David Lynch’s Popular Surrealism Considered on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #59

Pretty Much Pop hosts Mark Linsenmayer, Erica Spyres, and Brian Hirt–along with guest Mike Wilson–discuss the director’s films from Eraserhead to Inland Empire plus Twin Peaks and his recent short films. We get into the appeal and the stylistic and storytelling hallmarks of his mainstays–Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Lost Highway, and Mulholland Drive–and also consider outliers like Dune, The Elephant Man, and The Straight Story.

What’s with the campy acting and the weird attitudes toward women? Why make us stare at something moving very slowly for a long time? Are these films appealing to young people interested in something different but not on the whole actually enjoyable? Is there actually a “solution” to make sense of the senseless, or are these wacky plots supposed to remain unassimilable and so not dismissible?

Some articles we drew on included:

Also, read Roger Ebert’s reviews of Dune and Blue Velvet, and his subsequent thoughts on the latter. What did critics say about “What Did Jack Do?” Watch “Twin Peaks Actually Explained.”  Check out his short films if you can sit through them.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. If you’re not subscribed to the podcast, then you missed last week’s aftertalk highlights episode. This episode includes bonus discussion that you can only hear by supporting the podcast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This podcast is part of the Partially Examined Life podcast network.

Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast is the first podcast curated by Open Culture. Browse all Pretty Much Pop posts

Elementary School Students Perform in a Play Inspired by David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

david lynch school play

Image by Janet McMillan appeared in The Milwaukee Record

For those of us with kids, the grade school play is usually a combination of parental pride and teeth-grating nostalgic civic lesson and/or Bible study. Not so at Milwaukee, WI’s Highland Community School where super cool drama teacher Barry Weber has written and produced Judy Plays with Fire, a love letter to David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks and other Lynchophilia.

The play has all the hallmarks of the director–red curtains, strobe lights, smoke machines, a Badalamenti-esque score–along with a backwards-speaking character in a red suit, two earnest and upstanding detectives, lumberjacks, rabbits, mysterious people in white masks, a Log Lady-like character who talks to a Slinky, and a middle America town called “Centerville” that, like Laura Palmer, is “full of secrets.” One character mimes Nina Simone’s “Don’t Let Me Be Understood” into a LED wand–shades of Dean Stockwell in Blue Velvet. Character names like Mr. Frost and the MacLachlans nod to the creators and actors behind Twin Peaks. The entire cast is played by 4th, 5th, and 6th graders, and apart from Mr. Weber, the production is crewed by Highland students as well.

This isn’t Weber’s first go at pushing the boundaries of school theater. His student theater group put on 2014’s ZERO, a cyberpunk tale, and a post-apocalyptic zombie production in 2010 called Penguin Attack.
The production got the attention of the Milwaukee Record who sent reporter Matt Wild out to see the three performance run that finished last Friday. He even gave it a bit of a Variety-style review, saying that

“In the case of Judy, (Maeve) Haley is terrific as the inquisitive Cooper surrogate, though diminutive CJ Young steals the show as the scheming Mr. Frost. Whether he’s barking orders to his flunkies or lording over his animatronic house band, Young—who had to take time off from acting two years ago due to conflicts with basketball practice—imbues his character with a surprising amount of gravitas and menace.”

Matt Wild also talked to Weber, who spoke of his desire to give kids more challenging works.

“I want to make sure that when I write the scripts there are no ‘trees,’” Weber says, referencing grade school plays that often give students thankless roles as inanimate objects. “I want to write the kind of plays that as a kid I would have really wanted to do. I certainly didn’t know who David Lynch was when I was a kid, but I’m sure I would have really enjoyed it.”

No video has surfaced yet to match the intriguing production stills, but we’re on the lookout. In the meantime, how well do you know Judy?

via Welcome to Twin Peaks

Related Content

David Lynch Falls in Love: A Classic Scene From Twin Peaks

The Paintings of Filmmaker/Visual Artist David Lynch

Watch David Lynch’s Hotel Room: The Complete Miniseries Featuring Harry Dean Stanton, Griffin Dunne, and Crispin Glover (1993)

Ted Mills is a freelance writer on the arts who currently hosts the FunkZone Podcast. You can also follow him on Twitter at @tedmills and/or watch his films here.

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