Song of Philadelphia

In the Lynchadelphia finale, the season's guests and a few others share a personal David Lynch memory and reflect on how he and his work affected their life. Song of Philadelphia host Julien Suaudeau and his wife Anne Duchene join the chorus and provide conflicting accounts of the role one Lynch film in particular played in pulling them closer to each other. Stick around for the donut in the episode's outro: a Twin Peaks-inspired song by Suaudeau's band in the 1990's, "Ana Anyway".

Peggy Reavey married David Lynch in 1968. She is a painter and the mother of Jennifer Lynch. As she recalls her final years with Lynch in Philadelphia and their young family's move to California, a new image of the filmmaker and of his creative process comes into focus. "It was his thing, Reavey says, but I knew what it was." Listening to Reavey reflect on her contributions to The Grandmother, Lynch's third short film, and about how she was replaced by "a whole staff" as he started working on Eraserhead, we understand that each film comes from a bundle of dreams, experiences, people, and places that could not be ascribed to a single individual: the person known as the author always contains multitudes. How much of Lynch's life went into his films? What kind of agency did his loved ones hold as the original idea was sculpted into motion pictures and sounds? Why was the presence, the emotional support of a trusted partner so critical to the filmmaker's authorship, as he translated his vision into cinematic language?

The episode art is a portrait of David Lynch by Peggy Reavey, c. 1970.

What if the fear that David Lynch said he found in Philadelphia came from another place, more emotional than physical?According to Peggy Reavey, who married Lynch in 1968 and is the mother of their daughter Jennifer, the young David arrived in the city with a baggage full of insecurities. The first part of a long interview with Reavey, this episode interlaces her memories with Jack Fisk's and soundscapes from the David Lynch universe, as we examine how Lynch projected his deepest terrors - of failing as a filmmaker, of not living the art life he knew he was meant for - on his living environment at the time.

Artwork: Peggy Reavey and David Lynch outside the home of Reavey's parents in Philadelphia, c. 1968 (photo by Bernard V. Lentz)

David Lynch often identified Philadelphia as his greatest influence, and Philadelphia has nothing but love for David Lynch. What are the Lynchian places and happenings in the city? In this episode, Eric Bresler talks about bringing the Lady in the Radiator and Sherilyn Fenn to PhilaMOCA. Dennis McNett explains how he created the Lynch mural-memorial on Buttonwood Street. Josh Hitchens, the last Philadelphian who ever interviewed David Lynch, recalls his feelings before, during, and after the phone call. Jack Fisk remembers searching for filming locations across the city with Lynch fifteen years ago and his friend's disappointment as Lynch realized the Philadelphia he'd experienced from 1965 to 1970 no longer existed.

Although Philadelphia is visible only in a couple of shots in the entire David Lynch's filmography, the city's aura is the primary color and the thread of the cinematic language we have come to recognize as "Lynchian". In this episode, Julien Suaudeau dives deeper into the David Lynch dreamworld and examines the wild ways in which Philly manifests itself in Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive, and the Twin Peaks universe. What if Lynch's reinvention of the city actually was the artist's "room to dream"? An MRI of his creative mind? And maybe the place where we find out that life is but a dream?

The episode contains audio from the following works: Laura, Sunset Boulevard, Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and Twin Peaks: The Return.

Artwork: Diane - screen capture of Twin Peaks: The Return

Philadelphia, 1966.

In his studio at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, David Lynch is experimenting with ideas, forms, materials, shapes. He is looking for something exciting. One night, he sees movement in the painting he is working on and starts thinking about film. Feeding on the effervescence of the local artistic scene, with the help of his best friend and roommate, fellow PAFA student Jack Fisk, Lynch is going to make three films in two years, while getting married and becoming a father.

In this episode, Julien Suaudeau continues to weave the memories of Lynch's early years with soundscapes from his cinematic work (Eraserhead, Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks: The Return) and examines the micro-events that encouraged a young creative mind to pursue the art life.

With Jack Fisk, Bruce Samuelson, Bob Bruhin, and Josh Hitchens.

The portrait of David Lynch used as artwork for this episode was taken in 1967 by C.K Williams in the Father, Son, Holy Ghost house on Aspen Street.

In the Song of Lynchadelphia season opener, Julien Suaudeau travels sixty years back to January 1966 on 13th and Wood, where David Lynch has just moved in with Jack Fisk. As the song of the city echoes in Lynch's films and across the Twin Peaks universe, and as other voices familiar with his work chime in, Jack Fisk recalls how his best friend dreamed up his art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In addition to his collaboration with Lynch (Eraserhead, The Straight Story, Mulholland Drive), Jack Fisk has worked as production designer and art director with Terence Malick (Days of Heaven, Badlands, The Thin Red Line, The New World, The Tree of Life, To the Wonder, Song to Song), Brian de Palma (Carrie, Phantom of the Paradise), Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood), Martin Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon), among others. His most recent collaboration is with Josh Safdie, on Marty Supreme.

Photo: Jack Fisk and David Lynch standing near 19th and Chestnut in December 1967 (Credit: C.K Williams)

This episode contains audio from the following sources:

Carrie Rickey's interview of David Lynch at Bryn Mawr Film Institute in 2014

Twin Peaks

Kim Lin Short's The End of Howard's End

Wild at Heart

Mulholland Drive

Gerard Malanga's Screentest: A Diary

Twin Peaks: The Return

Josh Hitchens' interview of David Lynch in 2022

Blue Velvet

Room to Dream, by Kristin McKenna and David Lynch

Lost Highway

This season: how David Lynch invented his cinematic language of fear and strangeness in Philadelphia. Julien Suaudeau walks around the Eraserhood and explores other Lynchian places in the city, tracking the impressions of Philly in Lynch's work, from the Twin Peaks universe to Mulholland Drive, and wondering how Lynch's art is the product of what he experienced in the city from 1965 to 1970.

In the season two finale, Julien spends one night at Fergie's Pub, where the legendary Larry Robin hosts the weekly Moonstone readings. Larry talks about poets and poetry, poets read their work and talk about Larry, and everyone is wondering how to make it through political violence, climate change, global surveillance, and good old heartbreaks. An oral anthology of Philadelphian voices reflecting on the end of the world as we know it, with the city as the backdrop.

At 83, Larry Robin sees a lot of ghosts in Philadelphia. In the first part of this season's finale, the legendary bookstore owner, arts-oriented educator and anchor of the city's poetry scene drives around the neighborhoods of his life with Julien Suaudeau. As the two get lost and find their way time and time again, unsure of what they are looking for, Larry's personal and Intellectual foundations come into focus, woven into the urban fabric: a Society Hill block where a lumberyard used to sit next to a luncheonette, the row home that houses the only remaining synagogue in South Philly, a boarded up textile mill on Lehigh Avenue. Back on 13th and Sansom, the longtime headquarters of Robin's Books and Moonstone Arts Center, Larry reflects on aging, loss, political disillusions, love and death, and explains how self-sufficiency has been the driving force of his extraordinary journey.