New on DVD

By Sean Axmaker
Special to MSN Movies

David Lynch can be a tough interview. He refuses to explain his movies, discuss his imagery, dissect his style or even offer an opinion on your own interpretation. "I think every interpretation is valid," he maintains, and he doesn't want to impose his ideas on the audience.

But get him talking about the DVD of his newest film, "Inland Empire," and he's a man inspired. He personally produced the "2-Disk" [sic] DVD release of the film, overseeing everything from mastering the film to producing his own slate of supplements, through his company Absurda. He's happy to talk about the technology and the supplements, as well as the growth of home theater, his idea of ideal viewing conditions and why watching movies on phones is just plain wrong. And he even explains why he loves digital video, which he's only recently embraced: "It's its own look and feel; it's not film. I think I like it with less detail; it kind of gives more room to dream."

MSN Movies: What's in your DVD player?

David Lynch: I saw "The Hustler" last week, with Paul Newman, Piper Laurie, Jackie Gleason and George C. Scott. It's a great film. It's black and white, and it really sets a place and a time and a world, and I really enjoyed watching it again.

Do you have a favorite DVD?

"Sunset Boulevard." Billy Wilder's "Sunset Boulevard" is maybe my favorite world to go into.

Do you ever check out the DVD supplements?

Hardly ever. But I gotta say, on the "Inland Empire" DVD, they're worth checking out.

You have, of course, never done a commentary track, but the "Stories" section of the "Inland Empire" disc could almost be a stand-alone commentary because you talk about so many things around the film.

I believe talking is OK separate from a thing, but a commentary track that goes along through a film, I think, is maybe the worst possible thing a person could do. From then on, the film is seen in terms of the memory of that commentary and it changes things forever.

You have about 70 minutes of deleted footage in the "More Things That Happened" section and you've edited them so they play like their own dreamlike film.

Right. There are things in "More Things That Happened" that give a feeling that could be like a brother or sister to the film. It's like if you know a family, but you haven't met the sister yet. You go over to Ohio and meet the sister, and it adds more to the feeling of the whole family.

In the "Stories" section of the "Inland Empire" supplements, you go on a rant about people watching movies on their phones. So how do you feel about the huge explosion of home theater?

I feel great about the home theater. It's so hopeful. It's a counterpart to the telephone experience, or the computer screen, but a lot of people are going to see their films on computers and phones and they will think they saw the films, but they will not have seen the film. And that's a sadness, as I say in "Stories," that's a real sadness. It's very hard to sink into a world when the picture is so small. I hope that the home-theater big screens at home will be something they embrace so they can feel and think in the world -- not have all this distraction around it.

This is the fifth DVD you have produced through Absurda. Are there any practical lessons you learned along the way in producing your own DVDs?

It's so beautiful, the world. You still need to go to an outside facility for mass printing and producing, and they need to be checked in certain ways, but so much of this anyone can do in their house, and that's the beauty of today's world. And then through trial and error, we discovered pipelines to stores and different places, and that's kind of an exciting thing. So you feel like you're more in control of where things go, how they go, and it's a good experience but a whole lot of work. I've had a lot of help from people working 24/7.

When it comes to producing a DVD, what are the kinds of supplements you'd like to see on DVD and the kinds of extras you think DVD can bring to people?

No. 1, I think the film is the main thing. All the rest -- it's like a circus. There's the main tent and then there's lots of little tents. In the little tents, I would like to see people telling stories about the experience and I would like to see scenes that weren't there but not put back into the film. And I would like to feel a little bit of what it was like to be there during the time of the making but not anything that would disturb the film. Extras are interesting, but the film has got to be protected.

Do you think you can create a way to bring people into the film with these extraneous extras -- that you can interact with them, get them to engage with the film in different ways?

I think maybe a little bit, but the film should do that. If it doesn't do that, you could put a lot of extras on and it wouldn't help. The good thing about a DVD is you can see it whenever you want, again and again. It's been my experience when talking to people that the first time they see "Inland Empire" it's one thing, and the second and third time, it's a whole different thing. So there's a very good thing about a DVD, but like I said, the bigger the screen, the darker the room, the best sound you can get, so you can go into the world and have that experience. That's the ticket.

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In addition to his regular contributions to MSN Movies, Sean Axmaker is a film critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and a DVD columnist for MSN Entertainment. He is also a contributing writer for GreenCine.com, Turner Classic Movies Online and Asian Cult Cinema, among other publications.