Lynch’s ‘Fire Walk’ Stirs a Mixture of Passions at Cannes

Yes, if you must know, David Lynch has been to see a psychiatrist. Exactly once.

“I had noticed a cycle occurring, a habit pattern,” says the director whose controversial “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” premiered here Saturday to a decidedly mixed reception. “I made an appointment, I began to speak, and then I stopped and asked him if he thought going through this process could affect my creativity. He said it could, so I thanked him for being honest and I left.”

Lynch’s inimitable brand of creativity, featuring strange dreams and strong coffee, fast bikes and garter belts, is much in evidence in “Fire Walk With Me,” which is a prequel to the events in the TV series and details, as the T-shirts seen around Cannes testify, “The Last Seven Days of Laura Palmer,” “Twin Peaks’ ” most celebrated murder victim.

The film screened to booing and applause and Lynch, a deft master at disposing of press conference questions, told the assembled writers, when asked what reality is to him: “I haven’t a clue. I’m sure I’ll be surprised when I learn what it is.” Asked about the violence in his films, he noted, “If we didn’t want to upset anyone, we’d make a film about sewing, and maybe even that would be dangerous.”

Now, seated in the deserted and somehow unsettling opulence of a private club atop the Carlton Hotel, Lynch expands on that thought. “In a perfect world people would enjoy the things everybody does, but it’s never been that way for me. If I do any film, some people will ask ‘why,’ like you’ve made a big mistake. But I can’t worry about that.”

Lynch admits that the risks of being second-guessed were strong with “Fire Walk With Me,” given that he would be working for a second time with material he had already dealt with for 32 hours on his much publicized TV series. He did it, he says without hesitation, for the simplest of reasons: “I happen to be in love with the world of ‘Twin Peaks’ and the characters that exist there. I love the mood, the possibilities for stories, and I wanted to go back in.”

That love has been reciprocated in some unexpected parts of the world. In Japan, for instance, “Twin Peaks” mania is so high that “Fire Walk With Me” is playing there now, months ahead of its late-August American debut, and in almost as many theaters as “Terminator 2.”

“There is something universal about it,” the director says, trying to figure out why. “A small town surrounded by a deep woods, it’s almost like a fairy tale.”

Lynch is in fact so enamored of the “Peaks” folks that he says he would “for sure” consider doing yet another film in that neck of the woods. Television, however, is another story. “I originally loved the idea of a continuing story, but now I’d think twice about the television medium,” he says. “Material is so hard to control when you’re not in charge, and one person can’t control all those hours. This is nothing against those people who worked on it, but it ends up heartache.”

Lynch is not sure what his next project will be, possibly “One Saliva Bubble,” which he describes as “a very wacko, infantile, bad humor kind of film.” What it won’t be, somewhat sadly, is “Ronnie Rocket,” a film he has been passionate about for at least a decade.

“After so many years, now I have the opportunity to make it if I want to,” he says, looking a bit regretful. “But when I read it, it doesn’t do the things it should to me. I’ve lost the electricity in it; it’s like a light bulb with no electricity.

“They have an expression for that over here,” he concludes, as only David Lynch can. “It’s c’est la vie .”

Of all the unlikely people who make their way to Cannes, from protesters objecting to the French government’s deportation of resident Kurds to a little group of dazed tourists from a Royal Viking cruise ship, the most unexpected visitor just might be the Rev. Robert Castle.

An Episcopal minister at St. Mary’s on 126th Street in the heart of Harlem, Castle is a politically and socially active clergyman with the arrest record to back up his beliefs, the kind of man who asks right up front on the ride in from the airport, “Where do the poor people live around here?

“This place is insane, absolutely insane,” he says, half amused and half horrified at a beach restaurant. “To see the decadence, the opulence, the money spent on ridiculous films--kill, kill, kill, murder, murder, murder--you have to have a sense of humor. I don’t know how many confessions I’m going to have to make when I get home, how many absolutions.”

The subject of a documentary called “Cousin Bobby,” directed by his Oscar-winning cousin, Jonathan Demme, Castle is shown doing everything from visiting poverty-stricken parishioners to protesting the lack of a traffic signal at a busy corner. Although he “has no illusions that people will wake up the morning after seeing the film and say, ‘Let’s do it for Cousin Bobby,’ ” he hopes that his example, and his words here, may help stimulate people to get involved in social action in their own communities.

A man with a pointed sense of humor, Castle recalls the headline after his first brush with the police at a demonstration at a fast-food emporium: “White Castle Arrested at White Castle.” And when asked if the community ever got that needed traffic light, he chuckles, shakes his head and says, “That’ll be in ‘Cousin Bobby II.’ ”