When a clip circulated featuring David Lynch violently dismissing the validity of watching theatrical movies via phone, some assumed that he was disinterested in web video altogether. This is patently ridiculous, as he was among the first major filmmakers to create original web content. Some of that content — the show Rabbits — even found its way into his latest feature, Inland Empire.
Now the director may be developing a web series based on his book Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness and Creativity. The book covers Lynch’s involvement and fascination with transcendental meditation, and specifically the effects on his creative process. Whatever you think of TM, Lynch’s conversations prove to be fascinating for fans of his films, as his descriptions of the meditative state are (unsurprisingly, in retrospect) eerily similar to the more obscure visions in his movies. The Red Room from Twin Peaks seems almost obvious in retrospect.
Lynch is reported to be developing the series for On Networks, which has already debuted work from Amy Poehler. If you can’t wait for the series, I recommend the audiobook version of Catching the Big Fish, read by Lynch himself.
Incidentally, the next big release from Lynch is the 10-DVD Lime Green box set later this month. It collects Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart with soundtracks and supplemental material, in addition to a batch of mystery content on the tenth disc. I’d been relatively disinterested (especially at $179.99) until Lynch mentioned that among the mystery features would be “32 scenes never seen before from Wild at Heart. Partial
scenes, extended scenes and complete scenes from a work print that was
found, so it’s funky quality, but all of them have been edited as much
as I could edit them with what was available and all of them have been
mixed.” Holy shit! We’ll work on covering that when the discs are available on November 18.