When one first encoun­ters the sur­re­al sen­si­bil­i­ties of David Lynch on film, it’s hard to know what to expect of the man behind them. Is he a tor­tured recluse, work­ing out his demons onscreen? A dement­ed auteur with issues? But Lynch’s explo­rations of the vio­lence and sadism lurk­ing beneath America’s shiny veneer come to us too leav­ened by absur­dist humor to be the prod­uct of a man who takes him­self too seri­ous­ly.

And when you first encounter Lynch—in inter­views or his own cameo role, say, on Twin Peaks—you find exact­ly that: he’s an affa­ble, seem­ing­ly well-adjust­ed-if-eccen­tric gen­tle­man from Mis­soula, Mon­tana who doesn’t at all seem beset by dark forces in the way that many of his mem­o­rable char­ac­ters have been over many decades of film­mak­ing. Lynch seems instead remark­ably free from anx­i­ety, as his work is free from the per­ni­cious influ­ences of a venal Hol­ly­wood stu­dio cul­ture he evis­cer­ates in Mul­hol­land Dri­ve.

Lynch would cred­it his psy­cho­log­i­cal and cre­ative good health to med­i­ta­tion, but there are oth­er rea­sons that his body of work feels so con­sis­tent­ly ele­vat­ed to the lev­el of purist high art: the film­mak­er him­self is a purist when it comes to film—perhaps one of the last few high-pro­file direc­tors to remain almost ful­ly inde­pen­dent of the dic­tates of com­mer­cial­ism. Wit­ness his atti­tude toward such crude, inva­sive com­pro­mis­es as prod­uct place­ment in the inter­view clip at the top of the post (Lynch’s ver­dict in a word: “bull­shit”).

Or, just above, see him opine on the phe­nom­e­non of the iPhone, or smart­phone equiv­a­lent, as media plat­form. “If you’re play­ing the movie on a tele­phone,” says Lynch, “you will nev­er in a mil­lion years expe­ri­ence the film. You may think you have expe­ri­enced it. But you’ll be cheat­ed…. Get real.” Like the inter­view clip at the top, the iPhone mini-rant—an extra from the Inland Empire DVD, Lynch’s last fea­ture film—shows us the direc­tor at his cranki­est, a side that of him that seems to emerge only when the sub­ject of artis­tic com­pro­mise for commerce’s sake aris­es.

But should we con­sid­er Lynch a Lud­dite, an oppo­nent of the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion in film­mak­ing? Far from it. Lynch shot Inland Empire on a small dig­i­tal cam­era, as you can hear him dis­cuss above in anoth­er clip from the film’s DVD. And if we were to assume that he hates Hol­ly­wood and the stu­dio sys­tem, we’d be wrong there as well. He goes on to explain what he loves about L.A.: the dream, the light, the smell, the feel of the “gold­en age of Hol­ly­wood,” the sound stages (“fac­to­ries for mak­ing cin­e­ma”), and even the star sys­tem. Keep watch­ing for more of Lynch’s idio­syn­crat­ic opinions—on his favorite actress Lau­ra Dern, on “mak­ing films for a par­tic­u­lar audi­ence,” and on a sub­ject very dear to him: “dreams influ­enc­ing thoughts.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Explains How Med­i­ta­tion Enhances Our Cre­ativ­i­ty

David Lynch Cre­ates a Very Sur­re­al Plug for Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion

9 New Episodes of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks to Air in 2016

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness