I love David Lynch’s filmmaking. Although I’d stop short of attaching the ‘genius’ tag to his name, he’s without a doubt one of the most visionary filmmakers of the last few decades. To this day, ‘Blue Velvet’ is one of my favorite films. That being said, look at this monstrosity:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkt8L0NtSjA&feature=related

It’s commonplace to ask yourself “WTF did I just see?” after watching a Lynch film. But usually, that question is accompanied by the feeling that you’ve also glimpsed a strange, indescribable thing of beauty that you don’t understand but wish you did. With this Nissan commercial, it looks like he simply grabbed a fat check and phoned it in. You don’t get it, but this time you don’t really care that you don’t get it. The recent Dior ad by Guy Ritchie is even worse. Ritchie has been sucking it for years now, but the Dior ad is painfully douchey & obnoxious. It looks like he just appropriated every single lame fashion industry cliché in existence, amalgamated them all into a 5 minute long mess, and tacked on the title “A film by Guy Ritchie” at the front end. It should have said “A steaming, self-indulgent turd by Guy Ritchie.”

I heard a story about the PPM for the Lynch/Nissan spot. A guy I work with knows one of the agency guys who was there, and apparently Lynch came to the meeting with no shooting board, no script, nothing but an abstract blue painting, and said something to the effect of “Do you see this painting? Your advertising will look just like this.” After he signed autographs for everyone & left, the remaining account people in the room were shitting their pants, screaming “What the fuck was that?!?!?!?!? What’s the spot gonna look like?!?!?!?!” I wish I was there. Sounds like the best PPM EVER.

If that’s the truth, then more power to Lynch. It’s great that a brilliant mind can cash in for minimal work. Maybe he’ll use some of the Nissan cash to finance his next film. I just wish the finished spot was a whole lot more interesting. I think this example clearly illustrates what can happen when you mix art & commerce. Not to say the results will always be crap, but when you have a creative visionary, their allegiance is to their own art, and obviously the client’s allegiance is to their own product. That give & take can be like oil & water. It’s impossible to place blame, because I wasn’t there. Maybe Lynch could have tried harder, made it Lynchier. Maybe the client flexed hard behind the scenes to water down the vision. Who is responsible for the awful looking “modern” & “retro” supers? Who knows?

In related news, I spent the majority of this weekend (and the last) starring in a short film. It’s called “I Shot Myself Today”, and I play a sociopathic middle-management level businessman. The director’s reference for my role was Patrick Bateman from ‘American Psycho’.  As soon as I heard that, and the films ‘Taxi Driver’ and ‘Bad Lieutenant’ also listed as stylistic references I said “Yes” to the role without another second of consideration. More on that to come…

- Patrick Buchanan