1. He is one of the few film directors today that actually views film as an art rather than a business.

What a kind thing to say.

I have to agree. Bad first reason.  Try again. 

Oo- I know one.  Because the structure of Mulholland Dr. was genius.

"What credit card do you want to put that on?"
"Caash, prease."

Well I love Close Encounters, all of the Indy films, Minority Report, Jaws etc.

However, I'm not surprised that there's a certain amount of snobbery among Lynch fans towards someone who is and has been hugely successful and popular.

It's not about snobbery, it's about preference. If I were to be a snob about Spielberg, I wouldn't have put E.T. in my top three, that's for sure. I personally think his style is heavy-handed and oppressive. It's not any fun to watch, and it's far less interesting than a lot of other commercial/successful directors. Example: I think Robert Zemeckis has a light, interesting and sometimes goofy touch with actors which makes his style somewhat unpredictable. He's filmed wildly uneven scripts, but his style makes the films mostly worthwhile for me.

I wish the filmmakers I like all the success in the world. The ones I don't like, not so much.

"What credit card do you want to put that on?"
"Caash, prease."

franny_cky started two threads within minutes of each other - one about not liking Mulholland Drive and one about loving David Lynch. Likes and dislikes are the lowest common denominator of message board threads. It's easy so everybody can participate but it's also jaw-droppingly banal (much like the modern film industry).  

The first time I saw INLAND EMPIRE I didn't even try to understand it but I practically bounced out of the cinema, I was so excited. The thing I love most about David Lynch's films is their beauty. Even Dune, which was supposed to be corporate, linear filmmaking yet alienated most people, is beautiful to look at and that in my humble opinion more than justifies its existence.

I was absolutely thrilled by INLAND EMPIRE and the thing that brings me back to it isn't the narrative, which probably makes as much sense to me now as it's ever going to, but the imagery, the mood and the performances. As Delia Smith might put it, you can't go too far wrong with a recipe if you're using good ingredients.

I would call David Lynch hugely successful. Bordering on so wealthy he's become eccentric, like Michael Jackson or Elvis. (Peace Palaces. anyone?) I am so not a film snob. I hate foreign films. I like Troma for christ's sake.

I'm going to jab out my eardrums with knitting needles if I hear Lynch fans are snobs one more time. Is it so snobby to tell people if they don't get it, they need to expand their minds a little?

"What credit card do you want to put that on?"
"Caash, prease."

I would classify Fifth Element as a "guy movie" before "foreign film."  Frog director or not, it's in English (the lingua franca!)

And "condescending prick" is a label I can deal with. 

A foreign film, which by the way is already a slightly derogative form of calling them, is a film produced ouside of your country. For an italian like me, David Lynch movies can be foreign as much as Spielberg's, or Woody Allen's, or Spike Lee's etc. etc.

Mira Nair's. Ingmar Bergman's.

Got it?

So for the american audience, which I guess is the majority of you talking in this forum, everything that is not American is foreign (Canadian, South American, European, African, Scandinavian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabian, Australian)

When any director starts being renown worldwide, has success and starts filming in English with Hollywood stars, his films aren't foreign anymore. So, Luc Besson, who is french and made "The Fifth element" in English, in that case he did not make a foreign film for the american audience. Just because a film looks different from the crap the average american film commissioned-directors make, that doesn't mean they are foreign. For me Luc Besson has always been very Hollywood, in his own way. Now he even shoots videoclips for Madonna. Couldn't he be more?

Anyway, I love David Lynch because he is nuts and his films are unique, magical, dream-like, nonsensical, scary, beautiful, sublime! WOO-HOO!

"Did they scoff the whole damn Smörgåsbord?" (Audrey) 

"Gimme a donut!" (Coop)

My post was more about what foreign films actually have in common - nothing. That's why I picked a French and a Norwegian film that have American actors in it. Saying you hate foreign films means about as much to me as saying you hate canned foods. Since Mira Nair was mentioned, I'll just say that I love Monsoon Wedding and hate the pretentiousness of the American avant-garde (like Stan Brakhage and Jonas Mekas) and leave it at that.

I can live with being a condescending prick too.

PS: Silencio, Luc Besson did not as far as I know "go to Hollywood". In the documentary on The Fifth Element I saw on telly way back when it premiered, the crew was pretty much all French from the top down to the digital effects work. The only thing Hollywood about it (again, I could be wrong) is the cast. Same with Factotum, which is written, produced and directed by a Norwegian, with Norwegian composer, cinematographer etc. A lot of the crew further down the line is American, but that's the case for pretty much any movie shot abroad. I think these kinds of productions are interesting as they're definitely foreign, just not in language. Brings up some nice parallels to Italian exploitation cinema of the 60s and 70s, like Argento and even Leone.

"What credit card do you want to put that on?"
"Caash, prease."

I'm starting to suspect the 'David Lynch fans are snobs' argument is an urban myth. It definately doesn't exist outside the US. But 12rainbow has a point about people needing to expand their minds. I'm so bored of reading posts by people who didn't like/understand the films. It's like every time a fifteen year old Buffy The Vampire Slayer fan doesn't get Mulholland Drive the whole of the Twin Peaks online community has to be punished. I DON'T CARE! I also think Booth's right about condescension being rife on the internet but that's got more to do with bad parenting than the films of David Lynch. I've never felt patronised on this board but to be fair I mostly write posts nobody else reads .   

And Mr Silencio made a really good point about American fans seeing anything from outside the US as foreign. Oh I know us non-US residents must seem like impossibly exotic creatures but I grew up thinking ET, Goonies and Raiders of the Lost Ark were foreign. You have no idea how alien waste disposal units, trailer parks and fat children seemed to me.  

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying people haven't tried, I just said I've never felt patronised. I've been a David Lynch fan since I was fifteen (half my life) and his films are one of my favourite things about being alive. I know them inside out. I find it laughable that people consider his films obscure and elitist. If I wanted to participate in a cultural circlejerk there are names I could drop that are far more chic and cutting edge than DL (but not as good). And if I wake up tomorrow and decide I want to watch The Fast and the Furious that doesn't in any way make me a prick or a moron. I could give loads of examples of so-called moron films I like (nay love) but then I'd look like one of those people who claims to like bad films whilst making sure everybody knows they're being ironic. When it comes to exclusion I like most of the people on this board but I'm most definately an outsider and I don't find that threatening or demeaning in any way. I have complete faith in my own superiority (ithat was a joke before anybody starts!).    

Oh and on the subject of IMDB my spider senses were right about franny_cky - one of her posts on this board was pasted straight from IMDB (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105665/board/nest/88888347) and the person who wrote it seemed a) genuine and b) sane. Draw your own conclusions.
 

Um, what? Subtitles and dubbing. I could care less where it was shot. They can interfere with the overall viewing experience. Certainly I've seen some good really tremendous foreign language films, but I can't give the film my full attention, or appreciate the nuances of the actors voices if they're not in English.  It takes astounding visuals and narrative to really float my boat when I watch a foreign film.  And the subtitles have to have a certain poetry to them that gets me in the first few minutes.  (I won't even watch a dubbed movie.)

They have nothing in common - until they're subtitled in English. I'm not a native English speaker myself, so it's kinda hard - and pointless - for me to think of all films not in English as some massive entity with something in common. They are for you, I get that. But I do think you're missing out if you avoid subtitles. That they automatically stop you from enjoying visuals and the like is some sort of recent American myth, in the 70s and early 80s Americans watched a lot of foreign-language films, it's only nowadays it's been reduced to one percent or so (I don't have the statistics handy). You get used to subtitles. Being interested in arts and cinema and avoiding watching foreign-language films at all is a luxury only native English-speakers can really afford, and in my opinion even those (you) miss some of the best films ever made, as well as some of the best silly entertainment. Telling someone what they should watch is something I never do and I won't do it now either. Just saying there are lots of good films out there. And the vocal nuances you might miss are nothing compared to the cinematic nuances you miss by not watching them at all.

Dubbed films, on the other hand, should be avoided like the plague. In-studio dubbing like in Italian cinema occasionally works, though. Argento confusingly dubbed English and Italian soundtracks where none are superior to the other. And Fellini dubbed everything - in some cases really badly to add self-reflexive discrepancies to the film. But mostly it's terrible and to be avoided. I watched five minutes of agent Cooper speaking German as an experiment once and I had to watch the rest of the episode in English just to reset.

"What credit card do you want to put that on?"
"Caash, prease."