“It is no secret that David Lynch, the writer-direc­tor-com­pos­er-painter, has an unusu­al rela­tion­ship with Bob’s Big Boy,” begins a 1999 Los Ange­les Times arti­cle on the auteur of films like Eraser­head and Blue Vel­vet. “For sev­en years in the 1980s he ate lunch there every day, order­ing cup after cup of over-sweet­ened cof­fee and a sin­gle choco­late milk­shake while scrib­bling notes on Bob’s lit­tle square nap­kins.” He took pains, notes reporter Amy Wal­lace, “to arrive at Bob’s at pre­cise­ly 2:30 p.m. each day. The rea­son: It increased the odds that he would encounter per­fec­tion.”

“If you go ear­li­er, at lunchtime, they’re mak­ing a lot of choco­late milk­shakes. The mix­ture has to cool in a machine, but if it does­n’t sit in there long enough — when they’re serv­ing a lot of them — it’s run­ny,” Wal­lace quotes Lynch as say­ing. “At 2:30, the milk­shake mix­ture has­n’t been sit­ting there too long, but you’ve got a chance for it to be just great.”

For his pains, he received “only three per­fect milk­shakes out of more than 2,500. But that was­n’t the point. For Lynch, it was enough to know he had set the stage for excel­lence to occur,” believ­ing that “whether with milk­shakes or movies,” one “must make room for inspi­ra­tion to strike — to lay the prop­er ground­work for great­ness to take hold.”

When the 1980s British tele­vi­sion series The Incred­i­bly Strange Film Show devot­ed an episode to Lynch, it nat­u­ral­ly went to Los Ange­les not just to inter­view him but to shoot some footage at Bob’s, the sacred space itself. In the clip at the top of the post, you can see host Jonathan Ross, seat­ed in one of the retro din­er’s booths and Lynchi­an­ly dressed in a white shirt but­toned all the way up, describe how, after an “all-Amer­i­can lunch,” the direc­tor would embark on “marathon cof­fee-drink­ing ses­sions. Fueled by the caf­feine and his exces­sive sug­ar intake, he’d then spend the after­noon writ­ing down ideas for movies on the nap­kins help­ful­ly pro­vid­ed by Bob.”

In the inter­view that fol­lows, Lynch him­self con­firms all this. “I was into Bob’s halfway through Eraser­head,” he says, estab­lish­ing the chronol­o­gy. “The end of Dune” — his trau­mat­ic, failed expe­ri­ence with big-bud­get stu­dio pro­duc­tion — “was pret­ty much the end of Bob’s.” Even Lynch’s daugh­ter Jen­nifer, for a time her father’s Bob’s-going com­pan­ion, rem­i­nisces about “the draw­ing on nap­kins” and the “tons of cof­fee with lots of sug­ar.” In this late-80s inter­view, Lynch describes him­self as “heav­i­ly into sug­ar. I call it ‘gran­u­lat­ed hap­pi­ness.’ It’s just a great help, a friend.”

Lynch’s rep­u­ta­tion for drink­ing Bob’s milk­shakes long out­last­ed his actu­al habit. Char­lie Rose makes a point of ask­ing about it in the clip in the mid­dle of the post, prompt­ing Lynch to explain the rea­son­ing behind his dai­ly trips — both lit­er­al­ly and metaphor­i­cal­ly, since when Rose asks if all the sug­ar got him high, Lynch admits that “it is like a drug, I sup­pose, because it revs you up.” Though by all accounts still a prodi­gious drinker of cof­fee and smok­er of cig­a­rettes, Lynch has grown more health-con­scious in recent years, a shift that may well have begun when, for rea­sons of his own, he went behind his beloved Bob’s and climbed into its dump­ster. “I found one of these car­tons that milk­shakes came from,” says Lynch in the more recent inter­view clip above. “Every ingre­di­ent end­ed in ‑zene or ‑ate. There was noth­ing nat­ur­al any­where near that car­ton.”

Even though that dis­cov­ery put an end to Lynch’s 2:30 appear­ances, all his cof­fee-soaked, sug­ar-sat­u­rat­ed after­noons spent at Bob’s had already filled him with ideas. One day, for exam­ple, “I saw a man come in. He came to the counter, and that’s all I remem­ber of this man, but from see­ing him came a feel­ing, and that’s where Frank Booth came from.” Blue Vel­vet’s psy­chot­ic, gas-huff­ing, Den­nis Hop­per-por­trayed vil­lain aside, Lynch fans who make their own pil­grim­age to Bob’s Big Boy even today will under­stand how well its sen­si­bil­i­ty may have res­onat­ed with the film­mak­er’s obvi­ous attrac­tion to mid­cen­tu­ry Amer­i­cana. But as we’ve learned from his life as well as his work, it’s best not to go around back.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sur­re­al Film­mak­ing of David Lynch Explained in 9 Video Essays

The Incred­i­bly Strange Film Show: Revis­it 1980s Doc­u­men­taries on David Lynch, John Waters, Ale­jan­dro Jodor­owsky & Oth­er Film­mak­ers

An Ani­mat­ed David Lynch Explains Where He Gets His Ideas

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Boosts Our Cre­ativ­i­ty (Plus Free Resources to Help You Start Med­i­tat­ing)

Hear David Lynch Read from His New Mem­oir Room to Dream, and Browse His New Online T‑Shirt Store

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Few can think of the very con­cept of the auteur with­out think­ing of Jean-Luc Godard. That goes for those of us exhil­a­rat­ed by his movies, those of us amused by them, those of us frus­trat­ed by them, and those of us who expe­ri­ence any com­bi­na­tion of those emo­tions and more. Godard­’s ear­ly audi­ences, at the dawn of the French New Wave in the late 1950s and the decade or so there­after, react­ed in all those ways, and some­how time has­n’t drained his work in that peri­od of its pow­er.

“How Jean-Luc Godard Lib­er­at­ed Cin­e­ma,” the video essay from The Dis­card­ed Image above, shows us how a young film­mak­er in mid-cen­tu­ry France, work­ing under severe­ly lim­it­ed envi­ron­ments and in a whole new post­war real­i­ty — cul­tur­al as well as eco­nom­ic — imbued them with that pow­er. Start­ing with a bang, his 1959 fea­ture debut Breath­less, Godard took cin­e­ma, says Dis­card­ed Image cre­ator Julian Palmer, and “tore through its foun­da­tions, rein­vent­ing the form and rein­vent­ing him­self, pic­ture by pic­ture.” This entailed “a hap­haz­ard ethos toward edit­ing” as well as oscil­la­tion between “genre and the every­day, actors and non-pro­fes­sion­als, black and white and col­or.”

Godard “found the mod­ern world, engulfed with com­mer­cial­ism, both appeal­ing in its pop-art aes­thet­ic, but also repel­lent,” and his ear­ly films vivid­ly express both halves of that world­view. All the while he “toys with the con­ven­tions of cin­e­ma,” for exam­ple by sev­er­ing the “umbil­i­cal cord” of the musi­cal score, “mak­ing you aware of how you’re being manip­u­lat­ed by his medi­um,” and lit­ter­ing the frame with text, “often with abstract phras­es, pos­si­bly just to pro­voke a reac­tion” — or, as some Godard enthu­si­asts might put it, def­i­nite­ly just to pro­voke a reac­tion.

The Godard films on which this video essay focus­es — the for­mi­da­ble stretch from Breath­less to 1967’s Week-end, with pic­tures like Vivre sa vie, Con­tempt, and Alphav­ille in-between —  also draw deeply from cin­e­ma itself. “Movies sur­round these char­ac­ters’ lives, pro­vid­ing a con­trast to their exis­tence,” says Palmer. “This fan­ta­sy can allow them to momen­tar­i­ly escape their real­i­ty.” But as the 1960s became the 1970s, “like a film com­ing off its pro­jec­tor, Godard him­self was com­ing off track. He was increas­ing­ly dis­gust­ed by con­sumer cul­ture, which was only becom­ing more dom­i­nant.”

There­after, as some crit­ics see it, the del­i­cate bal­ance between Godard­’s pol­i­tics and his aes­thet­ics was over­turned by the for­mer, but his ini­tial “man­ic peri­od of fer­tile cre­ation is still unmatched to this day, and Godard­’s influ­ence is immea­sur­able.” We should not only be thank­ful that Godard still makes films (his lat­est, The Image Book, won the very first “Spe­cial Palme d’Or” at this year’s Cannes Film Fes­ti­val), but also hope that the next gen­er­a­tion of film­mak­ers con­tin­ues to look to his exam­ple. Godard may have lib­er­at­ed cin­e­ma, but it always and every­where threat­ens to put itself back in chains.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to Jean-Luc Godard’s Inno­v­a­tive Film­mak­ing Through Five Video Essays

How the French New Wave Changed Cin­e­ma: A Video Intro­duc­tion to the Films of Godard, Truf­faut & Their Fel­low Rule-Break­ers

Jean-Luc Godard Takes Cannes’ Rejec­tion of Breath­less in Stride in 1960 Inter­view

The Entire­ty of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breath­less Art­ful­ly Com­pressed Into a 3 Minute Film

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The films of Andrei Tarkovsky, even more so than those of most revered auteurs, cre­ate a real­i­ty of their own. Watch­ing them, you might even believe that Tarkovsky him­self lived in his own real­i­ty as well, one made only of the sub­lime and the tran­scen­dent, impos­si­bly far from the mun­dan­i­ty of every­day life and com­mer­cial enter­tain­ment. Per­haps he did, to an extent, but the direc­tor of Andrei Rublev, Solaris, and Stalk­er cer­tain­ly did­n’t become and exist as a film­mak­er in iso­la­tion. He had pre­de­ces­sors in cin­e­ma who inspired him as well as col­leagues he admired, and in the clip above from the 1983 doc­u­men­tary Voy­age in Time, shot in Italy dur­ing pre-pro­duc­tion of his film Nos­tal­ghia, he reveals who they are.

“If you had to talk to today’s and yes­ter­day’s great direc­tors,” screen­writer Toni­no Guer­ra asks Tarkovsky, “for what rea­sons would you thank each of them for what you feel they gave you?” Promis­ing he won’t take long to answer the ques­tion, Tarkovsky begins with Sovi­et mon­tage pio­neer Alexan­der Dovzhenko, sin­gling out his 1930 film Earth. He then con­tin­ues on to Robert Bres­son, who “has always aston­ished and attract­ed me with his ascetics. It seems to me that he is the only direc­tor in the world that has achieved absolute sim­plic­i­ty in cin­e­ma. As it was achieved in music by Bach, art by Leonar­do. Tol­stoy achieved it as a writer.” Sim­plic­i­ty, as it emerges over the course of the con­ver­sa­tion, may well rank as Tarkovsky’s most esteemed artis­tic virtue. If that sounds iron­ic, giv­en how aes­thet­i­cal­ly com­plex Tarkovsky’s own work can seem, he also prais­es Fed­eri­co Felli­ni for the same qual­i­ty.

“I like Felli­ni for his kind­ness, for his love of peo­ple,” he says, “for his, let’s say, sim­plic­i­ty and inti­mate into­na­tion.” He describes a Felli­ni pic­ture he calls Pale Moon Tales (by which he may have meant La Dolce Vita) as “astound­ing in its sim­plic­i­ty, ele­gance, and won­der­ful noble­ness of pic­ture and act­ing.” To Michelan­ge­lo Anto­nioni, anoth­er Ital­ian but one pos­sessed of a strik­ing­ly dif­fer­ent sen­si­bil­i­ty, he cred­its his real­iza­tion that “the mean­ing of action in cin­e­ma is rather con­di­tion­al. There’s prac­ti­cal­ly no action going on in Anto­nioni films, and this is the mean­ing of ‘action” in Anto­nioni films” — or at least in the “Anto­nioni films that I like the most.” Tarkovsky does­n’t neglect French cin­e­ma, nam­ing Jean Vigo, whom he remem­bers “with ten­der­ness and thank­ful­ness” as “the father of mod­ern French cin­e­ma,” the film­mak­er who “found­ed the French movie, and nobody has gone far­ther than him.”

Final­ly, Tarkovsky ends his list as he began it, by pay­ing trib­ute to one of his Sovi­et coun­try­men. Sergei Para­janov, he says, has not just a para­dox­i­cal and poet­ic way of think­ing — words many a crit­ic has sure­ly applied to Tarkovsky him­self — but an “abil­i­ty of lov­ing the beau­ty” and the “skill of being com­plete­ly free inside his own cre­ation.” Para­janov, whom we recent­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, had in the 1970s endured the per­se­cu­tion of the Sovi­et author­i­ties. Nobody cham­pi­oned the cause of his lib­er­a­tion as stren­u­ous­ly as Tarkovsky, who wrote that, “artis­ti­cal­ly, there are few peo­ple in the entire world who could replace Para­janov.” Now both of these irre­place­able auteurs are gone (as are all the oth­ers named here), but in their cin­e­ma will open the path of artis­tic lib­er­a­tion for gen­er­a­tions of film­mak­ers to come.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andrei Tarkovsky Cre­ates a List of His 10 Favorite Films (1972)

Andrei Tarkovsky Calls Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey a “Pho­ny” Film “With Only Pre­ten­sions to Truth”

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

A Poet in Cin­e­ma: Andrei Tarkovsky Reveals the Director’s Deep Thoughts on Film­mak­ing and Life

Free Online: Watch the Films of Andrei Tarkovsky, Arguably the Most Respect­ed Film­mak­er of All Time

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

We all remem­ber our ear­ly encoun­ters with the work of Char­lie Kauf­man, though few of us knew at the time — or even know now — that it was the work of Char­lie Kauf­man. Now acclaimed as a screen­writer and the direc­tor of the films Synec­doche, New York and Anom­al­isa, he brought his pen­chant for the inter­sec­tion of the philo­soph­i­cal and sur­re­al even to the first projects he worked on. These include episodes of tele­vi­sion shows like Get a Life, the ear­ly-1990s sit­com known pri­mar­i­ly for its weird­ness, and the more sub­tly askew Ned and Stacey a few years lat­er. But only at the end of the 1990s did Hol­ly­wood and its audi­ences taste Kauf­man’s writ­ing in its purest form in Being John Malkovich.

Direct­ed by Spike Jonze, Being John Malkovich, a film about a pup­peteer who dis­cov­ers a tun­nel into the mind of the tit­u­lar actor, launched a cin­e­mat­ic explo­ration of Kauf­man’s sig­na­ture themes: con­trol, con­nec­tion, iden­ti­ty, mor­tal­i­ty. That explo­ration would con­tin­ue in Kauf­man and Jonze’s next film, Adap­ta­tion, as well as in his col­lab­o­ra­tions with direc­tor Michel Gondry, Human Nature and Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind. “Writ­ing with Hon­esty,” the Chan­nel Criswell video essay above, shows us how Kauf­man has approached those themes in the films he has writ­ten for oth­er direc­tors as well as for him­self.

In Kauf­man’s work, says Chan­nel Criswell cre­ator Lewis Bond, “the craft and strug­gle of the writer is ever-present with the raw sin­cer­i­ty with which the angst of every per­son is put on dis­play.” This has required Kauf­man not just to break long-estab­lished rules of screen­writ­ing but to put him­self into his screen­plays in unusu­al­ly direct ways (as evi­denced by Adap­ta­tion’s depic­tion of screen­writ­ing guru Robert McK­ee and use of a screen­writer main char­ac­ter named Char­lie Kauf­man). His “explo­ration of the human con­di­tion” neces­si­tates “plac­ing his own anx­i­eties at the cen­ter of his work. His naked ego is com­plete­ly exposed to the audi­ence, to the point of unbri­dled self-scruti­ny.” In oth­er words, “the fur­ther he probes into his char­ac­ters, the deep­er he actu­al­ly delves into him­self.”

This may sound self-indul­gent — and nobody acknowl­edges that more than Kauf­man him­self — but Bond describes the process as “test­ing his own per­sona as he’s plac­ing him­self in sit­u­a­tions that he does­n’t know how to over­come. He watch­es oth­ers watch­ing him­self, giv­ing him the lib­er­ty to write as he dis­cov­ers.” He dis­cov­ers, as his writ­ing takes him into the realms of the abstract, the metaphor­i­cal, and the sym­bol­ic, that he and his view­ers share an inner self. “Por­tals to the head of John Malkovich, a fake twin broth­er he writes as real, a the­ater the size of a city tak­ing pri­or­i­ty over the end of the world: all these are clear peeks into the soul of Kauf­man, his attempts to rec­on­cile his per­son­al foibles, and through this we rec­og­nize our own frail­ties and anx­i­eties in his.” Hence, per­haps, the mem­o­ra­bil­i­ty of our encoun­ters with Kauf­man’s work: they’re also encoun­ters with our­selves.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Film­mak­ers Tell Their Sto­ries: Three Insight­ful Video Essays Demys­ti­fy the Craft of Edit­ing, Com­po­si­tion & Col­or

What Makes a David Lynch Film Lynchi­an: A Video Essay

Watch a Video Essay on the Poet­ic Har­mo­ny of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Film­mak­ing

44 Essen­tial Movies for the Stu­dent of Phi­los­o­phy

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.