Latest / Cinema Yūgen / When Dreams Speak: Richard Green on Lynch, Loss, and the Log Lady

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When Dreams Speak: Richard Green on Lynch, Loss, and the Log Lady · Cinema Yūgen

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G'day. That's right. It's that time again. Time for... CINEMA! YOOGEEEAAAAAAA!
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Yes, welcome back, Cinema Yugen. There are voices you hear, and there are voices that summon worlds.
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From the electric blue darkness of Mulholland Drive to the mythic forests of
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Twin Peaks, one artist has spent a lifetime walking the line between dream and
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reality, never asking permission,
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never explaining the magic.
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Richard Green is not just a performer, he's a presence, an
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actor who can command the screen with
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a glance a filmmaker drawn to the beautifully
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mysterious a voice that has echoed through
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generations of animation gaming and television
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shaping villains visionaries and legends
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with nothing but breadth and imagination
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before most artists dare to
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trust instinct green was already collaborating with
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david lynch in the purest way
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possible no over analysis no safety net just fearless creation you don't rehearse
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the unknown you step into it now he returns with i know katherine the log lady
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a deeply human profoundly moving tribute to Catherine E.
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Colson not just a documentary but the preservation of a myth a reminder that.
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The people who touch our souls never truly leave the story.
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Four decades, hundreds of performances, countless of characters living rent-free
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in our collective psyche,
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and yet Richard Green remains what all true artists become if they stay the course long enough.
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Unpredictable, unrepeatable, unforgettable.
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So dim the lights, ladies and gentlemen, lean closer to your speakers and listen
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carefully because when Richard Green drops in, you don't just hear a conversation, you enter a dream.
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Please welcome him to cinema, Eugen Richard Green.
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I am delighted to be here. Thank you very much. Mate, it's been a long time coming.
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I am so glad to see that all of my horses at the Film Threat Awards came home with gongs.
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Great. It was a great year. documentaries last year. Fantastic.
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And, and, and it's still really going on. A review I wrote just came out actually for a review.
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I actually filmed my watch late last year. It's only just out now.
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It's called a long lonesome highway. It's the story of Michael Parks.
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Oh, I just read about that. So maybe it was in film thread that I read about it. Yes.
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Hopefully in film thread at film thread.com you read about it and,
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and, uh, yeah, definitely check that one out.
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Wherever you can great story michael parks really
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like yourself very talented man i did not know
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he had a musical career as well yeah very
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interesting just like from your great documentary i know
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catherine the log lady the big uh the big thing i walked away with it i didn't
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know was about the whole wrath of khan the thing i knew a lot of other stuff
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about her but i did not know about that that was a big i liked when documentaries
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give you a sort of a big surprise that you didn't know something about somebody...
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If you dig into anybody who is interesting at all life, you find some big surprises. Oh, sure.
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I was fascinated by Catherine and what I found.
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I'd known her since I was 20 years old, but I found out stuff my producer didn't
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know, who was one of her closest friends forever. Right, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
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Yeah, I can only imagine, like, in the wake of someone's passing,
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the detritus of their life and sifting through it.
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And there's, look, it's, it's always sad when someone has to leave us,
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but they do leave a wealth of a library, if you will,
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of, of this life lived so marvelously that it, that it makes a good material for a film. It does.
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You know, it occurs to me that we all leave stuff, right?
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After working on a documentary about somebody passing, I started thinking about,
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well, what is my son going to have to do to sift through all this junk,
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all these things that I've collected?
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And so I've started sifting through them, and that's been a wonderful process
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because the theater stub that you hold on to because there was something special
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about the night, not just about the theater performance.
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But the night the the shirt that you
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just it's got a hole in it and it's got a stain but man
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i like this shirt i like so you're sticking in a
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drawer someplace and 30 years later you open the drawer
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and there's the shirt and it's amazing it's
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amazing how some people treat to their their past
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i watched a very great documentary that's been out for quite
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a while but i only just became aware of it it was called still alive
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about paul williams oh wow
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as in the rainbow connection paul williams but
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um not in the not in the singer song yeah yeah
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the little guy the short guy yeah
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yeah okay all right i didn't mean this merch is yeah from the muppet show you
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know it's just an old-fashioned love song but yeah great documentary But what
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was interesting about his film was that he has a lot of stuff from that time, that life.
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And what was interesting is the documentarian part of the way through realized
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that Paul Williams isn't really interested in the celebrity Paul Williams.
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He's kind of happy where he is in his life now.
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He's gotten over the worst part of his vices as far as alcohol and drugs is concerned.
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And he's enjoying his later years and, and doing his bit for,
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for other people who have suffered similar addictions and problems and stuff like that.
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But what was interesting, what he discovered is that the, the celebrity or the
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subject in question didn't hang on to their stuff.
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Like we would crave it. Like fans, of course, of wonderful people like yourself
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would probably crave like tissue that you wrote a little note on or something
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like that. But to you, it's just a tissue with a little note on it, you know what I mean?
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You know, there's something related to what you're saying in terms of autographs
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and what we leave behind and what we give fans, the relationship between someone
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who is a celebrity and only a celebrity because we celebrate them.
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I mean, it's just, you know, there's no meaning to that word, right?
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I remember when I was, I was in my early 20s and I was trying to decide whether
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I wanted to move into acting full time, move into music full time or actually
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write and direct, which was my dream.
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And the thing that was attractive to me about writing and directing is the anonymity of it, right?
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I could maybe gain notoriety. So when I went into a restaurant and say,
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hey, yes, Richard Green, I'm here.
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Can you possibly get me a table? You're Richard Green? Oh, sure. Here's a table.
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Versus you get into the restaurant. Right this way, Mr. President.
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Yes. Or versus celebrity, which I called it celebrity, rather than notoriety,
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where you walk near the restaurant and 50 people mug you.
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And who are you? We want this. And it's like, then the thing that I thought
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I would miss most from any level of fame, and I haven't had much,
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so it's been good for me, is I would miss the interaction with the person who
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serves me coffee in the morning.
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Yes. Right. The guy, I talk to everybody. My, my, my new wife is much more reticent. She's Ukrainian.
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She doesn't necessarily want to engage people on the street,
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but I'm talking to everybody about everything.
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And if they knew that I was somebody special, they might not have that same
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kind of interaction with me.
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Right. They thought I was important or famous or whatever.
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And I'm in an enmity. I lost it a little bit when I was in my late teens,
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20s, early, when I was 20 in San Francisco, I became fairly well-known doing
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improvised verse in the streets.
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And a lot of people would come through and see me. And I did it with an English
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accent because I started doing it at this Dickensian fair.
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And I got a lot of publicity. It was written up in the paper and places and
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stuff. And then people would see me on the street and they'd say,
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oh, we saw you at the ferry boat. And I'll go, thank you very much.
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What happened to your accent?
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It's like, they didn't think, cause I wasn't in a movie. They didn't think I
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was a character playing a character. So I was some guy who could talk in rhyme. It was English.
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I could talk in rhyme, but I wasn't English.
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So I always wanted the notoriety to be able to have those interactions rather than the fame.
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And what it brings me back to, I'm sorry to be so long-winded,
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is I've done some autograph signing and it just a couple of times,
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and I was very reluctant to do it.
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And I was reluctant to do it because I thought I grew up in a town where people
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ask people for autographs and you never charged anybody.
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I can't imagine going up to a movie star and saying, hey, you know, give me five bucks.
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Mel Gibson asked for 20 bucks for, you know, and I, and it bothered me and I
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thought, and I should do this for free.
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And I don't, I thought maybe it indicates the end of my career where I got to
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do this for money. Wait a minute.
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But it just seemed like a wrong kind of calculation. And then I was in London
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and I was asked to do it and I said, okay, I'll try this. Right. And I said, hello.
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And what I realized is if somebody comes up to me at one of the Lynch events
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or any place that I am where I featured and people might know who I am. Hmm.
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Then they feel uncomfortable slightly. They're asking you for something.
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You're giving them something for free. You're taking your time to write their
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name. They might say, would you mind if just to Sarah?
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Okay, okay. Because they don't want to waste your time. They don't want to,
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they're taking something.
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But if you sit behind a table and charge them a minimal 20 bucks or whatever
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it is, they feel like they don't, they can talk to you.
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They can have a couple of minutes, you know, they'll take whatever you give
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them at that point without feeling guilty about it. So the interactions I have,
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Michael Horse, when I was in
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London, told me about this and I started to realize he's absolutely right.
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The interactions that I have are much better with people when they'll tell me
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a little bit about themselves, when I'm not just blowing my horn or doing some
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voice they want to hear because I did a cartoon they once loved.
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You know, it's, it becomes real interactions when there's some kind of transaction
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and then the fan feels they have a right to, to speak to you as a real person,
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as opposed to they're a supplicant and you're a, you know, a celebrity. Yeah.
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No, I, I, I feel a similar way. I mean, I, I, I don't have a lot of autographs
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per se from, from people I admire, but I have had the privilege to shake a lot
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of their hands and I sort of value that more.
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Because I didn't go up and ask them for a photo and, oh, would you take a photo
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with me and my wife? And what about my cousins? Get everyone in here. Come on.
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No, nothing like that. I remember going up to Peter Mayhew, who was at a convention. Oh, wow.
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Before he passed and everyone was lining up a mile long, paying a couple of
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hundred bucks to get the photo and the autograph and press the flesh and all that sort of stuff.
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I caught him leaving, going out the back door.
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And he was being wheeled out on a wheelchair, poor bugger, because he had,
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you know, back problems or whatever.
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He's a gigantic man. I don't think I've ever seen him.
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But he was being wheeled out, and my wife goes, shit, there's Chewbacca, quick.
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And I get up, and he saw me coming, and he went, oh, shit. You know?
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And I went, no, no, no, no, no. I don't want an autograph. I don't want a photo.
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Can I just shake your hand, sir? And he says, sure.
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And his hand basically engulfed my entire forearm.
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Wonderful. And I said, look, I just wanted to thank you for,
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for being a part of a great part of my childhood and God bless you.
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And, and he was like, oh, thank God. I thought you wanted an autograph and a photo.
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So this is also, this is also related to another aspect of celebrity, right?
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And I'll tell you a quick story and then I'll explain why I think it's related.
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So for 18 years, I was one of the voices of Turner classic movies,
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right? I did a lot of voiceovers for different companies and networks. I was Spike TV.
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I was the voice of Call of Duty for a couple of decades, all sorts of stuff.
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So you're the voice that you hear this week on Turner Classic Movie.
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One of those, yes. And I did a lot of their special projects.
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I did like documentary series on Scorsese or Marlon Brando or stuff where I
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would do 50 different campaigns for them to sell that. And those were the coolest, right?
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But always, just as a side note, at the time at least, I can't speak to them now. Thank you.
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Turner Classic Movies had some of the best spots in the world. And why?
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Because they were making commercials about really great films.
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And they could just pull a couple of pieces of the film, throw a little voiceover
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in and some great graphics. And they hired really smart, creative people.
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Oh, yeah. Chuck Moore, Chris, a good friend of mine, actually,
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his name will pop into my mind.
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And I want to say it, Merrifield, Chris Merrifield, who was the first creative
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director there that I worked with at Turner Classics.
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But one of the things that I did toward the end of my run with them is they
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would do a yearly film festival in Hollywood at the Grauman's Chinese Theater,
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the famous place, the hands and the feet right across.
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And it was also a part of the hotel that's across the street,
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the Hotel Roosevelt, you know, that's the turn.
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And they would have a big premiere night and I would go in and they would,
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you know, big theater and on the audience left on the second level,
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right in front of the long walkway that goes to the green room,
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they would place my microphone and I was the voice of God.
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Ladies and gentlemen, five minutes, please take your seats.
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Welcome to Turner Classic Movies. You know, just doing the thing,
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right? Only two or three lines, really. They were paying me good. It was great.
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So this one time I'm there, it was the last time I was there,
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I think, and the microphone's there and I do my thing.
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And before the movie it's going they're going to show et
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this new edition right and it's ben
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mankowitz is going to interview steven spielberg so spielberg's on stage and
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i do my thing and i watch the interview with steven spielberg and then i'm standing
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there and the movie is just about to start and the door at the bottom of the
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the long walkway the green room opens and out comes steven Spielberg and like 12 people,
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his entourage, and they walk straight to me.
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They all like stand right around me. And Steven, who's not very tall,
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stood right in front of me.
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And I didn't even think about it. I just said, nice interview, man.
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And he turned around and he went, oh, thank you. Thank you.
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And then the movie started and he took out his phone. And just like you and
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me at the premiere of our movie at Grauman's, he shot the fucking movie and
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the audience's reaction to the opening of it.
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Just like anybody who cares about stuff.
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It was absolutely charming.
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That's one of the things I really love about this business is it doesn't matter
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what tier you're at, really.
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All of the the even the
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top guys like spielberg they're all movie nerds like me
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so that makes me feel better and and why he's
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so good is he's he understands how we feel about things and puts it up there
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his films are not they're not necessarily intellectually stimulating as some
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of the stuff that i'll go and watch or is challenging but emotionally rich and
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fulfilling and real he's a brilliant,
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he's a master at telling the story from an emotional and logical,
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at least logical point of view.
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The reason I bring it up and related back to this autograph signing is.
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He said, oh, thank you in a way that made me remember that he,
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people don't tell Steven Spielberg how great he is because they think he already knows.
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You know, if I run into Jack Nicholson on the street, how many people are going
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to go up to Jack Nicholson and say, man, I love your work. You were so good in this.
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You were this because his peers, you know, he knows.
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It's not like he doesn't have the money and the riches and the accolades,
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but just a human straight thing.
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You wanted to shake his hand because you admired him not
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because you wanted to show off to your friends that you had an autograph yeah
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no no not at all yeah i mean that's what touched him
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yeah and i mean that's um oh shit
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if i bumped into jack nicholson i'd be that would be that would be something
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indeed i hope they i hope someone with enough wisdom does a documentary about
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jack before he passes you know i just spent eight years on a documentary and
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the first doc that i actually I mean, seven years zigzag could be considered a doc.
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It's just a totally whimsical one, but it's true.
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All the story. And then I produced David Lynch presents.
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I don't know, Jack documentary about Jack Nance star Eraserhead,
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the unsolved life and homicide of Eraserhead star Jack Nance, right?
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I'm living blocks away from where he, he died by the way.
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And then, so I, my first Lynch related documentary is, I don't know, Jack.
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My second Lynch related documentary is i know katherine my third so somebody
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said to me hey you could do another one nobody knows.
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David no just go in the list nobody knows kyle
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no i don't want to spend if katherine took eight years david would take 20 well
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oh yeah no doubt no doubt no i mean there's a few films about him now but i've
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got no doubt if you were doing a deep dive and i think he's wonderful and i
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know Catherine, the log lady.
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And we have, you know, it was an hour and 20 minute interview. And,
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I've known David since I was 20 years old. And although we were never.
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I mean, we were buds, we were pals.
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We hung out for like six weeks, one summer when I was 20 and on my way to Europe
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for a year, I ended up doing a couple of weeks, six or 12 weeks.
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I can't remember at the opening of the Mayfair Music Hall in Santa Monica, California.
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It was an English style music hall with a chairman and a box up there for the
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chairman and these different,
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and they hired me to do that English accented improvised verse act and they
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kept me in LA and the other person from our mutual theater company that got
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hired was Frankie Phipps Wilson who's in Eraserhead and she was hanging out with.
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Catherine up in Beachwood Canyon she was
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living there with her husband Jack and David and they were making
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Eraserhead that's where I hung out for that summer so that's
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how we knew each other incredible yeah it's like
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you said in in another interview that you've done prior to
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this one regarding i know katherine the log lady that uh i
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love the fact that you brought it up too is the
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fact that you got not only did you know david lynch
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and and and got to work with
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him and all that sort of thing and interviewing but you
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talked you said that in this interview that you talked with him
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but not about the work and that's
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what i that's what i liked about it because like you you
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imagine meeting your favorite filmmakers and artists and
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you you just want to sit down and do a vivisection of everything
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they've done but at the same time you
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think well i'm hanging out with this person he's an interesting but there's
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got to be more to him than just his films and and then it seems to me the best
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conversations would be to sit and just talk with him but not about movies to
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be there well you know the longest single conversation we ever had certainly
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was the interview because every other time we were hanging out there were lots of people around.
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We were in Cannes together for the Mulholland Drive premiere.
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I was there for my own films, Jack and Seven Years Zigzag, both played in the market.
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And I had a 14-piece new swing orchestra open the Cannes Film Festival in 2001.
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I mean, imagine just, you know, for, you know, I, I consider myself folks,
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right. I'm very outside of the mainstream in Hollywood.
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I'm not saying I'm worse or better, just I'm different. I make this independent stuff.
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Usually, you know, I end up paying for it or my friends end up paying for it.
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And, you know, we're outside the studio system.
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So I'm just people. And I think most artists are just people who have decided
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to dedicate themselves to a particular way of interpreting life and expressing it.
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But it's their sameness, their humanness, the same stuff that makes it powerful art, right?
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David and Spielberg, they all felt stuff that we feel. It's interesting for
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me when I've had the opportunity...
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Partially because of David's passing, we were just ready to go with the digital
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release of this film straight away.
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David passed. All of a sudden we were in hundreds, over a hundred screens,
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I don't know how many, across the United States.
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And subsequent to that, I went to as many of those screenings as I could possibly go to.
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And I had the great experience that all the old Hollywood guys had when they
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would do six or 10 previews outside Hollywood and sit with the audience and
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watch the movie and see, oh, that dropped it.
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You know, the humor just fell out of the thing. All right, change that, fix it.
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Because we're, although it's a medium of self-expression to some extent,
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you have to be true to yourself and how you want to see the film.
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The idea isn't just to make a film for me to be the only person to watch.
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I want people to experience this as many as humanly possible.
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And if there's a piece, there's a moment in it that loses the momentum,
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them. I want to fix that because I don't want them to lose it.
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This is a willing suspension of disbelief. My whole theory of filmmaking is
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it's like a roller coaster, right?
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A roller coaster, I didn't understand this till decades into my life.
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A roller coaster has no power.
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It is towed up to the top as high as it can go.
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And it uses the power of gravity and centrifugal force to go down.
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It never speeds up again.
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Only when it, it's the turns and the curves that make it interesting,
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but it's just keeps going down.
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Right. So a good film, you have to have something that starts that good film
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that gives you the power to sustain your disbelief until you get to the end,
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because it's images on a screen and sound that come together in the back of your head.
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It isn't even out there. It's back here that you see it.
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So, and hopefully you walk out with a wealth of.
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You know, such a feeling that all you want to do is turn back around and get
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back on the ride. Get back on the roller coaster.
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I tell you that there used to be a place in California in Los Angeles called Pacific Ocean Park.
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And it was an amusement park on a pier that went out over the water.
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And they had a roller coaster there.
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It wasn't as big as the cyclone in my native Coney Island in Brooklyn, right?
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But it was great. And for a nine, 10-year-old kid, this was a fabulous and you
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would pay one fee and you could go on that rollercoaster.
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I must've done it 10 times with my buddies one day.
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We would do the thing, run back around and do it again. You know,
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whoever got tired first.
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Let's ride it till we throw up. Exactly.
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Exactly. Yeah.
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Great stuff. But listen, what I, what the, probably the biggest thing I got
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out of, of your documentary and it really made me think of it after I know Catherine,
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the long waiting was over.
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And i was going to put it in the review but you
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know then you sort of aesthetically i'm
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trying to make the review fit into you know a nice
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sort of willing suspension of disbelief that it's got to be in the right form
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if it drops out in the wrong place you know hey i'm with it that's true but
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what what i got out of it or what certainly after the film finished when i watched
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the first time i remember writing this down in my notes was it made me think
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of this quote that's attributed to go to, but it, it,
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they, they don't think it, you know, in the vivisection of life,
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everyone's trying to find out who really said stuff.
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But anyway, it's, it's, it's, it's attributed to him.
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And it says a human life remains of consequence, not because of what we leave
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behind, but because we act and inspire. And those others.
25:19
To action and inspiration. We act and inspire to rouse others to action and enjoyment.
25:26
And that's, that's something that popped into my head.
25:31
It's, it's not the first time I thought about it. It's actually,
25:34
it was actually quoted by FX Feeney in a very, another great documentary called,
25:38
uh, the Z channel or the magnificent obsession. It's a story of Jerry Harvey,
25:42
who once was the head programmer over the Z channel.
25:46
And it's something that FX Feeney was, uh, said
25:50
of his friend because he died him and his partner died
25:53
tragically but fx feeney
25:56
died died way too young yeah fx feeney was one of the people i most respected
26:02
in my years at cal arts we went to cal arts together oh wow really he was in
26:06
the film i knew him very very briefly and very basically but uh yeah i think
26:12
i admire his work very much.
26:14
One of the most beloved people that I know, you know, and all the groups that
26:18
we're in and stuff, there's somebody usually in a group, maybe a couple of people
26:22
in different groups that I'm in where they just, everybody loves this person.
26:26
Right. I think of Frederica Duke also makes some interesting films on occasion.
26:31
Really interesting. Married to Michael Berry, writer for Johnny Carson and Letterman,
26:35
you know, really interesting woman.
26:37
And the entire group of people that know her, I mean, she does some writing.
26:42
She's wonderful, you know, blogging and stories. but it's more than that.
26:46
It's just who she is and how she raised her family and how she relates to her friends.
26:50
Catherine was another, one of those people just stand out from, from any group.
26:56
It's, is, is it exciting making a documentary and you've got the interviews
27:00
lined up when you're sitting down and they, all of a sudden they start telling
27:04
you something like we were talking about earlier.
27:07
They start telling you something about your subject in this case,
27:10
Catherine, that you You had absolutely no idea she was into.
27:15
You know, here's the thing.
27:17
Going all to all of those screenings all over the country, right?
27:22
It not only gave me the opportunity to trim the movie down and sort of test
27:27
it, road test it, so it really worked for people.
27:30
But it convinced me of something that surprised me and delighted me and moved me deeply,
27:37
which is that I'm in a movie based on the stuff that these people said to me
27:45
that moved me, right? It's me.
27:48
I reacted to those things. And the connecting tissue of the things that we all
27:54
need to know, the information people gave me, the insights, the amazing stories,
27:59
the consistent stories, the themes, right?
28:02
All these interviews were over an hour.
28:05
And I felt, and I'm sure that you know this to be true. I can feel it just in
28:09
this short interview that we've done so far,
28:12
that a great interview is when you guys connect on a level that,
28:19
you know, you may be following your questions, but they're just flowing.
28:22
And the exchange is flowing between you and that person. And they are expressing
28:28
things they may have never, you see them remember and, oh, there's nothing like a good cup of coffee.
28:35
This is something, I don't know. I don't know if I ever talked about coffee
28:39
with David a long time ago, but man, as a lover of Twin Peaks,
28:43
I would never have picked you for a coffee drinker at all. Oh yes.
28:48
Every time, every time I drink of coffee, I think of agent Cooper.
28:54
I have to say, can I make two pronouncements here? Sure, go for it.
28:57
Things that I feel like, but I wanted to say one before and I'll say the other now.
29:00
I think David Lynch may be the greatest artist of the 20th, 21st century,
29:05
whatever chunk of time that 80 years, 78 years of his.
29:09
Literally, to me. I'll give you that. Yeah. I mean, there's,
29:12
you know, millions of different cases can be made for many, many other really,
29:17
really great people who maybe impacted other people more or had more.
29:21
But I don't know anybody who had the breadth of work, the variety of media, right?
29:28
The adoration of his collaborators so that he worked with amazing people that
29:33
his budgets could never afford if he was an asshole.
29:38
As I said to a group of film students the other day, watch The Elephant Man,
29:44
Blue Velvet, and The Straight Story and tell me that David Lynch isn't a marvelous filmmaker.
29:51
Well, and I think that's a great order, not just because it's the chronological
29:56
order, but Elephant Man is just as deeply, I mean, it's.
30:00
Breaks my heart. I can't watch it without crying.
30:04
I can't either. But he portrays this England that we all, it's almost,
30:10
you know, Basil Rathbone's England come to real life. Yes.
30:15
It's that period. Dickensian, to be sure. but it's
30:18
depth and the darknesses of it and
30:21
the i just you could feel it you could
30:24
feel that environment and then you can almost taste the sword on your tongue
30:27
you can and try to brush it off and you can't brush the emotions off of it right
30:33
because because david i believe i mean you know i think mel brooks should be
30:38
applauded forever for oh yeah god bless him We're trusting David.
30:44
But David's relationship with Spike in Eraserhead.
30:51
You know, here's a man who understands something that isn't normally what we
30:56
see and can love it and appreciate it and even be repulsed by it. There's a scene.
31:02
I will send it to you in the three. We started our feature as a three-part miniseries.
31:07
I know. When I heard you talking to Chris at the awards and I heard more,
31:10
when I heard the word more, I'm like, what do you mean more? So much more.
31:15
There is so much more. One of the moments that's wonderful is David talks about
31:22
that Catherine would get everything that was needed for Eraserhead.
31:27
She was the chief cook and bottle washer and would go waitress and bring food
31:31
and money home to just keep it going and buying film snips. God bless you for saying that.
31:38
Chief cook and bottle washer. My father used to say, yes, I'm just the chief. Great.
31:42
And she was in that case. She was totally that. And he says one time he needed,
31:48
I'm not going to do David doing this. It would be totally, I can't do it. I won't do it.
31:53
He needed, oh God, the afterbirth. What is the afterbirth of a human being?
31:58
Placenta, right? Needs placentas for eraser head. So he sends Catherine to, he thinks UCLA.
32:05
And she goes in there and they, you know, she asked for these,
32:09
you know, and they gave them to her and she, you know.
32:14
Put them in a cooler and brought them back to the set. In a container, it was wax impregnated.
32:21
It just, he tells us, we've illustrated it. I have the scene.
32:25
But he's just talking about,
32:28
loving it, right? Just appreciating the moment.
32:33
Probably the deepest lasting effect David will have on me is that I finally
32:38
decided to do TM after doing the interview with him.
32:41
I always thought TM from the 60s, it was like the Beatles, that was really, really cool.
32:47
But then they wrote songs about the Maharishi being kind of a not that cool of a guy.
32:52
And it costs a lot of money for them to give
32:55
you this word and you say the word and you you nah
32:58
come on wait a minute wait a minute you end up like Jeff Goldberg and Annie
33:01
Hole and I forgot my mantra yeah so you know I didn't do it and even when I
33:07
was in Cannes in 2001 and everyone in David's entourage including Eli Roth and
33:12
John Neff they were they were into it and it seemed great and stuff but I still was like,
33:18
ah, you know, that's, I don't know. Right.
33:20
When I did the interview with David, after this interview, I,
33:25
I was about to sell a house.
33:27
I didn't really want to sell, right.
33:30
Things were changing in my life.
33:31
It was okay. But I knew I was going to be facing a fair amount of stress.
33:35
And I thought, well, you know, maybe the TM can reduce the stress,
33:39
but more I thought maybe also, I'm so sorry. I'm at my, uh.
33:45
I thought maybe it would help me understand Catherine and David a little bit
33:48
more because they started doing it on the same day, you know, together.
33:53
They learned this together and there's a great story, which I don't want to
33:56
give away in our talk here.
33:58
But there's a great David tells us incredibly physically, physically illustrates
34:03
this story in the most unusual. It's so wonderful.
34:07
It's right. It's a master storyteller telling us a wonderful story about somebody
34:12
that he loved, which is extraordinary and exciting.
34:16
So I decided to do TM because of that.
34:22
I thought, well, maybe I'll understand David and Catherine and maybe it'll take some stress away.
34:25
And David, through Michael Breel, his assistant, arranged for me to meet Lynn
34:32
Kaplan at the David Lynch Foundation. They had this lovely house.
34:35
And it was wonderful. It was a wonderful experience, but it also has given me
34:40
something I'll take to my grave. I mean, it's a skill.
34:43
And Kyle McLaughlin talks about the skill. That's the other thing I wanted to
34:47
mention before, if I could just jump for a second back.
34:50
I see Kyle McLaughlin all over social media right now,
34:54
doing wacky things with his kids and interviewing young people and just wearing
34:59
funny costumes and being totally the other side of the coin from Cooper, right?
35:05
And I just think it's wonderful to see his career.
35:12
Bloom at this time because he's a really good actor
35:15
he's always been a really good actor
35:18
and you see it when you look through you
35:21
know certainly season three is a tour de force of his performances but
35:25
even the you know and he talks about in our film you know the choppiness of
35:29
of his career in the three part he really goes into it about you know nobody
35:32
knew what to do with them they put him in the doors and it was you know the
35:36
character was so specific and twin peaks was so unique, they didn't know what to do with it.
35:41
Then, you know, people wonder why certain actors do really well in Hollywood
35:46
and why we know these names.
35:47
It has to do with the team that's around you and the other people that are going
35:52
to benefit by your career, right?
35:54
It's like there are maybe 10 or 20 guys right now, probably,
35:58
that are considered for like major leading men roles.
36:03
Some of them are aging out. Some of them are just aging in.
36:06
Some of them are being discovered as the latest new thing, but it's really the lawyer Pedro Pascal.
36:12
Yes. And some of them are Pedro who sticks it out and, and lucks into a great role. Yeah.
36:17
And, you know, and, and, and what's everywhere at the moment,
36:21
Brian Cranston in the same way, you know, Brian Cranston is just a fine actor.
36:27
He's, he's one of the best kinds of actors in terms of his appreciation of literature
36:32
and history and art, you know, he's a full artist acting is his craft and his, his, his medium,
36:40
his primary. I liked him as Dalton Trumbo.
36:43
He was amazing as Dalton Trumbo. I'm not crazy about that film,
36:45
but I really, really liked him. I like the documentary more.
36:49
I think they should have used the play as a son, Christopher, to write a play. Oh, wow.
36:57
Yeah. And it was actually the basis of the documentary about him, I think.
37:02
Have you seen the documentary about Dalton? I have not seen the Dalton documentary. Please do.
37:08
It has a lot of great actors reading from the letters of Dalton Trumbo. Oh, wow.
37:13
How wonderful is that? Nathan Lane, David Strathairn.
37:18
Ah, she was in The Contender. Oh, I know who you mean. You know who I mean?
37:22
Rare-faced, strong woman. Yeah, she's in it too.
37:26
Beautiful recitations. I mean, it's a documentary about his life and career,
37:33
but it is interspersed with recitations of his letters,
37:37
to friends and family and colleagues read by a magnificent cast.
37:42
Michael Douglas also. Yeah.
37:45
Great. The late, great Donald Sutherland also. He's a fantastic,
37:51
knows how to deliver those big screeds of dialogue.
37:55
Yeah. Well, especially for Sutherland, he had, I don't think he had a particularly
38:00
nice voice, but Donald Sutherland was one of the most successful voiceover actors in history.
38:06
Yeah. Because he could convey...
38:10
Honest, almost immediate sincerity. And I mean by immediate sincerity,
38:15
I've never phrased it that way before, but the idea that it's not like you judge
38:18
the person, yeah, I kind of believe in them.
38:20
It's that when they're in the moment so much in what they're doing that you
38:24
were in the moment with them and you believe what they're saying right in that moment.
38:28
Yes, it's present, you know, and you stay with him and just you're present and it's his, you know.
38:34
You buy him in the part that he is yeah you
38:38
accept him i accept him just don't look now you
38:42
know those those are the bookends for mike for for donald
38:45
sutherland's career as far as i'm concerned yeah mash and don't look now i know
38:50
he did a bunch of great work and and and and if you mention it i'll probably
38:54
go oh yeah yeah okay but those two i like alice in one no alex in wonderland
38:59
alex in wonderland i don't remember that very well yeah yeah i was probably
39:02
really high when i saw it you know yeah.
39:06
I think they were all pretty high when they made it too, but. Yeah, I think so. Yeah.
39:11
And you know, I'll tell you something that's interesting about that.
39:15
And it makes it dangerous for people who indulge too much in any kind of drug,
39:19
whether it's, you know, alcohol or pot or anything.
39:23
Is the thing that made this, one of the things that made the 60s so exciting and so immediate.
39:29
Was that the drugs we were taking were drugs that didn't make you feel warm
39:34
and fuzzy and I'm secure in my life or hype you up like cocaine where I can do anything.
39:41
They were drugs that changed the way you saw the world.
39:47
When the world looks different, our brains are designed to adapt to change and
39:52
to make sense out of change.
39:55
If you saw the world from a different way, all of a sudden you had to think
39:59
about the world in a different way.
40:02
So the idea of mind expansion, and I'm not saying that all drugs are good and
40:05
everybody should take them. They shouldn't.
40:07
Some of them are very dangerous. I've had bad times at times when I was a teenager
40:11
and took some heavy, heavy, you know, psychedelics and stuff.
40:14
But the idea that by shifting the way we see the world, we have to,
40:20
you know, by shifting the way the world looks to us, we have to see the world
40:23
in a different way, that's change, that's growth, that's potential,
40:27
that's reassessing things, right?
40:29
Just like we were talking about with Kyle McLaughlin in The Doors,
40:33
when he's walking along the beach with Val, and he's like, they're talking about.
40:37
You know, they're taking license about how the name of The Doors came around,
40:42
but he's walking along and he's talking about, you know, you know,
40:45
when The Doors of Perception are cleansed, everything will appear as it truly
40:48
is, and he's like, yeah, infinite.
40:51
I love it. You know? I mean, it'll appear as it truly is or as we can truly
40:57
imagine it. Who knows, right?
40:59
Which brings me to another subject I'd love to touch on. I mentioned earlier. Please do. And that is.
41:05
This idea about what survives our passing, right?
41:10
Now we're artists, so our work is going to survive our passing.
41:15
I saw a small being walk behind you earlier, so I assume you're a father.
41:20
No, that's my wife. Your wife is. I'm a father, yeah, too.
41:24
You are a father, right? So that was a perspective that made it look like, all right.
41:28
But you're a father, right? So our children, I have a son as well.
41:31
Our children survive us, right? Right.
41:34
Maybe the good things we do for people, if it helps move their lives in some
41:39
positive way, that survives us as long as they're there, unless,
41:43
of course, they pass on a principle.
41:46
So, you know, Shaw is not survived by his books. He's survived by the ideas
41:53
and the words in his books.
41:55
His books are just things, but it's that which can survive for a long time.
42:00
The concepts, yeah. Right.
42:02
But what of us consciously survives? And this is a big question.
42:06
I want to tell you a quick story, and I want to quote a lyric to you.
42:09
Awesome. And then the subject is, how do we figure this out,
42:13
right? And do we need to, right?
42:19
2018, we do a 30-day crowdfunding on Kickstarter to raise money to do I Know
42:24
Catherine, the Log Lady.
42:26
And there's a huge Lynch audience that we can talk to.
42:30
Peter Dahm of Welcome to Twin Peaks was running our campaign and running our
42:35
graphics, and he's brilliant in both areas and did a great job for us.
42:39
The head of Kickstarter documentary and her former PR person who wanted to stick
42:44
around for this project did an amazing job on Kickstarter,
42:48
which is really about, you know, spiking the algorithm and making sure,
42:51
you know, a certain amount of money comes in at a certain amount of time,
42:53
you get a certain amount more exposure to people.
42:56
And that's how these things grow. All of this stuff in Kickstarter,
43:00
and it's a big platform, is really, really important because unless you raise
43:05
your entire goal on Kickstarter, you get nothing, right?
43:09
Nothing. I had spent all my money and and nine months, eight months planning this thing out.
43:16
Hiring good people to help develop all of it and not sparing any.
43:21
I mean, we were really cautious about spending money, but I didn't spare anything.
43:25
I, everything I had in, right? Just all in because, because I had this interview
43:30
that I had done with David.
43:31
I knew the story. The story was amazing. I knew Catherine since I was 20,
43:34
but I had this hour plus interview with David that's so emotionally compelling
43:40
and intellectually interesting.
43:42
And so just entertaining. yeah it's like
43:45
yet another side of david lynch oh i
43:48
think so and and stuff we've seen before i mean i see him
43:51
you know telling other stories that he's told oh sure i have i
43:54
have him telling one story that's not in i know catherine because it's in i
43:58
don't know jack right when when cat when jack mouthed off get in the car horse
44:04
face and catherine belts jack right yeah yeah yeah yeah right so So I had him
44:11
telling that in 2018 as well.
44:14
And we've actually, I cut him so I countered him a little bit at one point.
44:18
I might actually just, that would make a nice post.
44:21
Yeah. Just taking one from one. I don't know, Jack and this,
44:25
and just somehow they're playing with him.
44:27
So we get to see a story, a wonderful story in two different, wonderful ways. Yeah.
44:33
As a single post. But yeah. So we decide we're going to do this the day before we start.
44:40
The head of Kickstarter documentary, Liz Moe, comes to me on the phone and says, listen.
44:46
You're going to go for the 250. But the old school guys, the guys that have
44:51
been here for a while, they think that may be too much and you should go for 150.
44:54
But I will say that the young guys that are in here now, the new people,
44:58
they think you can get the 250.
45:00
So Richard, what do you want to do?
45:02
And I go and I get the answer log, not the ultimate one that had David's name,
45:09
David's answers in it, but just take the magic eight ball, stick it in a log
45:13
to demonstrate the answer log, right?
45:17
I ask it, you know, should we go for the two 50 and I turn it over and it says, absolutely.
45:23
And so we went for the two 50 and we had great publicity.
45:29
We had, we came out on a Tuesday and then on Saturday was the festival of destruction
45:34
in New York and Kyle McLaughlin introduced our one minute pitch on video live
45:41
at the festival of disruption at noon on their opening day. It was fabulous.
45:46
Right. And we start raising money and I, you know, it's, you know,
45:50
we're doing everything we can to make things happen and get people stimulated and finding it.
45:54
So we get about eight days out from the end and we got like two thirds of our
46:01
money, right. Got a hundred something thousand dollars.
46:05
And I was alone in this big studio with tall ceilings that I,
46:10
you'd see it in the campaign video and got a little bit loaded, right?
46:15
I just let myself go. I went, I did some of that stuff that makes things look
46:20
different. So you see it different, right?
46:22
We were talking about before I smoked pot. Yeah, I know.
46:25
And I went into the front office where we had collected these boxes that we
46:30
got from Catherine's family that, you know, all the memorabilia and stuff we
46:36
had, right, was in this office.
46:39
And for some reason, I started talking to Catherine.
46:43
I just started speaking out loud. Look, this is what I'm doing.
46:47
I don't know. It's crazy.
46:48
You know, I just let myself talk and got it, you know, really expressed how I felt.
46:55
Which was really intense. My whole life, my career, every piece of work I'd
46:59
ever done had culminated in this moment where we're either going to get the
47:03
money to do this movie and I'm going to spend the next however long,
47:06
I didn't know it would be this long,
47:07
however long on this film, or I'm not.
47:11
And I'm going to have to hang my head in shame and walk away.
47:15
And I just express all of that. I don't know how many words it was. I don't know.
47:20
But at the end of the expression of but I broke down and I cried.
47:24
And I cried deeper than I can remember ever crying maybe in my life, right? Just wailing.
47:31
I mean, I was in a big sound pro studio, so I felt safe.
47:34
And at the end of that, maybe 10 or 15 minutes of just bawling,
47:40
you know, my stomach heaving,
47:41
tears pouring out of my eyes, you know, me almost sitting back and going,
47:46
look what this guy's doing, being aware of how deeply I was feeling,
47:51
right? Aware of it as it was happening.
47:54
And at the end of it, I just said, if we raise this money, I will talk to you.
48:00
That's it. Wow. Didn't make any agreements that I would listen or that it was real or anything else.
48:08
And I thought about my father and, you know, he had died like 10 or 15 years,
48:13
20 years before. I don't even know. It's hard to keep track.
48:16
But when he died, the next day I sat on the deck behind our house where he and
48:20
I used to sit and have conversations when I needed my dad's advice.
48:25
And I remember he died. it was the next day. And I thought, so I thought,
48:29
well, I know people do talk to the dick. Can I talk to you?
48:31
Can I, and I, and I, I remember thinking, wait a minute, I'm a fucking actor.
48:36
I have this vivid, active imagination.
48:39
How do I imagine my father in a red tutu standing on the top of the fence?
48:44
And I don't want to do, no, I can't do this. I couldn't, I couldn't do it.
48:49
A year passed and it was the unveiling of his, his headstone took my son who
48:56
was four and a half by that point and wanted some lemonade.
48:59
So I went back to the car to pick up some lemonade across the field of graves,
49:04
you know, all these headstones in the grass and you're walking across.
49:07
It's weird, right? So I got the lemonade. And as I'm walking back,
49:11
I'm casually thinking, so it's been a year. If I talk to you, Pop.
49:17
And I hear your response, will it really be you?
49:22
This is what I'm saying, right? Yeah. And then I heard in my head,
49:27
easily could be my imagination.
49:29
I have no way of telling you whether it's my imagination or a real voice in
49:32
my head or just a memory. I don't know what it was.
49:35
But the response that I got, if you ask him to write, what?
49:41
If you build him, he will come. Well, maybe that would be your dad or your grandma. Right.
49:48
But my dad, unmistakably, I would never have written this line because I'm not
49:53
that good a writer, but unmistakably said, when I asked, Pop,
49:58
if I talk to you and I hear your voice, will it be you?
50:01
He unmistakably said in my mind or imagination, maybe.
50:07
That was my dad. Maybe. That was my dad. Maybe.
50:12
He would he thrilled and getting
50:15
me to think he was
50:18
you know socratic in his method of teaching right
50:21
it was questions that would make i would
50:24
have to my father was very similar i i in fact i sit with my father some sometimes
50:31
now and i talk about all this stuff i do with a computer and i remember my first
50:36
computer that he brought home and he simply sat it down in a box in front of
50:40
me and he said, you figure it out and then you can show me.
50:45
So yeah, that's all the lesson I've ever had using computers.
50:49
So yeah, he was a good teacher in the past. Yeah.
50:53
I hate to say this because I don't appreciate the man's politics.
50:57
Don't appreciate his acting for the most part.
50:59
But John Wayne, I just have this image of him in some movie where,
51:03
you know, the woman folk were worried about this boy not being able to swim.
51:10
And so John Wayne picked him up, grabbed him by the seat of the pants and threw him in the lake.
51:16
And the kids swam out.
51:18
Well, dang it. That's the only way to learn, right? Yeah, that's like the Christopher
51:23
Walken story in Catch Me If You Can, you know, the two mice fell into a bucket
51:29
of cream and one gave up and drowned.
51:32
And the other one, he turned that cream into butter and he crawled out.
51:38
I don't, I don't know that film. That's great. Oh, you catch me.
51:41
Steven Spielberg, Leonardo DiCaprio, a good true story about Frank Abagnale Jr.
51:47
The ended up great, a great con man ended up working for the FBI.
51:53
Con them too i guess but as he says as he says in
51:56
interviews now he says i wasn't trying to be a con man i was
51:59
a i was a a frightened kid with nowhere to
52:02
go and i had to survive and you need money to survive and so that's why i did
52:06
what i did it wasn't really about trying to be clever or trying to be a yeah
52:10
a con man it was this is a cool guy this is a guy with reflection yeah he is
52:14
an interesting cat okay cool yeah somebody once told me i don't know that this is in any way true,
52:21
but they talked about a natural aristocracy. Supposedly, D.H.
52:26
Lawrence maybe had written about this, but that 3% of all the people in the
52:30
world are the artists, the scientists, the inventors, the doctors,
52:36
the lawyers, and the criminals. Mm-hmm.
52:40
Three percent wow and that everybody else
52:43
is you know got does part of it some of it but sort
52:46
of just you know not necessarily everything no it's
52:49
interesting you bring it up it reminds me of what martin scorsese said
52:53
about filmmakers once in a great documentary
52:56
where he talks about the length and breadth of
52:59
american cinema or at least american cinema that
53:02
he understand growing growing up and he
53:05
talked about the being the the innovators the
53:09
masters and the imitators because the
53:13
innovators are like your charlie chapulins dw
53:16
griffith buster keaton's the
53:19
medium is young they're exploring it yeah the
53:23
innovators then you have the masters like uh kubrick david lynch stephen spielberg
53:29
they take what they're like when you keep what you consider griffith a master
53:33
dw griffith yeah even though his his films are terribly political yeah well i mean.
53:41
Certainly certainly he moved to quote the modern parlance he moved the needle
53:46
i think with his visual audacity as far as cinema it's kind of scope and scope
53:52
yeah yeah like like trying stuff that was probably insane at the time of it
53:58
that's why i think he's an innovator as well yeah,
54:01
so and i mean probably like you know
54:04
i mean just like when cubrick died just
54:07
like when david died i think everybody re-examined like
54:11
how much of an impact he was you know
54:14
and how many people really really admired him
54:18
like i like no one spoke about cubrick much till
54:20
he died and then all of a sudden all of
54:23
his films are classics and he was a genius and whatever else but up until that
54:28
point it was like oh well he's this weirdo that you know makes a film every
54:32
i can't agree with that and that may be true for the general population all
54:37
i can speak to is my own experience is that kubrick from from 2001 was.
54:44
Cooper that was it i was disappointed in in
54:47
the ryan o'neill thing that he did i just couldn't buy
54:50
ryan oh barry linden barry linden i should
54:53
re-examine the film because maybe it's better i i i
54:56
i i sort of get get flack from fellow cinephiles and cineast my favorite cubrick
55:03
is his paths of glory it's one of the great films which i think is uh unparalleled
55:09
as far as yeah the drama and And certainly Kirk Douglas was never so powerful,
55:16
except probably in the film that he plays,
55:19
Vincent Van Gogh in... Plus for Life.
55:22
Plus for Life, that's it, yeah. With Anthony Quinn.
55:25
Did you ever see the, I think, the live, secret live, six lives of Martha Ivers
55:30
or the secret life of Martha Ivers, something Martha Ivers. I have heard of it, yeah.
55:35
It's a film noir, beautiful. I think Mitchum's the lead.
55:39
Yeah. It's pretty great. I would like to see, I'd like to see people write parts for Av-
55:45
Yavier Bardem, because he always, he strokes me as like a young Anthony Quinn.
55:50
He's got that sort of young Anthony Quinn. He's got that face,
55:53
right? Look about him. Yeah, and
55:54
it's just like, you know, I wish someone would write him a decent form.
55:57
Or at least maybe if they do a biopic of Anthony Quinn, they could get Yavier Bardem to be.
56:03
Boy, if you did a biopic of Anthony Quinn, I think it could be pretty lustful.
56:07
I think this guy was a player in this crazy town.
56:12
And probably there's political stuff there, too. He was half Mexican and half
56:16
Irish. I know. That's weird, isn't it? From Mexico, right? Yeah, yeah.
56:20
And everyone thought he was like European. Everyone thought he was Greek because
56:23
he was all Greek, obviously. He was all European, yeah.
56:25
Yeah, yeah. And he fathered a child at 81 or something like that. Oh, yeah.
56:28
I watched the documentary, like a marvelous painter too, and his painter and
56:33
sculptor in his later years. What is that?
56:35
What is that about? Because I'm not a painter.
56:37
I'm painted as a kid a little bit. but what is it about particularly successful
56:42
actors that they become painters?
56:45
And when I say the difference between really successful actors,
56:48
I'm an actor. I made a really good living when I was acting.
56:50
I'm not complaining and it sustains our project now.
56:53
My pensions are what keep us, you know, riding along.
56:57
But I was never a really successful actor. I was never Ed Harris.
57:01
I went to Cal Arts with, and I don't know if he paints, but I can imagine he would.
57:05
And I wonder if it's, you have to force yourself to not work between projects
57:10
so that you get to pick the right project that you really, really want to do,
57:15
that you feel is going to further you or your career, whatever, you know.
57:18
So guys like that have this chunk of time where, you know, even if they just
57:23
did a play, well, that's a big deal.
57:25
That is like, they're going to get reviews. It's going to be seen.
57:28
They've got a career that they, you know, so I wonder if, if painting is.
57:33
You know, David, on the other hand, came completely the other way, right?
57:36
He started as a painter and ended up really liking acting and filmmaking and
57:41
music, right? And I don't know how much he painted.
57:44
And furniture, I don't know how much he painted at the end. I don't know.
57:48
Yeah. I have a David Lynch question that probably you could help me with.
57:53
I love, I forget where I saw David talking about it once in a clip where he's
57:58
talking about lots of things.
58:00
But I'm intrigued with this whole thing about the perfect milkshake. do
58:03
you know i've never heard this i can't help
58:06
you oh okay because he talked about had the milkshake at
58:09
bob's yeah he talks about it like it's very
58:12
hard to get a perfect one and he describes it as like it comes to you and the
58:18
cup is like you can see the condensation from the the chill on the cup and it's
58:24
yeah he just describes like and he said you only ever get maybe one in ten.
58:31
Is a perfect milkshake but the rest of the time it's
58:34
some elements are right but not completely you
58:37
know it was um it should not surprise us
58:41
that his eye for detail yeah
58:44
we know exists from everything we've seen that it's going to pick up that stuff
58:49
and he's going to be aware of it and what's charming about david and again i
58:55
you know i i worked with him three times and i hung out some amount one summer
59:00
when I was 20 and they were making Eraserhead.
59:04
And my whole existence with him was, you know, kind of as a result of,
59:08
of that and what had happened before that with the theater companies.
59:12
So I wasn't like his buddy. We didn't, I haven't, you know, I never had a cup
59:15
of coffee with David since 1973. Right. Right.
59:19
Even on the set of Mulholland Drive, there wasn't time. We had a great time,
59:23
but we weren't together. It was great. It was wonderful.
59:26
But I think his work,
59:29
just makes it really, really clear that he was absolutely present in this moment
59:36
and observing it and being able to express it in a really,
59:40
really fundamentally accessible way, even though he's different.
59:45
His way of perceiving it might be different than mine or expressing it,
59:49
but it's so David, it's so particular.
59:52
And that to me is what poetry is about, whether it's lyrical or musical or narrative
59:58
poetry or visual poetry. It's that.
1:00:03
Our DNA is almost exactly the same.
1:00:07
There's so few differences between you and I.
1:00:10
We're both 21st century males with facial hair and interest,
1:00:15
and we're talking about the same subject on the same digital channel.
1:00:19
I mean, there's so much the same, but it is the differences that allow us to
1:00:25
see ourselves by seeing the differences.
1:00:28
So the more specific a piece of art is, the
1:00:31
more the artist has captured what the artist perceives
1:00:36
in as much richness and detail
1:00:39
or whatever it is that they're perceiving however it's transmuted
1:00:42
whether it's volume you know lead guitar
1:00:46
you know solo or whatever it is that the
1:00:49
more particular it is for them the more we can relate
1:00:52
to it because it's the difference that allows
1:00:55
us to see ourselves yeah and i think it's that
1:00:58
also that difference but also the fact that these
1:01:02
filmmakers like david care about the little
1:01:05
details that separates them from like you say separates them from every other
1:01:09
director well yes the fact that the fact that nine times out of ten he you know
1:01:16
you and i wouldn't care about how the milkshake comes to us at the table but
1:01:20
david lynch would and that's what separates him,
1:01:23
You know, so there's, you think if I go order milkshakes and I start watching
1:01:27
them, I'll become better.
1:01:30
Sure. You just got to pay attention to all those little, like,
1:01:33
you know, the froth has to be nice on the top and there's condensate.
1:01:37
So the straw has to be in the center, not dead center, but just slowly off to
1:01:40
the center and the cherry has got to be a certain.
1:01:43
Exactly. My brother, who's never going to forgive me for saying this,
1:01:46
but I do think that he's a brilliant guy, comedian, standup comedian, a writer.
1:01:51
Liver of his life. But when he was a kid, right, he was playing drums.
1:01:56
And he also was working at a place called Holloway Cleaners,
1:01:59
right? Which is right in West Hollywood.
1:02:01
It was the cleaners everybody would go to because they were right there.
1:02:04
It was big. So stars would come in, right?
1:02:07
And he needed a red leather jacket to be the drummer that he saw himself as.
1:02:14
He needed to have a red leather jacket.
1:02:18
Now, my attitude is you could have practiced harder or spent that money on drum
1:02:25
lessons and you might still be a drummer, but you got the red leather jacket.
1:02:30
And maybe me 20 or 30 years ago would go, man, that's not cool.
1:02:37
Now I go, well, that's great. You got to have a red leather jacket and that fantasy.
1:02:41
And maybe you wouldn't be happy if you were a drummer, you'd be dead.
1:02:45
You know, it's like the concept of optimistic revisionism is very simple.
1:02:51
If you can tolerate where you are.
1:02:55
Can see a better place in your future that you're striving for,
1:02:58
then every place that you've been was the right place to be.
1:03:03
You look at the past and all the mistakes and all the pain and bad choices and
1:03:07
everything optimistically.
1:03:08
I'm glad you said that. Because that taught me this and this taught me that
1:03:12
and now I can be here, you know, and I can learn and move forward.
1:03:15
Yeah, I'm glad you said that. I mean, I feel similar.
1:03:19
You know, the more time goes by, you start to look back every once in a while
1:03:23
and you realize that each of the steps led to where you are now.
1:03:28
So as much as they may have been a pain in the ass at the time,
1:03:32
if you look at them in the grand scheme, they were integral because if you hadn't
1:03:35
gone through it, you wouldn't be waiting now.
1:03:38
So it's, you know, turns in the labyrinth are sometimes unfortunate.
1:03:44
But sometimes you make a right turn too and end up somewhere where you didn't think you might end up.
1:03:50
So it's... And this life has pain. Just like I never thought I'd be talking
1:03:53
to Richard Green, so it's….
1:03:57
Well, I talk to him all the time, just not as loud most of the time.
1:04:02
I wanted to come back to something if we could. Sure. And that's the idea of talking to Catherine.
1:04:09
Did I do it, right? So, I told you how that came about that I promised that
1:04:12
if we raise this money, I was going to talk to her, and then we raised the money.
1:04:16
So, what does that mean, right? I mean, if you would have asked me any time
1:04:20
in my life what sign I was, I would have said, skeptical rising, right?
1:04:26
Didn't put much faith in astrology and people's interpretations of the positions
1:04:32
of the stars at a given time designed hundreds of years ago.
1:04:36
Although, who knows, right?
1:04:38
I'm a big fan of many of the concepts of Carl Jung, right?
1:04:43
And I remember reading Man and His Symbols, and I remember coming to the conclusion
1:04:48
that however you looked at the world, that's how you'd see it.
1:04:56
That, you know, looking inside is the closest thing I have to full knowledge of anything.
1:05:05
There's a tree over there, and if you study trees, you know a lot more about trees than I do.
1:05:11
But I will never really understand what it's like to be a tree.
1:05:16
I can, if I take the time, fully, not fully, but deeply understand what it is
1:05:23
to be a man, a human, a person, an American, an artist,
1:05:28
internationalist, or whatever, you know, a universal citizen or whatever,
1:05:34
you know, just knowing this, you know, he who looks inside.
1:05:38
He who looks outside dreams, he who looks inside awakes, I think is the quote, but I could be,
1:05:44
anyway so sleeper must awaken yeah yes yes yeah so i wrote a song sure about
1:05:55
this i won't sing it to you right now i don't know what kind of instrument i
1:05:59
think i've seen you play it at i've seen clips of you play the song at uh,
1:06:04
at a screening, I believe, that we played a few guitars.
1:06:09
I don't even know what's out there. So I think I've heard the song that you're talking about. Yes.
1:06:18
Each verse is kind of directed at a different person, right?
1:06:23
And I've never talked about this, but the first verse is directed based on that story with my dad.
1:06:29
And the second verse was my Jungian therapist,
1:06:34
this cat who would listen to me tell the story of my life every week,
1:06:39
who encouraged me to write Seven Years Zigzag and encouraged me to write it
1:06:43
in rhyme when I suggested that story of the seven years pursuing this massive goal.
1:06:51
You know, that had it succeeded, I, you know, I'd be a built trillionaire,
1:06:56
you know, I'd have the Hollywood access to do anything I wanted to do.
1:07:00
You know, it was the, this was going, it was called the next step and it was
1:07:03
going to be the next step after disco, right?
1:07:06
What elements existed in disco?
1:07:09
You had a dance step, you had clothing style, you had a music style,
1:07:15
and you had a nightclub environment that had its own lights and specificities, right?
1:07:21
Those four elements and i just in one night
1:07:24
driving across country came up with this concept
1:07:27
of well what if you just zigzag from the 30s to the 80s yeah right have a new
1:07:32
dance staff and it was this was the late 70s it was early 80s it was like man
1:07:37
led half the time woman led half the time right what about a club called the
1:07:41
zigzag club stylistically high-tech deco just entering the Yeah,
1:07:45
you were saying last time we spoke, yeah.
1:07:50
So anyway, the third verse is to Catherine.
1:07:55
And the lyric is, if I talk to you, now that you're gone, how do I know you will hear?
1:08:02
And if you talk to me, is it really you or imagination whispering in my ear?
1:08:08
I used to wring out my worries. This is to my Jungian therapist.
1:08:12
You hardly said a word, but I knew you understood.
1:08:16
Told me to listen to my heart and keep my own counsel.
1:08:21
Take my own advice, if it's good.
1:08:25
Bridge generalized, right? I didn't know I'd miss you so. Oh, to be heard like I was.
1:08:31
Wish you would come back and stay here. Wish I could be heard like I was.
1:08:37
Wish you could come back and stay here from the other side, but nobody does. In the last verse.
1:08:44
But I'm going to talk to you now that you're gone. Remember the things that
1:08:49
you said, and maybe it won't really matter whether you respond or are conversations only in my head.
1:08:57
Because if I can hear you in my heart, that'll be a start.
1:09:00
At least I'll know how I feel. If I can hear you in my heart,
1:09:04
I'll have what to go on, and I won't have to go on. You're a beautiful man, Richard.
1:09:09
Please tell our audience where they can see this movie. Yes.
1:09:14
Yes. You can see this movie exclusively at IKnowKatherine.com,
1:09:19
www.IKnowKatherine.com, and come and see it.
1:09:24
And there are wonderful opportunities to share the film if you feel as strongly about it as I do.
1:09:30
And so many people that have seen it so far, it's been an amazing experience
1:09:35
to experience this film. Because you've got to remember two things.
1:09:38
The audience is just seeing what I've been watching, the best shit that I could
1:09:42
find and put together. That's what they're seeing. The stuff is there.
1:09:46
These people's lives were affected by Catherine Coulson's lives and she affected
1:09:51
them and they affected her and great art was created and life was nurtured.
1:09:57
And it's a powerful and passionate story about living.
1:10:02
Yes, the mighty Richard Green. What a gentleman. I can't wait to chat with Richard just like casually.
1:10:10
And even in this forum once again
1:10:12
he is endlessly intriguing the stories just
1:10:16
flow like chocolate from a fondue
1:10:19
fountain i love it i love richard i
1:10:22
can't wait to talk with him again and you should not wait to get down to the
1:10:26
links and check out i know catherine the log lady please please please do even
1:10:30
if you're not a fan of twin peaks or or david lynch this is a great fantastic
1:10:37
story fulfillment of a final wish.
1:10:41
A great, great personal life full of love, full of heart, full of friends,
1:10:48
everything we want our lives to be.
1:10:51
And, of course, if you are fans of Twin Peaks and you know Catherine the Log
1:10:56
Lady, then I know Catherine the Log Lady is the movie that you need to see.
1:11:00
Get down to the links in the description.
1:11:04
And, as always, my little Eugenites, thank you for listening to us on Spotify,
1:11:10
iHeartRadio, or wherever you choose to listen to your favorite podcasts.
1:11:13
I'm Kent Hill. And until next time, you've been listening to us on Cinema U-Game.