Hacker Cinema
David Lynch: The Art Life
2017 · Film · documentary · 89 min
Directed by Jon Nguyen, Olivia Neergaard-Holm, Rick Barnes
An intimate journey through the formative years of David Lynch's life. From his idyllic upbringing in small town America to the dark streets of Philadelphia, we follow Lynch as he traces the events that have helped to shape one of cinema's most enigmatic directors.
4 positivefrom 4 commenters
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5 comments on Hacker News
If anyone wants another glimpse behind the red curtain, I highly recommend the documentary David Lynch: The Art Life from 2016. It focuses on David Lynches upbringing and formative years as an artist up until the release of Eraserhead that completely changed the direction (or maybe rocketed forward?) of his career. It also shows Lynch working at this workshop, showing some of the tools you see on auction here too.
The collection has some absolute grails too for any fan, like the original script to Twin Peaks as Northwest Passage.
RIP to true master.
May he rest in peace. I started watching everything he filmed when I was around 14 and immediately fell in love with his artistry. I recommend watching The Art Life (2018), about him, or just about any video featuring him that you can find on the Internet. Great character, indeed.
Can recommend the documentary "David Lynch, The Art Life". For now appears to be here:
https://youtu.be/a6slh83RhfA
(Sorry — it appears to be 360p, not very hi-res. Other higher res versions can be found but with subtitles or dubbed in... maybe Farsi?)
The first line saying that Lynch’s Dune is a “misbegotten botch job” is based on the authors definition of success in art which is box office returns. And yet here we are discussing a film that turns 40 this year. And there the Wired author is selling ads on the back of David’s work and disabling my back button to grab mailing list signups.
To gain an understanding of David’s approach to art, which is deeply inspired by Robert Henri’s book “The Art Spirit”, it’s worth watching The Art Life (2016). David is a believer in the artist alone in the room with an infinite supply of coffee and cigarettes, creating new ideas with pure creative freedom and the removal of societal pressures. There’s no doubt that his art and all art and creativity is derived from experience and experiencing the art of others. But the point is that for original art to flourish, there comes a time for the artist to seclude themselves and create without market pressures, the influence of popular culture and daily distractions. Us devs can learn much from him.
So I think Lynch’s Dune is spectacular in its originality and bold creativity. And I think looking to box office returns as a measure of success misses the long term value of that kind of originality.
Stumbled on the documentary "David Lynch: The Art Life" before YouTube took it down.
That and "Crumb" are a couple of films that convinced me that some people just are artists. It's not ego, or some desire to be eccentric ... they can't help it. They live "the art life", damn the consequences.
You could handily list any number of other people (John Waters just came to mind).
Similar to the author of the blog post, I have sort of demurred when asked if I was an artist. Partly it sounds arrogant to say, "Why, yes I am."
Partly it seemed to be a thing in the eye of the beholder. "I don't know, do you think I am an artist?" Plenty of people don't think Andy Warhol was an artist, Jackson Pollock....
Sometimes I have treated "artist" as a profession. Do I get paid for my art? Why no, I do not. I get paid for programming. Although when I write a game I am both programmer and "game artist". (Or is perhaps designing an elegant API for a framework a kind of art form? Okay, maybe not.)
If an artist can be a hobbyist the way many of us are amateur musicians, woodworkers, cooks, mechanics, (construction contractors), in our spare time then, yes, many of us are artists.
I think the older I get though (and maybe the more films I see about artists) I am slowly coming to accept that, sure, I'm an artist too. Just maybe not a very good one.