Libé loved David Lynch so much that we often ran into him. As early as 1984, we went to get lost on the river shoot of Dune in Mexico to see him at work… First real interview, in June 1992: after the harsh judgment of the Cannes festival (which had awarded him gold two years earlier) on Twin Peaksthe film, David Lynch appeals in Liberation. “Who killed Twin Peaks ?,” was the title then. A meeting which ends with this sentence from the master: “You got it all figured out.” Which, coming from him, isn’t half a compliment.
Two years later, the release ofEraserhead is a good opportunity to get news from the filmmaker. We find him in his Hollywood offices, pack of cigarettes on the table, nostalgic: “I would really like to return to smaller things, more modest and controllable projects. I have this desire to disappear and become someone else…”
In November 1999, in promotion for the release ofA true story, the filmmaker grants a long meeting to Liberation. Between two puffs of American Spirit, he defends his film: “There’s not much going on, he concedes, so everything becomes important.” And talks about his new soap opera whose pilot was ultimately refused by the ABC channel. The name of this project which seems buried? Mullholand Drive…
2001 started with a bang for Lynch in Libé. January 3, passing through Paris. He takes the time for a big interview outside of any promotion. He has nothing to sell and lifts the veil on what Mulholland Drive in the making but also on his practice as a filmmaker. A rare encounter.
-The 2001 river interview
Change of scenery in 2003. It is in Maryland that Libé finds Lynch… in a conference for world peace where the guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi speaks from India. The portrait that the newspaper published on the back page of December 2003 is that, unexpectedly, of a filmmaker soothed by transcendental meditation.
It was well worth going back to see him in 2008 for a new portrait. The filmmaker has just released his autobiography-manifesto. And the resulting encounter is, shall we say… disconcerting.
