Okay! I finally have a few minutes to blog here (saving my SAG Indie job by the skin of my teeth – Bales is on a drunken firing rampage as usual I’m sure).
So the first of my two big stories of the week is that I indeed saw David Lynch’s newest mindfuck "Inland Empire" at the New York Film Festival. In fact, I think Lynch should start using that term the way Spike Lee uses "joint". "’Inland Empire’ a David Lynch Mindfuck". To get to the point: it’s freakin’ brilliant. If you thought "Mulholland Drive" was insane, hard to follow, and yet a totally captivating and unforgetable piece of post-Modernist filmmaking, you’re gonna pee your pants when you see this. Lynch has taken the place of Poe and Lovecraft and Gorky as our own genius dark myth maker and proves again that his visions outweigh the necessity for linear storytelling. The road he started down with "Lost Highway", filled with cleverly-remade mythical creatures, heros and victims, is apparently a long and winding one and "Inland Empire" comes off as the devil spawn child of his last two films. I’m not going to go in to detail here about it as you’ll have to experience it yourself. Just don’t go in expecting to understand everything. It’s the type of film I know I’ll be watching again and again when it’s out just to allow my brain to settle in to what is going on. Lynch, Laura Dern (who also produced and is at her best ever), and the always surprisingly deep Justin Theroux were at the screening and answered baffled if not enthralled questions from the press and industry audience. Perhaps the most astonishing moment came when Lynch declared that "film is dead", saying that he’ll never shoot anything but video again. Believe it or not, "Inland Empire" was shot on the Sony PD-150 which isn’t even a 24p camera let alone HD. It’s and old pro-sumer camera now used by people who can’t afford to buy anything new, including its updated model the PD-170. The man is a visionary and a true artist in the classic sense. Go see this film.
Story number two of the past week: I was hired as lead cameraman to shoot Tony Orlando in concert. He covered Prince’s "Purple Rain" in a sloppily conceived segue from James Taylor’s "Fire & Rain". Come on, sing along with me: "I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen – purple rain, puuuuurple raaain…". Need I say more?