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Rest in Peace David Lynch
During the 1980s, David Lynch was a ubiquitous presence in Los Angeles. He gave talks at the American Film Institute, his movies Eraserhead and Elephant Man were continually screened at revival theaters, his paintings and photos were featured at local art galleries and he scrawled a weekly comic for the LA Reader called “The Angriest Dog in the World.” Twice I saw him having pie and coffee at Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank.
In 1986, Lynch released his cinematic masterpiece Blue Velvet. The opening sequence features a blue sky, red roses and a white picket fence — an obvious metaphor for America. We see an old fire truck, kids walking to school, a man watering his front lawn. Suddenly, the man has a stroke and falls to the ground. The man’s dog licks the squirting hose poised over the man’s groin while Lynch’s camera sifts through the uncut blades of grass until we see a horde of devilish beetles devouring a pile of dung.
Lynch was exploring America’s shadow side. He was showing us the nasty underbelly of our nation behind the white picket fences and oversized flags. Blue Velvet was an antidote to the blind patriotism of Reaganism. Critics either loved the movie or called it sick and depraved.
During this period, I worked as a script reader for Paramount Pictures. I drove to the studio on Monday mornings and picked up five to ten screenplays to read…