In a message dated 20/04/2000 20:28:17, [log in to unmask] writes:

>JMC, I'm interested that you mentioned David Lynch as he is maybe one, if 
>not the only, "auteur" to actually distort and really use the aesthetic in a 
>creative way.  I would suggest rather than _Blue Velvet_ which for my 
>purposes is actually a contemporary drama, something like the _Elephant Man_ 
>which obviously isn't trying to convince us it was filmed in the  
contemporary period 
>but does try to throw us away from the 1980's.  But there will always be 
something.

Well, I was going to start blasting on about David Lynch's Elephant Man in 
response to this "time" related question, but I wasn't sure if I'd make too 
much sense, but now you've narrowed the whole thing down. Someone like David 
Lynch is a very sensitive person in terms of capturing ideas, and being 
sensitive to what the ideas going through his mind actually demands, as if 
the ideas are like a seperate entities swimming around the collective 
unconscious of the human race rather than simple brain signals from within 
himself. He also is sensitive to impressions that seem to float around in the 
air. I suppose David Lynch is perhaps the one director I think that I can 
talk a lot about because I tend to read all his interviews inside out and 
back to front. So I wouldn't be put off from suggesting that the Elephant Man 
was one the closest modern day thing  (through my possibly minimal knowledge) 
that we as modern day humans might have an emotional glimpse of that past 
Victorian era. (The only other thing I can do is to wonder around London in 
my genuine Victorian frock coat to start enducing hallucinations of Victorian 
people, through the vibes from the coat, and just see some marvelous things, 
it's better than watching Sherlock Holmes)

Rather than making a film that transcends the restrictions of time and space 
by trying to make it something that was filmed in the Victorian era, he made 
a film that offered modern day man a gateway to some feeling possibly very 
closely to do with the Victorian era.

I suppose I might talk briefly about Blue Velvet, it's not one hundred 
percent contemporary, it seems to be another portal into a revery the past, 
back into (I believe), the fifties, but without having to take your feet too 
far out of the present, but this film is more about someone of his age 
daydreaming in a timeless world through the years that he's lived through in 
his youth and actually enjoyed from the present. In a similar way, Lost 
Highway touched on visions of a past era in some places as well as going 
through the modern day era. Twin Peaks also tried to keep a timeless feeling 
so that you weren't sure whether the series was set in the present or some 
other time, and I believe that anything showing the date on cars were hidden 
from the camera lense to make sure this was so.

Then Elephant Man was a little like David Lynch's own little time travelling 
expedition to a place he had not been before, but I guess with all the 
information that he had at his fingertips from experts, about medical 
problems during the Victorian era, and people were walking around with gaping 
holes in their body, he'd gone a bit further than a lot of British people had 
actually gone to see what was there.

Possibly I might almost have to issue you a long long list on David Lynch 
interviews, and that list gets longer and longer as the months go by, but I 
don't know if this is such a good thing, because it might complicate your 
thought processes in an odd way, but judging by the thought behind your 
question, I don't think that you have a lot to worry about.

So rather than make a film into something made in the past or the future, we 
can possibly only make films that are gateways to open up to impressions of 
these eras. maybe the films showing ideas and events that would take place in 
the future that's actually about now, with all the giant metropolis cities 
with mile high skyscrapers or whatever are currently taking place in a 
parallel universe somewhere. Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey might be accurate
 in it's vision of technology, but certainly not in this reality, which is a 
pity.


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