He did it in mere months, and the result captured him the Palme d’Or, one of the world’s highest film prizes, at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival.įew directors ever get such a streak of highly-praised successes. Reportedly, Lynch loved his own adaptation so much that he decided to make the movie himself. A producer buddy who wanted to turn Barry Gifford’s novel Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula into a film asked Lynch to do the screenplay. He had just written and directed the pilot episode of what was to become perhaps his signature work, the soon-to-be hit TV series “Twin Peaks,” and so, having worked in the big leagues of the film world for 10 years, being hailed as a genius and suffering enough ups and downs to fill a lesser director’s entire career, Lynch was looking for something new. Want more? Order your copy of Wild at Heart today.By 1989, David Lynch had already come back from the artistic and commercial flop that was Dune (1984) with Blue Velvet (1986), his highly-regarded nightmare vision of small town America. and a man no longer believes he is a man. But he just lay there, weary with that deep weariness that comes from boredom, taking shallow breaths, rolling now and then from side to side.įor after years of living in a cage, a lion no longer even believes it is a lion. I desperately wanted him to, wanted for his sake the chance to stare me down, would have loved it if he took a swipe at me. During all of my visits, he never looked me in the eye. It sounded not so much fierce, but rather mournful. Sometimes late at night, after the city had gone to sleep, I would hear his roar come down from the hills.
Instead, he spent every hour of every day and every night of every year alone, in a cage smaller than your bedroom, his food served to him through a little metal door. This wonderful, terrible creature should have been out roaming the savanna, ruling his pride, striking fear into the heart of every wildebeest, bringing down zebras and gazelles whenever the urge seized him. Perhaps it was fear mingled with admiration perhaps it was simply that my heart broke for the big old cat. Yet he was my favorite, and whenever the others would wander on to the monkey house or the tigers, I’d double back just for a few more minutes in the presence of someone so powerful and noble and deadly. Honestly, I felt I ought to shepherd my boys past him at a safe distance, as if he could pounce on us if he really wanted to.
Sure, he was caged, but I’m telling you the bars offered small comfort when you stood within six feet of something that in any other situation saw you as an easy lunch. A huge male, nearly five hundred pounds, with a wonderful mane and absolutely enormous paws. Our local zoo had for years one of the biggest African lions I’ve ever seen.
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