David Lynch's Victorian Nightmare | The Elephant Man (1980) | LynchPins Ep 2

[@JessieGender1]

Seriously, your conversations are a joy and your on screen friendship is just absolutely fun. Adore this show and both of you!

[@stephanieok5365]

Such a perfect show name too 🎉

[@Xepscern]

It's interesting because... David Lynch and Mel Brooks are both massive names that allowed this film to be made, and yet it's not at *all* like their usual works outside.

[@RyanMichero]

At the time Mel Brooks was a massive name, but David Lynch was not. Eraserhead was his only film, and it was only known from the people that saw it in weird midnight movie screenings, very much a cult film.

[@DrySushi]

Elephant Man is so good it even looks great on a cellphone

[@theoneandonlymichaelmccormick]

Get real!

[@karlriddell3396]

such a sadness

[@RyanMichero]

Don't watch it on a cel phone or Lynch will yell at you

[@dford145]

Lynch is coming for ya

[@CharleyDeppner]

I've held the long conviction that _The Elephant Man_ is the one film that can actually teach empathy.

[@SheSmilesattheFuture75]

I believe that too ❤️

[@QuinnsIdeas]

I'm loving the podcast! Happy that there is another episode!

[@MaggieMaeFish]

😇😇

[@Antonicane]

Almost certainly Lynch's most 'mainstream' film in terms of broad appeal, but also IMO one of his absolute best. A poignant and beautiful tribute to the turbulent life and times of Joseph Merrick.

[@2nd3rd1st]

13:50 "He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching elephants right before she died."

[@jeremysmith4620]

I honestly forget it is John Hurt under that make-up. He literally disappears into the role between his masterclass performance and the incredible make-up. I find the film so beautiful. Every frame is just stunning and makes the most of the black and white palette. Well worth a watch or ten.

[@grapeshot]

I remember when I was a kid going to the movies to see this when it first came out in 1980 and being upset because he didn't look like an elephant.

[@ttthecat]

YT asked me to rate your comment- I gave it excellent for funny and relatable.😃

[@theoneandonlymichaelmccormick]

Same, except replace a movie theater in the 80s with a Tim Horton’s drive-thru ten years ago, asking my father to explain the title of the Mastodon song he was listening to.

[@Jean-PaulMichell]

LOL

[@plasticweapon]

"i don't wanna go to europe, i wanna go see the elephant man..."

[@intereality]

I've barely started this episode and I'm already looking forward to you guys covering Mulholland Drive....

[@michaeldebellis4202]

Yeah, one of my all time favorite movies Just watched it again a couple weeks ago.

[@ColombianThunder]

One of the few movies to successfully make me cry. It breaks my heart more than most sad movies

[@SUPERMEDIABROTHERS6]

You just happened to release the first episode of this right after I had watched “The Straight Story” for the first time. And this came out just before I was about to watch “The Elephant Man” for the first time. I think you’ve inspired a watch along now. I have no choice but to revisit the other movies he’s made now.

[@Wetcamerainc]

It feels like lynch places these heart wrenching scenes in his movies but without the surrounding journey they wouldnt be so devastating

[@Smethells2023]

This is a magnificent film. Everyone should watch it at some point in their lives. Highlights the importance and value of basic human kindness, offering sympathy, and giving dignity.

[@ItsYourDistraction]

This was the Lynch film that got me completely on board with his work. Now I adore it all.

[@matthewhearn9910]

Hannibal Lecter is a kind of interesting side thread when it comes to Lynch. Aside from the Hopkins connection, Lynch was actually offered the chance to direct the adaptation of Red Dragon that ended up being Michael Mann’s “Manhunter” while he was still under the De Laurentiis banner in the Dune-Blue Velvet era of his career. He reportedly considered the prospect, but rejected it as he thought the material, and the creative space he would have to inhabit to adapt it, was too dark. One wonders if a Lost Highway era Lynch would have had the same hesitations. Also, perhaps inspired by that anecdote, “What would David Lynch do with these characters” was reportedly Bryan Fuller’s starting point when creating the TV series Hannibal, primarily an adaptation of Red Dragon produced, again, by the De Laurentiis company.

[@Jean-PaulMichell]

A Lynch version of Red Dragon, now that would have been something....

[@ryanporterhouse]

@@Jean-PaulMichellPretty much got that in the final half-season of the Hannibal tv show

[@adampoll4977]

There are scenes in this movie that even THINKING about them make me tear up. There is an incredible HUMANITY in Lynch's work, an innate kindness underneath the depictions of a sometimes unkind world.

[@terryflynn6927]

I just got to the part where you talked about whether it's ever been a musical. Not a real one, but it was the major plot point of The Tall Guy starring Jeff Golbloom and Emma Thompson as actors in (i believe) the West End world premire of "Elephant!" the musical. Goldbloom's character plays John. "Somewhere, up in Heaven, there's an angel with big ears!" is sung as a winged Elephant Man is flown by wires up into the rafters.

[@mattgilbert7347]

"Here he comes - Mr. Disgusting!"

[@davetinoco]

I have only sobbed hysterically in 2 films in my entire life; one was Dancer in the Dark starring Bjork, and the other was The Elephant Man. This movie left me an uncontrollable mess of emotions, of tears and deep feelings of sadness. But the ending was so beautiful. So loving. So much a precursor to Twin Peaks and what it would become. Laura Palmer was born in The Elephant Man.

[@ranniazorya]

Really liked the ‘he’s been so abused that he’s never shown anyone his humanity’ line.

[@JosephRocco-mi4cm]

Those who say this movie is not typical Lynch; this is totally a Lynch movie through and through. Even though he was hired to direct it, he made it his own.

[@PirateJacques79]

33:23 - There WAS a musical! (of sorts) It happened as a play-within-a-film in the romantic comedy 'The Tall Guy' starring Jeff Goldblum and Emma Thompson.

[@ziggystardog]

I thought so! At first I thought it was one of those spoof pitches in some animated series like The Family Guy, but this made me realize it was ‘Hunch’ the musical from The Critic, I think. I’m losing to a bird, yet again.

[@cvtdesign82]

Elephant man is amazing. Some of the best set design and costumes. The end always destroys me. When I went to London had to see the tiny John Merrick Museum

[@Antonicane]

The ending is very bittersweet, but at the same time I think it's quite moving. It's the one conscious choice that John Merrick is allowed to make, and in a sense, it's an act demonstrating his own agency; taking charge of his own destiny.

[@cvtdesign82]

@@Antonicane Oh for sure. That coupled with the music always just gets me everytime.

[@Maoismus1917]

MY FAVOURITE MOVIE

[@Adam-bx4us2]

I could listen to Maggie talk about anything. Happy coincidence that she has a show about David Lynch, one of my favorites! Wonderful show 🎷🥧☕️

[@ttthecat]

How fast did I run to watch the hour long Maggie Mae drop? So fast!🏃🏽‍♀️🏃🏽‍♀️🏃🏽‍♀️ I have such a great way to enjoy my lunch break!!!🤩

[@HazMatt88]

I saw this movie in one of my high school classes, i remember enjoying it and thinking it was very sad

[@cheekylix]

I always liked to think that there's actually two David Lynchs. The industrial Lynch of Eraserhead, this one, and Dune. And then there's the suburban Lynch of Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, and so forth.

[@Jean-PaulMichell]

I've considered this also. His first three films have this odd industrial element running through them, with dialogue describing the treachery of 'machines' appearing in Elephant Man and then mirrored in Dune ( spoken by the third-stage guild navigator, to the emperor ). And yes Blue Velvet kicked off the suburban-set era of Lynch. All very interesting.

[@ruthspanos2532]

I was in Junior High when this movie came out. We had weekly readers and sometimes there would be dialogue from movies that we would read out loud, being assigned different parts. I’m not sure if I ever saw the movie, but I definitely remember a scenes from it. It was actually a pretty cool idea. I remember we read dialogue from lots of movies. Even though it was frustrating how many kids read their lines without any feeling.

[@karabearcomics]

While I was watching this, I couldn't help but think that David Lynch would actually be a great pick to helm an adaptation of DC Comics' Doom Patrol. I mean, he's weird enough that it fits with "the world's strangest heroes" moniker, but this movie in particular shows he could also be one who best understands how to show characters who are considered by society to be freaks, but as actually incredibly human. Now, I know Doom Patrol had a TV show, but I can imagine it might get a movie in the James Gunn-led DCU at some point.

[@Sobreversivo]

It's awesome to have these silent loud conversations with you.

[@MichelleAiello]

This is the best content to grace KZbin in a LONG time! Well done!

[@Len11999]

My favourite monthly podcast!! 🥰

[@mysticoferis]

This was actually my first Lynch film, we watched it in one of my high school science classes weirdly enough

[@AxeMan808]

When I saw The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs, "Meal Ticket" with Liam Neeson and Harry Melling reminded me SO MUCH of this.

[@ZeroIndent]

Absolutely love this podcast. The right kind of disciplinary interest I have in media studies and the vibes are perrrrfect, much love from Australia

[@maldaror7097]

Feels like they should do a double bill of this and Greatest Showman.

[@trol68419]

10/10 absolute banger of a video, no notes But seriously that was a lot of fun, thanks for making it! I can't wait to see the Dune and Blue Velvet discussions

[@cinemaocd1752]

I recently watched David Lean's Oliver Twist for the first time and I think there are a lot of callbacks to it Elephant Man, especially among the more grotesque characters that come to visit Merrick in the hospital with the Night Porter The actor that played the nigh porter is also a dead ringer for Bob Newton the actor who played Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist.

[@mathieuleader8601]

the Vangelis style intro theme is neat

[@metapowm4881]

On a technical level the movie is an absolute masterpiece, the acting, the makeup, the stage design, the sound, etc are all some of the best ive seen and I understand the universal praise it receives but at the same time I found it to be a deeply unpleasant movie to watch in a way that makes me not want to ever view it again, almost in a similar vein to how I felt upon watching Grave of the Fireflies Instead of beautiful my main impression was how depressing it all was and how uncomfortable I was looking at the wonderfully done makeup on John Hurts whenever he was on screen. I also could not relate at all to your discussion about how the conflicting feelings of wanting to see the "monster" but not feel like you are exploiting it like all the characters do. I just never had that curiosity to see exactly what he looked like in that way so its fascinating to me that it was a kind of major topic to you and apparently so many other viewers but I guess thats the beauty of a piece of art like this. There is no one correct way to experience it

[@harrisonshields7084]

My mom rented this movie for me and my siblings back in the 80s when we were kids not because she was a movie buff at all, but because she thought it was actually from the black and white era of film and thus must be wholesome because it was (so she thought) old. So that's how my fundamentalist, evangelical mom introduced me to the work of David Lynch. 😂

[@Joey_Headset]

Cool episode. I know it's really obscure, but do you think you'll get around to doing an episode about "On the Air", the (very) short lived David Lynch sitcom? It was one of the strangest things that has ever been aired on broadcast TV.

[@MaggieMaeFish]

Possibly as some kind of bonus episode after we get through his main body of work...

[@Jean-PaulMichell]

​@@MaggieMaeFishSo there is more Lynch content on the way? Excellent.

[@eddue12345]

I will cry my eyes out if I watch this movie, I just know it!

[@GrandArchPriestOfTheAlgorithm]

Hey, aren't that the woman from Identiteaze? The one that wasn't in Star Wars.

[@Vexxa_]

My parents were in on *betamax* of all formats - they were also into laserdiscs and, yes, we still have them - and i have such a vivid memory of seeing the betamax of the elephant man on our shelf as a tiny child. i made up the plot of the movie from the image on the box because they would not let me watch it at that age

[@ahobimo732]

God I love the weirdness of this series! That intro, Maggie? You fucking killed it! 😆😆😆

[@DeathMetalDerf]

I've always loved his unhinged films

[@michaeldebellis4202]

Are any of his films hinged?

[@ColombianThunder]

​@@michaeldebellis4202The Straight Story

[@mathieuleader8601]

I'm hoping Gummo is on the cards for a Lynch like film in the future

[@natalieshark]

The recurring joke about Bytes with the sex worker has me dying.

[@MrJohndoakes]

Not mentioned was the "Elephant Man" stage play which started running in London in 1977, closed in 1981, and had nothing to do with Lynch's film at all.

[@MrJohndoakes]

I bring it up because "Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide" mentioned the stage play in their capsule review if only to point out that you never see a deformed Joseph Merrick in the stage play, you have to imagine what he looks like, and the "Movie Guide" never points out that play and film are unrelated.

[@samm8410]

If you’re looking for more Lynch-inspired movies to discuss, I Saw the TV Glow is out in theaters right now and takes a lot of influence from him.

[@RyanMichero]

NICE, I just watched The Elephant Man!

[@lassoroot]

I can't believe the guy from scooby doo played Mr. Bites

[@HuplesCat]

Never seen it. Mind you I watched singing in the rain tonight and I’d not seen that either!

[@els1f]

-Wow! Are you okay? -Nope! 🤣😭😒😭

[@casanovafunkenstein5090]

My reading is that the opening thing is meant to be a representation of the story that the freak show would tell when Merrick was on display. It's meant to imply that he was conceived during an unnatural and non consensual encounter between his mother and a bull elephant. It's not even remotely true within the fiction of the film, but it's an immediate dehumanisation of the main character to the audience, which sets up the central theme of the film, where his inherent humanity is juxtaposed against the sensationalist claims made about him and the endless voyeurism from the supposedly normal people he encounters. Overall, I interpret the film as an allegory for the dehumanisation experienced by sex workers who are made reliant on their pimps to access food and shelter whilst having their labour mostly serve to enrich people who exploit them. I want to stress that I don't think that it's representative of all sex work, just the kinds of scenarios that tend to be more common when vulnerable people without alternatives are forced to become sex workers against their will for the sake of survival, as well as stating that criminalisation of sex work prevents people in these circumstances from accessing the means to defend themselves from abusers like the type depicted in this film, because people who have been trafficked or otherwise forced into sex work shouldn't have to worry about going to prison and/or having the cops take away all their money by way of 'civil forfeiture' when they report crimes that have been committed against themselves to the authorities. Criminalisation of sex work gags the mouths of people who are victims of trafficking and modern slavery, whilst protecting the perpetrators of those crimes and emboldening johns to violently assault them by making the consequences worse for sex workers speaking up about the harm being done to them than the people doing the harm.

[@HypatiaMuse]

I saw the thumbnail & thought for a second Matt Christman was back.

[@oriorb]

This was the exact movie I was hoping you'd cover next!! I'm really loving the podcast :)

[@Allandi89]

The famous quote...so famous you got it wrong

[@anthonywheeler2082]

I have another question. If you two are going to be covering movies inspired by Lynch's work at some point, would you two also cover videogames inspired by his work? Like The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, Silent Hill 1 and especially Silent Hill 2 (Lots of Blue Velvet references throughout the game, duality etc.), the Deadly Premonition games. There's been quite a few actually.

[@MaggieMaeFish]

We don't have firm plans yet, since it'll take a while to get there. But videogamea are on the table for sure, and I do love me some Silent Hill...

[@fonofiofone]

movies sure are cool n so's talking about em!

[@marcuswalters8093]

Nice bob. 👌🏼

[@Karveyheitel]

Dear GOD! Pls go back to video essay/analyses. You were SO good! Pls dont respond to this comment and put me in my place im fragile and wont be able to go on …. Lololol also watched elephant man with my father as a child. Good memory

[@AlDo-pd8uc]

How long until Eraserhead?

[@MaggieMaeFish]

It'll be one of the last movies in this season ✏️

[@M-CH_]

To me the industrial stuff showing up throughout the film are allusions to what really happend to John Merrick's mother.

[@erich623]

Wait, the Night Porter is part of this movie?!

[@ChefWillChill]

When you put the ideas elephants, industrialization and exploitation in my mind, I think of that black and white silent film that shows Edison electrocuting an elephant at the worlds fair.

[@fede2]

Not to stir the pot, but this is one of my least favorite Lynch films. Mostly because it's not what you expect given the whole ouvre (this may be my own fault), but also because it's pretty unsubtle. It bothered me that Anthony Hopkins' character actually sits down and thinks out loud that he might be treating him like a circus freak as well almost immediately after he was called out for that. I mean, it's a really cool motif to structure the movie around, but they say it out loud *twice*. None of this necessarily stops me from liking it altogether, but it really stands out in Lynch's filmography, in that he frequently has you guessing and racking your brain over what he means to convey.

[@casanovafunkenstein5090]

I know what you mean, but I do get the sense that one aspect of why that particular choice was made is because the film is really trying to channel the style and filmic vocabulary of the Universal monster movies of the 30s and 40s, which were made in an era where people were permitted to enter the cinema partway through the screening because they would be running multiple films, adverts, shorts, cartoons, news, etc. pretty much non stop throughout the day and your ticket was enough to allow you to be there pretty much all day, on the grounds that you'd be buying concession items at a mark up throughout your visit. As a result of this, those films do sometimes have a tendency to have the characters over-explain things in order to get people caught up with the story so far because if they couldn't keep up with it they probably wouldn't stick around for it to come back in the rotation and wouldn't buy anything from the cigarette and ice cream girls during the interval. They might also have come away with a negative experience of the film and told their friends that it was confusing and bad, so they shouldn't bother with it. Cinema culture was completely different to what it is now, because there was no television and it was the only option available if you wanted to watch a film, or a cartoon, or do something besides getting drunk in the evening when everything else that wasn't a bar would be closed by about 7pm at the very latest. Getting back on topic: I fully get why you feel that way about it and I'm not telling you you that you should like it, I just feel like it's an interesting anachronism for a film from the 80s to be written like that for stylistic reasons, rather than out of practical necessity as would have been the case back when films like Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Invisible Man, The Mummy, etc and their various sequels were being produced.

[@jlord9638]

I saw your videos on Josphe Campbell on art I am halfway between both of you. In my personal oppion art can be social criticism but the greatest art of all time is NOT.

[@chrispytheBlindSocialist]

Nebula sounds great & all until you remember they are not welcoming of all views.

[@HueyGnash]

5:50 Scorpios unit! We will take over the world one day!!!!

[@LayneBenofsky]

hot damn.

[@smdb2304]

He looks like paymoneywubbys scholarly uncle

[@just2watch1clip]

You two became too hot during the spotlight portion. How am I supposed to follow what's being said?

[@NicK-dm2ck]

SO HOT

[@TheStonedSpidR]

I hope youre not changing up your format for this

[@MaggieMaeFish]

Nope! This is just EXTRA!!! I'M WORKING TWICE AS HARD I'M FINE, IT'S FINE

[@vitaminwater9662]

how entitled can u be

[@mog068]

Eww homeless people in the park. So hard to handle.

[@mbbag1980]

this woman is addictively gorgeous. i can't understand why she makes me feel this way. such a unique beauty. and her voice has overtones of sensuality, warmth and irony, perfectly blended. god i like her so much. edit: it's the cheekbones.

[@vitaminwater9662]

look up what a parasocial relationship is homie you def got one

[@queztocoaxial]

You should delete this creepy comment.

[@eddue12345]

I will cry my eyes out if I watch this movie, I just know it!