"'Slut' is a one-word poem by Jules Woltz"


Austin's not a long drive, not relatively. There's a lot of greens and pastures and hobocamps along 290 and with my dear friend Winston iPod the Third at my side, it seemed less than what it took. Long drives all through the wonderfully desolate highways is a prime time to christen new songs, listen to those by the ones you've been meaning to get to but couldn't because of some weird negative associative disease you got sloshin' up in that little head of your's. Just me? Okay.

Anywho, Austin driving is initially enough to scare me and make my pants all poopy. The streets, some of them are one-way and some of them aren't. And they're curvey, oh the curviness. After wandering aimlessly listening to an omnious bullet mic version of "Reason to Believe" I phoned a friend and found the place just fine. San Antonio Street is an elusive little booger, but once you got it you got it.

I arrived at the theatre and met a friend, we'll just say her initials are Whitney LaCour and her name rhymes with Whitney LaCour. I don't want to say too much. On 7th and Congress there was quite a crowd of hipster-doofuses, Lynchers and Lynchettes all lined up for the 61 year old man with the Leave It To Beaver hairdo and the deceptively folksy mannerisms. Blah blah, some conversation with my movie-watching partner. And then, he showed up:



That's the three time Oscar nominated director / auteur / blinding visionary standing right before us without a care in the world. What a peppy man whose personal contrast with him films is almost disturbing, but the man's funny enough so it all sort of makes sense. Crista Bell came out and sang some reverby song not unlike the ones they might play when the explorers are uncovering the artifact with the thing or Stephen Gaghan is making a statement about big business oil by showing the terrorist perspective. Then David read a poem. The only word I remember is "spider". Funny the things that stick in your head. The lights dimmed.

And there it was. Polish prostitutes, a woman staring at her television crying, bunnies in a hellish sitcom of the mundane, Los Angeles porn stars / hookers doing the locomotion, a record, a thoroughly disturbing soundtrack that I couldn't imagine anybody else in the world producing, Laura Dern looking confused, Laura Dern looking like she was going to slice our chests open and piss blood into our lungs, bizzare, horror, nightmares. 179 minutes of what the minds of hell's dreamers may have rejected. Coherence? Nope. Insanity like I've never seen it before? Yeah. This thing dives into your head and sinks into the deep end and doesn't get out for what I assume will be a long while.

I don't know how to rate this kind of thing with anything resembling objectivity. Should we call it a movie? I'd probably be more comfortable saying it was cinema. It's of note that The Paramount sold out, 1200 people gathered to watch this happen and my eyes saw nobody, not one walk out of their seat. That is to say with the exception of Ms. Whitney LaCour. Whoopsie, I felt horrible. Poor girl had a test the next morning and this was Pity Premiere '07, not unlike Pity Prom '05. She's too much of a sweetheart to have the good sense to say "No Kevin, don't drag me to your weird f'n movies and make me sit next to you. Pervert" Note to self for the future, never watch a David Lynch movie with another, you know, person. But for the rest of us freaks and misfits, we were joined in the communal experience of watching what had to be roughly 2 straight hours of absolute maddness with a palpable air about us. It was joyous for some and an entirely different thing of a different sort for others. I couldn't see reason throughout the entire picture. David Lynch puts dreams on screen, and I think what I saw was working on this entirely different level of consciousness I was afraid to be tuned into. Rabbits are horrifying.

The lights came up after the entire credit roll and the Q and the A and the Q&A started up. One thing to understand is the fact that when you haven't, I say you put this probably applies to only myself, when you haven't had any sort of liquid for roughly four hours and you also haven't had anyone around to talk to for the sake of leveling vocal chords, something happens to your voice. It becomes weak and becomes frail. And not good frail. Another thing to keep in mind, I was talking directly and standing within kiss-blowing distance to DAVID LYNCH, so there may have been a bit of nerves there. Nonetheless, I trooped like a brave little trooper onto the microphone. There were two questions left so naturally, I had a 3-part question to which the moderator and The David Lynch mercifully allowed. I asked him about the Lost Highway DVD, and he said it wasn't a priority for Universal. I asked him if he'd ever ever ever return to television after getting his heart broken by ABC multiple times. He answered with a simple "NO" and elaborated to a good extent about how if he ever wants to do series anything, internet is the place to go. Then I asked him out to a cup of coffee and apple pie. He said he would and "yay" from the audience but he never showed up. A good man is hard to find, ladies. Especially the freaky cinema master in the early 60s range kind of man.

By God's grace did this whole thing go down like it did. I don't what to make of the thing I watched but everything bookending was more than nice. It was a new new new experience (In this sentence, new also denotes good) and I got to ask David Lynch questions. That was the first time he's ever been to Austin, in all of 61 years. I hope he comes back. Carole King and Nina Simone are disturbing now.