Commercials — and a PSA — by David Lynch

Around the time of their 1968 LP, Idea, the Bee Gees could be heard on the radio singing “Another Cold And Windy Day,” containing one of the most jaw-droppingly beautiful melodies and harmonies in their storied career. It’s all the more startling, then, that these are the last four lines:

I open up some Coke and smile
And then my mind’s free for a while
Things go better with Coca-Cola
Things go better with Coke

Rarely have I heard such a blatant capitulation of art to commerce; heart-wrenching beauty manufactured on order for a large corporation; creativity whoring itself. That’s one way of looking at it. Another is: If commercials have to be made (and they will, by somebody), shouldn’t they be beautiful as well? Shouldn’t everything fashioned by human hands be made beautiful (loosely defined)?

Between approximately 1992 and 2014, director David Lynch made over two dozen commercials, advertising perfume, coffee, pasta, a pregnancy test, and the very TV station the commercials were broadcast on. Most of them were commissioned overseas, where Lynch’s critical standing was higher in the ’90s. Many of them utilized imagery which would be used in later feature film work or on Twin Peaks: The Return. Most of them look like nothing else on television. Lynch is quoted as saying, “The money’s good, and the added bonus is that I get to use and learn about the latest technology, tools that normally wouldn’t be available to me, and then I can use those tools in my feature work.”

David Lynch wasn’t done with the world of Twin Peaks in the ’90s after his 1993 Fire Walk With Me feature film; he was commissioned to create four Georgia Tasty Coffee ads for the Japanese TV market, a serialized, mini mystery taking place in TP and featuring several of the regular actors and characters (Dale Cooper, The Log Lady, Lucy and Andy, etc.) It’s nearly a sped-up parody of the series—nice to know that Lynch could have a chuckle at his own work.

Many of his commercials were for luxury perfumes and accessories, often shot in luxurious black and white. His three Obsession ads for Calvin Klein each feature a quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and D.H. Lawrence (the first features Heather Graham (Annie Blackburn in TP). Lynch’s enigmatic 1992 ad “Gio by Armani: Who Is Gio?” evokes Alain Resnais’ Last Year at Marienbad (1961) and films from the same era by Federico Fellini. In addition to spots for Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium fragrance, Lancome Paris’s Tresor and Karl Lagerfield’s Sun Moon Stars, Lynch was commissioned to create a fifteen minute commercial/short film for a Dior handbag, starring Marion Cotillard, “Lady Blue Shanghai.” It’s prime Lynch, with scratchy music from a mysterious 78 player, a lady stalked by unknown forces, odd, long breaks in dialogue, thwarted love and the sudden appearance of the handbag, holding a blue rose (the name of the ongoing FBI case into the supernatural in TP).

“Lady Blue Shanghai” has the tone of melodrama, but not all of Lynch’s commercials are of such serious tone. His 2000 Playstation spots stretch the limit of what can be called advertising. In the B&W “Duck,” a business-suited man meanders down a dark corridor, with a ’40s loudspeaker shouting from the ceiling. His head leaves his body and floats in the air, an arm and fist fly from his mouth, smoke emits where his hand should be, and an impeccably-dressed duck says, “Welcome to the Third Place.” It beats me how this would spur anyone to buy a Playstation, but it’s highly entertaining. It was shown in movie theaters in over a hundred companies except the U.S.

One of Lynch’s most famous paid commissions was for the New York Department of Sanitation in 1991: “We Care About New York.” B&W footage of New Yorkers throwing trash into the streets and on the ground to ominous music switches to close-ups of rats pouring from gutters, seething, racing. Unfortunately (and assuredly unintentionally) the imagery closely matches symbolic images of rats emerging from sewers in Joseph Goebbels’ 1940 propaganda film, The Eternal Jew.

Of special interest to Lynch fans are those commercials containing visual ideas which Lynch refines in later works. In his intro for Michael Jackson’s Dangerous short films collection, Michael’s head appears in a floating bubble, similar to the birth and origin of Bob in Twin Peaks: The Return. In his 1993 ad for Adidas, “The Wall,” a montage of small flames float in the sky, beckoning a runner on; they look similar to the casino flames Dougie/Cooper follows in The Return. Lastly, his 1998 spot for Parisienne Cigarettes, “Parisienne People,” may be the wildest commercial in his portfolio. Electric static and smoke evaporate into nothing, while fish float in the air. Flashes of light emit from a house (or store) while two gentlemen stumble about. Fire explodes from nowhere. The entire scene looks like a dry run for the initial The Return convenience store scene. The tone in “Parisienne People” is creepy but celebratory, but the similar scene in The Return menacingly shows the origins of post-WWII evil.

Fans of Lynch’s work will want to delve into this fascinating creative sideline.

—Michael R. Neno, 2018 Aug 19