The Passion of David Lynch: Wild at Heart in Hollywood

Filmmaker David Lynch asserts that when he is directing, ninety percent of the time he doesn't know what he is doing. To understand Lynch's films, Martha Nochimson believes, requires a similar method of being open to the subconscious, of resisting the logical reductiveness of language. In this innovative book, she draws on these strategies to offer close readings of Lynch's films, informed by unprecedented, in-depth interviews with Lynch himself. Nochimson begins with a look at Lynch's visual influences--Jackson Pollock, Francis Bacon, and Edward Hopper--and his links to Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles, then moves into the heart of her study, in-depth analyses of Lynch's films and television productions. These include Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, Dune, The Elephant Man, Eraserhead, The Grandmother, The Alphabet, and Lynch's most recent, Lost Highway. Nochimson's interpretations explode previous misconceptions of Lynch as a deviant filmmaker and misogynist. Instead, she shows how he subverts traditional Hollywood gender roles to offer an optimistic view that love and human connection are really possible.

Author: Martha P. Nochimson
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 11/01/1997
Pages: 288
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.03lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.06w x 0.68d
ISBN: 9780292755659

About the Author
Martha P. Nochimson is Professor of Film and Literature at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, New York. She also has taught for ten years at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.