Who is the dreamer?

Many have tried, but few have succeeded in getting the straight story from David Lynch. With his aversions to linear storytelling and explanations of his often inscrutable films, a straightforward autobiography was probably never in the cards for iconoclast director and magnificent weirdo, and that’s why the call-and-response construction of Room to Dream is so ingenious. For this hybrid biography/memoir, critic-journalist (and longtime Lynch friend) Kristine McKenna tackled the just-the-facts biographical bits, very standardly organized in chapters describing pivotal periods of Lynch’s life and career: Childhood, art school, the making of Elephant Man, etc. Lynch read McKenna’s pieces and presented his own recollections in reply. Like his films, his memories are unconstrained by narrative, often dropping into peculiar moments that would appear later in his work, whether it’s a shocking moment from Blue Velvet or a seemingly inscrutable clue from Twin Peaks. Lynch’s singular voice and stream-of-consciousness style are transmitted faithfully to the page, and a reader might imagine Lynch dictating his comments from a dark basement studio, speaking into a vintage chrome microphone. For fans, this is damn fine reading.

We asked McKenna about Lynch, what it was like to write a book with such an unconventional collaborator, and other Lynchian things (though, unfortunately, not about Dune—a sandworm-sized oversight!). Room to Dream was a top ten selection for Amazon’s Best Books of the Month for June 2018.

You’ve been friends with Lynch for years. Whose idea was it to publish a biography-memoir? Did your friendship influence the book in any way, anticipated or not?

It was my idea to do the book. David had mentioned at various points how much misinformation there was out there about him, and I said to him, okay, why don’t we tell the story and tell it correctly once and for all? He thought that was a good idea.

I wouldn’t say our friendship affected the book, but the fact that we were writing it together definitely did. This is primarily David’s book, and there is nothing in there that he did not want in there. This isn’t to suggest that he was controlling—he definitely was not, and he allowed other people to tell their stories of their relationships with him as they saw fit, even if he didn’t always agree with them. Nonetheless, there are gaps, and I’m aware that the book is expansive on some subjects and just brushes over others. For instance, one reviewer faulted me—they didn’t fault David, they faulted me—for the fact that the book didn’t go into depth on the subject of the death of David’s mother. This, however, was not something David wanted to discuss. He was not obligated to share his thoughts and feelings about every area of his life just because he was doing a book. It always puzzles me when reviewers take the position of “hey, I’ve been cheated.” I, of course, asked some other interview subjects about this question and nobody had much to say about it. Sometimes you simply can’t get as much information as you want!

The call-and–response format is ingenious, and it allows Lynch to participate in Lynchian ways. Was that always the plan, or was it a process that developed out of practical considerations?

The call-and-response was always part of the plan and here’s the reason why: After reading the book I wanted readers to feel that they’d “experienced” David. David has a very unfettered conversational style and writing the book in a conventional format simply couldn’t have accommodated that. He’s a great storyteller, and often goes off on tangents that I couldn’t have anticipated, and I wanted that part of him to be part of the book. At the same time, I wanted it to be a “book of record,” and if David had been entirely in charge, tons of facts and figures would’ve been left out. He doesn’t remember things like dates and budgets, and that stuff is part of the story, too.

One of the aspects that I enjoyed the most was when Lynch remembered events differently than his associates. Was there any urge to reconcile accounts?

Absolutely not. As Fred Madison says in Lost Highway, “I like to remember things in my own way.” David is keenly aware of the fact, and respects the fact, that each person experiences the world in a way that’s unique to them, and he’s not interested in arguing with anybody else’s version. There was one anecdote in the book that was cut because he said “that flat out never happened.” Mostly, though, he was fascinated by the stories others had to tell and left their stories intact.

How do you get a guy who famously doesn’t like to explain his work sit down and talk about his life?

With considerable difficulty!!! I can’t say that David enjoyed working on the book. We had fun together, but having his life laid out there in a book wasn’t something he relished. But who would, really? Our working methodology was simple: I would write a chapter and send it to him. Then I would make an egg salad sandwich for him, I’d go up to his house, and he’d respond to the chapter while he ate the egg salad sandwich. I would then turn his commentary into text that he would cut, rewrite, and edit. I periodically had too reassure him, “don’t worry David. There won’t be anything in this book that you don’t want in there,” but basically things went smoothly. Twin Peaks: The Return was green lit ONE WEEK after he agreed to do the book, but David always keeps his word, and he continued to work on the book throughout the making of the show—which was a HUGE amount of work for him. Eighteen hour days for eighteen months. The fact that we completed the book in just three years is kind of amazing.

You’ve listed a tremendous amount of sources for the book. Who do you wish you could have interviewed for the book, but couldn’t?

Oh there are so many! Several key people in David’s life had passed away by the time I began work on the book. Among them are his parents, Don & Sunny Lynch, Alan Splet, Jack Nance, Herb Cardwell, John Hurt, Dino De Laurentiis, Freddie Francis, and Roy Orbison. I would’ve loved to hear John Gielgud’s take on the young David Lynch, and I just missed Miguel Ferrer. It would‘ve been nice to speak to David Bowie, too. A very few people declined to speak with me—Nic Cage was among them, and I don’t know what that was about. Patricia Arquette and Anthony Hopkins never responded to repeated emails. Mostly, though, people were eager to talk to me about David because the people who know him and work with him love him.

What makes Lynch a great artist, despite the difficulty (or inscrutability) of his films?

What makes him great is the expansiveness of his vision, and his instinctual understanding of human existence. David never loses sight of the profound mystery that’s sort of quivering at the core of everything in this universe, from birth and death, to a dimly lit street and red lipstick. He has a kind of rapturous engagement with existence that’s pretty unusual.

What do you hope Lynch fans—the really deep-divers—will discover in Room to Dream?

I hope they will discover what a good person he is—and David really is a good person—and find it a bit easier to embrace the cosmic logic of his work. David is a great artist, and as is the case with all great artists, the viewer has to meet him halfway.

Photograph © Scott Ressler