All language subtitles for lynch.oz.2022.1080p.web.h264

Ladies and gentlemen.

Lynch/Oz.

When you look at the grand scope
of American storytelling...

..in this strange, mixed up,
argumentative, polarized country.

Finding a story we can all agree
on is next to impossible.

There's these two very similar films
that are famous in film history

because they share the same story
beats, the same trajectory.

They're both flops
when they came out.

The first one's The Wizard of Oz.

The second one is Frank Capra's It's
A Wonderful Life.

I'm shaking the dust of this crummy
little town off my feet

and I'm going to see the world.

Get me back.

Get me back. I don't care what
happens to me.

There is no place like home.

There's no place like home.

And a curious thing happened
with both of them.

They went away for a few years.

And then they were represented on TV
and they were kind of put forth

as a special event.

50% of the television sets
in America were tuned

to The Wizard of Oz.

And then Oz did so well
in the numbers that the network

brought it back and it eventually
settled into a pattern.

Always the same time of year.
Always the same moment.

It's right there and it's special
and it's precious.

If The Wizard of Oz is not the
quintessentially American fairy
tale,

I really don't know what is.

It's one of the first movies I think
most children are introduced

to as "Hello, you are a child.
Welcome to the world of movies.

"Let me open up the curtain
of what cinema is."

# Somewhere over the rainbow

# Bluebirds fly. #

But even beyond that, what makes
it special is this is a movie

that we've had that every
generation of kids has watched

for eight decades.

There's just something in the
shared candy coloured musical

universe of The Wizard of Oz
that I find so remarkable,

so visually and sonically
influential.

We've all been to Oz.

# When you're starved from
technicolour up there. #

And the thing is, it has not aged
at all because it's a film

that takes place so squarely
in the world of musical and fantasy.

You can never underestimate
the power of when a movie

that is extensively taking place
in a normal universe breaks out

into song because that is the moment
when the film looks at the audience

and it says, "Are you in?"

# Somewhere...#

It makes me think of the moment
early on in Wild at Heart.

Nicolas Cage takes Laura Dern
to a metal bar, and suddenly

in the middle of this metal
bar, he begins to sing Elvis.

# Just to feel

# Just to feel

# Your...#

And the band magically knows
the notes and everybody else who's

also at this metal bar magically
sings along.

David Lynch must have been four
or five years old that first year

they put The Wizard of Oz on TV.

I do see the story of The Wizard
of Oz as the story of David Lynch

himself becoming a filmmaker.

I feel like I see him in it
more than I even

see his individual films.
Despite all the references.

Despite all the red shoes
and the curtains.

He's a guy from the Plains.

Missoula doesn't look too different
than the Kansas in this movie.

And so he goes on this journey
himself.

He's always talking about
consciousness and transcendence,

and he takes us
there through his films.

There's an ocean of pure, vibrant
consciousness inside each one of us.

The stream flows, the wind blows,
the cloud fleets, the heart beats.

And it's right at the source
and base of mind,

right at the source of thought.

And it's also at the source
of all matter.

You...you'd better close your eyes,
my child, for a moment, in order

to be better in tune with
the infinite.

And I think that's what Dorothy
does in this film.

She transcends and she goes
to this other world and she goes

on this journey where she winds
up finding herself and knowing

her own powers, which to me is the
David Lynch story above everything.

He talks about his movies
like Lost Highway, for example,

as being what he calls psychogenic
fugues, where a character gets

knocked upside by trauma
and they wind up slipping

into this other dimension almost as
a way of trying to find stability.

I mean, whether or not you believe
Oz is real, you know that Dorothy

got hit on the head, that something
very bad happened

to her and that she was unconscious
for a long time.

That she went to another place, that
she had this near-death experience

in the middle of a tornado.

Damn. Got some sticky stuff in my
hair.

There's this very small detail
at the opening of The Wizard of Oz.

Right when the title comes up on
screen, you hear this gust of wind,

but it's not a sound effect.

It is humans sounding like a gust
of wind.

They're going, "whoo."

That human wind sets up this mood
for the whole film, you know,

a whole film that winds
up being defined by wind.

And then when the house starts
to swirl around, it is the absolute

cacophony inside of this tornado.

And then she lands and this entire
movie goes silent

for the first time.

And that silence clears
the table for the audience.

And then the music kicks in and you
start to hear the Oz theme

and you get a little gust
of that human wind sound again.

And you have to wonder if those same
winds are the ones we hear

in David's films.

I was painting a painting
about four foot square.

And I was sitting back, probably
taking a smoke and looking at it.

And from the painting, I heard
a wind.

I've heard David Lynch say that
when he wants something special

from his actors, he says more wind,
which means put more mystery

in their performance.

He, too, has that love of rooms
that seem filled with wind

that you can hear, even if a room
seems like it should be completely
airless.

And I love that he talks about wind
as the source of mystery

when that is exactly
what happens in Oz.

Wind is the source that rolls the
girl around and it puts her
somewhere new.

The camerawork in that scene helped
set this really ominous sense about
Oz.

And it sets up this vibration
of this land is beautiful,

but you need to watch your back.

Something with poison in it, I
think.

With poison in it, but attractive to
the eye.

I think there is a sense in a David
Lynch film where he trains

you really early on as the audience
to never be content, to just take

things at face value.

He is always interested
in what's underneath the surface

and he is pushing underneath
that and he is the person who is a,

"Do you think that grove of apple
trees just looks like apple trees?

"I would look again, that grove
of apple trees is actually alive."

Ouch.

There's violence where you're not
expecting to see it.

The Wizard of Oz is absolutely
darker under the surface

than the movie forces you to
acknowledge.

I mean, Dorothy enters Oz killing
somebody.

And that's all that's left
to the Wicked Witch of the East.

Two powerful women die in the Wizard
of Oz at the hands of a young girl

who is pretty OK with it.

Like, does Alice go into Wonderland
and just start murdering people left
and right?

Melting, I'm melting.

She's dead. You killed her.

And it's funny because Frank Baum
looked across the ocean

at Hans Christian Andersen
and the Brothers Grimm,

who were writing really grisly,
gory stuff.

And he thought, I'm going to write
a story that does not

have that horror.

But, he didn't really do that.

I think if there is a driving
question or driving goal

that really connects David Lynch
in all of his films,

it is that nothing should be taken
for granted and that nothing

is exactly what it is.

I'm not me.

I'm not. I'm not me. I'm not.
I'm not me.

And that we all contain
within ourselves a deep truth

of who we are and the power
to be the person that we want to be.

100%.

It's interesting because every time
I see David Lynch, I see a man

who has done a lot of work
to maintain the sense of moving

through the world like a child.

And I love that he is so drawn
to a character like Dorothy, whose

defining characteristic
is a complete lack of cynicism.

She walks through this world and
when people are kind, she's
grateful.

The only way to get Dorothy
back to Kansas is for me

to take her there myself.

Oh, will you? Could you? Oh!

And when people are mean, she's
like, "Well, you're mean."

Shame on you. What did you do that
for?

But, yet she is never jaded
about anything.

She has this gigantic, curious
spirit that propels her forward.

I think where David Lynch
and Dorothy have this strong point

of connection is in the fact
that they both know that adventures

can not be planned.

Life.

Is full of surprises.

They can only be approached
with the right attitude.

Man's attitude.

A man's attitude goes some ways
the way his life will be.

Is that something you might
agree with?

Sure.

He still thinks, I think, of
curtains almost as this gateway to
magic.

They open up and then you get
to enter this other world.

He favours theatrical curtains,
the kind of curtains that belong

to magicians and movie theatres,
you know, the kind of curtains

that you only use when you are
framing a performance.

The kind of curtains he would've
seen when he goes to the movies,

when he's a young boy
and that curtain opens up.

And so when you see a curtain
like that, you know that something

is about to happen that is not
real life.

If a curtain is your divider
between reality and fantasy,

the curtain is easy to get
through and to walk through.

The curtain is welcoming.

It's as easy as Toto pulling
back the curtain

on the great wizard himself.

Think yourselves lucky.

Oh, hi. I am the great and powerful
Wizard of Oz.

You're a very bad man.

And you see on the wizard's
face this disappointment

because he has disappointed them.

I'm just a very bad wizard.

And it's almost unfair, I think,

for everybody to be so sad
when they see him because it's still

a great show.

There's this fear that the director
does not want his craft

to be exposed, and I wonder
if that's a little bit

of where David Lynch is like,
"I don't want to explain my films.

"I don't want to ever show
you my gears and my levers

"because nothing lives up to what
you have perceived on the screen."

Damian asks, "What's behind the red
curtains?"

It's a top secret thing, Damian.

And...

..just leave it, leave it like that.

Sometimes when you see a filmmaker
make an allusion to a film

that they love, they're doing
it for this reason of saying

this film was an influence on me.

Go watch it, go pay attention to it.

But that is not at all how I think
David Lynch uses The Wizard of Oz.

I mean, you can't use The Wizard
of Oz like that because everyone's

seen that film.

I think he wants to go home. Home?

Where is your home? Is that right?
He knows where his home is.

Well, where is his home?

Where, home?

# We're off to see the Wizard, the
wonderful Wizard of Oz. #

He almost uses it as a way of making
his films more approachable.

When you have something like Wild
at Heart, which is a story

without really clear arcs,
and there's violence that comes

in out of nowhere and tragedy
that comes in out of nowhere.

And yet incredible hot lust
and humour and romance.

To take this crazy mother figure
with her red dress and nails

and keep associating her with
the Wicked Witch is almost a way

of giving that character a parallel.

And letting the audience say,

"I kind of understand who
she is and why she does this,

"and I don't need to know
any more about her motivations."

He's using The Wizard of Oz,
I think, almost as a way of shaking

hands with the people
in the audience and saying,

"We do have this shared language.
You can trust me."

We will pursue, capture and
incarcerate.

Let's hit the road.

My family and I were just watching
Back to the Future,

which couldn't be a less Lynchian
movie if it tried.

But if you use the lens
of Oz to look at it, well,

what do you have?

A young man from Anytown, USA,
who travels magically to another

world, in this case, his own past.

This has got to be a dream.

Where he encounters doppelgangers
of people that he knows from home.

Now, I've got no reason to suspect
that Back to the Future was inspired

by The Wizard of Oz.

But The Wizard of Oz is
a really sturdy template.

It's a provocative lens to look at,
you know, a lot of different stories
through.

Mum, dad! Did you hit your head?
You guys. You guys look great.

Oh, Auntie Ellen, it's you.

There's a strong Oz, Kansas
dynamic in Blue Velvet.

We see how close the real world
and then that nightmare world

are to one another.

Dreams talk to you.

In dreams, you're mine.

Jeffrey leaves the Kansas
of his family's bubble deep

in the suburbs of Lumberton
to the other side of Lincoln,

where the sinister adults
only action goes down.

Here's to an interesting experience.
I'll drink to that.

He crosses over when he sneaks
into Dorothy Vallen's apartment.

She's certainly a character from
Oz, not from Kansas and Jeffrey's
journey.

And then Jeffrey gets dragged
through hell, kills the big

bad and then returns to his family.

And then at the very end, that scene
with the robin, with Jeffrey

and his family gathered
around the window.

Jeffrey, lunch is ready.

OK.

Looks an awful lot like Dorothy
in her bed, surrounded

by her loving family.

It's a strange world.

Isn't it?

But knowing things,
having experienced things

that they never will.

Paul Atreides is a very Dorothy
like character.

He certainly travels through
multiple worlds and moves

from the more colourful Caliban
to a raucous dune, which is sepia

toned, a lot like Kansas.

Ultimately, he liberates Dune
just as Dorothy liberates Oz.

John Merrick, the Elephant Man,
is really the epitome of a character

who moves between different worlds.

A freak exhibit in the carnival
is just about the lowest social

class I can imagine
in Victorian England.

And he leaves it for London
Hospital, which becomes his gateway

to the upper class.

If Oz echoes Kansas, well then
the hospital echoes the carnival.

The horror and the abuse recur again
first, more politely as scientific

curiosity, but then again
quite literally.

So if you see Dorothy as an innocent
character flung into a dangerous

world, well, Merrick's been born
into one, and he strives

to find his kinder Kansas,
which is sort of a reversal of Oz.

In the images that we see
of his angelic mother seem, at least

to me, to be a little inspired
by Glinda the Good Witch,

the epitome of kindness.

Nothing will die.

But just because Oz can be a handy
way to help parse out

particular elements of Lynch's
work, I wouldn't assume

that all of those similarities
were necessarily directly

inspired by Oz, they could be.

Desiring an idea is like a bait
on a hook.

You can pull them in.

I like to think of it as in the
other room,

the puzzle is all together,
but they keep flipping in just one

piece at a time. In the other
room... Over there.

Based on Glenn's disappearance
in Wild at Heart,

I think it's safe to assume that he
spent some time thinking about the
movie.

But, you know, I personally
have no idea

how far that influence really goes.

He's certainly aware of Oz.

Certainly something that he thinks
about, certainly something that's
important to him.

I'm going to play Somewhere Over The
Rainbow and...try to anyway.

A lot of people go to the movies
in order to experience new worlds

and new sensations.

And for that you need a relatable,
innocent and experienced character

to be confronted by those things.

And I think that that approach
works really well because,

well, I mean, the real world often
feels chaotic and strange.

Every day we're dragged
into some chaotic new hellscape

against our will. And we have to
find allies.

We have to find a way out to not
only achieve our goals, but make

it back home at the end of the day.

Of course, I could be projecting.

It might be that the broad strokes
of Oz, an innocent character

finding herself in a nightmare
world, characters appearing

in more than one shape
within more than one avatar,

having multiple doppelgangers.

Even the man behind the curtain,
sort of sinister power figure

at the centre of the narrative,
one who has two faces.

Well, it could be that that's
a generic enough, a powerful enough

metaphor that you could squeeze
it and poke it and prod it to apply

to almost anything.

Thousands of movies are based
on the idea of fish out of water.

Beverly Hills cop, Axel Foley
travels from the urban grime

of Detroit to glitzy Beverly Hills,
learns a couple of lessons and
concluding

that there's less difference
than you might think at first glance

between those places. And then he
goes back home.

The idea of going on a great
journey, extending yourself

beyond your comfort level.

Look. They're shooting buffalo.

It's a story that's what three
quarters of American movies.

It's probably hard to overstate
how common that trope is.

Luke travels from his home,
his Kansas like desert home

to the Death Star to the rebellion.

Is that an Oz narrative? Is
everything?

There's a really interesting movie
I watched recently,

The Miracle Worker, Arthur Penn's
1962 movie about Helen Keller.

And it really felt like I was
watching an early lost David Lynch
film.

There's a dinner scene where
the very formal and proper Keller

family are sitting around the table
and Helen is racing

around it like a wild animal,
grabbing at food, grunting

and all the rest of the family
around her are trying to act

like nothing is strange.

That kind of contrast, at once comic
and horrifying and a little sad.

Felt very Lynchian.

You'll be all right in a minute.

There's another moment
where her teacher is watching Helen

out the window, and then Annie
flashes back to her own school days.

As a kid, she was in an institution
for the blind, and Penn uses

a double exposure dissolve
that lasts

just an incredibly long time.

If it doesn't look like a dream team
straight out of the Elephant Man

or Eraserhead, I don't know
what does.

It's something that David Lynch does
in a way that feels effortless

and it has this powerful,
dreamlike effect.

There's that amazing dissolve on
Cooper's face, last minute, minute

and a half where he seems
to be unmoored in his world.

In the Miracle Worker, it's almost
as if the ghosts of Annie's

past have returned. And in both
cases, it's slightly Oz like.

All these characters
are becoming untethered and losing

track of which layer of reality
they're in.

Why would Lynch be that absorbed
for The Wizard of Oz?

Well, it's very nostalgic.

American icon of a film.

But anyway, Toto, we're home.

And this is my room.

In a lot of his movies, there's
a sense of a search for a sort

of lost, perfect American world,
the nostalgia for a paradise lost.

Perhaps for one that never
really existed.

Did he watch The Wizard
of Oz on a perfect day

at the perfect time
as a child, it's sort of baked

into his subconscious?

I wonder if on the same
day he watched The Brain

From Planet Arous instead,

would his movies be very, very
different?

Many filmmakers works are often
variations on a theme.

To me, Stanley Kubrick's films
are often about exposing the abuses,

the excesses of people in power.

Paths of Glory being one
of the most literal ones.

HE SPEAKS GERMAN

But that continues all the way up
to Eyes Wide Shut,

which is about the decadent,
super rich.

Ladies, where exactly are we going?

Exactly.

Where the rainbow ends.

Where the rainbow ends.

In The Shining, there's the whole
conversation about

all the best people who stayed
at the Overlook.

We had four presidents
who stayed here.

Lots of movie stars. Royalty?

All the best people.

Even Lolita is a girl who's preyed
upon by different, powerful men.

Clare Quilty and Humbert Humbert.

Gee, I'm really winning here.
I'm really winning.

I hope I don't get overcome
with power.

Lolita is a girl who's forced
to live in multiple worlds,

the normal one of teenagers,
but also a darker adult one.

Do you want to stay with this
filthy boy?

Is that what it is? Yes!

Why don't you leave me alone! Shut
your mouth.

There's a lot of Lolita the film in
Twin Peaks,

and there's a lot of Dolores Haze
and Laura Palmer.

What is real? How do you define
real?

Right now, I'm wrapping up a film
about simulation theory

and The Wizard of Oz has been coming
up a lot because at the end

of the day, what kind of
movie is it?

It's the story of a young girl
who moves between parallel worlds.

It means buckle your seatbelt,
Dorothy, because Kansas

is going bye-bye.

And there's a question, a sort
of question mark left at the end.

Which of these worlds is
the real one?

Are both of them real in some way?

But, it wasn't a dream.

It was a place. And you. And you.

And you. And you were there.

That's a question that people play
with in countless movies

that have been influenced
by it and everything from Nightmare

on Elm Street to The Matrix.

Lynch's films are filled
with characters who move

between different worlds,
and they're often very innocent

characters like Dorothy.

I've never seen so many trees in my
life.

As WC Fields would say, I'd rather
be here than Philadelphia.

In Mulholland Drive, which might
be the most Wizard of Oz

of all of them, Betty is a perfect
innocent

who finds herself in sort of the
twin versions of Hollywood,

the dream and the nightmare.

I think that in Lynch's duelling
realities,

the membranes between layers
of reality are thinner

than they were in The Wizard of Oz.

In many of these movies,
they're characters who hold

all the cards, just like The Wizard
of Oz himself, the man

behind the curtain, characters whose
influence travels between worlds.

We've met before, haven't we?

Yeah, I don't think so.

Where was it you think we met?

At your house. Don't you remember?

When Lynch was talking about Inland
Empire, another story of a woman

who moves between different levels
of reality, he once answered,

"We are like the spider. We weave
our life. And then move along it.

"We are like the dreamer who dreams,
then lives in the dream."

This is true for the entire
universe, like Mulholland Drive

in Winkie's Diner,

that guy is talking about his dream,
and he's afraid that the dream

could come true.

And then, soon enough, he finds
himself in the nightmare

of having to relive that dream.

He says to his psychiatrist, "In
the dream, I was sitting

"here and you were up there
by the cash register,"

and then they pan slowly over to the
cash register and you see

the absence of the psychiatrist
and it cuts back.

And then you see the gears turning
in the psychiatrist's head

who says, "Oh, you want to see
if it's real."

And then the man can't stop
it from happening.

The psychiatrist gets up
and he walks to the register

and we pan over. And now he is
exactly in that position.

He's filled the negative space,
and then the man finds himself
in his dream.

The way Dorothy is transported
into her dreams of Oz, only

without a tornado or even
a dissolve.

Just in the space of a line
of dialogue or two.

That very last scene in Twin Peaks:
The Return,

is the summation of a lot of ideas
that I think about with Oz

and with Lynch. The question of
dreams versus realities.

Because I read that the woman
who answered the door in the scene

is actually the woman who lives
in that house in our world.

This is your house.

Do you own this house or do
you rent this house?

Yes. We own this house.

So it's almost as if, well...

..which of the thousands of possible
multiple realities does Cooper land

in at the end of the series?

He lands in the same one
that you and I are living in.

And that the woman who owns the
house that they film,

Twin Peaks: The Return lives in.

And it's more than Cooper
and Kerry are able to take.

What year is this?

Argh!

They end to that sequence
in a complete mental breakdown,

a complete panic.

Which was an experience
that I really went

through while watching that whole
season.

It was shortly after the election,
and a lot of us were confused

and scared about what was going
to happen in the world.

God bless America.

So it's really nice to return to
the world of Twin Peaks,

even if within the show there's one
unspeakable nightmare after another.

At least it was our unspeakable
nightmare.

This is the water.

And this is the well.

Drink full and descend.

The horse is the white of the eyes.

And dark within.

But the strangeness crossed
over into my reality

because I remember episode eight,
the big episode, the one

with the atom bomb and the firemen
and that lizard.

I've watched that episode twice
and each time another horror

would be waiting for me the morning
after.

The first time my wife and I
watched it,

our cat was acting really strange,
rubbing her head against the TV.

The next morning we came downstairs
and the floor was just littered

with blood and feathers of a bird
that she had managed to catch

while locked in the house all night.

Maybe she escaped through a window
and maybe she pulled

it back inside somehow, I've got no
idea.

But she murdered it while we were
sleeping and scattered his remains

all over the floor.

And then two or three weeks later,
I watched it again alone.

And maybe this is in hindsight,
but as I imagined myself walking

down the steps the next morning,
I'm feeling a sort of Lynchian dread

like that guy in Mulholland Drive
who's walking back behind Twinkies,

and I come to my desk and on my
phone, there's like 20 new messages

that have just popped in the last
hour waiting for me.

My father back in Florida,
he died the night before.

He hadn't been doing well
for a while, so it wasn't a shock.

But I dunno, the timing
felt really strange.

I don't think I'm gonna watch
that episode again anytime soon.

I don't want to know what's
going to happen.

There's bad juju baked into
the bones of that thing.

It is happening again.

Like wildfire in the wheat field,

the fabulous tale of the Wizard
of Oz spread from town to city

to nation to the entire world.

For me, The Wizard of Oz
was the ultimate not just American

movie, movie period that I saw
as a child that made me

want to be in show business,
that made me want to create

characters, that made me want to go
on adventures and probably

made me take LSD.

I think it was a good influence
on me all the way around.

For me, it changed my life
when I saw it.

My obsession with it was I started
before television.

My parents took me to see
it at the Rex Theatre in Baltimore,

which, oddly enough, later became
the sexploitation nudist camp movie

theatre like 30 years later.

Then the Christmas thing became
like the sequel in my mind

as a child. Every year we watched
it.

I mean, it was a big deal
event and you always watched

it because it didn't come on again.
There was no other way.

Nobody could imagine that you could
ever buy a video of something

or watching it whenever you wanted
or rewind it.

That's the thing I always was kind
of against, you give away
the magic trick.

But, you know, the saddest thing
I ever heard was I talked

to this young kind of hipster kid
and we were just talking about
movies.

I said, "Do you like The Wizard of
Oz?" He said, "No, not really.

"I mean, it's basically just
walking."

I thought, "God, what a blurb."

If a kid watches The Wizard of Oz
today, the film completely works.

I think it's the perfect,
like a drug to kids to get them

hooked on movies for the rest
of their young lives.

Well, I don't think that's the only
movie that influenced David Lynch

or me, but certainly, he probably,
it was maybe one of the first movies

he saw too, and whatever
those first movies are,

the other one for me was
Cinderella, Walt Disney's and I love

the stepmother in that movie. And
she was the same to me as the witch.

She was the villain, the one
you were supposed to hate.

But, I was a puppeteer
when I was young.

Was David?

Hello. We're all very happy to be
here tonight.

First of all, I'd like to introduce
my boys.

This is Chuck O. And this is Buster.
And this is Pete.

I'm David Lynch, and this is Bob
and this is Dan.

Many, many directors are,

and later in life, your actors
always say

we're not your puppets, you know.
Well, yes, you are.

But, I wonder if he was,
because it seems like many, many

directors were puppet enthusiasts
as children,

and they were their actors and they
told them what to do in a way.

Like this. And I got it. I got it!

And then start bouncing up and down.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. OK.

Pals are rowdy. Kissing.
Yeah, OK. Yeah.

So I think it came from that,
that the villains were always better

characters, they had better outfits.

They're the ones you remembered
more in a way.

Captain Hook and Peter Pan, I mean,
the little girl in The Bad Seed,

Patty McCormack. These were
my childhood playmates.

Give me those shoes back.

Oh, no, I got them shoes hid
where nobody but me can find them.

You'd better give me those shoes,
they're mine.

Give them back to me.

I wrote Margaret Hamilton in my life
and she did send me back

an autographed picture and she
always signed her autographs

WWW Margaret Hamilton like
the Wicked Witch of the West,

which I prayed she had monogrammed
sheets that said that.

What a performance,
what a performance.

Who killed my sister? Who killed
the Witch of the East? Was it you?

And she was so much more fun
than the good witch

who dressed like she had gone
insane getting ready for the prom.

Most directors can always tell
you one of the first few movies

that obsessed them when they were
a kid and that is what led them

to pick this as a career forever.

The Wizard of Oz is still my
favourite movie.

Wicked Witch, I was in drag only
once in my life and that was as the
Wicked Witch.

And I went to a children's
birthday party.

You know, I raised a few
parents' eyebrows.

I think all my films
have been influenced.

Oz was Queen Carlotta maybe.

I think Desperate Living
had some Wizard of Oz in it.

Bring me her broomstick
and I'll grant your request.

Now go!

Loyalty to the Queen sometimes
result in rewards.

The Munchkins were, that was like
Martinville, kind of The Wizard of
Oz.

A special little weird town.

Even Divine was not
the Wicked Witch.

But Divine would have hung
around with the Wicked Witch.

They would have gotten along well.

I'm trying to think of is there one
scene that was really like

The Wizard of Oz on purpose?

Like a parody of it?

Dorothy: the Kansas City Pothead
was a movie I made that never

really got made.

Dorothy smoked pot and then went
to Oz,

which was a psychedelic high.

I don't think we ever got
any further than that.

The people that are my heroes
or your ones

would have been the villains
in other people's movies.

And the villains in my movies
are usually people

that are more middle of the road
and judgemental and don't mind

their own business.

Now, Miss Gulch didn't mind
their own business.

I want to see you and your wife
right away about Dorothy.

I make the same film. The moral is
the same, "Mind your business.

"Exaggerate what people use
against you.

"Turn it into a style and win."

All of my movies say that.

We find the defendant not guilty
of all charges.

There are different characters,
but the moral of all my movies

is definitely the same.

David might agree
with that with his own movies.

I think David and I both have a love
and a hate for the 1950s in America.

I mean, the 50's was a terrible
time.

Tracy, I have told you about that
hair.

Oh, wrap it up like a teenage
Jezebel.

Oh, mother, you're so 50's.

I mean, it was the most
judgemental, conformist thing ever.

But neither one of us is going
to start eating until Laura

washes her hands.

Wash your hands.

That's why rock and roll exploded.

It was the first way to rebel from
all that.

God bless Dwight Eisenhower.

ALL: God bless Dwight Eisenhower.

God bless Roy Cohn.

ALL: God bless Roy Cohn.

So I think David would probably
agree with that, that we grew

up with the same music, the same
censorship in movies that came

falling down over the years.

I don't think that America
has changed that much.

People still want to go home.
That's why I never left Baltimore.

This city has great style.

I think it's sort of like white
trash chic.

I did stay here because,

to me, my real friends were here and
people that didn't care

about show business and we went
over the rainbow ourselves

here with my friends
when we were young.

And most of those friends
I still have.

David has gone over the rainbow
from the very first film ever.

He lives in a different
reality than you or I do,

and that's quite obvious.

The last TV show he did was my
favourite thing he ever did.

Because if there was ever, like,
being kidnapped and taken

into a Lynchian world that you
didn't even know where you were,

you were so disoriented that it was
like The Wizard of Oz.

And I couldn't wait each week to go
there with him on that show.

Somehow he got that through
the Hollywood system.

That is amazing to me.

But from the very first moment
I ever saw a David Lynch film,

which was Eraserhead, it
may have been the first weekend

it was ever at midnight.

And I started raving about it
in the press because it was such

an amazing movie. And of course, it
still is.

I've met John Waters many
times and I always make sure

I thank him for that.

And that's kind of how we met.

And there is kind of a famous shot
of David Lynch and I meeting out

front of Bob's Big Boy. Have you
ever seen that picture?

At that period, David did eat lunch
at Bob's Big Boys every day, I
think.

Can we say you're a creature
of habit? Yes.

Habit in a daily routine. Yeah.

And then when there's some sort
of order there, then you're free

to mentally go off any place.

You've got a safe sort of foundation
and a place to spring off from.

One day in Bob's, I saw
a man come in.

To a counter.

Seeing him came a feeling.

And that's where that Frank Booth
came from.

Let's fuck. I'll fuck anything
that moves.

And even though I think our films
are very, very different, I think

that we are certainly kindred
spirits and have the same

sense of humour.

UNINTELLIGIBLE SHOUTING

My favourite thing that David said
is that he loves making

the movie, he loves editing,
he loves thinking it up.

But then it's released
and the heartbreak begins.

What a great life. I know the
feeling.

I would have loved to have met him
with Margaret Hamilton

while she was alive. That would
have been the best.

I was once a struggling artist
in New York City and waited tables

at a diner. David Lynch would come
in as a customer.

I was just so fascinated
that he always ordered pancakes

and used a lot of maple syrup.

Short stack of griddle cakes, melted
butter, maple syrup,

lightly heated, and slice of ham.

Nothing beats the taste sensation
when maple syrup collides with ham.

He's quite handsome, almost
a caricature of Midwestern courtesy

and bluntness, which I think we see
in some of his Q&As.

Do you want some more pie?
A whole pie.

Yes, I would, Miss Johnson.
And a piece of paper and a pencil.

I plan on writing an epic poem
about this gorgeous pie.

In 2001, I went to see Mulholland
Drive at the New York Film Festival,

and then Lynch came out at the end
and he spoke about the movie quite

elliptically, as he has want to do.

No, I thunder.

There is no damned.

I remember somebody had asked him,
what does the film mean?

And his response was, "Well, I
think, you know." And that was it.

I know you hate saying what things
mean in your films, but am I right

in thinking that that's
at least in the right area?

No.

And then a guy asked, "Can you talk
about your relationship

"to The Wizard of Oz in relation
to Mulholland Drive?"

And his response was, "There is not
a day that goes by that I don't
think

"about The Wizard of Oz."

I will say that it was one
of those watershed moments for me

as a filmmaker to understand
his sense of humility in front

of another piece of art. Because he
said it with a kind

of childlike wonder in all of my
subsequent viewings of Mulholland
Drive,

I've always thought of it as a
companion piece to Wizard of Oz.

Part of that has to do with perhaps
a left turn away from, quote,

"On the nose gestures" of a film
like Wild at Heart and something

more about its structure.

This idea of the dream within
the consciousness of a character

essentially comprising two thirds
of the film, a dreamscape
given narrative life.

Mulholland Drive is an exploration
of a character named Betty Wilkes,

a fresh faced aspiring actor
who comes to Hollywood

to make it big.

She immediately meets a cast
of characters who are also searching

for something themselves,
and she's immediately thrust

into mysteries beyond her
comprehension and romance

that's unexpected and somewhat
unruly.

And in the process of investigating
this mystery, we learn about another

woman who looks very much like Betty
Wilkes named Diane Selwyn.

And we learn about a kind of shadow
world that she lives in that's

very much like Betty's, but the
failed version of Betty's life.

Camilla.

You've come back.

We're given access to the fantasy
and the dreams and the hopes

of Betty's character.

And then by pulling the lid
off of that, we realise

that there is a hope for something
that never happened in the character

of Diane Selwyn.

It's as if Lynch is saying, "We're
not going to learn as much

"about this character by watching
her in her dank Hollywood apartment

"planning a murder haunted by the
odious-ness of her own thoughts.

"We're going to learn so much more
about her seeing her as the best
version of herself."

Ten bucks says you're Betty.

Yes, I am, Mrs Lenoir.

The most capable, the most talented,
the most hopeful and loving.

Thanks.

Diane.

And in the process, we're going
to see Diane's imagination

of a better version of her
girlfriend, which is so
heartbreaking.

What's your name?

And the way to get to that better
version of the girlfriend

is to strip her of all of
her identity.

Diane Selwyn.

Maybe that's my name.

There's something so deeply
moving about this strategy

because it's saying sometimes
we learn more about a character not

from their reality,
but from their dreams.

Hey, pretty girl.

Time to wake up.

Mulholland Drive is an inverse
of Oz and that the home

we return our Dorothy to,

in this case, Diane Selwyn's, is not
one she wants to return to.

It's a much darker register
of the Oz narrative.

I was so struck watching the movie
again by how it is such a merciless

depiction of Hollywood.

It seems to be such a personal
film for Lynch.

You feel a sense of deep, almost
anticipatory wounding in him

in his depiction of Hollywood.

There is no way that girl
is in my movie.

Argh!

This is the girl. Hey, that girl is
not in my film.

It's no longer your film.

And to me, there's nothing
more nightmarish than the moment

that the director says,
"This is the girl,"

because you understand
he has surrendered his agency

to larger forces as a way
to just stay in the game.

There is almost nothing
more brutally truthful

about the process of making movies
in Hollywood than that moment.

Might as well be a documentary
as far as I'm concerned.

When you don't have final cut, total
creative freedom, you stand to die

the death. Dying. The death.
And died...I did.

I just think there are so many
things in Lynch's work

that are speaking back to Oz
and they show up so profoundly

in this film, like Rebecca del Rio
lip syncing the Spanish version

of Roy Orbison's crying.

It's like hearing Judy Garland's
incredible recorded real voice lip

synching to herself, singing
Over the Rainbow.

It's foundational in Oz,
but it's also foundational in Lynch

to watch characters lip sync.

I just feel that as a kid, he must
have been aware that Garland

was moving her mouth to a recording
of her own voice.

The drama and the uncanny weirdness
of that Rebecca del Rio

performance, that's all Oz, the blue
haired lady, that's all Oz.

There's a couple of extraordinary
moments in Oz where you just get

close ups of the witches face, of
the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion,

where you really see the artifice
of the makeup.

When Lynch plays with those
gestures, I think they are
intentional.

Thinking about movies like Fire Walk
With Me, where Lynch will do

something so simple as Laura Palmer
talking to her old boyfriend,

and he does a hard cut
to her wearing black lipstick

and laughing and then cuts
out of it.

It is so scary, so shocking.

That kind of simple makeup
gesture truly going back

to the origins of theatre.

He's looking back at the green faced
witch when he puts that black

lipstick on Laura Palmer.

And I think the same is true
with the man who I believe

is actually a woman behind Twinkies
in Mulholland Drive.

It's a gesture of theatrical
artifice, but also something

emotionally more true than just
seeing a guy back there roasting hot

dogs or squirrels, that black makeup
with the red ringed eyes.

It's such a strong, strange,
deeply bold choice.

And I feel like that kind of choice
is directly influenced by some

of the wildness that we've come
to take for granted in Oz.

What I think is perhaps
a through line between Oz

and the films Lynch has made
is this kind of unconscious courage

that the character is willing to
keep opening doors they shouldn't
be opening.

To keep going to addresses
they shouldn't go.

To keep spying on those they should
not spy on.

They invite chaos into their life
because they have to know.

I'm involved in a mystery.

I'm in the middle of a mystery
and it's all secret.

He applies the quotidian
narrative trope of the detective

to many of his films, characters
who are detectives of metaphysical

mysteries, cosmic mysteries,
sometimes to their great

peril or horror.

Gordon.

Gordon.

And if you think about Dorothy
and Oz, she's a child detective

with her dog and a picnic basket.

She's being asked to go
on this insane journey and trust

to follow that yellow brick road.

Part of the irony to me when I think
about The Wizard of Oz is I think

of it as forever coupled, of course,
with Gone With the Wind, these two

completely foundational works made
by the same person and released

in the same year.

It's a strange statement
about the American unconscious.

Oh.

Home.

I have to think of some way
to get him back.

And when you look at Lynch's films,
which are so driven by a law

of the unconscious, why wouldn't Oz
be the foundational text for him?

I do wonder if he would have found
his way towards some version

of what is his inimitable
style over time anyway.

But that Oz gave him permission
to think so big, to think so wildly

and off the map.

I don't think it's so unusual to
find new inspiration or comforting

lessons in a single work in the same
way that we might consult the Bible.

I think Oz has served as some kind
of foundational text for Lynch.

I really do.

His body of work is braided
with gestures and moments in Oz,

which have burned their way
into Lynch's creative mind.

My sense is that his work
is governed by irrationality

and that he arrives at some
of his best ideas through a trip

into his unconscious as opposed
to his conscious mind.

In some of his work, he's proving
the theorem that once we see certain

works and once certain images
and story passages and characters

are burned into our brain,
there is no unseeing.

And somehow that work has landed
in our DNA.

And for him, there's just a lot
more of Oz in his DNA

than there is in any other
filmmaker.

There are so many gestures
that I wonder if Lynch himself

would say, I love to watch people
singing lip sync songs,

for instance, which happens
in at least every other one

of his movies and sometimes
within his movies, multiple times

as in Mulholland Drive, and always
in front of curtains.

# And I'll see you

# And you'd see me and I'll see
you. #

I just wonder if that's his dream
of the Wizard of Oz.

Do you know what I mean?

Like in his dream life,

that's how the Wizard of Oz
has landed as Dorothy in front

of curtains as a torch singer.

Not a 12-year-old farm girl
in a gingham dress.

# Somewhere over the rainbow. #

But part of what I think
is so juicy about this idea

that he is so influenced
by the film is the meta story

beyond The Wizard of Oz.

It's the story of Judy Garland.

Her brilliance, her greatness.

The deep betrayal
that she experienced

as a genius in Hollywood.

The tragedy of her life.
The wreckage of her life.

You don't know what it's like to
watch somebody you love...

..just crumble away bit by bit, day
by day in front of your eyes.

I think that is as influential
to Lynch as the film itself.

Goodnight, baby.

It's the story outside of the story,
and that is so much Lynch to me

that he's always telling the story
outside of the story and sort

of saying, "But it gets bigger.
It expands."

And Mulholland Drive to me is one
of those movies where he completely

sticks the landing in terms
of proposing a world

of great possibilities and great
mystery and then actually showing

it to us the way that Oz does.

Howdy. Howdy to you.

The scene that stands out for me
as it relates to Dorothy and Oz

is the masterful scene of Betty
auditioning.

First watching her play the scene
with the Rita character, reading

the lines horribly and being clearly
not an actor, which is its own sort

of wish fulfilment
on Diane Solomon's part.

So get out of here before...

Before what? Before I kill you.

Then they put you in jail.

There's something so inspirational
to me about watching

her transformation in that audition
scene and playing the character so
differently.

Get out of here. Before...

Reinterpreting the scene, giving

us another window
into what that scene could be.

Or what?

This is like the crystallization
to me of Lynch's work in a nutshell,

which is this idea of multiple
realities but also multiple

interpretations as the rule,
not the exception.

A multiplicity of possibilities.

Before I kill you.

It's thrilling to see her become an
actor

we had no idea she could be.

After watching a kind of meta
performance by Naomi Watts, that's

almost frustratingly naive and golly
gee, gee whiz in a way that makes

it hard to be in a real
kind of relationship

to her as a character.

And then to see this unexpected
complexity, that to me felt

like a central instinct
in Lynch's work.

To say that we quite literally
contain multitudes.

And there is so much more to all of
us than we give ourselves credit
for.

And part of how I think that relates
to Oz are those moments of Dorothy

having to summon the courage,
the abject despair of never getting

home, having to be present in Oz,
even though she may never leave Oz.

I'm frightened. I'm frightened and
I'm frightened.

And at least she has the Tin Man
and Scarecrow and the Cowardly

Lion as friends.

There's something about that journey
that is so unexpected

that she becomes such a hero.

This little girl, Dorothy Gale,
that I just feel

like that must be something
that in the best way, infected

a young David Lynch's mind
and allowed him or inspired him

to create characters with as much
possibility in them.

Come on, it'll be just like
in the movies.

We'll pretend to be someone else.

As much as Mulholland Drive
devastated me when I first saw it,

and as much as it frightened me
to my core.

That movie shook me.

I now see a tremendous amount
of hope in it because I feel

like Lynch is giving us, the
audience, access to the best
versions

of those characters.

The most interesting. The most
inspiring.

The most hopeful.

You look like someone else.

He's actually kind of an optimist
to me, and that movie proves

it in my mind.

As dark as it is, I see
it as a very optimistic film.

I really think he identifies
with Dorothy, but who knows?

He might be somebody who says,
"And I have the witch in me too.

"And I have the Cowardly Lion
and I have the sham wizard."

I think he has all of those
characters in him.

We all do, I think,
is what he's saying.

We have all of them in us.

There are plenty of movies
that follow the Hero's Journey

as outlined by Joseph Campbell,
but a number of them

more specifically, seem to follow
the formula and the vernacular

of the Wizard of Oz.

I'm melting, melting.

Argh!

I don't care about money.

I'm pulling back the curtain.

I want to meet the wizard.

I want your dog.

Barney? Give him to me.

The film touches almost every
single genre we can think of.

It has adventure.

Musical.

Comedy.

Drama.

Science fiction.

Even horror.

To The Big Lebowski, which is
this extraordinarily Wizard

of Oz-like tale. It's a comedy and
it's a stoner comedy.

Here you have an unwilling
protagonist like Dorothy swept

up in a whirlwind
that he doesn't understand.

Where's the money, Lebowski?

Into a different world that is
so much deeper and darker

than his relatively simple
pedestrian existence.

And he meets a cast of magical
characters that give him secret

knowledge that interestingly,
a lot of them

had all along inside themselves.

Sometimes you eat the bar
and you'll be surprised.

Sometimes the bar will eat you.

And at the other end of the genre
spectrum,

we've got films in the realm of sci
fi and horror and dark fantasy,

movies like Suspiria, which actually
shares a lot with The Wizard of Oz.

Here we have a young woman
going on a journey into a surreal,

bizarre, even technicolour world.

Meeting several people along the way

who will shape her for the rest
of her life.

Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth
and the Devil's Backbone also share

a lot of similarities with
Wizard of Oz.

Here we have young people
going into these dreamlike
scenarios,

meeting a series of interesting
entities that shape them and coming

out on the other side changed
in some way.

Martin Scorsese's After Hours
feels like The Wizard of Oz.

Would you just give me a break?
I really just want to go home.

I've got to get over to that bar,
get my keys.

Then I can get home.

Where do you live? Can you take me?
Can you take me home?

And Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
is The Wizard of Oz

in so many ways, we open
on her sepia tone childhood

in Monterey, and the entire movie
is about going back home.

She eventually decides to stay
in Tucson, but the final shot tells

us she found her new home.
So she is home.

Even a movie like Apocalypse Now
has similarities to The Wizard of
Oz.

But there's no
home in Apocalypse Now.

I mean he starts in Saigon.

I'm still only in Saigon.

And he really doesn't want
to be there.

So in a sense, he's started
in Oz after the tornado.

But he goes on a mystical,
psychedelic journey in a foreign

land meeting a whole bunch
of strange people that help him

along the way.

In order to find someone
who is basically a wizard.

Good. We talk to Colonel Kurtz.

Hey, man, you don't...you don't
talk to the colonel.

Well, when you listen to him...

There's this monolithic, powerful,

all knowing, Colonel Kurtz,
that everyone speaks

about with reverence and fear.

And it turns out to be both
the wizard and the witch.

And then there's David Lynch,
who is by far the king of weaving

the visual and auditory language,
the thematic and story language

of the Wizard of Oz into his own
work.

Oh, I had the strangest dream.

You were there.

And you. And you.

Taking Twin Peaks season three,
for example, he has some
spectacular,

very modern visual effects,
but he also uses a lot of the same

techniques used in The Wizard of Oz,
old school opacity transitioning

that no-one uses anymore
unless you were trying to make

it look like it was actually
made in the 1950's.

He knows he's using an old school
of fact.

This is David Lynch showing us
where the smoke machine is.

He is the wizard.

Why didn't you want to talk
about Judy?

Who is Judy?

Does Judy want something from me?

Why don't you ask Judy yourself?

Let me write it down for you.

You could say that The Wizard of Oz
has been a more powerful tool

for Lynch in making populist
surrealist entertainment

than Jesus Christ has been for other
surrealist filmmakers

like Jodorowsky or Bunuel.

But he's way too gifted
of an artist and a filmmaker

to just regurgitate The
Wizard of Oz.

What he's doing is he's taking
what we all know about it,

and he's breaking it down into its
component parts and remixing

them either buried deep
down beneath in visuals and themes

and motifs and basically
all of his movies or right

at the surface in Wild at Heart.

Perhaps you might even picture
Toto from The Wizard of Oz.

In my mind, it honours this great
film, The Wizard of Oz,

which is a film that's caused people
to dream now for decades.

And there's something about The
Wizard of Oz that's cosmic.

And it talks to human beings
in a deep way.

What's interesting about Wild
at Heart is that The Wizard of Oz

exists in the cannon
and the mythology of its world.

It's too bad he couldn't...

..visit that old Wizard of Oz.

Get some good advice.

There are no munchkins in the movie
now, huh?

Oh, I don't think so. Yeah.
There was a munchkin.

Erm, there was a munchkin.

The characters in Wild at Heart
have seen the movie The Wizard of
Oz.

You ever think something.

And hear a wind and see the Wicked
Witch of the East coming flying in.

And they use it as the ideal of
their own lives that they can never
get.

That kind of money.

Get us a long way down the
Yellow Brick Road.

Well, I know it ain't exactly
Emerald City.

They constantly reference
that movie, and their idea

of the comfort of home is
the idyllic movie, The Wizard of Oz.

Oh, sure. Somewhere over the
rainbow.

It's just shit.

There's this moment where Laura Dern
was just assaulted by Willem Dafoe

and she clicks her red heels
together three times.

You can't miss it. And everyone
knows what should happen next.

But the scene cuts and nothing
happens.

She's still in Oz, and it's because
he's not retelling The Wizard of Oz.

He's using the cultural real estate
that the Wizard of Oz occupies

in our public consciousness to say
in these people's cases,

there just is no home.

All of these virtues that Dorothy
collects in The Wizard of Oz

are vices that these characters
are collecting.

These vices are going to keep
them where they are,

and they need to find a way
to live with that or find some

other way out.

Honey, you ain't going to begin
worrying now over what's

bad for you. I mean here you are
crossing state lines with an A

number one certified murderer.

Manslaughter, honey, not murder.
Don't exaggerate.

There's this strange cultural
currency to using certain, almost

universally known images
of 1950's celebrities

that have become Americana.

And almost every movie that David
Lynch has made, there is some

expression of this Americana in it.

We've got Nicolas Cage basically
playing Elvis in Wild at Heart.

Let's go out into the crazy
world of New Orleans.

Go to Ronnie's and get a fried
banana sandwich.

OK.

Almost every character in Blue
Velvet is a 1950's image.

Bad guys wear leather jackets
and hang out in nightclubs.

What kind of beer do you like?
Heineken. Heineken!

Fuck that shit.

Pabst Blue Ribbon.

In Twin Peaks, James literally looks
like James Dean and Audrey Horne

looks a lot like a teenage Ava
Gardner.

And Michael Cera in Twin Peaks
is dressed exactly like Marlon
Brando

in The Wild One.

And Dale Cooper is like a 1950's
noir detective and a very idealized

version of one.

He is flawless, almost to the point
of satire.

There's the strong connection
to film noir archetypes

in his movies, which is interesting
because a very, very early noir

I Wake Up Screaming obsessively uses
the song Over the Rainbow

as a motif.

"SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW" PLAYS

So there's a very established
connection between The Wizard of Oz

and the origins of noir.

Why? Who on earth is that beautiful
girl?

David Lynch will often style
characters as pinup girls

like a Marilyn Monroe type figure
or a Bettie Page type figure

or Jayne Mansfield.

There's a power to these types
of images in that they're almost
collective fetishes.

Yes, these are 50's Americana
archetypes, but they're also sex

icons, all of them.

And he's making a facsimile of them
in order to take us back and prey

on our nostalgia.

And it also makes his movies
just very enjoyable to watch.

So he's not just a surrealist.
He's a populist surrealist.

But he always shows you the dark
underbelly of that.

And it seems like it's an expression
of this idea that the 1950s

were a really exciting time
and it must have felt

really good for a lot of people.

But there was obviously
a subset of society

for whom it wasn't great
and the neglect of that leads

to a certain kind of horror.

And it's just...it's always
ready to come out and break

through the surface.

David Lynch isn't
just holding up these two things

and saying, "Hey, look
how different they are."

He's way more principled than that.

He's holding up these things
and saying that the badness

is actually what gives
the good meaning.

And that would be why he has these
themes of doppelgangers, why

he has parallel realities, why
he has people with the same name

but completely opposite
personalities.

Is that you?

Are both of them you?

I think the only things in life for
him

that don't have an evil
doppelganger are probably coffee
and meditation.

Coffee!

Agent Cooper. I'm going to
let you in on a little secret.

It's called Georgia Coffee comes
in a can, tastes as good and rich

as any cup of coffee I've ever had.
It's true.

Even cigarettes in Wild at Heart
are this constant threat.

And everybody knows David
Lynch loves cigarettes.

Gordon.

Whoa.

The Wizard of Oz treats
polarization in the same way.

There's a black and white Kansas
and the Technicolour Oz.

There's the good witch and the bad
witch.

One is a dream and one is reality.

And they all have their counterparts
in both worlds.

And that's exactly what David Lynch
keeps on doing.

There's not a lot of moral
or thematic muddiness in his movies.

It's funny to say his movies don't
have an enormous amount

of muddiness to them
because they're so confounding

for most people.

But what he's doing
is he's following these things

through light and dark
and through a logic that actually

does make sense.

You know, Bob is a force of evil,
but you don't see scenes of Bob

where you empathize with him
and wonder how he used to be good.

And Coop is a force of good and, you
don't watch him get tempted by the
dark side

unless he's literally possessed
by evil.

They're very complex characters.

They're extraordinarily
deep characters.

But you just never wonder if you're
supposed to be rooting for Coop.

You know what Amagahat
is basically saying, let's get back

to this idea of this thing
that America was that so much

better than now.

I mean, think about where Marty
McFly went to in Back to the Future,

that 1950s is great.

Everyone's lives are great and
everything is fine, more or less.

But the reality is that nothing's
ever been fine.

It was just fine for a few people.

I could run for mayor. A coloured
mayor.

That'll be the day. You wait and see
Mr Carruthers, I will be mayor.

I'll be the most powerful
man in Hill Valley.

And I'm going to clean up this town
good.

You can start by sweeping the floor.

I think that David Lynch,
who grew up in Boise, Idaho,

and then eventually moved
around a lot, you know, one

of the places he ended up was low
income Philadelphia.

And there it's where he sees
the flip side of America, what's

beneath the artificial sheen
of it all.

I lived in Philadelphia and I call
Eraserhead the true Philadelphia
story.

# Some day over the rainbow, way
up high...#

What is this? Now, easy, old man.

And I don't think that his
realisation was, oh, man,

I was fooled. The 50s weren't as
great as I thought.

I think his realisation
is the beautiful white picket fence

and Leave It to Beaver and pinup
girl vision of the 50s.

It only existed because of
this horrible darkness that I'm now

able to see, and it's built
on the shoulders of it.

So there's America, and then there's
a doppelganger of America.

And the American dream was,
in fact, an American myth.

Or perhaps the American dream walks
hand in hand with the American myth.

The way Lynch usually
expressed his showing

the underbelly of America is often
through the way women are treated

by the side of society that is the
romanticised portion.

It's the portion that's
supposed to be good.

Stay away from me!

Laura Palmer's dad is a 1950s ideal,
but he's obviously done awful

things for her.

And then in Blue Velvet, you know,
Jeffrey watches Dorothy Vallens
from a closet.

Hello, baby. Shut up.

It's Daddy, you shithead.
Where's my bourbon?

And witnesses how she's treated
for a very long time.

Don't you fucking look at me.

Really that story is about him
observing how this woman

has been destroyed by the society
he lives in.

And he had no idea that
it was destroying women.

Help me!

And so there's definitely a huge
parallel there to this old fashioned

idea, and not just of America,
but of the golden age of Hollywood,

the system in which Lynch is now
working.

From Hollywood, California,

where stars make dreams
and dreams make stars.

The relationship between Judy
Garland and the character of Dorothy

is highly analogous to heaven
and hell.

The American Dream
versus the American myth.

And there's references to characters
named Dorothy in Blue Velvet

and in the Straight Story.

There's a Garland Avenue
in Lost Highway.

Lived with his parents,
William and Candace Dayton

at 814 Garland Avenue.

Garland, who did this to you?

Garland.

Oh, no.

Judy Garland.

In Twin Peaks the idea of Judy comes
up all the time, especially the
question

of Who is Judy? Where is Judy?

Who is Judy?

You've already met Judy.

What do you mean I've met Judy?

Judy's never to be found.

Judy seems to represent
the grand mystery.

Gotcha. Can I say hello to my
friend Judy.

We're shooting, sure. She's a
friend.

Hello, Judy. Judy. Now you see
that's right.

Now, who is Judy? What is she doing?
She's just a friend.

Just a friend. You see, it's only,
I mean, is it an open ended friend?

Open ended, yeah.
LAUGHTER

Where is Judy now?

She's in America.

She's almost her own doppelganger
in the sense that on screen

she's this totally wholesome person.

But in real life, Judy Garland
was pigeonholed into that girl
next door thing.

She had problems with alcoholism,
pill use.

She had an eating disorder.

She died very young.

She was only 47, almost broke.

I wanted and I tried my damnedest...

..to believe in the rainbow

that I tried to get over
and I couldn't.

So what?

So who is Judy?

It's an unanswerable question.

It takes an entire lifetime
of Judy Garland to answer.

I grew up with a black and white
television.

And so the formal idea that Oz
was in colour was lost on me

for many, many years.

The first time I saw it
as it was intended was in 1989,

and that was revelatory.

But it also didn't diminish my
previous understanding of the movie,

which kind of proves the extent
to which our imagination

drives our understanding
of the stories

that are being told to us.

But, I feel as if I've known
you all the time.

But I couldn't have, could I?

I feel like I must have handled
the 35mm print at some point

when I was in high school
when I was a projectionist.

But I could be misremembering this.

It's weird that I can't remember
if that was real or not.

I like to remember things
my own way.

What do you mean by that?

How I remembered them, not
necessarily the way they happened.

Looking at it as an adult, it feels
to me like The Wizard of Oz

might be a Quaalude
for the proletariat.

Poppies.

Poppies will put them to sleep.

Everything's just fine the way
it is.

Don't strive for anything more.

The fact that the movie reverts
to sepia is a very caustic

and suppressive move.

When you look at it this way,
it's almost as if the pioneering

spirit of America is being subdued.

They were being told to stop
dreaming, to stop yearning,

and to put down roots.

The American dream is shifting
before our eyes from one ideal
to the next.

Every movie is a transportive event.

A cyclone carrying us
to another realm.

That was...

..Bobbi.

A blow ahead of...

..a stroke.

A movie can take us to another world
and then safely return us home.

Or can offer us a clearer
and more vivid perspective

of the world around us.

You had enough, asshole?

It can dig in to the world at hand.

Yes, I have.

And I want to apologise
to you gentlemen for referring

to you as homosexuals.

I also want to thank you fellows.

You've taught me a valuable
lesson in life.

Lola!

Each of these is a different type
of journey, but the common ground

is when we watch a movie, an act
of transportation is occurring.

Many children's films are about
making peace with the fact that one

must find a way to exist
in the world at hand,

that there is not a better
place to go.

We see this in Peter Pan
with Neverland.

One of the crucial points
of that tale is discovering

that Neverland and the very concept
of not growing up isn't

all that it's cracked up to be.

Oh, Mother, we are back.

Back? All except the Lost Boys.

They weren't quite ready.
Lost, but ready? To grow up.

That's why they went back
to Neverland.

Neverland? Yes, but I am.

Am? Ready to grow up.

We see it in Where the Wild Things
Are, which has a lot in common

with both The Wizard of Oz
and Peter Pan.

The idea that there may be a world
in which childhood reigns supreme

and where rules don't apply.

Be still!

Why?

And yet, when Max gets there,
he finds that there's a reason

we have those rules.

Because... Why?

Well, because you can't eat me.

You didn't know that so I forgive
you, but never try it again.

And there's an inevitable
disappointment in this, especially

for a young viewer who wants
the fantasy to be maintained.

Come.

Stay.

I remember feeling this very
profoundly as a child with Beauty
and the Beast.

It's me.

When the beast became a human again,
it was innately disappointing

because now he's just a normal
human.

Of course, when I really thought
about what Belle's life

would be like living with this half
human half lion, she'd fallen

in love with all sorts of practical
problems emerged.

And they got quite disturbing
quite quickly.

And so in some respect,
these narratives are doing us

as children a favour and gently
revealing that what we perceive

as disappointments and discomforts
are in fact necessary in order

to both function in the world
and to appreciate it.

Well, but anyway, Toto, we're home.
Home.

They implicitly promise us
that the journey into adulthood

will not be as bad as we think
it is, and we don't

have to leave everything behind.

In Pete's Dragon, the world
that Pete is leaving

behind when he leaves the force
is not going to be lost

to him forever.

And I think that is what
we have in Peter Pan as well.

The idea that growing up can be just
as magical as living as a child

forever, and perhaps more
so because change can occur

and change can be a beautiful thing.

You know, I have the strangest
feeling that I've seen that ship
before.

A long time ago when I was
very young.

George, dear. Father.

Lynch's work definitely functions
across that spectrum of the ways

in which a film can transport us.

His understanding of the quotidian
is very rooted in the world

in which he grew up.

The Straight Story, in addition
to literally being about

transportation, is just as
transportive as Lost Highway
or Inland Empire.

But the world that takes us
to has a verisimilitude that is much

more graspable, relatable.

You feel like you can dig
your fingers into it.

And I think that's why the film
ultimately is so gentle.

They look at the stars at the end,
for a moment you feel that maybe

that's where you're going to,
but in reality, you know,

that you're just sitting
on the porch in the country

on a planet that is indeed
hurtling through space.

But still you're just on the porch
and you know what that feels like.

Whereas in Lost Highway, Fred
Madison disappears into a dark

hallway and you have no idea
what might be on the other side

or whether he's going to emerge
in his own house at all.

You're in a seemingly familiar
space, but as you move through it,

you lose all bearings on reality.

I do feel that what Lynch is doing
in his movies is indicative

of something that occurs
when we watch The Wizard of Oz

repeatedly over our lives.

The Wizard of Oz that I see
as a child is a burst of happiness

with a very little at stake.

It's a fairy tale with a happy
ending.

I don't understand yet the layers
that can be extrapolated from it,

partially because I'm seeing
it all in black and white, but also

because I'm a child and I take
it at face value.

The Wizard of Oz I experienced
as a teenager is different.

I'm a little bit more cynical
now, as teenagers are.

Oh! Dorothy. Who's Dorothy?

The idea that you return
to this black and white world

at the end, there's something off
about it.

I don't know what it is yet, but I
can tell that it's not quite right.

And then later in life, I began
to look at it as a piece of history,

which I think with any movie
that is endured, becomes a part

of the text of the film.

At a certain point, you can't
separate the film from its own

history, you start to understand
that the world in which this film

was made was not a happy one.

At first it manifests in bits
of trivia, like the exploits

of the munchkins in the Culver City
Hotel that they had these Dionysian

parties after hours and trashed
the entire hotel.

There was a lot of them? Oh, in the
hundreds and thousands.

And they put them all in one hotel
room, not one room, one hotel

in Culver City.

And they got smashed every
night and they'd pick them
up in butterfly net.

LAUGHTER

You hear these stories and you laugh
and you think it's funny,

but it also starts to colour
your understanding of this seemingly

perfect technicolour world in which
nothing is necessarily wrong.

We thank you very sweetly
for doing it so neatly.

You've killed us so completely.

That we thank you very sweetly.

The thing that I really got
into was the mythology

around the dead person.

A dead stagehand or a dead
munchkin who committed suicide

and is supposedly just barely
visible in the finished film.

Hanging in the background
on the set.

I had the movie on VHS

and I spent a lot of time digging
through the tape, rewinding it,

looking for this evidence
that supposedly existed of someone

who had hung themselves in the set
of a movie that was regarded as one

of the happiest, most influential
films for children of the past 40
or 50 years.

The idea that a movie
could be a bubble, that it

could be representative
of all that is wholesome in America,

and yet also contain textual
evidence of the darkest depths

of human misery
really fascinated me.

It's like the story in Three Men
and a Baby.

I had heard that there was
supposedly a ghost of a child

who had died on the soundstage,
visible in the finished film,

and I was determined to find it.

Where the hell is he? Looking at
cows or something.

I'd heard that this ghost
was visible in a shot

where the camera panned
past a window.

So I remember renting that tape
and rewinding and fast forwarding

and rewinding and fast forwarding
and hitting

pause and play and pause and play,
looking for any brightly lit scene

that might have a window in it.

And eventually I found what people
were talking about,

and it freaked me out because it
looked exactly like what I feared
it might be.

And I also found it in The Wizard
of Oz, and that freaked me out too.

Here I am looking at a movie I've
seen a million times before

and suddenly I'm seeing
this secret revelation in these 480

lines of video that was meant
to be hidden, that we were meant

to be protected from.

Now, none of this is true, of
course.

It's not actually a dead
stagehand or a dead munchkin.

It's a bird or an ostrich
or something.

And the ghost in Three Men
and a Baby is a cardboard cutout.

But once you set aside these
facetious myths about the dark side

of the Wizard of Oz, you can
actually start to unpack the literal

dark side to the film, which ranges
from the incidents of the Culver

City Hotel to Judy Garland's
own life story.

And these things colour the movie
in a way that is impossible to
unsee.

It is impossible to separate the
film from them once you become
aware of them.

And that is what I believe Lynch
is doing with his films.

This tarnishing of the American
dream that exists in the text

of The Wizard of Oz.

I think that's something
that he is obsessed with.

Here, Scarecrow. Want to play ball?

It's something that he must
have gone through himself.

Here's to Ben. Here's to Ben.

Here's to Ben.

Here's to Ben. Be polite.

Here's to Ben.

I think Lynch accepts the fact
that we are at all times surrounded

by dark forces.

But he also believes
that they can be subdued.

Goodness will prevail.

He said this very recently in one
of his weather reports.

Great things, beautiful
things are afoot.

I think this is what he's working
towards, both in his movies

but also in life.

Right now, the thorns of negativity
are making their last desperate
stand.

But soon they're going to wither
and fall away.

They're going to rot and disappear.

So don't despair.

Great times are coming
for the United States

and for the whole world family.

I wonder if ingesting these...

..you call them totems, but I would
also just call them symbols

or motifs from the Wizard of Oz,

if he's just regurgitating them
because they've become embedded

in his own cultural lexicon.

What did I tell you?

As a filmmaker, that's something I
know I certainly do.

In Pete's Dragon, I was constantly
telling the actors,

"Look at the sky with a look of
wonder.

"What are you looking at? Doesn't
matter. I'll figure it out later.

"Just give me that look of wonder."

And all I'm doing there is
recapitulating the Spielberg face,

which has become embedded in my own
psyche throughout the years

of me loving Spielberg movies
and understanding that a certain

expression can convey a certain
feeling to the audience.

And if you use it at just the right
time, you'll achieve an emotional

apex that is almost universally
understood to mean one thing,

which in this case is wonder.

So if a character in one of Lynch's
movies is wearing red shoes,

whether or not we are consciously
processing it, there's a symbolism

at hand that goes further
than his own work.

It goes into our own understanding
of what those ruby slippers

might have meant when we first
saw them as a child.

I'm not going to talk about Judy.

In fact, we're not going
to talk about Judy at all.

We're gonna keep her out of it.
Gordon? I know, Coop.

The first movie I saw that wasn't
an animated film

at the movie theatre was E.T.
and I'm still recycling the things

I got from that film.

The first movie I saw in a cinema
at all was Pinocchio.

# I've got no strings to hold me
dow... #

The journey of Pinocchio.

The lessons of Pinocchio.

The darkness of Pinocchio.

Momma! Momma!

Those are things that I consistently
am coming back to.

Putting together a list of the
movies that I think

had a seismic effect on the work
that I do.

It's not a long list.

Those impressions run deep
and are hard to escape,

they're so hard to escape
that I think the majority of us

as storytellers don't try
to escape them.

We just dig in deeper and in so much
as we're doing that, we are making

the same movie and telling
the same story repeatedly.

Lost Highway is a step towards
Mulholland Drive, which is a step

towards Inland Empire, which is a
step towards Twin Peaks: The Return.

He's working his way towards that
in the same way that Terrence Malick

was working his way towards the Tree
of Life from day one of his career.

And once you realise what
they're digging towards,

you can appreciate their body
of work in a new light

because you understand what matters
to them.

I love the idea of digging in deeper
and hitting the boundaries

within the work that we've created
for ourselves, rather than trying

to expand the horizons around us.

I like the comfort of knowing
there's always further inward I can
go.

The themes and images that compel us
are ones we will keep revisiting,

re-exploring, re-investigating,
re-contextualizing, re-everything

because they are the things
that compel us to be storytellers

in the first place.

We look to the past while also
looking into the future,

and that is a valuable thing
for the culture.

The fact that the Wizard
of Oz, David Lynch, can go hand

in hand and communicate
with one another.

The fact that we can have this
conversation about ruby slippers

and Twin Peaks is one of the most
beautiful things about this medium.

We go way, way out, and we get lost
in the field of relativity.

And the trick is to find
your way home.

You're a beautiful man.

Here we go. On your mark, get set,
go.

Auntie Em. Auntie Em. I must
have been dreaming.

It was horrible. We were on
Saturdays.

Andy, you were there. The log lady
was there.

And the man from another
place was there too.

Saturdays. That is a bad dream.

Diane, Thursdays at 9-8 Central,
there's no place like home.

Cut it.

There's no place like home.

There's no place like home.

There's no place like home.

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