The
Jennifer Chambers Lynch Interview
With the imminent
cinema and DVD release of her new film Chained, David Watson
meets director and screenwriter Jennifer Chambers Lynch.
Few filmmakers have survived
a journey like that of director and screenwriter Jennifer Chambers Lynch. The
eldest daughter of the legendary director dubbed “Jimmy Stewart from Mars” by Mel Brooks, David Lynch, she penned
the bestselling novel tie-in, The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, to complement her dad’s groundbreaking TV show,
Twin Peaks. at 19 she wrote the screenplay for her infamous directorial debut Boxing
Helena, a film unjustly pilloried by
the (mostly male) filmmaking establishment, and by her mid-twenties it looked
like she was washed up. After a
near-fatal accident which required numerous surgeries, she released the
fantastic, chilling serial killer thriller Surveillance in 2008 and, while her next film Hisss thankfully disappeared without trace after being
butchered by the producers, her new film Chained cements her reputation as one of the most exciting
and intelligent directors working in genre cinema.
“I think entertainment is
manipulative,” says Jennifer Chambers Lynch. “And that’s not always bad, you know; we wanna make people
happy, we want to scare them, we want them to ask questions, and this is
ultimate[1]ly,
along with being a movie about a serial killer who kidnaps a boy, it is an
examination of how the abuse of children creates monsters.”
A profoundly unsettling
film, Chained is a bleak,
beautiful, uncompromising piece of cinema that’s a very different movie from
that originally envisioned by the producers.
Says Lynch: “It was a script that was sent to me by
the producers and it was called Chained and it was about what this film is about. But it was excessively more violent and involved detectives
chasing this guy down and it was a totally different kind of serial killer than
who he is now.
“I was at first really shocked
that they thought of me as the director as a possibility because I just thought
it was really, really violent.
“And I’m more mentally
twisted than physically cutting people apart, so I went in and talked to them
about it. And after they told me
they sort of thought I did
violent films, they asked what I would do, how it would appeal to me more. I discussed exploring why this killer
did what he did, what the relationship with the boy is and what becomes of
someone with that damage.
“And they let me go for
it. So I did a rewrite. And slowly but surely fell in love with
the story.”
Bleak, gritty and
claustrophobic, the film is a tough journey, a descent into Hell that’s tinged
with humanity and hope.
Determinedly ambiguous, what does Lynch want the audience to take from
it?
“In the spirit of horror
movies I hope they felt scared and unsettled,” says Lynch, “and I hope they
felt respected as they watched it and treated intelligently.
“And I hope they leave the
theatre and over the next few days, or hopefully even longer than that, take a
second look at everyone they assume is good or everyone they assume is bad and
ask what their damage might be and what their own damage might be and why they
make the choices they make because that’s exciting to me.
“If you make walking down
the street a different experience after a film, then you’ve done what the
medium sets out to do.”
Like Surveillance, a child in jeopardy and the legacy of violence lies
at the heart of Chained.
“I am fascinated with the
way kids see things,” says Lynch.
“It’s just so clear. They
are genuinely innate in their needs and their vision. It’s pure.”
Lynch continues: “So Tim
goes from wanting his Mom and hearing that she’s never coming back to being
called Rabbit and very clearly seeing that this guy is in control and yet is
not well, mentally.
“And that listening he does,
even as a child, outside his door is a compassion thing. Again, much like with Surveillance, people forget how smart kids are.
“They’re not preoccupied
with all this crap we are as we get older, so they’re seeing better than we are
and I just love looking at that.
“It creates a sorrow about
what we lose as we get older and it also hopefully creates an openness to why
we shouldn’t be hitting them or abandoning them or thinking they don’t hear it
or it doesn’t matter what they see.
You know, respect the child, they grow up.”
Perhaps one of the most
surprising things about Chained
however, particularly given its problems in the US where it was slapped with
the highly restrictive NC-17 rating, is that there’s very little onscreen
violence. It puts its audience
through an emotional wringer, it feels violent, has a very violent vibe, but
much of the violence happens offscreen or out of shot. We hear it. We don’t see it.
“I like to watch people,”
says Lynch. “I like to study
people.”
She continues: “I think film
and TV are visual mediums and that watching a movie is voyeuristic. You pay money to sneak into a dark room
and watch other people live out there lives in silence as if you’re peeping in
their windows.
“I think to suggest that we
don’t all like to observe one another is absurd. I like that the audience feels there was more nudity in it
and that it was violent because, for me, if you look at it, it’s all behind
closed doors, so it’s the audience that fills in.
“And I love that because I
could never make up the things you’re afraid are happening back there. And I think that’s fun; it’s giving you
the opportunity to make part of the film.
“I think obviously with the
MPAA they really thought this is waaaaay too violent, way too real, no, no,
no. I tap into that because that’s
what I’m afraid of and that’s what I like to do.
“I don’t like to hurt people
or watch people get hurt but I think we’re all natural voyeurs and that a
visual medium should be treated visually.
In the same way that reading a scary book, what the readers imagine
independently is so much better.
Which is why it’s so hard to adapt a book into a film because suddenly
you’re deciding what everybody saw the whole time and you can’t, you cannot
win.”
Part of what is so
fascinating about Chained is the sense that the audience is watching something
taboo, something forbidden. The
film humanises both victim and victimiser, something perhaps that the
filmmaking establishment and the MPAA are uncomfortable with. Or perhaps they’re just not comfortable
with a woman making a smart, intelligent film about serial murder and child
abuse where the last thing it seeks to do is titillate.
“Can you imagine the shit I
would’ve gotten if I’d made Saw?” asks Lynch. “Have you any idea what the board have done to me? And yet those producers and directors are
making tons of money and nobody’s asking why.
“If I had made a movie like
that, oh my God, I’d be in jail. I
do not understand. I think it’s
absurdist. And they got an R. It’s a mystery.”
Lynch continues: “Hopefully,
what it is, is that I’m actually making people feel really f*cking
uncomfortable. These are uncomfortable
subject matters; they should feel uncomfortable.
“At the end of Surveillance I sexualised violence but I sexualised it in a way
that explained how f*cked up the characters were.
“I didn’t want to sexualise
the violence in Chained because
it’s about the horror of violence and how it doesn’t stop rolling over on
itself. But I think if I had made
it funny or sexy or if I had made you not care about Bob or Rabbit, I would
have gotten an R.”
Perhaps they’re
uncomfortable because the film takes real world fears, real female fears, the
fear of getting into a stranger’s car, the fear of walking down the street at
night alone, the fear of being raped, murdered, and puts the audience in the
victim’s shoes, bringing those fears home and making them real for a male
audience.
“All the good horror films
make a certain house scary or a certain thing or an upside-down cross
scary. All of those things are
really potent,” says Lynch. “I
like making a taxi cab driver seem maybe not as harmless as you might first
assume.
“And I like thinking you
never know what someone\s gone through or when they’re gonna make a bad
choice.
“It’s cathartic, it’s
helpful. And I think it helped my
daughter be there every day, she was the girl in the plastic bag who got pulled
into the basement, I do think it helped her, strangely, talk about and think
about what she would do if she was ever in trouble.
“It’s not curing cancer,
this is not a message about how to protect yourself, but it hopefully is
getting people talking about being careful. And kinder.
It’s really a film about how we should stop hurting each other and we
should start with the kids because they’re the ones who grow up and hurt
people.”
Her father David, no
stranger to controversy and screen violence himself with films like Blue
Velvet, Wild At Heart and Lost
Highway, was reputedly horrified by
the resolution of her earlier film Surveillance. It’s
tempting to wonder how he reacted to Chained.
“He didn’t talk to me about
the end of this one,” laughs Lynch, “he just said: “You made a good film but
you sure are doing a lot of horror Jen-O.” I don’t know how he felt about the end of this one.
“And I’m not sure if I want
to know.”
Says Lynch: I think he gets
very upset when I have unpleasant feelings come up. And he really didn’t want Bobbi to die in Surveillance. He was
really pissed off at me.
“He kept saying: “You’re the
sickest bitch I know!” But that’s
where my head went.”
Chained
opens at UK cinemas on Friday 1st February 2013 and will be released
on DVD and Blu-ray from Anchor Bay Entertainment UK on 4th February
2013.
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