Top 5 David Lynch Scenes | Archive

16 Sep 2026 · 41 min · 18 chapters

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In short

FilmSpotting’s “Archive” episode where hosts and a listener discuss David Lynch scenes, counting down a “Top 5” list (from 2014’s picks) plus honorable mentions. They also debate what makes a scene “definitive” versus merely characteristic of Lynch.

Guests/backgrounds

No guest celebrities. The hosts are Sean Evans (Hot Ones) and Josh (FilmSpotting). They reference a listener submission from Huntington Beach, CA (Aaron Fenn) and other contributors (e.g., Melissa Taminga, “Filmsbody Advisory Board”).

Key claims

Lynch scenes often hinge on voyeurism, creepy sexuality/fear of sexuality, light-vs-dark contrast, and empathy/distancing from exploitative viewing.

Notable examples

Lost Highway (Robert Blake to Bill Pullman: “I’m at your house right now”); The Elephant Man (Treves presenting Merrick to doctors; “I’ve tried so hard to be good”); Wild at Heart (Bobby Peru’s hotel-room assault/“Someday, honey, I will”); Mulholland Drive (Club Silencio: Del Rio’s “Crying” continues after collapse; Betty’s audition transformation); Blue Velvet (opening hose/ear sequence; Frank Booth car confrontation: “You’re like me”).

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

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Introduction to David Lynch Scenes

2:06 to 2:22

Hosts introduce the episode focusing on David Lynch's top five scenes.

“What kind of a show are you guys putting on here today?”

Looking Back at Lynch

2:22 to 3:38

Discussion about the impact of David Lynch's work and upcoming retrospectives.

“Josh, we have a Pantheon project review, a 40th anniversary review of David Lynch's Blue Velvet dropping here in a couple of days.”

First Scene: Lost Highway

3:38 to 4:44

A listener's favorite scene from Lost Highway sparks a discussion on its chilling effect.

“Some great choices here, of course, with David Lynch, a lot of great scenes to choose from.”

Criteria for Top Scenes

4:44 to 6:20

Hosts discuss their criteria for selecting their top David Lynch scenes.

“I've only seen it once when it came out.”

Number Five: The Elephant Man

6:20 to 11:15

Discussion of a powerful scene from The Elephant Man and its thematic implications.

“They do speak to something that maybe we only see in David Lynch.”

Number Four: Wild at Heart

11:15 to 14:00

Exploration of a tense scene from Wild at Heart featuring Bobby Peru.

“I'm not gonna piss on your head, your hair and all.”

Exploring David Lynch's Unique Film Style

14:00 to 19:36

Delve into the characteristics and scenes that define Lynch's storytelling.

“with something that actually does make you laugh.”

The Complexity of Acting in Lynch's Films

19:36 to 22:24

Examine the nuanced performances in Lynch's work, particularly in audition scenes.

“Lynch did, when I think it really is one of his best films.”

The Complexity of Acting in Lynch's Films

27:31 to 28:06

Examine the nuanced performances in Lynch's work, particularly in audition scenes.

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Exploring Blue Velvet's Dark Themes

29:16 to 33:30

A deep dive into the significance and themes of scenes from Blue Velvet.

“Join me and former NFL quarterback Matt Castle every Wednesday on our podcast, Lots to Say, with me, Bobby Bones, and Matt Castle.”
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The Elephant Man's Heartbreaking Scene

33:30 to 37:16

Discussion of the emotional impact of a scene from The Elephant Man.

“My number two comes from a movie you've previously mentioned.”

The Absurdity of Eraserhead's Chicken Dinner

37:16 to 42:06

Analyzing the iconic chicken dinner scene from Eraserhead and its implications.

“I really think the worst and the best of humanity are on display in The Elephant Man.”

Nostalgia and Impact of Blue Velvet

42:06 to 43:16

Discussion of the lasting impact and subversive nature of David Lynch's Blue Velvet.

“But I just go back to seeing it for the first time after the movie came out around 90 or 91 when I was 17 or 18 years old.”

Honorable Mentions in Lynch's Work

43:17 to 45:42

Exploration of additional memorable scenes from various David Lynch films.

“Those are our top five David Lynch scenes.”

Membership and Benefits

45:43 to 46:02

Information on how to access FilmSpotting segments and become a member.

“Of course, you can access segments and shows like this anytime you would like.”

Membership and Benefits

46:03 to 46:40

Information on how to access FilmSpotting segments and become a member.

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Membership and Benefits

47:17 to 47:51

Information on how to access FilmSpotting segments and become a member.

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Membership and Benefits

47:52 to 48:17

Information on how to access FilmSpotting segments and become a member.

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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:00Adam Kempenaar:This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Hi, I'm Sean Evans from Hot Ones, and I want to tell you about YouTube Premium.

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2:11Josh Larsen:What kind of a show are you guys putting on here today? You're not interested in art? No. Now look, we're going to do this thing. We're going to have a conversation.

2:20Adam Kempenaar:Hey, film spotters. Josh, we have a Pantheon project review, a 40th anniversary review of David Lynch's Blue Velvet dropping here in a couple of days. Of course, that meant going back into the archive and looking for something David Lynch related. And we've got our top five David Lynch scenes from 2014.

2:43Josh Larsen:Great list. Love doing this one. I was not a Lynch completist when we did this. Sadly, I'm not yet now as you're hearing this, but next week, Adam project into the future future. I will be because the music box theater here in Chicago is doing a twin peaks. The series retrospective across. I think it's a week. They're showing all the episodes. I believe it's all the episodes. All I know is I'm going finally to see fire walk with me in 35 millimeter. Okay. as part of that. And then I can say, never seen it. I mean, you, you know, this, it was only a couple of years ago that Debbie and I watched the entire series of Drake peaks and completed that.

3:26Josh Larsen:So, yeah, I don't know. Retroactively, if I will want to fix anything on this list that listeners are about to hear, but I'm happy to get a chance to do that on the big screen.

3:38Adam Kempenaar:These are good lists. Some great choices here, of course, with David Lynch, a lot of great scenes to choose from. Here are those David Lynch scenes from 2014. We've met before, haven't we? I don't think so. Where was it you think we met? At your house, don't you remember? No, no, I don't. Are you sure? Of course. As a matter of fact, I'm there right now. A scene there to get us into our top five David Lynch scenes. On the appropriately creepy note, that's Robert Blake with Bill Pullman from Lynch's Lost Highway. And Aaron Fenn, a listener from Huntington Beach, California, wrote in and said, that's one of his nominees for favorite David Lynch scene.

4:29Adam Kempenaar:I don't think I understood what the phrase chills running down your spine truly meant until I heard Robert Blake's wide-eyed mystery man tell Pullman, I'm at your house right now. And not only that, then Bill Pullman calls his own house only to hear Robert Blake's unexplainable voice say through the receiver. I told you I was here. Aaron adds eek. I agree. I don't love Lost Highway. I've only seen it once when it came out. I've been on the record many times saying that I badly need to revisit it, especially considering how much of a Lynch fan I am. But that scene did make my honorable mentions.

4:59Josh Larsen:And don't you think every Lynch film, even Dune, which I didn't get to for this list, but wanted to, could have a scene that would be eligible and understandably so for this list?

5:09Adam Kempenaar:That's a good point. And I think we also could have done not just scenes. We could have done favorite David Lynch shots. Yeah, we talked about that. Images, right? Just an image. Favorite David Lynch characters, most visceral moments we could have done, or even favorite David Lynch lines. My two nominees from Wild at Heart, Freddie Jones and that weird frog voice. Pigeons spread diseases. I mess up the place. You see that? Pigeons spread diseases and mess up the place. And the dad, the straight-laced detective dad in Blue Velvet telling Jeffrey, yes, that's a human ear, all right. Those would have been my two.

5:46Adam Kempenaar:The frog voice is almost a lyric Frank would come up with, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. From the Fatsbender film. That's a good point. I do want to set you up with this question, Josh, and we've done quite a few of these types of tributes to directors and even a few actors, so maybe we've hashed this out. But as you approach this David Lynch list, did you think about your top five scenes in the context of your favorite, the ones that are most memorable, that you love to go back and watch and rewatch, or are they definitive? You think they are just prototypical Lynch at his best, or maybe not so much definitive, but they are characteristic.

6:20Adam Kempenaar:They do speak to something that maybe we only see in David Lynch.

6:24Josh Larsen:So this was revealing to me because I like Lynch. I think I like just about all of his films. I don't hold him as high of esteem as you do. So for me, I looked back at some of these scenes and found things that were revealing to me about his work that I hadn't thought of before. So maybe a weird sort of criteria, but that's just how it started to fall out. Not having a chance to revisit everything in total. I watched a lot of the stuff that was available, a lot of the scenes that were suggested to us on social media, and just went with a few that made me realize, oh, that's interesting about this guy's work that I hadn't thought of before.

7:04Josh Larsen:My number five comes from a film that I did manage to watch in its entirety recently because it was another blindspotting film for me. In addition to Eraserhead, I had never seen The Elephant Man. And so my number five comes from that film. It is the scene I'm calling On Display for the Doctors. He is English. He is 21 years of age. His name is John Merrick. This is a movie that I do like quite a bit, but I would say it's not of a piece. There are some very clear, surrealistic Lynch scenes, and then some very clear traditional period piece scenes. But one of those that beautifully blends the two comes about 20 minutes in.

7:45Josh Larsen:And this is when Anthony Hopkins surgeon Treves presents John Hurt's John Merrick, the elephant man, before a classroom full of colleagues. Now, the point here is to show how Treves' treatment of Merrick, though it's in the name of science, is really no better than the exploitative routine that Merrick was subjected to at the circus freak show. So the scene opens with this close-up of a laboratory spotlight that's exactly like a spotlight you'd see at the circus. I like how the scene closes on that spotlight as well. Really nice bookending effect there. We then cut to Treves, who orders Merrick to be wheeled in on this cart that has these curtains around it.

8:22Josh Larsen:So again, curtains being pulled back, just like some sort of performance. And then Treves goes on to describe his condition, talking about him as if he's not even there. He's talking to the audience. That's what really matters.

8:34Adam Kempenaar:I wish to draw your attention to the insidious conditions affecting this patient. Can you see over there? Note, if you will, the extreme enlargement of

8:43Josh Larsen:the scar, the right upper limb, which is totally useless, the alarming curvature of the spine. Would you turn around, please? Turn around, please. There's also an interesting camera angle that Lynch returns to in this scene. And it's from behind that curtain cart so that we only see Merrick's deformed silhouette. And I don't think, you know, we've already seen him in the film in full. So I don't think Lynch is doing this to create suspense or to draw out our own voyeuristic impulses. I think it means to distance us from those gaping doctors and colleagues who are watching him, to put us more in Merrick's position than in theirs.

9:24Josh Larsen:Because, you know, that's going to generate empathy. And I think that's really the central drive of the elephant man is this sense of empathy.

9:32Adam Kempenaar:So then, gentlemen, owing to this series of conditions, the congenital existosis of the

9:37Josh Larsen:skull, extensive papillomatous growth, large pendulous masses in connection with the skin, the great enlargement of the right upper limb involving all the bones, the massive distortion

9:46Adam Kempenaar:of the head and the extensive area covered by papillomatter's growth, the patient has been called the elephant man. Thank you.

9:58Adam Kempenaar:Without a doubt, a great film, one I just revisited in the past year or so, watched it with my oldest and was really blown away by it. Hadn't seen it since I was much younger. My number five is one that I seriously have been deliberating on for about 72 hours. I told you last week when you suggested top five Lynch scenes that it was a great top five, but I was going to take it so seriously that like Jack Nance in Eraserhead, I was going to be probably paralyzed by doubt and fear. That was your face the whole time? Just staring blankly, bewildered. Staring at a list of options, just looking bewildered.

10:35Adam Kempenaar:And this number five, I just reserve the right to change every few days or so, Josh, even though it's going to be in perpetuity in this podcast form. I may have to change it on the website. And it's maybe not a favorite, but it is one that does get at the heart of Lynch, I think. It gets at something we talked about very specifically in the context of our discussion of Eraserhead. And it also features one of my favorite Lynch villains in a movie I really wanted to definitely represent on my list. The movie is Wild at Heart. The villain is Willem Dafoe's Bobby Peru. Yeah. Oh.

11:09Josh Larsen:Hey, pretty woman.

11:11Adam Kempenaar:Sailor here? Oh, he's changing oil out in our car. Man, I gotta take a piss ban. Can I use your head? Uh, yeah, I guess. I don't mean your head, head. I'm not gonna piss on your head, your hair and all. Just gonna piss in the toilet. Y 'all take a listen. You hear a deep sound coming down from Bobby Peru. And like many Lynch scenes, this is one of the reasons I did decide to go with it. It's really difficult to watch. It's not a fun scene. It's a challenge. It's a challenge to watch a character so loathsome on screen as Bobby Peru is. And I know Sam and Joe, our producers, will love the fact that I picked a scene for my number five with dialogue mainly consisting of a two-word phrase we can't play on radio.

11:54Adam Kempenaar:But if you know Wild at Heart, it's the only scene in the movie that takes place with Bobby and Lula, Laura Dern's character, alone in her hotel room. Sailor's not there. She and Nicolas Cage, they have stopped off in this sleepy little Texas town on their way to California running from Lula's mother. And the night before, they meet this group of people hanging out where they're at. And Jack Nance actually is included. He's one of the men there talking about his dog, famously, in this scene from Wild at Heart. And they meet Bobby. when he comes across Lula in her room he immediately starts going to some places he shouldn't go with someone he's just met or really anybody for that matter immediately crossing some boundaries you got the smell in this room a puke you been puking little girl huh you sick

12:49Josh Larsen:pregnant you use the toilet now you can go it ain't none of your business what I do around here that's for sure.

12:55Adam Kempenaar:You know, I sure do like a woman with nice like yours who talks tough and looks like she can like a bunny. Like that, huh? Again, not radio friendly, not family friendly. So I'll simply say that the crux of the scene is him coming on to her and her resisting him. And then through sheer force of will physically, and then also through some seductive prowess, he gets her at the end of the scene to basically say, yeah, I want you. And then the kicker. Someday, honey, I will. But I gotta get going. Sing. Don't cry. There is just this element in Lynch, runs throughout his films, but definitely an eraser head, of that creepy sexuality, this sort of fear of one's own sexuality.

13:48Adam Kempenaar:Someone like Bobby is in complete control of it. and uses it against Lula in this scene. And to have that real creepiness and that real terror that you feel for her in that scene and then have it end with something that actually does make you laugh. Lynch is one of the few filmmakers that can really pull that off. I didn't think of this

14:06Josh Larsen:when I was watching the film earlier this year, but Defoe's playing with this quite a bit, actually, in Grand Budapest Hotel, isn't he, with his villain there? There's some physical characteristics for sure. So yeah, creepy guy, perfect for a Lynch film. My number four, I'm going to jump ahead from The Elephant Man to Mulholland Drive, and it's Rebecca Del Rio's performance at Club Silencio. This was another case of Lynch incorporating existing musical art into his movie Dreamscape. Del Rio had already recorded and had been performing her a cappella version of Crying, which was mostly made famous by Roy Orbison, well before Lynch had asked her to perform it for this scene.

14:44Josh Larsen:This is when the mystery women, Buddy and Rita, played by Naomi Watts and Laura Haring, make a late night visit to the Curious Nightclub where they find Del Rio singing.

15:08Josh Larsen:What I love about this scene, it goes back to something we've been talking about, defying expectations, pulling the rug out from under us a little bit, specifically our expectations for a Lynch film. It's a fairly straightforward scene. I mean, there's not anything really odd about it at the beginning. It's acapella Lynch, really, in a way. It's just a woman performing in this spotlight. She looks fairly normal, elaborate makeup, a cocktail dress. But other than that, it seems to be fairly routine. And the scene cuts between her performance and Watson Herring watching from the audience as they're increasingly moved and brought to tears.

15:45Josh Larsen:And it goes on for almost four minutes. I mean, it's the full performance. And then just when we feel comfortable, at that point, Del Rio collapses. But her voice continues singing, not missing a beat. So she's lip syncing, we assume. But I think this is another one of those instances in Mulholland Drive where Lynch is making us wonder if what we're seeing is real or what real even means in this story.

Read the full transcript

16:10Adam Kempenaar:I love that scene. An honorable mention for me, for sure. My number four is the perfect chaser to the harsh shot that was Bobby Peru at number five. It's from Lynch's most sentimental and yes, his straightest story, the straight story based on the real life tale of Alvin Strait, who rode his John Deere tractor from Iowa to Wisconsin, something like 240 miles to see his estranged brother, who I think had just suffered a stroke and knew that he may not have many more opportunities to see him. and that was the only way he could go. No longer having a driver's license got on that tractor. This scene is the one between Richard Farnsworth and Wiley Harker.

16:49Adam Kempenaar:They go down to one of the local watering holes and Alvin says, I don't drink anymore, but I always like a change of scenery. He's just going to go to talk to the man. They sit at the bar and as the other man takes a swig from, I believe it's a Miller Lite, Farnsworth explains how he couldn't drink enough when he got back from the war and eventually got sober and the other man says, a lot of men came back drinking hard and that's all he really wants to divulge. And then Alvin says, everybody's trying to forget, I can see it in a man right away. And there's this silence and Wiley Harker just turns and looks at him quickly when he says, I can see it in a man right away and then quickly looks back at his drink.

17:30Adam Kempenaar:And he takes that in for a second. He knows that it's sort of an indictment, a tacit indictment of him. And what he recognizes is that in that moment when he's saying, I can see it in a man, well, Alvin can probably see it in him, that he's one of those people. And rather than hide it, he's actually going to open up to him. And he does. The floodgates open. He recounts a story, a horrific story from his time in the war. There was one time when we just were waiting for the first warm meal in 10 days. we thought we'd seen the worst. We hadn't had much trouble from the air. I was on a rise. There was a quartermaster working on more coffee for me and my buddies.

18:27Adam Kempenaar:A stray folk-a-wolf came over the treetops and dropped an incendiary in the mess tent. all my buddies.

18:41Adam Kempenaar:The crowd then banked right in front of me on that hill. And I didn't see the

18:49Josh Larsen:swastika.

18:53Adam Kempenaar:What I love about this scene, not only the performances and just the emotion of it, but there's really no suggestion that the Harker character has a drinking problem or that Alvin is proselytizing to him, trying to get him to change in some way. There's just an inherent openness and honesty and vulnerability to that Alvin character. And he wants to let others in and he wants others to have that same kind of openness. I also think it is obviously one of the themes of that movie, reckoning with the past and finding a way to move on from it. You have to be able to do that. And we see Alvin do that finally with his brother in another great scene, the closing scene with Harry Dean Stanton.

19:26Adam Kempenaar:I'm glad you found a place for the straight story

19:29Josh Larsen:because I know it got a lot of attention when it came out, but now I feel like it's sort of seen as this diversion, Lynch did, when I think it really is one of his best films. My number three comes from a film you already mentioned, Wild at Heart, and it's The Desert Dance Party. I think Wild at Heart came out in 1991. It doesn't really get as much love among Lynch fans. Some actively dislike it, but I've always appreciated it for its use of music and its Nicolas Cage-iness. Oh, yeah. I mean, such great stuff. He's really in his prime here as Sailor. This is partly a road movie, and the scene I'm thinking of does take place on the road.

20:06Josh Larsen:Sailor's sleeping in the back seat of the convertible, and Lula's trying to find something on the radio. I don't want to get out of that hospital. I don't want to listen to this crowd.

20:15Adam Kempenaar:For her recent divorce, shot and killed her three children aged 17. Shot right between a heinous... A local judge praised defendant John Roy, but was dismayed to learn that Roy had had sex with the corpse. What?

20:30Josh Larsen:Every station she tunes into has some horrible, horrible news report going on. It's terrible and quite comic. It's about corpses. It's about gunshot wounds, deviant sex. Not coincidentally, the sort of things that make up your average David Lynch movie. Good point. And she can't take it. She pulls over, wakes Sailor up and demands he finds some music this instant. So he tunes in to some sort of death metal, it sounds like. They both let out these primal screams and start kickboxing slash dancing like maniacs. I love Cage's touch, how he does the head flip out of the convertible. Right. You know, he just woke up five seconds later, but he's there.

21:07Josh Larsen:He's into it.

21:14Josh Larsen:I think this scene is something of a retort to the sort of purient material that Lynch's films often indulge in. Yeah. In a way, in this movie, Sailor and Lula are trying to flee from that awful world, and they frequently escape through music. The camera work here also supports this idea of setting them apart from so many of Lynch's characters. When Lula pulls over, he cuts to a full shot of the car, but then a crane gradually lifts above them. And then by the time they embrace at the end of their dancing, we've pulled back high enough and far enough that the sunset starts to seep into the top of the frame.

21:48Josh Larsen:It's kind of a classic Hollywood moment. Very classic. There's a real majesty to it. Even the death metal gives way to this classic Hollywood soundtrack music. So I think that for all the disturbing elements in his films, I get the sense, at least here, that he also believes in moments like this just a little bit.

22:04Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, without a doubt. And I think that that whole conflict between light and dark, that scene really captures it most directly in Wild at Heart. But it does run throughout his films. We'll get to a little bit more of it here in a couple of picks. My number three is from Mulholland Drive, and I should point out that I forced myself not to have any overlap. Just with so many films I do enjoy and so many great scenes, I figured, come on, you can come up with five where you're not picking from the same movie. Otherwise, I may have had three or four from Mulholland Drive because I just do love that film so much.

22:34Adam Kempenaar:The one I'm going with at number three here is Betty's audition scene, Naomi Watts with Chad Everett. And this is something you brought up a couple of weeks ago in talking about the new movie, The Congress, with Robin Wright, how there's a scene where she has to perform. Yes. She has to act, right? And I haven't seen it, but you felt like she didn't really completely pull it off. This is that scene. It is. This is Mulholland's Drive and Watts nails it. I think she does. And I'll also point to another acting scene in a movie I love, Get Shorty, the scene where John Travolta is teaching this great actor, Danny DeVito's character, how to act properly.

23:10Adam Kempenaar:He's telling him, look at me, right? DeVito in that scene, it's a tightrope because he has to act really badly. And he then has to turn and act really well. And both acting badly and acting really well on screen requires good acting. And so I always pay attention when that scene comes on to see how DeVito navigates that. And he always nails it. But it's tough. It draws the viewer's attention to the fact that this is a construct, that we are watching a performance here, a performance within a performance. So they really have to deliver if the whole point of the scene is that something magical is happening, that they've tapped into something, that they've connected in some way.

23:50Adam Kempenaar:And we certainly get that with what Naomi Watts and Shada Everett do. This is where we see the Betty character do a scene. We've already heard her rehearse with Rita in their little bungalow or whatever. And it's horrible. It's completely melodramatic. She plays it exactly as it seems to be written. and it really sounds like terrible TV soap opera acting. So you have no faith that when she actually gets into that room that something is going to happen and she's going to get to the heart of the scene. But she doesn't play it as melodrama in that moment. She hits it as drama. She plays it not as a victim.

24:24Adam Kempenaar:A little bit of a very sly spoiler alert here. The victim I think she sees herself as in real life, but she's the person controlling the scene. She dictates the action. She dictates the sexuality. She dictates all the tension.

25:05Adam Kempenaar:He trusts you. You're his best friend. It's not just good acting, Josh. I think it's almost as if that Betty character has been taken over by one of those sinister forces that David Lynch likes to play with and suggests to us that they're out there. They're especially out there in Hollywood. She becomes a different person entirely in that scene. And then I love how she just snaps back out of it at the end, back to Betty, as if it has been almost a spell she's been under. And that transformation that we see her undergo there suggests that maybe she's just as dark, if not darker and more mysterious than Rita, who has been the mystery girl up to this point.

25:45Adam Kempenaar:It's a great scene. I know you really like it too, Josh, because you've been begging for us to do it in Massacre Theater for a long time. And I'm just not comfortable enough yet to go there. Maybe someday.

25:56Josh Larsen:That's your young woman. That's the young woman you've been practicing for. Naomi Watts and Mulholland Drive.

26:01Adam Kempenaar:Mulholland Drive, though, that whole movie is such a rich deconstruction of the Hollywood myth, a myth that keeps young Bettys coming fresh off the bus or fresh off the plane to Hollywood to this day. And that scene is really a key cog in that myth deconstruction.

26:15Josh Larsen:I'm glad you mentioned Chad Everett, too, who's her co-star in the scene in a couple of senses, because he's really good as well. When you think about what he has to do, he has to be this kind of generic, stiff soap opera actor who gets caught off guard during the audition.

26:29Adam Kempenaar:And yet he stays in the scene with her. There's no reason to believe that at the beginning he's going to be able to run with her. Right. Because he's just as cheesy and melodramatic as Betty was previously.

26:37Josh Larsen:But then he does and it becomes something really special.

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28:20Josh Larsen:I think for me to be any good or for any character, to be any good. You've got to put enough of yourself and your empathy for people in it. I'm a people watcher. You see that guy going down the street and go, yeah, I can use that. Open Igloo co-founder Alia Mohammed.

28:36Adam Kempenaar:I love staying on top of what is going on in our city, what is going on in city politics, what is on renters' minds, and taking all of that knowledge to build a platform that hopefully is going to make New York City better in the long run. And actress and singer Melissa Errico. Partnership took on a whole other meaning when I started making my own work. It's like you with a great actress or actor. It was best to come out of your trailer full of life and just face another person who's full of life and don't talk. Listen to Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

29:16Adam Kempenaar:Hey, it's Bobby Bones. Join me and former NFL quarterback Matt Castle every Wednesday on our podcast, Lots to Say, with me, Bobby Bones, and Matt Castle. We also bring in friends, they're mostly Matt's friends, who are current or former NFL players, some of the biggest names in music and entertainment, and then we have some really great conversations that can pretty much go anywhere. The great Pac-Man Jones. After the game, the whole National Task Force for Police Officers was at the stadium. Like, hey, buddy, yeah, you, Adam, come on. And one of my favorite segments we do is called Situational Awareness, where Bobby and I give each other real-life situations and figure out what we'd actually do.

29:54Adam Kempenaar:You're in training camp, and the rookie quarterback has one good throwing session in front of the media. Suddenly, everybody online says he should start over you week one. How do you handle this? You just go back out to practice the next day and wait for him to mess up. Listen to Lots to Say with Bobby Bones and Matt Castle on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

30:16Josh Larsen:so you were talking about light and dark my number two comes from maybe his filmography's darkest place it feels like that to me it's blue velvet and tons of suggestions came in when we asked for nominations for this lynch scenes top five suggestions for dennis hopper's frank booth he's such a crazed terrifying force in this 1986 bizarro noir people had all different scenes they wanted to see. He's the deranged criminal who has kidnapped nightclub singer Dorothy Valens, played by Isabella Rossellini. And Kyle MacLachlan plays the all-American kid who gets sucked into his world. The scene that I'm thinking of, I considered a number of them.

30:56Josh Larsen:His early attack on Rossellini, which MacLachlan witnesses while hiding in the closet. There's his profane defense of Pabst Blue Ribbon over Heineken, another example of Lynch humor. But I went with a car ride where Booth takes McLaughlin, Rossellini, and a couple of henchmen along, and he and McLaughlin have this confrontation there.

31:17Adam Kempenaar:What are you looking at? Nothing? Don't you look at me! I shoot when I see the white city eyes.

31:41you're like me.

31:43Josh Larsen:Blue Velvet, when it came out, received some criticism, famously from Roger Ebert and others, for its use of violence, especially that directed toward Rossellini. But I think this scene is revealing about the purpose of the Booth character. He pulls over the car and he demands of McLaughlin, who's in the backseat, what are you looking at? And this also gets into one of the things I love about Blue Velvet is the idea of voyeurism and the rear window element going on here and the implicating of us in the audience. Then after asking McLaughlin that question and after taking one of his really elaborate drags on the gas mask that Hopper just pulls out so beautifully, he blatantly states, you're like me.

32:22Josh Larsen:And, you know, this really gets at the heart of Blue Velvet. Because he's hurting her and Jeffrey doesn't look away, right? He's watching. He's the watcher. And he's us, right, in that scene. And I think that much of this movie is trying to bridge that gap between this clean-cut kid and this criminal. I mean, if Blue Velvet is partly about the seedy underbelly of supposedly squeaky clean suburbs, we have the famous opening shot that goes under the lawn to reveal the bugs, then this is suggesting, you know, we all, too, are corrupted underneath. Not just Frank, the guy who flaunts his corrupted nature, but McLaughlin's good kid, too.

32:58Josh Larsen:I mean, I'd almost say that the scene is too on the nose with dialogue like that, except that right after this moment we get Frank smearing lipstick on his face, lip-syncing words to Roy Orbison's In Dreams and threatening McLaughlin with a knife, and all this while a prostitute is doing a slow dance on the roof of the car. So it's on the nose, maybe, but it has a distinctly Lynchian flair.

33:20Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, on the nose for Lynch. Exactly. Which you do have to make that distinction. Obviously a great scene, and you're right, any scene with Frank Booth from Blue Velvet probably should have been considered for this list. My number two comes from a movie you've previously mentioned. It is The Elephant Man, And I love this film, so this was hard, but there is one scene for me that emerges as my favorite. And it's certainly the most emotional. It's one of the scenes, maybe in all of cinema, that slays me the most. I did truly, and I'm not one of these people who gets highly emotional watching movies, but just re-watching this scene today for this list, it got a little dusty at the computer taking a look at it.

33:58Adam Kempenaar:And it's the scene between John Merrick, the Elephant Man, and Treves, Anthony Hopkins, and Treve's wife on his visit. Oh, that's such a good scene. Yeah, his visit to their house. And I love how he asks where their children are, and she gives this furtive glance because she's a little embarrassed and feels shame. And Treve says, oh, they're playing with friends. Not quite ready to show them John Merrick just yet, but he meets Treve's wife, played so wonderfully by Hannah Gordon. They're looking at the photos of their kids, then Treve's mom, and that prompts Merrick to show them a picture of his mother.

34:34Adam Kempenaar:Mr Merrick, she's beautiful. Oh, she had... She had the face of an angel.

34:44I must...

34:49Adam Kempenaar:...been a great disappointment to her. No, Mr Merrick, no. No... No son as loving as you could ever be a disappointment. If only I could find her, if she could see me, because she's lovely friends, if you're not, perhaps she could love me as I am. I tried so hard to be cooked.

35:23Adam Kempenaar:Here is a man born horribly disfigured, had no choice in the matter. That's just the way he was made. Against his will, forced into performing as a freak, treated unspeakably badly. He's truly a victim, but he feels guilty of letting his mother down, as if he did something wrong to force her away. And that line, I've tried so hard to be good. The sad kind of optimism in that, his notion that if he was just a little bit better of a person, Maybe people wouldn't be so scared of him. Maybe his mom would be proud to see him. And he says it, that's emotion enough. And then watching Hannah Gordon lose it in that scene, that's where then the floodgates open.

36:09Adam Kempenaar:And like I said, that scene just annihilates me. And it's not a flashy scene, but it doesn't need to be.

36:16Josh Larsen:No, and she's so good because normally you don't need or necessarily want the other character in the scene to be showing the emotions you should be feeling. because that piles it on. But for some reason, it's so genuine. It is so genuine, her response. And I think it's also tied into what you talked about, the fact that the kids aren't there. Like all of a sudden she's realizing this is someone the kids should know because he's such a fundamentally decent human being. And her kind of complicated feelings with what her husband's doing with him, the husband's complicated feelings, it's all tied up into her response there.

36:50Adam Kempenaar:It is. And it's another movie, The Elephant Man, like Eraserhead, But obviously shot in black and white, though, not quite the high contrast that you get in the 1977 film. It's another movie that captures the terrible depravity and the darkness in humanity. But you also get in this film what makes it palatable. And I don't mean that in any kind of condescending way. It's a good thing because we see a lot of horror. We get the dignity and we get light. I really think the worst and the best of humanity are on display in The Elephant Man.

37:19Josh Larsen:That scene also, I think, points to the straight story in a lot of ways because it's a very straight scene, right? It's completely on the surface, take it for what it's worth, and it works really well as much of the straight story does. All right, we're down to our number one scenes, and I saved that slot for one from my favorite Lynch film. It's Eraserhead, The Chicken Dinner. This occurs early on after Jack Nance's Henry Spencer has been invited for dinner at the house of his girlfriend's parents. And they're serving these tiny baked birds. I don't know if they're chickens or quail or something oddly in between.

37:55Adam Kempenaar:Can I just say that you're scaring me right now?

37:57Josh Larsen:I know. This is your number one. You're really scaring me. Oh, because I chose that? Yeah. Hey, confront your fears, Adam. I guess. Mary X's father asks Henry if he'd carve them. And here's the kicker. Why? Because the father's afraid to. Okay? Not being polite, but yeah. Where's this going to go? So as soon as he touches the carcass with a fork, the legs start moving. This thick, dark goo spills out. I think we get it twice, a horrifying close-up of these bubbles. And it's almost like something from early Bunuel. It's so jarring and off-putting, and you're trying to make sense of it. And it foreshadows something similar we're going to see later.

38:35Josh Larsen:It does. And this is just another hint that, you know, the movies we talked about a little bit is more about this fear of fatherhood or domesticity. It's fundamentally this exploration of social anxiety using such jarring images. And I count this one as one of the most jarring images in the film, at least it is for me. We also talked about the comedy in our review and so many funny touches here. here. I mean, the fact that the bird's so tiny and the knife he's handed is so enormous, ridiculously huge. We have Jack Nance's dazed expression that we've discussed. Even he keeps it. I don't know how he managed to do this.

39:14Josh Larsen:After Mary X's mother starts like clucking her tongue, she's excited at first and then it turns into this seizure. Yeah, like she's having a seizure. And she and the daughter have to get up and leave the room. And he just sits there with the father in Bewilderment. He really is, like I said, the straight man to this absurdist comedy, plays the part perfectly and makes this scene work.

39:35Adam Kempenaar:Well, I'm not sure I can top the chicken dinner from Eraserhead, but I'm going to go for my number one with a movie you had at number two, cue up the Bobby Venton. She wore blue velvet Bluer than velvet was the night Blue velvet and as many good options as there are, for me, it's all about the opening scene. Those blue velvet curtains, the credits, we go from that to the song. That beautiful blue sky, roses in front of a white picket fence, red, white, and blue, very American there, right in the shot, of course. The Lumberton firemen go by, they wave to us, which I love that Lynchian touch of them waving to the camera there.

40:22Adam Kempenaar:That's how corny. We're four years. It is, yeah, and we are. More flowers, yellow flowers, and a fence. Kids at a crosswalk. Then we get a house with one of those white picket fences and an old man watering his lawn. His wife inside watching a detective mystery on TV because, of course, it's only on TV that people like that would see something so nefarious happening. They have to see it from the comfort of their living room. Back to the old man. There's a snag in the hose. He clutches himself, has some kind of heart attack, and he falls to the ground. And the hose begins spraying wildly. A dog barks and drinks from the hose.

40:55Adam Kempenaar:The hose up, I will note, in a very phallic fashion. Cut to a close-up of the dog's mouth. Slow motion now, biting at the water. And this idyllic setting, for a minute, has become much darker and sadder and violent. We continue to hear the sound of the water. The camera glides along and goes down into the grass to reveal a severed ear teeming with insects. The whole movie that follows, of course, is the story behind how that ear got there. And I think that two minute sequence sets up that light and dark battle that underscores the whole movie and much of Lynch's work. Why are there people like Frank?

41:31Adam Kempenaar:That's the question Jeffrey has to ask at one point and has no answer. There always have been and always will be people like Frank. And it took their discovery of this ear to have their eyes open to it, to want to actually look into it and investigate it. They got the look under the surface that Lynch shows us in the beginning. And it's ugly and disturbing. It's a little bit, maybe, Josh, looking back on it now almost 30 years later, to use your phrase, talking about another scene from Blue Velvet, a little bit too on the nose. It seems maybe a little too ironically quaint in the way that Lynch presents scenes sometimes.

42:06Adam Kempenaar:But I just go back to seeing it for the first time after the movie came out around 90 or 91 when I was 17 or 18 years old. And it was a game changer for me. I've said it on the show many times. It was absurd and weird and poetic in a way that at that point I hadn't seen from cinema. So with a little bit of a nostalgic nod to it, but I still think the scene holds up. Absolutely. That sequence, the opening sequence from Blue Velvet's my number one.

42:31Josh Larsen:Yeah. I mean, you're looking at it in retrospect and it was a shockwave. It wasn't obvious at all. to have a movie open this way, deeply subversive, not only within its own story, but within what we were getting in 1986. I mean, it had been the high point of the studio production factory phase. We've had many of those phases, let's be honest. But in 86, we were at one of the high points. And here you have something that turns that on its head and is eager to make its audiences uncomfortable.

43:02Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, make them squirm a little bit. And you're certainly right that since then, And we've seen so many movies give us the darkness beneath the surface of suburbia. But I don't know that we've ever seen it quite like Lynch. And I don't know that we had it in our face that way before 1986 and Blue Velvet. Those are our top five David Lynch scenes. What about any honorable mentions for you, Josh?

43:22Josh Larsen:Well, this just shows how rich of a field it was because I don't think any of these that I have here have come up. The brothers sitting together on the porch at the end of the straight story. I think you referred to it. Didn't pick it. But Melissa Taminga from the Filmsbody Advisory Board suggested that one. I would definitely agree with the monster behind the diner in Mulholland Drive. Another Mulholland Drive scene that we referenced at the start of the show, the cowboy. And then an iconic scene from the Elephant Man would be the I'm not an animal. Yeah. Which he shouts out tellingly while falling down beneath the mob amidst urinals.

43:58Adam Kempenaar:Really powerful moment. It is, and a great place to start for my honorable mentions. I had I Am a Human Being, and also the one I referenced during our Eraserhead review, This Is My Home, that sequence with Treves and John Gielgud. From Blue Velvet, the candy-colored clown, Joy Ride with Frank that you had, Josh, and Baby Wants Blue Velvet, another one you did mention there, that opening, just horrifying sequence where we see through Jeffrey Beaumont's eyes what is happening between Isabella Rossellini and Dennis Hopper. Wild at Heart, the Don't Turn Away From Love ending I like a lot. And also a scene I mentioned a while back in our top five dance scenes that are not in dance movies.

44:35Adam Kempenaar:That first dance scene to the heavy metal with Lula and Sailor. And then he stops to defend his girl's honor. And I love how he throws his cigarette down on the ground. And then he takes the guy and puts him down on the ground. And his hand, of course, hits right in the spot where the cigarette is as if he had it planned there all along. Mulholland Drive, I love the whole club silencio sequence in Yorando. that you mentioned. And this is the girl, every little star scene, that scene where the director has to pick the girl he doesn't want to pick, those unseen forces now seen, representing the unseen forces, making sure that he picks the right girl.

45:09Adam Kempenaar:But then he makes that connection as well visually with Naomi Watts as Betty. I've got a couple others we've already talked about. I'll close with Fire Walk With Me. I can't single out Twin Peaks, even though I adore it because it's television and not movies. I was wondering if you might break that rule. There are rules, Josh, but Fire Walk With Me, a certain someone, for those who haven't seen it, in Laura Palmer's room. Still a terrifying, terrifying moment for me. So a lot of honorable mentions, and I think we could go on and on, but we will close there. Send us your picks or any other comments about the show to feedback at filmspotting.net.

45:49Adam Kempenaar:Of course, you can access segments and shows like this anytime you would like. Josh, all you have to do is be a FilmSpotting family member, and you can learn more about that and the benefits by visiting FilmSpottingFamily.com. This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

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From the publisher

Blue Velvet turns 40 this month—Adam and Josh have a Sacred Cow review coming later this week—so we're going back to 2014 for our Top 5 David Lynch Scenes.

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