YMMV / David Lynch

• Death of the Author: As noted by his quote on the main page, Lynch himself enforces this; he feels that it's better for fans to come up with their own interpretations than to tell them what they're supposed to feel about his films. Every now and then you can coax an insight out of him regarding one of his films, but don't expect him to follow up on it.
  Lynch: Believe it or not, Eraserhead is my most spiritual film.
  BAFTA Interviewer: Elaborate on that, if you would.
  Lynch: No, I won't.
  (Both of them, and the audience, laugh)
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: Lynch's more surreal works fall into this category because of their unusual narrative structure, dream logic, and bizarre events, and it is not unusual to find viewers interpreting certain elements as symbolism to rationalize what exactly happened. It's downplayed for Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive because Lynch has explained those films to a certain extent, but it's played entirely straight with Eraserhead and Inland Empire, both of which are usually considered Lynch's most confusing films.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Europeans in general and the French in particular are noted for being bigger fans of Lynch than Americans. Much like Philip K. Dick, he was particularly appreciated by the French intellectual set (and Slavoj Žižek, who is essentially a Frenchman in a Slovenian's body) as his early work gelled very nicely with the Postmodernism current in the French academia at the time. His work in general and Twin Peaks are also big in Japan.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "And if yoooouuuuuuu can believe it: it's a Friday once again!"^Explanation Taken from Lynch's "weather reports" on YouTube, where he announces this phrase every weather report he does on a Friday. Tends to get more and more exaggerated as time has gone on.
  • "Believe it or not, X is Y." "Elaborate on that." "No."^Explanation Snowclone of a quote from his 2007 BAFTA interview (quote is at around 8:39) about Eraserhead being his "most spiritual film".
• Nightmare Fuel: The notoriously epileptic vanity plate for Lynch/Frost Productions definitely counts, with the hideous electrical noises and the rapidly changing light sources jumping about. And this came after the very serene ending music for Twin Peaks. Yikes.
  • Think that vanity plate was bad enough? Well, the logo for Asymmetrical Productions used in 1993 is debatably much, much worse. It features a closeup of lips uttering the company name while the entire thing flashes at a rapid-fire, seizure-inducing pace.

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