conversation<\/a> with Jay Leno on The Tonight Show in 1992. As the show starts, Lynch briefly discusses his childhood, calling his former self \u201cstraight as an arrow.\u201d Leno begins to formulate a question along the lines of \u201cwhat happened?\u201d but before he can get it out, Lynch interrupts him: \u201cI went to Philadelphia.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\nLynch\u2019s stay in Philadelphia began in the mid-1960\u2019s, when he enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA). In a 1997 interview with Chris Rodley, Lynch revealed that though he enjoyed his time at PAFA, he felt that the city of Philadelphia, specifically the industrial belt stretching across the north Broad street and Callowhill areas, had the greatest influence on him and his work. In the \u201960s and \u201970s, this was the industrial fringe of Philadelphia \u2013 and for Lynch, it was a place where grime and beauty coexisted. Perhaps the best way to get a sense of what the city felt like to him is through his own words. To that end, I have compiled my favorite of his quotes on Philadelphia, of which there are many.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I always say, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is my biggest influence. There is something about the mood here. The fear, insanity, corruption, filth, despair, violence in the air was so beautiful to me.” – PAFA new conference, 2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I saw horrible things, horrible, horrible<\/em> things while I lived there. It was truly inspiring.” – Philadelphia Inquirer, 1986<\/p>\n\n\n\n“Yes, (Philadelphia is) horrible, but in a very interesting way. There were places there that had been allowed to decay, where there was so much fear and crime that just for a moment there was an opening to another world. It was fear, but it was so strong, and so magical, like a magnet.” – The Face, 1987<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“When I was here, every building was black, soot-covered. And every building had a mood and it was before graffiti so it was very pure, very filthy, but it had a beautiful mood.” – PAFA news conference, 2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It was a mixture of heaven and hell, Philadelphia.” – Loud and Quiet, 2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first movie Lynch made after living in Philadelphia was Eraserhead<\/em>. I\u2019m sure Eraserhead<\/em> is about something, but what stuck with me after watching it was the atmosphere that Lynch managed to create. The whole movie felt like a bad dream, one of confusion and despair and decay, all with the hum of machinery in the background. It is not hard to imagine that this is what Philadelphia felt like to Lynch. <\/p>\n\n\n\nIn stark contrast to Eraserhead<\/em>, as well as many of his other works, is his own demeanor. In an interview, Sherilynn Fenn, who worked with Lynch in Twin Peaks<\/em>, described Lynch as \u201capple pie,\u201d saying he constantly used phrases like \u201cDoggone it!\u201d or \u201cThat\u2019s Jim Dandy!\u201d She went on to describe him as a \u201cparadox\u201d in that he seems so \u201cstraight\u201d but then has all of these \u201cstrange thoughts within his head.\u201d This is one of the most amusing things to me about David Lynch. You could watch one of his movies and be thoroughly disturbed for the better part of a week, then you\u2019ll see him talking in an interview, and you swear you\u2019ve never seen someone so boyish and earnest and kindhearted.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\nIt seems worthwhile to view both Lynch and his works as reflections of his formative environments. His quaint northwestern upbringing seems to bleed through both in his mannerisms and in the worlds of creations like Twin Peaks<\/em> and Blue Velvet<\/em>. By contrast, his years in Philadelphia left a darker imprint on him, one that began a fascination with fear and decay.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Isaac Held \/\/ Few people have loathed a city as productively as David Lynch loathed Philadelphia. Lynch\u2019s relationship with Philadelphia was long and fraught, and to understand it, one must start with his childhood. The majority of Lynch\u2019s early life took place in small rural towns in the American Northwest. In a 2014 interview […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[26,28,27],"class_list":["post-191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","tag-david-lynch","tag-film","tag-philadelphia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.sccs.swarthmore.edu\/orpheusreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.sccs.swarthmore.edu\/orpheusreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.sccs.swarthmore.edu\/orpheusreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.sccs.swarthmore.edu\/orpheusreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.sccs.swarthmore.edu\/orpheusreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.sccs.swarthmore.edu\/orpheusreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198,"href":"https:\/\/sites.sccs.swarthmore.edu\/orpheusreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions\/198"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.sccs.swarthmore.edu\/orpheusreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.sccs.swarthmore.edu\/orpheusreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.sccs.swarthmore.edu\/orpheusreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.sccs.swarthmore.edu\/orpheusreview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}