David Lynch and politics.

A co-worker of mine was a background extra on "Blue Velvet".  It was filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina, which is about two hours down the road from here.  To her it was just another movie (many get shot in Wilmington).  When I tell her it's one of the greatest American movies ever made, she just gives me a blank look.

I've been a fan of David Lynch ever since I was a highschool kid watching Twin Peaks.  Tonight I came across an interesting interview with Lynch involving politics.  Mark Cousins conducted the interview, and it's not new.  No big point; I just thought it was interesting.

MC: When you look at a lot of American actors and directors today,
they're quite involved with politics, and in the past, of course,
famous Holywood supported Adelay Stephenson (sp?) and supported JFK,
and things like this - do you feel... You're smiling, why are you
smiling at that?

DL: Well, I'm not a political person.

MC: So, when you look at the way that Holywood and of course its
normally the democrat side, when you look at those relationships do
you feel cynical about that..

DL: Oh no, I'm not cynical at all. I'm just saying that I don't
understand politics, I don't understand the concept of two sides, and
I think that probably there's good on both sides, bad on both sides,
and there's a middle ground, but it nevers seems to come to the middle
ground.  And, it's very frustrating watching it, and seemingly we're
not going forward.  Some change of simple, simple, really relatively
speaking, and we're going forward somewhere, you know, it could be a
beautiful place.  There's many little obstacles and there's many
people that are just opposed, and we're not moving forward.

MC: When you were talking before there about Straight Story and about
the possibility of understanding the whole world from your own small
place, it was almost the sort of thing that Ronald Reagan would say.  Is
that true, do you think?

DL: I have no idea what Ronald Reagan would say.

MC: Well I know you had dinner at Reagan's Whitehouse, but what I had
in mind was that provincial idea, where you root your whole view of
life just in the small everyday understanding you have of...

DL: I think there's a time in you to go out and gather things and they
say that when you're little, the window is open, and then the window
closes, not all the way, but closes for safety reasons, so stuff stops
coming in and you can work with, you know, things that are there.  And
new things can pop in and join with them, but now it's a time, you
know, to start doing some things with the things you've gathered...