Straight time

David Lynch without irony

"The whole film is ironic!" a normally astute film critic friend of mine said upon seeing David Lynch's The Straight Story in its world premiere at Cannes last May. My pal couldn't have been more out to brunch: The Straight Story is straight. Sunshine and green grass, neighborliness and family values. They mean just that; they're not to be read deviously, ghoulishly upside-down, Twin Peaks/Blue Velvet style.

"You'd have to say that The Straight Story is not like films I've done lately," Lynch acknowledged at a Cannes press conference when queried about his about-face in telling the story of lovable old Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth) and Straight's improbably heroic lawnmower ride across Iowa to visit with, and patch things up with, his ailing brother, Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton). "I'm not on any pilgrimage. People react to things, and I reacted to it. Something is in the air: it seemed like the right thing to do. . . . It was the emotion of the script, the phenomenon of forgiveness that got to me. You've got to dig deep to do what Alvin did . . . to mend fences with his brother.

"In America, you submit films to get rated. I got a call from a gentleman named Tony: `You've got a `G' rating.' I said, `Say that again?' But it's absolutely a G-rated film. Someone described it as `America at four miles an hour.' It's a simple story and goes at its own pace."

"How do you prepare for the John Deere mower's super-slowness," a journalist asked Lynch.

"You get a very old DP," piped in legendary cinematographer (and horror director) Freddie Francis, who shot Moby Dick (1956) for John Huston and such British classics as Room at the Top (1959) and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960). "I said to David that I'm very old, that I'm 80, and I don't want to work 17 hours a day. David said, `How many hours will you work?' I said, `Ten hours.' And we finished two days ahead. There's a story in there somewhere."

"Freddie is a very fast director of photography," said Lynch, who also employed Francis on The Elephant Man (1980). "Many people were dropping alongside the road. Not Freddie!"

The Straight Story began with a New York Times article about the real-life Alvin Straight. "I read about him in 1994," said co-screenwriter Mary Sweeney, who also is Lynch's long-time editor and live-in companion. "Unfortunately, someone else had optioned the story. But we got the rights in 1998, and it came together so fast." She wrote with newcomer John Roach, who managed to arrange one in-person meeting with the real Alvin before Straight's death. Together, Sweeney and Roach researched Straight's life, and they took his 200-mile road trip (though by auto), talking to people along the way.

Meanwhile, Lynch started casting his Midwesterners. "Most of the actors are from Minneapolis and Chicago, and they came in and did a great job. I think Harry Dean Stanton is the only one from Los Angeles. Sissy Spacek, who plays Alvin's daughter, Rose, is married to my best friend, the production designer, Jack Fisk. She's a chameleon, can do anything.

"Harry Dean has only one scene -- and what a scene! But Richard Farnsworth is in practically every scene. We're so lucky Richard is in the picture. Such a beautiful soul comes through in every look. . . . The script is rural, it's John Ford territory, and it's about a guy John Ford would have really liked. Farnsworth worked with Ford."

"I did stunts for Ford," said Farnsworth, a gently aging rustic at Cannes in a cowboy hat. "He was good to stuntmen if they made an honest mistake. But if an actor didn't remember his lines or made a mistake, all hell broke loose. There's no comparison with David Lynch as far as getting along with people.

"My agent called and said she read this beautiful story. However, I'm going to have a hip replacement, so I said I couldn't do it. My agent said this character has two canes. I thought, I could handle that! . . . It wasn't hard to portray Alvin. I identified with him."

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Rarely revived, Paul Leni's The Man Who Laughs (1928) is among the greatest of silent films, and among the most heart-wrenching. Who could not be moved by the plight of Victor Hugo's hero, poor Gwynplaine? He's victimized as a boy by wicked child traffickers, who mold his face into a permanent jack-o'-lantern grin. He sobs on the inside, smiles forever on the outside, through countless tragedies and endless pining for Dea, his true love. J.D. Salinger surely thought of Gwynplaine when concocting his famous Nine Stories short story "The Laughing Man."

In the movie, Gwynplaine is played by the divine German actor Conrad Veidt, who was the somnambulist killer, Cesare, in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and Rick's Nazi nemesis in Casablanca. A must-see, The Man Who Laughs shows in a newly restored 35mm print at a colossal screening/concert October 24 at Harvard's Sanders Theatre that's being co-sponsored by the Harvard Film Archive and French Cultural Services.

The score for this performance was specially commissioned for the 1998 Cannes Film Festival from Canadian composer Gabriel Thibaudeau. It will be performed by the eight-piece Octuor de France Orchestra, with piano accompaniment by David Braslawsky. For ticket information, call 292-0064.