Kyle MacLachlan Thinks This David Lynch Movie Is The Best To Start With

Kyle MacLachlan stopped by Austin, Texas this week for the South By Southwest Film Festival, where he sat down for an interview with SXSW studio host Reece Feldman. The conversation soon turned to one of MacLachlan’s most famous collaborators, the late David Lynch, who passed away in January this year. Feldman asked MacLachlan where he thought was the best place for new viewers to start with Lynch’s work. “I was curious,” he said to MacLachlan, “if you think that there’s one totemic work that’ll really introduce someone to (Lynch).”

MacLachlan name-dropped a few of Lynch’s other films, but in the end went with perhaps the most popular answer he could’ve given:

“‘Eraserhead is a very particular vision, almost a nightmarish vision. And you can obviously distill so much of his later imagery from ‘Eraserhead.’ ‘Elephant Man,’ again, a beautiful film, personal in a different way to him … But the story in ‘Blue Velvet’ is pure David: the detective story, a genre that he loved. And then populated by such unusual characters. And then (my character) Jeffrey as kind of the eyes of the audience going through this. And I think that structure is really David. I mean, that’s really a pure form.”

“Blue Velvet” holds a special place in the hearts of most Lynch fans. It’s the movie of his that held the best balance between mainstream success and critical acclaim. It was surreal, dark, and controversial, but it was also relatively accessible compared to Lynch’s other works. “Eraserhead” may have been the perplexing cult classic that put Lynch on the mapbut “Blue Velvet” was the triumph that made clear he was here to stay.

“Blue Velvet” was an especially important moment in Lynch’s career considering it was his first film after the disaster that was his 1984 “Dune” adaptation. As bizarre as “Dune” was, the film was still Lynch’s only real attempt to do a big studio blockbuster film. It hurt him when the movie crashed and burned, but it’s also part of what made him realize that mainstream blockbusters were very much not his calling. “Blue Velvet” was Lynch’s return to his roots; the movie represents him embracing his own personal interests and ambitions, not Hollywood’s.

This was an important moment in MacLachlan’s career, too. MacLachlan, who was the lead in Lynch’s “Dune,” got to properly prove himself as a leading actor in this film. It’s doubtful MacLachlan would’ve gotten to be the lead of “Twin Peaks,” a show co-created by Lynch in 1990, if not for the success and public goodwill that “Blue Velvet” gave both him and Lynch.

“Blue Velvet” may have been a hit, but it wasn’t universally praised in its time. Some film critics, most notably Roger Eberthad a serious issue with the way Isabella Rossellini’s character Dorothy was treated. There’s a particularly brutal sequence early on where Dorothy is raped by the villainous Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), as Jeffrey (MacLachlan) watches from inside her closet. Violence against women is a major recurring theme in Lynch’s work, one that may have been at least partially inspired by a traumatic incident Lynch had as a child.

It’s perhaps the aspect of Lynch’s work that’s most upsetting to watch, even if it became increasingly clear with each new movie of his that Lynch was exploring these female victims of sexual violence with compassion, not malice. Especially with his “Twin Peaks” follow-up film, “Fire Walk With Me,” survivors of sexual assault have written a lot about how much they’ve seen themselves in Lynch’s work and appreciate him for it. With “Blue Velvet” and “Twin Peaks” (and “Lost Highway,” “Mulholland Drive,” and “Inland Empire”), Lynch has never shied away from just how poorly women can be treated, regardless of how uncomfortable it is for the audience.

“Blue Velvet” also establishes a hallmark of Lynch’s work: A depiction of an idyllic small town with something deeply evil lurking within it. Lynch has often been accused of being a cynic in this respect; that opening sequence of “Blue Velvet,” with the shots of the lovely suburban town followed by the extreme close up on the rotting ear found in the grass, gave some viewers the idea that Lynch actually hates small-town American life and sees it all as a cheap facade.

I’ve always thought that was a misinterpretation. My take’s always been that Lynch genuinely loves nice lawns and hot coffee and cherry pies (not to mention Flamin’ Hot Cheetos). He’s been focused not on exposing the suburban dream as fake, but in exploring how something so beautiful (like the nature in “Twin Peaks”) and something so terrible (like the murder in “Twin Peaks”) could exist side by side. It’s an unanswerable question driving so much of Lynch’s work, and it’s with “Blue Velvet” that you can see it most clearly on display.