When the trailer for David Lynch’s new web series Interview Project premiered in early May, I was so skeptical that I mocked the repetitive banality of Lynch’s “drinking game-inspiring intro.” I’ve since had a chance to see five episodes of the series — which premieres publicly on June 1 and through which Lynch and Co. will unveil one short video each day for the rest of the year — and now I think I’ve found the method motivating the mundanity.

We’re to take that introduction as its producer’s statement of its thesis, but it also reveals something about its form. Addressing the camera in his rumpled shirt and jacket, firing off a deliberately prosaic monologue in sing-song, with the words “people”, “interview” and “different” pushed so many times as to completely lose meaning, Lynch appears to be using that banality as a smokescreen. And why not? This is, essentially, what he’s done for most of his working life.

…Read more