Lynch has been directing ads for decades. Everything from perfumes to toothpaste to car commercials and playstation 2. It’s nothing new for him.
http://www.lynchnet.com/ads/
Thank you,Cacophonism, I didnt know this fact.
Since I don’t consider ads as art (videoclips, yes, why not? they can be very creative and perhaps help a young film maker to get known) but for Lynch,I’m a little disappointed… he doesn’t need this kind of work to get known. But I respect every opinion.They are ads nights : I attended some (most of the commercials were funny).
It changes a little bit my view on Lynch.
I feel an urge to watch Eraserhead again ;-)
Thanks!
Have a nice day!
Aliel
I think it has less to do with getting known as an artist and more to do with supporting himself so he can continue to pursue the kind of art that he’s really interested in (for someone like Lynch, I see this route as probably less of a compromise than having to direct Hollywood features on a work-for-hire basis, for example).
Thanks for links and ads. I just watched some.
Hopefully, Chris Marker (La jetée,Level 5…) and Andreï Tarkovsky (Stalker, Solaris…) didn’t do the same ;-)
Have a nice day!
Aliel
I hope he makes another movie. See if all this new tech CG nonsense affect his sense of cinema.
Lynch has stated he directs ads for the money and for the chance to experiment with different filming process’, so f**k off with the Lynch hating
I really don’t hate Lynch?! he is on my best directors’ list.
And I find it really interesting to follow the changes in his film making. There were big changes since Eraserhead but you can always see his very own touch.
Yes hopefully he can give us another movie soon…
Hopefully, Chris Marker (La jetée,Level 5…) and Andreï Tarkovsky (Stalker, Solaris…) didn’t do the same ;-)
Well, Tarkovsky made films in the Soviet Union, state-funded art, so funding for him was a whole different tangle of advantages and disadvantages than a filmmaker like Lynch faces.
Marker is purposefully obfuscatory about things other than the work, but he’s really a multimedia artist, so he doesn’t really have the same kind of expectations (producing feature films) that Lynch does.
Errol Morris does the same thing.
http://www.errolmorris.com/commercials.html
Lynch has also bee doing concert films like Hal Ashby did for The Rolling Stones. I don’t know if Lynch likes Duran Duran, but he wants to keep working.
If you are a less than commercial director, then you might need to do these to make a living. They can also be good exercises for other projects. You can try out new cameras or audio equipment and then bring that knowledge to a larger project.
Not that this is an entirely apt comparison, but Alfred Hitchcock used a lot of his TV crew for Psycho. TV at the time was not supposed to be as good as film but he wanted a crew that would work quickly and cheaply. The benefit of these projects often outweighs our idea that the director should stick to narrative films.
Re: Ads as art
I wouldn’t necessarily call them art now, but you know 50 years from now when TV has advanced far beyond its current paradigm, they will have pop art exhibits that show off famous commercials.
Don’t knock the way another man feeds himself and his family. I’m sure Lynch didn’t get a million dollar payday from “Inland Empire”. Maybe he didn’t even get six figures. Besides, the commercial is great. It plays like a nice, short film. I didn’t even know what the products were.
Yeah, artists are put into such awkward pedestals. They’re not allowed to “sell out”, but they’re expected to make work that transcends their own economic desires or needs. I currently work in video production, creating marketing and training videos. It’s not art—at least, it’s not my art, or the art I want to make, and I don’t credit what I’m doing for art—but it gives me access to cameras and software and production schedules and the like, and is infinitely preferable to sitting around wishing I had access to these things so that I could make art. I am working on The Ergodic Cinema Project on my free time and will probably be using quite a bit of the resources I have access to because of my commercial job. I am realistic and aware that this may be the predominant position of most of my life, and whereas the goal is to make art I like and get paid for it, I cannot just reject a paycheck on some abstract principle about artists’ responsibility or whatever. I have a responsibility to take care of myself as well, and so I will shoot commercials if the time calls for it.
David Lynch has an enviable amount of artistic freedom in most of what he’s done, and the existence of advertisements directed from him does not diminish the quality of his personal work.
—PolarisDiB
My old philosophy professor once said that the reason the arts don’t excite people as much as they used to because so many of the creative and talented minds are now in the advertising industry. Can’t help but feel there is more than a grain of truth to this statement.
So yeah, i won’t knock a director that does the occasional commercial project. It’s just one of those evil necessities in today’s world :-)
and Lynch’s style is quite flashy anyway, and therefore well suited to advertisements.
The issue is if advertisements distract from, instead of enable, creative personality. In Lynch’s case I think he’s doing the best he can. In my case it’s a goal of mine to not get too bogged down in work ever that I no longer have the energy for my own projects.
—DiB
Cronenberg has a long history of advertisement directing that was very painstakingly outlined in the chronology in CRONENBERG ON CRONENBERG.
And, yes, I think it’s fair to say Lynch didn’t get a million bucks for INLAND EMPIRE. Didn’t he have to (or at least prefer to) create his own distribution company to release it (edit: in the US)?
David Lynch has a website from which you can order some of his films on DVD. From that website you can get The Short Films of David Lynch , Eraserhead , Dumbland , and I think Inland Empire. I think he’s actually trying to get more artistic freedom in this way, delivering more directly to his fans. The website itself, last time I checked, required paid registration to join. Whereas this hasn’t been often talked about, people seem to be watching Lynch out of the corner of their eyes to see how it works out. It may only work for him because of the name he’s built for himself. It may be a successful distribution mode in and of itself.
Sorry for all the “I thinks” and “seems” and “maybes”. Part of the problem is that I’ve been sort of, cough unwilling to pay the registration fee myself, so I haven’t explored around it. But whether forced or by choice (I’m still pretty sure about the “choice” side), he’s trying something new for himself.
—PolarisDiB
Yeah, the whole project of Lynch branding himself has been interesting to observe.
has anyone ever tried his coffee?
“Has anyone ever tried his coffee?”
He doesn’t sell it well. “Coffee is about the beans… and I’m just full of beans” honestly gives me the mental image that he pulled the coffee from his ass.
Heck, Newman’s Own isn’t bad. I haven’t heard much about Coppola’s wine, but when it comes to consumables I just don’t go out of my way for stuff just because of celebrity. Maynard James Keenan from Tool has his own wine and the website for it is hilariously bad, and the wine itself is much too expensive to even consider buying “just to taste.” I think what I’m saying here is that consumables are about their availability, cost, and quality, and the personality behind them is sort of a bad idea—and the more “personality” you try to give it, re: Caduceus, the more you give way to goth jokes.
—PolarisDiB
Coppola at least owns vineyards and a winery, so his wines are in some sense really his. As far as I know, the only connection Lynch has to coffee is that he drinks a lot of it.
“Coffee is about the beans… and I’m just full of beans”Isn’t that a line from one of his films?
coppola’s wine is quite good and also reasonably priced
@Polaris
it is more or less expected that a guy that makes hilariously bad music would have a hilariously bad wine website.
About Lynch, I feel that his slogan just appeals to his fans that see it as Lynch being his usual wacky self. “He shits beans. Awesome!”
@Matt
The line is from Inland Empire, though its context escapes me at present.
a means to an end, not as an end itself.
mrzt
Hi movies lovers!
First thing I can get my eyes on here: Lady Blue Shangai… a short “movie” by David Lynch.
Bad luck!
Lynch is IMO pretty talented…. so why does he need to make an ad?
The plot was so cliché (ha ha! a beautiful girl in an expensive hotel seems not to know what a Dior Lady bag looks like!), everything was awfully cliché in this “cheap” ad.
So disappointed Lynch has become a “prostitute” to the advertising world.
(no offense towards sex workers, I respect them more than someone once talented who sells crap tagged as art)
What’s your opinion? do you feel comfortable with directors who make ads?
Have a nice day!
Aliel