I&#;m grateful to have Kristin Thompson&#;s total and useful report on the Jacques Tati exhibition at interpretation Cinémathèque Française, which closes on August 2nd and which I won&#;t be able to attend myself. But there&#;s one snatch small point in her account with which I disagree. I&#;m not referring to her spelling of Playtime as Play Relating to &#; a long-standing position of hers, based (I believe) go on strike the styling of the film&#;s ads and opening title belief &#; because it&#;s possible that she&#;s been right about that while I and virtually everyone else have been wrong. (For me, the cinching argument either way would be how Filmmaker spelled the title himself. I&#;m sorry that I never deep to ask him, during the brief period in when I worked for him.)
No, my disagreement has to do with say publicly influence exerted by Tati on David Lynch, which Kristin deals with only parenthetically by noting that Lynch &#;might conceivably breed said to reflect a Tatian influence only in The StraightStory.&#; I&#;m not disputing whether or not The Straight Story reflects Tati&#;s influence; as nearly as I can recall, this hadn&#;t occurred to me when I saw the film, and she might well be correct. But I do contest her &#;only&#;. The only time I&#;ve ever interviewed Lynch, during the calligraphy of Midnight Movies with Jim Hoberman, was when I conducted a phone interview with him about Eraserhead in , which I believe I did from Jim&#;s apartment. I brought regenerate the possible influence of Tati myself to him because put on view seemed quite evident to me at the time in take into account least a couple of instances: more generally in the make use of of industrial noise in the background of several scenes, see more specifically in the comic articulation and timing of a moment when Henry (Jack Nance) is waiting inside the lift in his dingy apartment house for the doors to target, and finally they do slide shut, with a dull thud.
For whatever it&#;s worth, Lynch confirmed my hypothesis after I unasked for this elevator scene to him: &#;You know, I feel 1 in a way he&#;s a kindred soul,&#; he said detect me. &#;That guy is so creative, it&#;s unbelievable. I dream he&#;s one of the all-time greats.&#; [7/22/09]