John Waters and David Lynch really love Lana Del Rey
The two legendary directors recently praised Del Rey's art and authenticity
Aux News Lana Del Rey
Lana Del Rey has many, many fans, including the staff and patrons of a Florence, Alabama Waffle House, the administration of NYU, and the Recording Academy, who just nominated her 2023 album Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd for five Grammys. Unsurprisingly, the artist—who penned the line “When you know, you know… like Hollywood and me” on her latest release—also counts many iconic names in film and television among her large roster of admirers.
One of those figures is Hairspray and Pink Flamingos director John Waters, who expounded on his adoration of the “Say Yes To Heaven” singer in her recent Harper’s Bazaar profile. “She’s unearthly suburban and unreasonably talented, and she can pretend to be a normal person,” he said. “I think of the ad campaign for Russ Meyer’s Lorna… [The tagline] could go for her: ‘Longing, love, lust, life, Lana. Too much for one man.’”
This isn’t the first time Waters has praised Del Rey. In a 2014 interview with Rolling Stone, the filmmaker said he’d been listening to her album Ultraviolence (released earlier that year) a lot. “She’s very David Lynch to me,” he added in the RS interview. “She infuriates people, but I think she’s in on it. I really want her to hook up with David Lynch, because he produces great albums these days.”
That collaboration may not be so far-fetched. Not only did Del Rey cover “Blue Velvet” in an ode to the filmmaker in 2012, but Lynch is also quoted as a fan of the singer in this week’s Harper’s profile. “She tells a story in her music,” he said. “She gives a mood and a story and a way to think, and she paints a picture in your brain.” Previously, Lynch also praised Del Rey as having “fantastic charisma.” “This is a very interesting thing—it’s like she’s born out of another time… She’s got something that’s very appealing to people. And I didn’t know that she was influenced by me!” he added (per Vulture). This really does sound like a match made in heaven to us.
36 Comments
Since the comments are closed on the D4 interview article: Having articles about Blizzard and D4 and not letting us comment on them is pretty shitty. I’m sure Bliz pays good money to not get bad press, but at least let us talk about it.
I’m genuinely surprised we still have comments at all. Once those are gone, I imagine I’ll be done with this site for good.
Same, closing down comments on Bliz articles is the beginning of the end I think.
They’ve been doing it on the Facebook- oh, I’m sorry, “Meta” – sponsored content “Future Of Gaming” articles for a while.Here’s a fuckin’ hint, Zuck: the future of gaming doesn’t involve VR or social media nowhere fuckin’ near as much as you’d like.
Literally that’s why I’m here. I don’t care about the articles. I live in the Washington DC area now and there used to be a great blog site DCist. It still exists, but doesn’t have comments anymore. I stopped reading it.
Dee Seeyalater!
yo I just came from that article and that weirded me out. All I was going to say was that the first Diablo I played was D4, I had not idea who the Butcher was, I ran into him in my very first dungeon and he annihilated me. I realized that when you run into him there is usually an invulnerability shrine nearby, so the next time I was running a dungeon with a friend and he showed up, we ran to the shrine, which was cursed, and we got annihilated 😀
Yes god forbid we can’t hear a bunch of white male hipsters suck each other’s dicks in the comments. Tragic.
She’s so authentic, she goes by a fake name!
What a weird thing to whine about
Well, some would say it’s not weird at all. This isn’t just any random stage name. “Lana Del Rey” itself is an appropriation of Cuban culture – she said it reminded her of “the glamor of the seaside,” the beach and Miami. Her early album (Lizzy Grant) under her real name (Elizabeth Woolridge Grant) flopped hard. She’s a white chick from the suburbs, but the persona that got her all the success is an appropriation of music, aesthetics, and storylines conceived in low-income neighborhoods populated by people of colour. So, you know, calling inauthenticity isn’t that weird.
Well, when the person making the point is an obvious incel troll, yeah, it is a weird thing to whine about.
Well you can whine that her name was picked by a room full of middle-aged white guys like lawyers, because she is on the record before she broke big admitting that.
Okay, if it was like the stupid “Cougar” in John Cougar Mellencamp (also picked by his label) I absolve her.
? I think there is a difference between being put in a box and having a team create your jeweled setting, name, appearance, plastic surgery, and marketing for you.
I thought she was too manufactured at first (especially after seeing that SNL appearance she clearly wasn’t ready for) but I have to admit she’s made the most of it and if that’s all she had going for her she probably wouldn’t still be relevant a decade later.
I don’t know, there are a lot of people who people like who I don’t, they just aren’t normally praised by Waters and Lynch
White Guys Like Lawyers is her backing band.
😀
Not really. Why do people create stage names, pen names, whatever? Because they want to separate their works from themselves. I’m not saying that’s always unjustified; there may be real reasons for it if they live for example in a dictatorship or like George Eliot, because they are a woman in a culture that doesn’t respect women, but in modern Western culture it is basically a twee affectation.
She had a middling career as a folksy singer before the name change. I’m not going to put her on David Bowie’s level by any means but it is a bit like how he dropped a dead end style and adopted a completely new persona.
I tried a stage name once. It didn’t work because I was never that famous that I was around people who knew me as my real name and I didn’t really expect them to call me anything else. Now that I’m thinking, this story really adds nothing to your comment.
What a broad overgeneralization. I use a separate name because there are people in my previous life that would happily tank my career out of spite. It’s safe and practical and I don’t have to share my writing with everyone I meet. Just the ones I want to.
What’s your real name?
So let me know when Lana will be following up on a new Twin Peaks series, with David Lynch as executive producer?
Lana Del Rey does with music the exact same thing they did with movies — confronted the nauseating falseness of the suburban American dream. That said, Lana Del Rey also has a history of kind of being that thing, so… you know, whatever.
That’s authenticity, baby!
When Lana Del Rey first came on the scene, I thought she sounded like a Lynch soundtrack. So nice to know I wasn’t completely crazy.And Lynch is a great source for discovering music: I wouldn’t have known about Cactus Blossoms if they hadn’t appeared in Twin Peaks II.
He is, but on the other hand, Chrysta Bell was a terrible actress, and she was only cast in that season because David Lynch liked her music and/or wanted to sleep with her and/or already was sleeping with her.
The Veils for me
Oh, I could have told you that.
I heard some of her songs pre-Lana, when she went as ‘Lizzie Grant’, and they are good. very commercial sounding but more enjoyable than her Lana music, for me personally.Also, Lana/Lizzie dropped the ball in not doing a song for the Priscilla movie. Same tardiness behaviour that made her 30mins late for his Glastonbury performance early this year.
I can see her working with Lynch. She’s known to deliver great soundtrack work.
Her talent is beyond this earth!
Well who wouldn’t in that cute dress?
When Born to Die came out, I thought she was the kind of pop star Quentin Tarantino would invent.