External Site: David Lynch Interview Project[info]
In 2009, film director David Lynch sent his son Austin and collaborator Jason S. on a 20,000 mile, seventy day long road trip, across the United States, during which they filmed ordinary people, talking about their lives and experiences. This website presents the 121 short films which resulted from that trip. Each film is introduced by Lynch Senior and features the interviewee speaking to the camera about his or her life. Although one woman talks about her recurrent nightmare of a faceless man with a goatee beard, the general tone is in the gentler vein of The Straight Story, rather than Lynch’s more surreal outings. What unites the interviewees, despite the wide range of age, background and race, is how compellingly the stories of their lives are told. The end result is a powerful and moving portrait of smalltown America as well as a demonstration of how the medium of the internet can be used creatively and imaginatively without sacrificing any of the traditional virtues of documentary filmmaking.
The filmmakers followed up this project with Interview Project Germany: a similar venture, featuring fifty interviews with German people.