Does anyone think that David Foster Wallace didn’t give Quentin Tarantino a far shake in his 1995 essay “David Lynch Keeps His Head”

in which DFW w/r/t Quentin T.’s work, says that;

“And it is also to say that David Lynch, at age 50 is a better, more complex more interesting director than any of the hip young “rebels”….It is particularly to say that — even without considering recent cringers like Four Rooms or From Dusk To Dawn  — D. Lynch  is an exponentially better filmmaker than Q. Tarantino. For unlike Tarantino, D. Lynch knows that an act of violence is an American film has, thorough repetition and desensitization, lost the ability to refer to anything but itself.

I mean, to say in 1995 that David Lynch, who at the time had been making films professionally for 18 years (the essay was published in ‘95, and written during the time that Lynch was making Lost Highway, although L.H. wasn’t released till ‘97, when at that point, Lynch had 20 years of film-making experience) In that same time frame Q.T. had only released Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction and one segment of Four Rooms (which I thought was brilliantly cast and written), and those films coming in only a 3ish year time frame. How could he even possibly compare the two at that time? It would be like to say that if I were to compete against a baby for who could eat the most food and spit up the least that I was thoroughgoingly a better human being because I could retain the most food…

SUB QUESTION;

Would DFW, were he alive today re-vamp his critique based on Lynch’s and Q.T.’s latter work—would DFW be less of an arrogant and all-knowing dick (though I resoundingly love him for it) to Q.T.

::DISCLOSURE::

I don’t much care for Lynch aside from the Twin Peaks series and generally regard Quentin as the better director and writer overall, and I don’t think that Q.T. ever wrote a bad film, which can’t be said for Lynch. Also it could be said that posing these questions that I don’t truly “Get” noir avant-garde films—whatever. And anyway, one need only look at the box-office revenues and Academy Award noms to put into perspective how great hollywood thinks Q.T. is, even if he isn’t in the writer’s guild (I realize that the same argument can be made to illustrate the point that I don’t really get avant-garde films, or anything artsy for that matter).

6 notes

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  1. afellowofinfinitejest answered: All Q.T. does is try to recreate his previous works.
  2. monsterbeard said: The central question is: Has Q.T. learned that an act of violence has lost its ability to communicate anything but? My opinion, he has not learned this. However, 95 QT is arguably different than today’s, so DFW might have a different take today
  3. flannelowl answered: I think DL and QT have very little in common as directors. Anyway I don’t think QT is really trying to refer to anything with his violence.
  4. heymikewaskom posted this

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