Best movie of 1994

When everyone else was seeing Pulp Fiction and other cine-plex fare, I was really into Art House movies. So instead of Pulp Fiction, I saw Cemetary Man. Essentially, it is a zombie movie. I don't remember the plot at all. In fact, because I saw DeadAlive in the same theater I get the two mixed up in my head. (No. I am not a zombie movie fan. I just saw every movie that played in that theater from 1992 to 1996.) Anyway, there is a guy who is the caretaker of a cemetary in a small town in Italy. Problem: People keep coming back to life. Part of his job is to put them down again with a shotgun blast to the head. Sounds gruesome, right? Well, if you can get past that it is absolutely hillarious. Well, it was in 1994 when I was 25 and drinking a lot. (About a gallon of gin per week.) Maybe I wouldn't find it funny now. I know that I liked David lynch films back then, too. But the Mullholland Drive, the last Lynch film I saw made me feel like I needed to take a bath.

You know what the problem with David Lynch is? He makes these movies that technically, and naratively, and in everyother way are the best movies ever made. But there is always something in them that stinks. It's like a gorgeus pie on a shelf. I looks good. It looks like pie in a Crisco advertisement in a food magazine. And boy, does that pie smell good. The smell makes you think of the midwest in the forties and women baking pies for church socials. And you cut yourself a slice of that pie, (is it peach or berry?) and just go to town with it. And oh! it tastes good. But you can tell that something is different. There is a flavor you think you recognize, but not really, its not something you have ever tasted, but somehow you know it. Something is wrong. Something is dreadfully wrong. Only when the pie is sliding down your throat do you realize that the baker put a piece of shit in the pie-filling. Now this isn't true of all his movies. I really only mean it about "Blue Velvet", "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me", "Dark Highway", "Wild at Heart", "Eraserhead" and "Mulholland Drive". "Dune" doesn't count (Lynch didnt have creative control.) And the "The Straight Story" is an exception. That was a very good movie. In every sense.

Hmmmm. Now that I think of it, Maybe Lynch is dealing in the extremes of human exerience. Maybe he is saying in all of those polluted movies that no matter how things look on the outside they are diseased on the inside. Maybe in "The Straight Story" he sees that there really can be good in the world, that Martin Luther is wrong, and not every act of man is tainted by the fall. But you know what the weirdest thing about David Lynch is? He seems to be saying, "This world sucks! I want a better world.", while at the very same time he is making the world an uglier place. I think this is illustrated best in Blue Velvet in which two teenagers living a mythic 1950's American life are plunged into a world of murder, transvestitism, rape, kidnapping, and drug abuse. And, yeah, we can agree with his thesis (Satan runs Hollywood) in Mulholland Drive but do we really have to look at all of that yuck?

Paging Mr. Lynch. Paging Mr. Lynch. We all want the world to be a beautiful place, David. Please, stop making it uglier while telling us it is uglier and should be better. Just make it better like you did in "The Straight Story".

Well, anyway, if you like zombie movies, Cemetary Man is worth the price of a 2 night rental.

Other news: I bought most of my textbooks for the Fall Quarter today.

What I am listening to as I write this: "Harley-Davidson" by Bridget Bardot.