Director.com

More directors are discovering the value of creating a cool site

by Saul Austerlitz | Published October 8, 2003

While sites like ifilm and BMW Films serve as portals for short moviemakers, there’s been a dearth of successful moviemakers who have used the Internet as an outlet for their creative energy. Recently, however, two superb Internet sites have emerged as a way for directors to release material that doesn’t fit  within the narrow confines of a 90-minute feature film. These two projects may serve as an example for other moviemakers who have been excited by the seemingly limitless creative possibilities of the Internet, but unable to determine exactly how the Internet and the moviemaking process might comfortably coexist.

Somewhat surprisingly, one of the first directors to appreciate the creative possibilities of the Internet has been iconoclastic creepmeister David Lynch. The 57-year-old American icon, who radiates an aw-shucks, Middle America artlessness seemingly at odds with the technical savvy necessary for innovation on the Internet, launched his Website, www.davidlynch.com, in the summer of 2002 with the help of designer Eric Bassett. The site, which features everything from short films to Lynch-designed e-greeting cards and music by his band, Blue Bob, is a panoramic view of Lynch’s personal universe. Entering the site, one is struck by the vaguely creepy, unsettling tone of the enterprise as a whole. Blair Witch-like stick figures scuttle across the screen, complemented by the atonal soundtrack stylings of longtime Lynch collaborator Angelo Badalamenti. When the lone radio tower and semi-goofy cemetery landscape drawing pop up, understanding hits: Lynch has managed to transfer his quirky sensibility to the Internet, wholly intact.

DavidLynch.com is a vast storage house that replicates, in some fashion, the contents of its namesake’s mysterious mind. Rather than giving off the aroma of the spare parts store, the leftover goods emporium of ideas not developed enough to make their way into Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and the like, the Website succeeds on its own terms. It is a fascinating, rare glimpse into the mind of the moviemaker—like sneaking a peek into his notebook of ideas when he’s not around. Simultaneously funny, haunting, obscure and gorgeous, it fully deserves the epithet “Lynchian.” Journeying far beyond the usual view-the-trailer tedium of most film-related Websites, DavidLynch.com is an experience unto itself, not requiring affiliation with any theatrical film for validation.

Lynch includes selections of his photography and painting work on the site. The former brings to mind Herb Ritts and Nan Goldin as potential inspirations, while the latter appears to be nothing so much as a strangely perfect melding of Jasper Johns and Francis Bacon. The highlights of the site, though, are the two groupings of short films. The first, Cannes Diary, is a series of shorts made by Lynch at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, when Mulholland Drive was in competition. The shorts are a faux-naif’s view of French life and culture, from the idle strollers ambling along the Croisette, to paparazzi swarming celebs like Sharon Stone, to a chef’s careful, step-by-step explanation of the best method of preparing foie gras. The second is a compilation of various other Lynch shorts, including The Amputee and Lumiere, taken from compilation films, early work and assorted other sources.

What’s so intriguing about a site like DavidLynch.com is its attempt to create a fundamentally aesthetic experience on the Internet. In contrast to the general tendency toward functionality and the information-dominated nature of most of the Web, it proposes an Internet that is mysterious, complex and visually charged. It is also an effort by Lynch to create an Internet experience that maintains the characteristics and iconography of his film work. In short, it is not merely a place to learn about David Lynch, but a zone to experience his artistry.

A similar effect is taking place at another recently launched Website from an auteur of gnarled, tangled film narratives. British director Peter Greenaway, best known in the U.S. for his The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, has established a site dedicated to his new film, The Tulse Luper Suitcase: The Moab Story. The Moab Story is scheduled to be the first of a trilogy of films centered on the titular character, a staple of Greenaway films since earlier, more experimental works like Vertical Features Remake.

The site, at www.TulseLuperNetwork.com, is an integral part of Greenaway’s large-scale project, and not merely a marketing-related offshoot of the film. Greenaway’s venture tracks the history of Luper, a writer, scientist and all-around intellectual whose life’s journey is inextricably linked to the political turmoils of the 20th century and the scientific element of uranium. While this may sound like somewhat unpromising material for an amusing Internet site, TulseLuperNetwork.com uses it as a jumping-off point for a dazzling and addictive puzzle-box. The site is set up as a reconstruction, by a group of researchers, of crucial people, events and objects in the life of Tulse Luper. The essential mystery of one man’s life is highlighted by the personal and cultural detritus that remains as his legacy.

The “archivists” have discovered 92 characters (with names like Ma Fender and Joris Salmon) with some relevance to Luper’s life, along with 92 suitcases (containing objects like bloodied wallpaper, lumps of coal and Vatican pornography), 92 searchable categories (like maps, prisons, cookbooks, atomic tables and birthday news) and 92 experts—92 being the atomic number of uranium. Not all of the aforementioned information is currently available—it is intended to roll out steadily over the next year, creating a mystery wherein interested parties will return, again and again, in order to fill in the gaps of Tulse Luper’s life. (And perhaps their own.)

Greenaway’s site takes a large step forward in utilizing the Internet as a storytelling medium. Rather than allowing it to take a backseat to the narrative on celluloid, Greenaway and his collaborators have worked out a story whose parameters extend beyond the edge of the frame, and into the zeroes and ones of the Web. Extending boldly beyond such earlier efforts as the Website for Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream (www.requiemforadream.com), the Tulse Luper site has been created as an essential part of the overall aesthetic experience of Greenaway’s Tulse Luper story.

Both Greenaway and Lynch share a willingness (surprising in moviemakers so far advanced in their careers) to peer beyond the celluloid curtain, and even beyond the glimpsed paradise of DVDs, and ponder the next step. Whether the Internet ultimately will supplant the theatrical moviegoing experience, or merely serve to creatively supplement it, is yet to be determined. Lynch and Greenaway, through their fascinating new sites, are making the Internet a more fertile ground for cinematic creativity now. MM

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