Attended a weekend screening of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Saturday evening. Played in its entirety——from 3PM to midnight——all eight episodes were projected onto a big screen to a sold out theatre audience.
Erected in 1915, the neo-classical building aptly named Hollywood is the oldest cinema still showing 35mm films in Auckland. hollywoodavondale.nz | instagram.com/hollywoodavondale
There was cherry pie and black coffee, cosplay and contests, and a live acoustic performance by Tiny Ruins frontwoman, Hollie Fullbrook. It was a special surprise, as Hollie once met and collaborated with the late multidisciplinary artist, David Lynch in 2016 (Yes, David Lynch has a discography).
Before her intermission performance, Hollie shared a piece she wrote about her chance encounter with David Lynch, which sounds like a very transcendental-cum-coincidental experience. David Lynch once tweeted his fondness for New Zealand band Tiny Ruins, and Hollie Fullbrook dreamed. This excerpt taken from flyingnun.co.nz (published 2016) gives a brief description:
Lynch wanted to record Dream Wave having heard a demo sent to him by Ella Yelich O’Connor, aka Lorde. […] Fullbrook traveled to LA, met with Lynch at his Hollywood Hills studio, and Dream Wave was tracked.
I took the liberty to transcribe for posterity, Hollie Fullbrook’s testimony of her phenomenal experience:
[…] was thinking about quitting music altogether; sorry, this is quite intense.
“Maybe you should try transcendental meditation, or something,” said Simon (a friend). “It works for David Lynch.”
*audience laughter*
“Ah, Lynch.”
I had watched Mulholland Drive as a teenager when I was alone, home sick from school, and it had left a lasting impression.
[…]
I loved ‘Catching The Big Fish,’ too (David Lynch’s book).
[…]
Overnight, [David tweeted] something about how he found a band he liked called Tiny Ruins.
The timing was undeniably weird, and an obscure and fairly, very uncool Auckland folk band was suddenly bathed in gold ‘Lynchian’ light.
*audience laughter*
Fast-forward a year, and thanks to Lorde, I was in a taxi winding upwards into the Hollywood Hills.
I could see we were heading towards Mulholland Drive on my phone.
I was tour-emptied, floating, and somewhat nervous having stayed up late the previous night watching Blue Velvet in a motel, feeling I had to watch everything he had made before meeting him.
Cass (bassist), Alex (drummer), and I—my bandmates—had just completed our first, mostly disastrous tour of the U.S., often playing to no one.
[…]
I have a photo on my phone of his studio. It’s kind of similar to this except, maybe a quarter of the size.
He was in a suit; his hair, immaculate.
He shook my hand warmly, putting me at ease.
He ushered me to the kitchen, making us both a coffee. “This is what I call an Americano.”
Sorry, I can’t do a very good Lynch voice.
*audience laughter*
We walked back to the cinema studio, and sat in the seats enjoying our Americanos.
Dean was setting up the studio gear. We all talked for a bit.
David said he had stumbled across me on YouTube, singing “Carriages” for an ABC Radio session in Sydney.
Real nice. Listen to the rest of the story below. Now. . . Silencio!
Listen to David Lynch’s studio recording of Dream Wave, sounding crisp and dreamy:
Lyrics:
They caught you walking, naturally, away
School field – it’s a troubled desert terrain
A mirage unfolding
Dream wave, a coast calls you back
Coast calling you back
Meeting in the dark woods is the lowering sun
In splinters certain, all pieces one
Dream wave, a coast calls you back
Coast calling you back
Hollie had the good sense to put her experience into words, and kindness to share them. Had to pass them on to you music loving, Lynch admirers.
Two strange observations after the show (or just me confusing unfiltered thoughts for pattern recognition): I waited in the rain at the bottom of the small flight of steps under a small umbrella, ready to pass it off to the two stragglers above in the dry. As we three walked in the deluge to a car parked two blocks away, we were passed by a topless woman, embracing herself for warmth and protection from the pelting rain of Cyclone Vaianu. Bare feet, skinny wet jeans, nothing else except for a tall man escorting her back towards the crowd at the Hollywood Cinema.
The man wore a band t-shirt, jeans, shoes, and was likely in the audience as well. He asked us, “Does anyone have any clothes she can wear?” An unfortunate circumstance. We were all moving fast in strong wind. The man knew we couldn’t help her anymore than he could, and by the time the words left our lips, they were gone. I have several questions, but only one related experience/memory and that was from David Lynch’s Blue Velvet.
That particular scene is graphic and a plot beat I’m not going to explain, but here is an excerpt from Isabella Rossellini’s book, Some of Me (published 1997):
“Once when he was a kid, (Lynch) told me, coming home from school with his older brother, they had seen a naked woman walking down the street. The sight had not excited them, it had frightened them, and David had started to cry. My ‘model-trained’ brain flashed me an image: the photo by Nick Ut of the girl in Vietnam walking in the street naked, skin hanging from her arms after a napalm bomb attack. That devastated, helpless, obscene, frightening look seemed to me what David wanted, and I adapted it for my scene. . . .
“I wish I’d found some other approach for the scene in ‘Blue Velvet’; I did not like being totally exposed. I kept worrying about what my family would think when the film came out, and I searched and searched for other solutions until the last moment – also because people were gathering around the set to watch the making of the film.
“People came out with blankets and picnic baskets, with their grandmothers and small children. I begged the assistant director to warn them it was going to be a tough scene, that I was going to be totally naked, but they stayed, anyway. I went out and talked to them myself, but they were already in the mood of an audience and just stared at me without reacting to my plea and warning.”
Had I not attended the viewing with company, or had we been quicker to leave our seats after the marathon, it would have been us and not the tall man helping the mystery woman out of her troubles, like how Sandy Williams (Laura Dern) and Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) help Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini). Timing was altogether perfect and absurd: Why was there a woman topless in the middle of an extratropical cyclone at midnight? Was this a similar level of guilt shared by Twin Peaks’ 51,201 population over Laura Palmer’s downward spiral? Or, was it unconventional promotion for Hollywood’s next David Lynch screening event? Meddling with entropy, or authentic uncanniness? I choose to believe the latter. Kooky characters after dark aren’t that out of place in NZ, just like our national, nocturnal bird——Laser Kiwi.
The other strange observation came when looking at the path Cyclone Vaianu took across NZ, which it appears to have cut through the Northeast Arm. . . Strange forces at work, aye?
Special thanks, special company; the mother and daughter I spoke with about 90s billboards, logs, and Lynch; Hollie Fullbrook; Angelo Badalamenti; CBS/ABC showrunners; cast; crew; directors; Mark Frost; and David Lynch. Thank you, Hollywood Avondale; watching Twin Peaks on the big screen was peachy-keen! Time for a soothing nightcap.
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