David Lynch may have been one of the very first of Hollywood’s creative upper echelon to experiment with online video, though no one aside form his obsessive fans would know it.
At a not-so-low price of $9.97/month (or a slightly discounted $99.07/year), Twin Peaks fanatics and Lynchian cinephiles can navigate a labyrinth of material mundane, surreal, and exclusive to the web.
Last year we took a look around. For those membership fees you’d expect dreamlike sequences with one of Lynch’s Lauras (Palmer, Harring) sans clothes, but instead you’ll find the director’s 2006 Cannes video diary, which is sort of spectacular in its weirdness; Dumbland, his animated comedy series about life’s stranger unhappy moments; and an exclusive experimental section with bizarre videos like ‘Coyote #1,’ which finds a coyote sniffing around an empty living room at night with the caption: “The coyote is hungry and wants to kill and eat the small creature. The coyote doesn’t yet know the creature’s powers nor what surprises this environment may hold.”
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And, of course, there’s the daily weather report:
Genius? Annoying? A little of each? I can’t tell, but I THINK that’s the point. Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see how Lynch’s forthcoming series with ON Networks will look.
Andrew Wallenstein broke the news that the new media studio out of Austin, TX will produce a web show based on Lynch’s “mad-genius new book Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness and Creativity.”
So, what’s it going to be about? Again, I can’t tell, but I THINK that should be a contest. ON Networks formally announces Lynch’s series, vaguely describes the concept, and then solicits you to submit your best guess of what it’s going to be in the form of an under-five-minute video. Then, a bunch of recent NYU grads and a couple percentage of the 129.308 individuals who “pretend to have some deep understanding” of David Lynch movies have production meetings in coffee shops.
Six weeks later, ON Networks receives a few dozen submissions. The best part is, you can film ANYTHING. People will watch overexposed videos of balloons with smiley faces or talking heads in chiaroscurro and be like, “Soooooo Lynch!” And no one will be able to tell if they’re right or wrong!
You’re welcome, ON Networks (you can thank me with 2 lbs of David Lynch’s Signature Cup Organic Decaf French Roast). Between the contest(?!?), the actual series, and Amy Poehler’s upcoming Smart Girls at the Party, you’re putting together one helluva programming lineup.
