[
INLAND EMPIRE screens Saturday July 11th at 8:05 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]
Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.
INLAND EMPIRE is to cult-hero director David Lynch what
KILL BILL was to cult-hero director Quentin Tarentino. No expense or indulgence spared, no reins, no guardrails, and everything that makes this idiosyncratic filmmaker the...thing that he is, an unadulterated Lynch-a-thon. Never mind his "mainstream" success in
Twin Peaks or even the bizarre trivia that George Lucas wanted Lynch for
RETURN OF THE JEDI; this feature is the fellow back to his roots in grainy, grotesque and troubling avant-garde/experimental cinema, shooting in international locations without a completed script, having at his disposal a megabucks cast and winding up with a three-hour running time.
It was also more or less self-distributed by Lynch city by city, during its non-studio 2006 release. In Cleveland
INLAND EMPIRE was booked for an unprecedented seven-day run at the Cleveland Cinematheque. Director John Ewing told me at the time that fans
were coming in from as far as Pittsburgh and Cincinnati just to see it.
