It’s hard out there for a Lynch, it seems. As the waiting game for a new feature from the director inches closer to the decade mark, it doesn’t seem like we’ll see anything from him any time soon, at least not the on the big screen. While rumors pop up every now and then that he’s got something cooking (earlier this year, word had it that he was working on a “typically dark” script), there doesn’t seem to have been any real concrete movement and Lynch doesn’t feel like the current system is conducive to his type of filmmaking.
“It’s a very depressing picture. With alternative cinema – any sort of cinema that isn’t mainstream – you’re fresh out of luck in terms of getting theatre space and having people come to see it. Even if I had a big idea, the world is different now,” the filmmaker recently told The Independent. “Unfortunately, my ideas are not what you’d call commercial, and money really drives the boat these days. So I don’t know what my future is. I don’t have a clue what I’m going to be able to do in the world of cinema.”
And we gotta say he’s not wrong, and it’s a sad picture. Even within the indie realm, it’s hard to imagine who would front the money for Lynch to go make another “Inland Empire” — it’s hard to conceive of a movie like that getting made today, unless it’s done wholly outside the system (see Shane Carruth‘s “Upstream Color“). Even then, where it would play? New York and Los Angeles? Maybe a few other major cities and then it would be shuffled off to VOD land, which doesn’t seem to be the right place for someone like Lynch, where almost every element of his films are calibrated for seeing them on a big screen. While those in our comments section will undoubtedly yell out for Megan Ellison to come to the rescue, even the mega-rich producer knows she can’t live on bankrolling arthouse movies. There’s a reason she bought the rights and is producing “Terminator 5.”
So yeah sing a sad song for Lynch and the possibility that we might not get another movie from the man. But there’s always his coffee and music career….right? But before we get too bummed out, Lynch does have a bit more hope for TV. “I like the idea of a continuing story,” he said. “And television is way more interesting than cinema now. It seems like the art-house has gone to cable.” Are you listening HBO, AMC etc?