Monday 22 February 2010

The Cowboy and the Frenchman (David Lynch, 1988, "Whut the Hell...?")

(originally posted on myspace here)


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Well yeehah! Back in 1988 it turns out that stone-deaf David Lynch - THE great artist of unsettling alien hospitality - decided to make a film from the HOST's point of view for once, a gorgeous little project for... Actually before I go on if this sounds like your kind of thing and you've half an hour to spare then watch it here first. Very much not the kind of thing Lynch would make nowadays but SO MUCH the kind of thing he made back then, it's funny to see just how starkly his mood has changed (his stuff's still fun but not nearly so silly. This actually makes quite a nice companion piece to Tomatoes Another Day now I think of it.) And no, all I was going to say before I cut myself off was that this piece was actually commissioned by a French television station for a season "The French as seen by..." And the reason I cut myself off was that I only learnt this fact after I'd watched the piece and can't be sure that I'd have enjoyed it as much if I'd known before. Conversely though... if I hadn't known beforehand that it was directed by David Lynch I might not have enjoyed it AS MUCH. I don't think I was cutting the film more slack, I just think that this way round I was seeing more in it. More than if I'd known it was a film made specifically for an audience with English as a second language in order to address views on the French (which it beautifully doesn't do anyway). Authorship though, hm...

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Another point of reference for Money's machine now I think of it

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