By the looks of it, this horrifying video has been doing the rounds for a while, but I owe PPH contributor Ed Wall a big “thank you” for pointing me in the direction of a positively Lynchian treatment of a no-doubt inoffensive (apart, perhaps, from the occasional ‘N’ word) meeting between the now-disgraced TV chef and the multimedia empress.
For the full nightmare experience, listen to audio only.
[Source: Pixelbark.com]
“It’s like the song ‘Amazing Grace’. The footage was lost, but now it’s found” – David Lynch.
This has been doing the rounds on the internet, but I figured that a re-post wouldn’t do any harm. YouTuber heavymetalirishman (I suspect he would do what it says on the tin, to paraphrase Jim from last year’s Apprentice) has uploaded nearly a full hour of amazing – and very much NSFW – deleted scenes from David Lynch’s creepy 1986 masterpiece.
Here’s a sliver of the precis, from website Dangerous Minds:
“Blue Velvet’s original shooting script is reputed to have been over four hours long. The theatrical release came in at 120 minutes. An additional hour of deleted footage was thought to have been lost when the producer of the film, Dino De Laurentis, sold his company. Fortunately, the footage was located and was released as an extra on the Blu-ray edition… These deleted scenes have been uploaded to YouTube… Rumour has it that there is even more footage out there.”
Enjoy:
Londoners should also be aware that Blue Velvet is screening at the amazing Prince Charles Cinema on Monday 16 July.
Photo by Mateusz Witek
Though I am a proud supporter, defender and member of the geek club, I have never been to a convention. And this – The Twin Peaks UK Festival 2011 at Hammersmith’s Riverside Studios – may be the nearest I ever get to the dizzy heights of show fandom. It turns out Peaks freaks – the nickname given to fans of David Lynch’s cult TV series – are wonderful people. Not only are they (or should I say we?) friendly and approachable, they are more than willing to dress up. And thank heavens for that, as Dad and I have done just that. My father, who in the daytime is a (mostly) serious and respected academic, has grown a thick greying mullet for the occasion, donned a garishly vile Hawaiian shirt and some psychedelic braces, and is instantly transformed into Laura Palmer’s psychotic psychiatrist Dr. Jacoby. I arrive much tamer, and have opted for white tights, red velvet, lipstick and black and white brogues, with the appropriate beauty spot, to go as serial seductress Audrey Horne. Walking round the rather Lynchean maze that makes up the journey to Riverside Studios, we start to get nervous – what if no-one’s dressed up? What if somebody recognises me?
Our fears are instantly allayed as, walking into the foyer, we spot two couples in matching outfits: the men dressed as Special Agent Cooper in impeccable suits and slicked back hair, and the girls in mint green Twin Peaks waitress outfits. We breathe a sigh of relief, and so it begins.
Twin Peaks cupcakes!
To enjoy the Twin Peaks festival experience, you really do need to be a fan of the show. That’s not to say you need to have watched all of the episodes, but you’ll require a more than lukewarm interest in it to get you through fourteen hours of Lynchean obsession. You read correctly – fourteen hours of screenings, interviews with stars of the show, and burlesque performances from the David Lynch-themed cabaret group The Double R Club that make up the day’s festivities. A diner decked out like the Red Room provides the audiences with Lynch’s brand of coffee, unlimited free doughnuts and cherry pie, and a variety of American diner-inspired snacks, including Twin Peaks cupcakes with Laura Palmer’s dead face drowning in blue icing made to look like waves!
Burlesque performances by the Double R club break up the day’s events. Highlights include a superbly surreal Lady With the Log striptease (think double entendres on getting wood, and the log as a boob-jiggling prop), a Special Agent Cooper look-a-like strumming ‘Halleluyah’ on the ukulele, a fire-eating long-haired Bob look-alike, and wonderful compering from a gentleman with black and white face paint who alternates between delivering Lynch-inspired performance poetry to strobe light dancing and outré introductions.
Photo by Mateusz Witek
Two stars from the show – Al Strobel who plays the One Armed Man, and Kimmy Robertson who plays kooky secretary Lucy – are interviewed by Time Out film journalist Tom Huddleston. Both actors are charming, and fill the Q&A session with hilarious in-jokes and titbits from the set. Apparently, Kimmy kissed David Lynch “French style”, and he likes to drink red wine at parties. She’s also kissed Elton John and John Belushi: “It’s a hobby”, she states.
As the day comes to a rather exhausting close, I mull over what I’ve achieved essentially sat on my ass in a cinema. I met The One Armed Man! He complemented my dad’s parenting skills! I ate loads of doughnuts and cherry pie! I tripped out on Lynch coffee while watching Japanese animated video art played along to a single from the Lynch’s debut album ‘Crazy Clown Time‘! I freaked out when I thought I saw my ex-boyfriend in the foyer of the Riverside Studios! I don’t know what David Lynch puts in his coffee but after three cups and fourteen hours of wonderful festival madness, I have absolutely lost my mind, in the best possible way. Rest assured, it’s what David would have wanted.
Time Out's Tom Huddleston leads a Q&A in the Riverside Studios' transformed auditoria
The Twin Peaks UK Festival 2011 took place on 26 November 2011 at Riverside Studios, London.
It has been doing the rounds on Twitter, but in case you missed it you can watch the original 90-minute pilot of David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr. HERE.
"Turn the central heating off!" "No YOU turn the central heating off!"
On record, the Philadelphia popsters’ ‘Family Man’ is the potentially harrowing tale of an ordinary Joe sorely tempted by the advances of a voracious lady of the night (“Leave me alone / I’m a family man / And my bark is much worse than my bite / Leave me alone / I’m a family man / If you push me too far I just might”).
So how did the pair choose to represent this noirish tale on video? With shadowy streets, Edward Hopper-esque cafes and an alluring femme fatale? No. By taking the lead from St Bob Geldof (who commemorated the 1979 San Diego school shooting spree of 16-year-old Brenda Ann Spencer by arsing around in a classroom with his band of merry men The Boomtown Rats in the video for ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’) and making one of the most inexplicable music promos known to man.
Immediately, something’s up. An agitated Hall breaks the fourth wall as a pair of cheaply rendered computer sprites fill in for the song’s anti-hero and his tormentor, while Oates and crew are jiving around in a pastel-coloured house, sharing nothing approaching a dress code. Before long, a catastrophic mistake is made as a host of dancing Jedward-haired children are drafted into the whole unholy equation and a bizarre game of familial relations are played out as a Lego-headed dad (presumably the Family Man of the title) descends into a ghoulishly-lit, desperately creepy TV underworld. It doesn’t help that Daryl Hall is taking none of this remotely seriously.
From a visibly clean shaven Hall deciding to shave anyway, to an extended dance sequence involving some of the whitest moves of all time, none of this makes the blindest bit of sense. In particular, parents worldwide should cover their eyes at the moment when a session guitarist, legs akimbo, fretwanks manically over a bed full of cowering children in a darkened room.
Finally, the promo dissolves into horror, as hordes of family members look on in disgust like statues at the television which is playing… the video for ‘Family Man’ by Hall and Oates!?! Apart from the mindbending nature of their choice of viewing, it is never made clear what has upset them so much. Dad’s decision to nearly, but not quite, go with a hooker (Did he tell them??)? The frightening guitarist on the bed? Oates’ moustache and braces-with-T-Shirt combination? Answers on a postcard.
Insanity? A treatment written on the back of a cigarette packet? Or latent genius? Fuck knows. They simply do not make them like this anymore. Watch below for five minutes of madness that would give David Lynch sleepless nights…
Permanent Plastic Helmet 
