Check Book: Try Silencio

Our advice to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson

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IN THIS WEEK’S EDITION:

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THE BARDI PARTY REPORT

The number one movie at the box office this weekend was Red One, which Griffin Newman went to see in a theater:

More:

But at least it proved inspirational:

I did not think we could stoop any lower than the Santa Clause franchise, yet here we are.

Speaking of Dwayne Johnson, he shared his totally normal reasoning behind putting streaming piece of content Red One into IMAX theaters:

I was midway through shooting Red One and I had an opportunity to see Oppenheimer. I watched in the IMAX theater where Christopher Nolan watches and screens his movies. Him and Emma [Thomas], his wife. I even asked to let me sit where Chris sits. They said, 'Chris sits here.' I watch Oppenheimer. It was amazing, but I was thinking: 'Holy shit. Red One on this screen and with this technology could be game over.' I remember texting [director Jake Kasdan] a picture of my bare chest and a picture of the screen and we realized how cool [IMAX] would be.

Okay, so first of all - Nolan watches his films at the AMC Universal Citywalk in LA. It’s just a normal theater. Anyone can go there. You can go there right now, actually, and take a photo of your bare chest to send Jake Kasdan. I think we all can agree that the problem with Oppenheimer was that Cillian Murphy just wasn’t jacked enough, his bare chest was too narrow, too concave for the power of IMAX. So glad the Rock is addressing this head on.

One of these sets of pecs was built for IMAX.

In a shockingly good move for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, it announced this week that Conan O’Brien will be our next Oscars host. Remember when Conan hosted the Emmys back in 2006 and opened the show with an intro package that had him stopping by the sets of Lost, The Office, South Park, AND To Catch A Predator with Chris Hanson???!?!?!? This needs to happen again. We need Conan vaping in the Vatican with Ralph Fiennes for Conclave. We need Mikey Madison giving Conan a lapdance for Anora. Conan needs to take The Substance and turn into Jacob Elordi wearing a red wig. Conan should not touch Emilia Perez with a ten foot pole, but I would like to see Conan and Jordan Schlansky take a tour of Poland with Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin for A Real Pain. Speaking of Jordan, we need him to offer a pronunciation guide for each Best International Film title. Paul Rudd can introduce the In Memoriam segment. The possibilities are endless, and it is nice to feel like we have something to look forward to.

Kevin Costner is still trying to make Horizon happen. Bless his heart. We’re still on standby for that Part 2 release date. He also stopped by the Plaza Hotel in New York this week and posed for some recently-divorced dad Instagram pics:

LET’S CRACK OPEN THE DOSSIER

• One thing we’ve hopefully made clear this miniseries is that, while David Lynch is infamously reluctant to ascribe obvious meaning to his work, he is often willing to share the provenance of his ideas. Sometimes his art starts with an image (the ear in a field for Blue Velvet), a song (the song “Blue Velvet” for Blue Velvet), or a long-held desire (to “sneak into a girl’s room to watch her at night” and eventually uncover “a clue to a murder mystery” for, uh, Blue Velvet). Other times—especially when Roy Orbison is involved—the ideas just seem to find their ways to Lynch from other people. Such was the case with Mulholland Drive’s most iconic sequence—Club Silencio—which traces its origins to a phone call between Lynch and his friend/former music agent Brian Loucks. According to Lynch, Loucks would call him “from time to time” and say, “’I want you to meet so-and-so, can we come over for a coffee?’” One of those times, the so-and-so in question was the Chula Vista-born singer Rebekah Del Rio, who Lynch says, “just wanted to come over for a coffee and sing in front of us.” Though she had no intentions of recording anything during her visit, Lynch had his audio engineer John Neff set up the studio just in case, and Lynch says, “I think before she’d had her coffee—she’s in the booth.” (Has it ever come up that Lynch really likes coffee?) Anyway, Del Rio’s choice in music was a Spanish-language translation of the aforementioned Orbison’s 1961 song “Crying,” a track that carried personal relevance for Lynch; though he ended up going with Orbison’s 1963 song “In Dreams” instead, “Crying” was the Orbison tune that Lynch originally intended to use in Blue Velvet. Now, a decade and a half later, Lynch had found the right movie—and singer—for “Crying,” crafting the Club Silencio sequence as a showcase for Del Rio. And, as Lynch notes, “[T]he one take that she sang, four minutes off the street, is the vocal that’s in the film. THE ACTUAL RECORDING!” (ed. Chris Rodley, Lynch on Lynch)

  

  Silencio in Paris

• Since we’re on the topic of Club Silencio, I should probably mention Silencio, the Paris nightclub founded by Arnaud Frisch in 2011 that was designed by David Lynch. Though Lynch says that the “name was inspired by” Mulholland Drive, the design of “the actual club itself” was not. The club features a number of, well, Lynchian design elements: walls that “curve into the ceiling”; a performance stage and a movie theater; and the “yellow forrest,” which Lynch says is “a smoking room in the club, with these steel yellow trees that go from floor to ceiling with these little lights coming off them, with pods that you can sit on.“ But in a 2012 piece from Interview Magazine, Lynch says there was one part of the club of which he was particularly proud: “I also designed this sink for the restrooms—I’m really happy with that sink. These things, you just don’t know what’s going to come next. It’s great to be given the possibility of designing a sink; ideas start coming that you never thought about before. A person doesn’t really think too much about a sink, but when you do, ideas come that are really beautiful.” (Interview Magazine, January 7, 2012)

• Finally, here’s my favorite quote that didn’t make its way into the episode, in which Lynch tragically lays out why he decided to return to the world of television after his negative experiences with Twin Peaks’ second season and On the Air: “I was lured back because of a really strong desire to tell a continuing story in which you go deeper and deeper into a world and you get lost in that world. A pilot is open-ended, and, when it's over, you feel all these threads going out into the infinite which, to me, is a beautiful thing. It's like a body with no head.” (Movieline, August 1999)

WHAT IS THE TEAM INTO THIS WEEK?

Griffin Newman, Host: “Thanks to underground Google Drive folder sharing I have finally finished watching all of Matt Johnson and Jay McCarroll’s NIRVANNA THE BAND THE SHOW and now eagerly await the release of NIRVANNA THE BAND THE SHOW THE MOVIE.”

David Sims, Host: “I watched David Lowery’s new short An Almost Christmas Story with my coldy daughter in bed…dare I say…charrrrrrming????? I also finished my fifth Roger Angell book (Game Time) and probably need to read something that’s not about baseball soon but who can say.”

Ben Hosley, Producer: “For the 30th anniversary Warp recently reissued Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II with 3 previously unreleased tracks. “#19” has become a new standout for me. It had been available only on the original vinyl release. Highly recommend this record if you’re looking to escape and contemplate some shit.”

AJ McKeon, Editor: “I have been watching Zelda speed runs on YouTube when on the treadmill! Good turn your brain off activity!”

Marie Bardi, Social Media: “I started watching FX’s adaptation of Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing over the weekend. Got to episode three and then paused to watch the BBC’s recent docuseries Once Upon A Time in Northern Ireland, because I found myself craving more historical context. All of this to say, I’m in a deep Irish Republican rabbit hole right now and I might rewatch Hunger this week.”

JJ Bersch, Researcher: “I’m still having a blast working my way through UFO 50. If you don’t already know what UFO 50 is, it’s the new game(s) from Spelunky mastermind Derek Yu and a team of five other indie maestros centered around a fictional company (UFO Soft) that released 3 imagined consoles (the LX-I, LX-II, and LX-III) in the 1980s. The 50 (fifty!) fully featured, ingeniously designed retro games are great, but so is everything else: the abundance of secrets, the brief tidbits about the fictional company’s history, the way the games evolve over the narrative’s constructed chronology. It is—without hyperbole, I swear—probably this year’s single most awe-inspiring artwork. But if you do already know what UFO 50 is, I’ll just say this: 5) Mortol; 4) Party House; 3) Seaside Drive; 2) Pilot Quest; 1) Velgress. But, also, gee, Mooncat. And Valbrace. Warptank. Magic Garden! Waldorf’s Journey!! I will be playing this game forever.”

Alan Smithee, Pseudonymous Editor: “I’m in the bottom of the ninth of a real nailbiter Stratomatic baseball game against my son. I’m up by one run. He just stole second.”

THIS WEEK ON THE PODCAST

Writer and director Leslye Headland returns to the pod with a runtime record-busting Mulholland Dr. episode:

COMING SOON: