It also means that theories about what, say, that blue box in Mulholland Dr. means are more plentiful than donuts in Agent Cooper's mouth. Whether they be glib brain farts or endless exegeses, explanations of what Lynch really meant are everywhere. To the late filmmaker's credit, he rarely validated any, but also rarely outright said any were wrong either.
I myself played this game when I wrote an article for Twin Peaks fanzine Wrapped in Plastic twenty-something years ago, so I can't be too judgmental when a Lynch theorist's theories diverge from my own. Sometimes I agreed with Colin Odell and Michelle Le Blanc's interpretations in their 200-page David Lynch, and sometimes I didn't. If the grandmother in The Grandmother is a sinister character or the Lady in the Radiator in Eraserhead is aggressive, I really don't see it. I also think it's pretty obvious that Philip Gerard of Twin Peaks is not addicted to drugs, as the authors suggest, but is using them to keep MIKE from emerging. But other times we align, and sometimes Odell and Le Blanc even managed to make me see Lynch's work in a slightly different way. I like the way they pointed out how the home-life of the little boy of The Grandmother mirrors his fantasy life and how they defined Sandy's role in Blue Velvet. I also liked that they steered away from the kinds of "this is what it all really means" conclusions that make some theorists look goofy. They don't even touch that blue box.
Odell and LeBlanc's David Lynch was originally published in 2000 and then updated on the heels of INLAND EMPIRE in 2007. Its new "revised and updated" edition makes room for all that Lynch did in the years between that second edition and his death last year. The only substantial edition is Twin Peaks: The Return, since that's the only substantial film work Lynch accomplished in the last nineteen years of his life, although it focuses more on synopsis than analysis. There are also mini-entries devoted to short films, commercials, his Duran Duran concert film, and Fire Walk With Me: The Missing Pieces. That definitely justifies the "updated" addendum to the title, although one has to wonder about the revisions when there are still several mistakes in the text, which includes a bit of character confusion in their synopsis of Dune.
