I had the privilege of seeing David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE last night. Although it resists interpretation and I wish the guy would hold on to narrative just a little bit more (if only because he does it so well), you have to give Lynch so much credit for continuing a dying tradition of experimental, visionary film making. INLAND EMPIRE explores and blurs the boundaries between reality, dream and fantasy, and also, in this age of reality television, creates for both character and audience a very pertinent postmodern confusion between playing a part and living an authentic life. It certainly is the only movie around at the moment that approximates art. I also have to mention the performance by Laura Dern which is absolutely fantastic and more than Oscar worthy. Although as a cinema of gesture, reverie, violence, hysteria and lyricism it resembles the work of such past geniuses as Bunuel and Godard, what it brought to my mind was Interstellar Overdrive by Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd – a relatively normal chord progression in the beginning followed by a long total freak out in the middle and then a slight return to convention at the end, all of which causes you to see the medium (and in fact REALITY ITSELF) in a different light.

I been working on a soon to appear short, little thang on David Goodis and the intermittent noir revival and there was a line in INLAND EMPIRE that seemed very resonant. At the beginning the crazy, witch woman says something like "the road to the palace doesn’t lead through the marketplace but through the alleyway behind the marketplace," pertinent considering Lynch’s noncommercial instincts and Goodis’s preferred setting and subject. Here’s a few choice Goodis passages that rang my chimes and help remind that it’s only too easy to get lost in that alleyway:

And he said to himself: All you want is a look-see, that’s all, you just wanna get a glimpse of her. Just a glimpse. Just a chance to look at her again after all these years. He thought: What a chance, buddy, what a chance to let it hit you between the eyes and cut through you and eat your heart out. If you had only one grain of brains you’d get the hell away from here.

– from Street of No Return by David Goodis

"I don’t like to be called sir," The American said. "It gets on my nerves to be called sir."

The West Indian’s face remained expressionless. "What would you prefer to have me call you?"

The American pondered for a moment. "Jerk," he said.

"I don’t understand that word," the West Indian said quietly.

"You would if you knew me."

– from The Wounded and the Slain by David Goodis

Going toward her, it was more as though she were coming toward him, and the effect of her was something tremendous. He couldn’t understand that, because along with it there was something uncanny, made all the more uncanny by the fact that she looked to be anything but uncanny or hard to figure out. He asked himself to stop trying to understand it.

– from Nightfall by David Goodis