The merest glimpse of a weirdly compelling movie
Bill Paxton‘s Spinal Tap-inspired boyfriend creaks onto the scene in his leather kecks. chortle as serious actor Kurtwood Smith tussles with some of the most inept dialogue ever written. and burst into blubbering hysterics when you realise Art Garfunkel now looks like Van Morrison mated with a koala bear. Lynch junior has an answer for everything — that. ‘I knew in this movie i would have to allow for some humour because otherwise the viewer wouldn’t be able to tolerate the images.’ and that ‘I knew I couldn’t let the audience be too close to the characters otherwise it would just be monstrous’ — responses that sound sensible in print. ye' which in person sound like a sort of self- justifying spiel made up after the event. There's surely more than a touch of disingenuousness about a lot of what Lynch says. Having grown up in a movie-privileged background (she has been on
set for all of papa’s films since Dune and wrote the Twin Peaks
novelisation. The Secret Diary Of Laura Palmer). and having fought for five years to make her film. there are elements of both nepotism and hard graft in her resume. but surely if she’d just made a halfway accomplished film she wouldn’t have to mewl so much about her current treatment in the light of the ‘publicity nightmare’ she calls
‘People who are expecting a film like my father would have made are going to have to realise that I don’t want to make the films that he makes.’
the Kim Basinger trial. ‘I don’t know if the film will
ever be viewed the way l wanted it to be viewed because of all this mess.’ she sighs. ‘it’s just a little film and the pressure on the idea has become magnified 50 times because of all the attention. Sherilyn’s really pleased because she’s in something that everyone‘s talking about. but I’m not sure all the talk is really helping the movie. I guess I have this constant battle with my own self- esteem because I keep taking people back in time to this nineteen-year-old girl who wanted to make a small film. l didn’t know all this was going to happen.’ Cl
Boxing Helena opens Friday I 8 June a! UCIs and city centre Orleans.