mike@projection-booth.com mike@projection-booth.com

March 5, 2013

Episode 104: Blue Velvet (1986)

Special Guest: Paul M. Sammon
Guest Co-Host: Vincenzo Natali

Logs, logs, logs. We're going to Lumberton, USA this week to talk about David Lynch's Blue Velvet, a neo-noir that examines the dark underbelly of idyllic small town life.

Joining Mike and Rob is special guest co-host Vincenzo Natali, director of Cube, Splice, and the upcoming release, Haunter.

Links:
Buy Blue Velvet on Blu-Ray
A great German David Lynch site
Another great David Lynch site
Yet another David Lynch site
Buy the Blue Velvet soundtrack
Hear more David Lynch soundtrack mash-ups at Mashed in Plastic
Visit the Blue Velvet Project at Filmmaker Magazine
Read “David Lynch should be shot”: Looking back on the madness and chaos of “Blue Velvet” and Ronald Reagan’s '80s by Dennis Lim

Listen/Download Now:

Bonus: Music Mix


Music:
Music used in this episode
"Honky Tonk" by Bill Doggett
"Blue Velvet" by Bobby Vinton
"Song to the Siren" by This Mortal Coil
"In Dreams" by Roy Orbison
"Blue Rigby" by Wax Audio
"Blue Velvet" by Lana Del Rey
"Frank's Here" by The Who Boys
"Tricky Mystery Cruise" by Robbie D
"Mysteries of Love" by Julee Cruise

Watch:

4 comments:

  1. You were right about the "Napalm girl" reference! It was Rossellini's idea though:

    "He (Lynch) wanted Dorothy to walk in the street of Wilmington, where we shot the film, naked and convey a sense of terror instead of sex appeal. And when he was talking to me, there was a photo of Nick Ut's that I remembered ("Vietnam Napalm"). It was a photo of a young girl in Vietnam. She has been a victim of an napalm attack and her clothes have been completely torn off her body and she has skin hanging and she's completely naked. She walks in the street with the arms outstretched. It's such a helpless gesture. I couldn't think of anything else but this absolute helpless gesture and walking like that. See, if I would have walked covering my breasts, or covering myself, it meant that Dorothy still had some sense of pride, still had something in her to protect her. That woman had to have lost everything. And so she had to walk completely exposed, just saying help me. I took the gesture from that photo and used it. I hope that I conveyed the same sense of despair. I wanted to be like raw meant. My nudity was like raw meat, like a butcher, like walking in a butcher and seeing a cow hanging, you know, a quarter of a cow hanging." Rossellini on NPR's Fresh Air, 1994 (http://www.lynchnet.com/bv/)

    Salut!

    Jordi

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  3. Great show! Somehow every Kyle MacLachlan performance is more entertaining after seeing Blue Velvet. I remember wondering what the hell was up with the guy. Then I saw Blue Velvet for the first time and it was like flipping a switch. Now I'll watch anything if you tell me he's in it!

    Regarding the ear, good call on the Le Chien Andalou reference, though I always thought of it as an homage of sorts to Roman Polanski's Repulsion which begins and ends with an eye. Given Repulsion's unannounced transitions to and from reality, I would guess that Lynch is a fan.

    Greg

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  4. I saw this at a local Long Island multiplex theater on the night it opened.
    Packed audience (they seemed to love it--despite the weirdness) . At the time this was an exhilarating punch-in-the-face. Alas, in time, the blow has softened (thanks a lot Tarantino) . Even weirder, was thinking that in this same theater we saw "Dune" a few years before. By the way-- when you bought a ticket for "Dune" you were handed a glossary sheet with all the Dune terms ( "The Spice; an addictive drug-like substance that is also used as a form of wealth" ) . Now I saved all my promotional movie items from years back (I own an ORIGINAL 1981 "Polyester" scratch & sniff card, a paper medical mask imprinted "Night of the Creeps", pinback button form "Day of the Dead" from 1985, etc.) Sadly I never save the Dune glossary sheet. Oh well.....
    P.S. My dream come true would be The Projection Booth would tackle my favorite movie of all time (1979) "Dawn of the Dead".

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