Everyone knows that David Lynch is done with making films, but what the latest news from the Cannes Film Festival presupposes is, maybe he isn’t?
As reported by the fan site Welcome To Twin Peaks, the 71-year old American master, who was implying that 2006’s self-financed Inland Empire was his last feature film as recently as three weeks ago, has decided to renegotiate the public terms of his retirement from the big screen. In an interview with the Belgian newspaper Le Soir, Lynch—who was at Cannes to present the first two episodes of his uncompromising revival of Twin Peaks—stated that some of his remarks about being done with film “have been misrepresented.”
Considering that said remarks have included answering “Yes, it is,” to the question of whether he had made his final feature, we’ll chalk this “misrepresented” business to bit of politician-style backpedaling on the part of the usually plainspoken director, who clarified, “I did not say I quit cinema. Simply that nobody knows what the future holds.” So there you have it. That’s as close to a definitive answer as you’re going to get from Lynch or from any of his work.
Given his visibly emotional response to the standing ovation he received at Cannes earlier this week, maybe he’s just realized how much he misses this stupid business and wants to leave possibilities open. Or maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all.