![]() At the time, I had a few different employment options on the table and kept asking for more time. ![]() He wanted me to travel to North Carolina to shoot at Dino De Laurentiis’s studio in Wilmington, North Carolina. He was in Los Angeles and had received the greenlight to get to hiring his crew. Once I finished reading, I didn’t want to talk to anyone else and I didn’t even go to the screening with my friends! I just turned around and drove home in silence.įilmmaker: Had the film commenced principal photography by this point? Or was David trying to assemble his post-production team beforehand?ĭunham: Beforehand. The screenplay was as impactful as the film turned out to be, all right there on the page. I remember having made arrangements to meet some friends to go see a movie and arrived early and sat in the parking lot as I finished reading the script. David gave me the script and said, “Read this and let me know what you think.” I went to the airport to take a flight back to Marin County and began reading the script on the plane. We shared a couple of “aw shucks” and “gee whizzes” in the meeting and it quickly became clear that we were speaking the same language. One day, David’s secretary called to connect me with him, and David told me, “I’m doing this picture and I’d like you to cut it.” I responded, “Well, maybe you ought to meet me first.” I flew down to LA., where David’s office was, over at, I believe, Raleigh Studios, right by Paramount, and met with him very quickly. I was pretty fresh off Return of the Jedi and finishing up a picture for Orion, Phillip Borsos’s The Mean Season Kurt Russell and Mariel Hemingway. Alan was legally blind, so travel for him was difficult. (he wanted to be away from all of that pressure), and David’s good friend, the excellent sound designer Alan Splet, lived in Berkeley. There are only a few bonafide film editors in the Bay Area, and David had specifically wanted to do post-production on Blue Velvet in Berkeley, California for two reasons: he didn’t want to be around the film studios in L.A. or New York where there are so many people. The work pool in the Bay Area is very small, not like L.A. I was living up in the Bay Area, having attended the film program at San Francisco State University and then on George Lucas’s films. Did you know David before then?ĭunham: I didn’t know David personally, but I knew of his work, of course. At the time, you had been working for George Lucas quite a bit in the editorial departments on The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, which, ironically enough, was a film David Lynch had at one point been in talks to direct. I believe he called you one day out of the blue to gauge your interest in working on Blue Velvet, so you flew out to meet him in Los Angeles. As you’ll read below, Dunham and Lynch share many things in common beyond each having a directorial effort currently available on Disney+.įilmmaker: I wanted to begin our conversation by asking about your initial encounter with David Lynch. A few days before the screening, I phoned Dunham to discuss his initial impression of working with Lynch, how he was able to negotiate directing several episodes of Twin Peaks at the height of its popularity (Dunham’s directorial debut, seen by over 15 million viewers, aired 32 years ago today), and, after a “Laura Palmer-sized” 25-year gap, returning to work with Lynch on Showtime’s Twin Peaks: The Return. ![]() Īn industry veteran who has continued to work extensively for both Lynch and George Lucas, Dunham was recently in Chicago to partake in a Q&A for Blue Velvet last Thursday. Running through April 14th, the retrospective also includes several in-person appearances, one being from Duwayne Dunham, Lynch’s editor on Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks: The Return. Blue Velvet, David Lynch, Duwayne Dunham, Twin Peaksįive years after the Music Box Theatre ’s previous David Lynch retrospective coincided with the television premiere of the highly anticipated Twin Peaks: The Return, the Chicago-based arthouse now presents David Lynch: A Complete Retrospective – The Return, a week-long celebration of Lynch’s work that also pays tribute to his many collaborators, friends and, in one particular instance, offspring.
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