Quentin Dupieux wants people to stop comparing him to David Lynch: “A bad way to present my work”
Comparison is the thief of all joy, they say, but if your work is being compared to someone as legendary as David Lynch, chances are that you’d be pretty happy.
Or perhaps not; the thing with being an artist is that when you strive to make something so individualistic and personal, hearing someone compare you to someone else can feel like a kick in the teeth, a disservice to your own creativity, and Lynch was such a unique filmmaker, so specific in his dedication to the space between reality and dreams, where violence bubbles under the surface of the everyday.
Thus, for a certain French director who also indulges in all things surreal, absurd and weird, comparisons between him and Lynch only serve to detract from his own ambitions as a filmmaker, and Quentin Dupieux, who has made some strange pieces of cinema like 2014’s Reality and the César-nominated Yannick, can’t stand it when people liken him to Lynch, even though he considers himself a fan.
Dupieux is quite prolific as of late, having released seven films since 2020, and when he’s not writing and directing, you can find him making music under the moniker Mr Oizo, just like how Lynch was a talented musician when he wasn’t holding the camera. While Dupieux’s music is electronic compared to Lynch’s more industrial and haunting approach, both are fascinating case studies of filmmakers whose cinematic style seeps into their music.
When you listen to Dupieux’s music, it’s not hard to find similarities between the absurdism in his films, like ‘The Church’ in which a deepened voice tells an uneasy story over a throbbing beat, saying words like “Today, with my friends, we don’t know what to do/ So we watch a movie/ But it’s a movie about cancer/ So we stop, because it’s depressing.”
It seems like there are a good few similarities in the interests belonging to both Lynch and Dupieux, but the comparisons should end there, the filmmaker seems to suggest. “It might be sort of helpful for people who don’t actually know my stuff, but I don’t really see my movies being connected to other movies, even if they’re thematically connected. I really respect David Lynch, I enjoy some of his work, but I don’t see myself as a baby David Lynch, and actually, I hate when we compare to him because it’s usually, I think, a bad way to present my work,” he told Indie Wire.
He continued, “David Lynch is David Lynch, and he has his own stuff and his own way of filmmaking, and I think at the end, when you compare, there’s not really a connection. Of course, I like to talk about dreams, but I don’t see a real connection,” and while he admits that it’s a “compliment” when someone brings up Lynch in the same breath as him, he just thinks it’s best if both of them are respected as individual artists.
“At the end of the day, I’m just trying to be kinda funny. I have no idea what David Lynch is trying to do. I don’t know what’s his goal, and I don’t really care. I just know that he’s making brilliant movies, and that’s all I need to know. I’m pretty sure we don’t have the same goal at the end of the day,” he concluded.
