The movie production that made David Lynch feel “pretty insane”
David Lynch had a world of his own, a party in his head that few actors were granted proper access to.
Those who saw and understood his world, and those he saw back, could return as many times they liked, resulting in reliable repeated collaborations between the director and figures like Laura Dern, Harry Dean Stanton, and Kyle MacLachlan.
Now Lynch and MacLachlan had a special connection that carried them through projects spanning decades until the former’s demise; it’s all well known how they overcame all challenges to have each other’s backs or share a cup of coffee. However, they simply got unlucky on their first try, and the experience left Lynch at a breaking point he had hitherto never faced, something which weaker pairs would succumb to.
It was the early 1980s, and Lynch had found underground success with Eraserhead, which had become a popular midnight movie. The untrodden grounds of the film might not have found widespread critical acclaim but it highlighted Lynch’s unique directorial vision, which was appreciated by Mel Brooks, believe it or not, who produced his next project, The Elephant Man.
This was a much bigger success, and it remains one of the filmmaker’s most accessible films. With the thought that perhaps Lynch could make films that veered closer to the mainstream, offers came rolling in for him to work on big-budget blockbusters, like the third Star Wars movie, Return of the Jedi, and Dune. He picked the latter, of course, and first-time actor MacLachlan was cast in the lead role of Paul Atreides, to be reprised decades later by Timothée Chalamet to much fanfare.
Sci-fi was uncharted territory for Lynch, but it didn’t seem like anything so out of the world he couldn’t handle. Unfortunately, the scope of Frank Herbert’s novel mixed with the director’s love of the surreal made for an uneasy pairing and a disaster feature film.
Lynch’s vision was unique, but it didn’t really align with the studio’s idea of mainstream success. In an interview with The New York Times, production designer Tony Masters explained, “If David sees anything that looks in any way normal, he wants to change it. He hates anything that looks like Star Wars or any other movie ever made. He comes up with weird ideas that make no sense.” Meanwhile, actor Francesca Annis revealed in the same interview that during production, “You do not meet anybody here who isn’t ill, about to get ill, or just over being ill”.
With the behind-the-scenes difficult atmosphere fighting Lynch’s desires to bring his expansive visions to life, it was only a matter of time before he found himself going slightly crazy. Talking to Chris Rodley in 1997, he admitted that Dune “cut me off at the knees, maybe even a little higher”, adding, “I went pretty insane on that picture. Little by little, I was making compromises. It was like, ‘We have to watch David. If he goes in the direction of Eraserhead, we’re dead in the water’, so I had to be restrained. I just fell into this middle world. It was a sad place to be.”
Critical reception was lukewarm, and most Lynch fans will tell you it’s one of his weakest efforts, where all involved were quite sad with the result. “To hear what people were saying about me after Dune could have completely destroyed my confidence and happiness. You need to be happy to make stuff,” he offered sagely.
So he didn’t let Dune’s failure break him; in fact, it might just be the reason he doubled down on his bizarre ideas and leaned into the Lynchian without hesitation, and thus Blue Velvet saw him reunite with MacLachlan to magnificent rapture, and then over and over.
