They are intellectuals, he's spiritual (not the same as pious). But the Coens think up a story and cleanly work out its mechanism, Lynch's work seems to come from prolonged stays in meditative habitation of that world. Blue Velvet and Raizing Arizona, I can't think of one without the other, both with a dreamlike noir engine that skewers idyllic middle America. The Coens for example, who are closest to him in several ways, both work with metaphysics and indulge loves for song, noir and dreams. What sets Lynch apart is that others create movies as self-enclosed worlds for Lynch it's rather one larger, open-ended world that he carries with him everywhere and now and then summons some part of it in movie form. But can he be thought of as one of them now? No indeed and that's how much he has evolved. At this point Lynch could still be thought of as one among the quirky bunch that included the Coens, Stone and soon Tarantino. It's the same audience that was going to receive Pulp Fiction with plaudits in a few years. I would have to guess that the French saw some of this as archetypally tweaked America, quintessential in the fracture. It was awarded the top prize that year at Cannes.

It has enough going for it either way a road movie given to us with a gonzo eye, crime and anguish as kitchen- sink ritual, archetypally American male and female avatars of sexual youth, a sense of wanting to just love but the world is a wicked place, and if that's not enough something else will come along in the next scene. It speaks just as well about every other film he made of course where a certain amount of fear makes the things to dream about stand out from the night as all the more urgent. This is how Lynch described his attraction to Gifford's book.

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