As I feel,
rightly or wrongly, a lot of personal connection to this work through its use
of particular motifs that I’ve also used in my work and elements of the history
of the character, Jack, coincidental to my own, one may expect ridiculous and
undue prejudice from me against this
work. Such is not the case. David Lynch plays a detective interrogating a suspect in a side room of a train station. Clearly the character of Jack, embodied by a
Capuchin Monkey (similar or identical to the one who utters Judy near the close
of the film Fire walk with me) and
given voice (and mouth) by Lynch, is primarily an alter ego, a projection of his own self
fears, as well as a loving tribute to his long time friends Jack Fisk and Jack
Nance. It should also be remembered that
Jack Nance died under mysterious circumstances and one would expect such a
traumatic mystery to find its way into Lynch's work. The style of the film harkens back to
Eraserhead, though the dialogue with its elaborate animal metaphors and proverbs seems to
parody hardboiled detective scripts, and specifically Philip (possibly with the help of his twin brother Julius) Epstein’s
racehorse dialogue in Hawks’ the Big
Sleep.
