David Lynch and Jay Leno: A Late-Night Love Story (Part 1)
A psychopathic Norman Rockwell in the spotlight
We’re not going to talk about Judy. In fact, we’re not going to talk about Judy at all. Today, we are going to talk about daily routines, late night television, and an improbable love story spanning at least two decades. We’re going to talk about David Lynch and Jay Leno.
With the unexpected success of Twin Peaks on ABC in 1990, David Lynch discovered more than just mainstream acclaim. His soft midwestern-melange demeanor and otherworldly and uncomfortable artistic output established Lynch as a character ripe for the late night show panel format. No longer a mere press junket opportunity for un vrai auteur sandwiched between the day’s top sitcom stars and pop icons, Lynch was now part-sideshow and part-sideman. A cheap laugh, surely, at Lynch’s expense, the way a schoolyard bully may prod the awkward theater kid. Or maybe not?
Watching available clips of David Lynch on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, I find myself in familiar territory: I think I know what’s happening based on the surface-level information, but there’s something impenetrable happening beneath. Below, it’s a place both wonderful and strange, and the jowls are not what they seem.
Routines
“Everyday, once a day, give yourself a present.”
The daily rituals of the rich, powerful, and productive have been studied and emulated since the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius from the 2nd century AD. What people like Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos eat and wear, when they sleep and rise, how little time they spend with their loved ones, are all interesting metrics to people seeking to Hustle™ their way to Success™. I’m not going to talk about those people.
My morning routine, by contrast, is relatively simple: I wake up around the same hour each day, make a strong cup of black tea (black as midnight on a moonless night), and tune in to David Lynch’s YouTube channel, David Lynch Theater. Since the pandemic began (and indeed for long stretches of time in years past), Lynch begins his mornings with a public greeting, a summary of the current weather conditions in Los Angeles, something that might be on his mind (a song, a birthday greeting to a famous friend, a condemnation of Vladimir Putin), and a promise of blue skies and golden sunshine all along the way, be it in the current forecast or a hopeful glimmer to carry us through. On Fridays, Lynch is in a particularly good mood, hyping his viewers up with a spirited “IF YOOOOOOOOOU CAAAN BELIEVE IT, IT’S A FRIDAY ONCE AGAIN!” shaking the camera for dramatic effect. On Saturdays and Sundays, Lynch and his audience are all aboard the Fun Work Train, destination Weekend Projects. There’s plenty of black coffee and treats on the Fun Work Train, and an observation car to help clear the mind as we each tackle our passion projects with Lynchian gusto.
Lynch’s habitudes go back way before the Fun Work Train left the station. A 1990 Time Magazine article, the earliest record of David Lynch on The Tonight Show that I can find, recounts the following:
Some people want to know who killed Laura Palmer […] More people, it seems, want to know about David Lynch's eating habits. How many damn fine cups of coffee (lots of milk, gobs of sugar) does he drink each day? Does he share the cherry-pie fixation of his TV hero, Special Agent Cooper? On the Tonight Show, Jay Leno quizzed Lynch about his Guinness Book-worthy consumption of chocolate milk shakes at the Bob's Big Boy chain in Los Angeles. The astounding stats: one every day at 2:30 p.m. for seven years, 1973-79.
-From Czar of Bizarre by Richard Corliss, Time Magazine, 1990, courtesy Lynchnet.com
Sadly, the full video does not seem to be publicly available (in one clip, Lynch and Leno, a known automobile collector, opine on their mutual appreciation for spark plugs). That takes us to the first full Lynch/Leno face-off one can find on YouTube, from 1992, in which Leno references his previous encounter with the “psychopathic Norman Rockwell” (4:25 mark):
JL: Like you say, one of the articles says you’re a creature of habit. Explain and we’ll see if we have similar…
DL: Well… some people have heard the story that I went to Bob’s Big Boy for seven years every day at 2:30 and had the same thing. That was my longest habit pattern, I think.
JL: Right. [growing laughter from the audience]
DL: But I like a habitual behavior because it’s, it’s a known factor and then your mind is free to think about other things.
Jay Leno, taking some of the incoming arrows fired from the audience, interjects at this point to assert that he does the same thing: after his show every night at midnight he goes home and makes spaghetti with Romano cheese. This confession becomes a bonding point between two men who occupy diametrically different spaces in the popular imagination. Leno not only understands Lynch’s methodical way of living, he is a participant. They may not be on the same page, but they’re reading the same book (perhaps Ethan Frome or Silas Marner).
They continue on the subject of midnight spaghetti and it’s fascinating. Leno remarks (with the inflection of the stand-up misogyny of his era) that his wife can’t understand how he can have the same thing to eat every night for a year then “switch to tuna fish for no reason.” Lynch is downright giddy at this turn in the story — there is a fish in percolator after all. “Precisely,” Lynch responds, nodding vigorously in approval. The sudden disruption of long-held habits becomes a method of rejuvenating the creative spirit. As Lynch says earlier in the interview as Leno oddly proclaims his fondness for industrial areas: “Jay, this is music to my ears.”
The interview veers off at this point into typical late night promotional material by way of Raffaella De Laurentiis’ rigatoni. Lynch half-heartedly pitches his ABC comedy On the Air, sounding defeated by his assigned time-slot and sympathizing with the unusual-yet-Lynchian hissing reaction from the audience at the mention of the network. Leno snaps back from introspection and settles comfortably into his smug-schtick we have all grown to hate (#teamCoco anyone?). “When you say wacko, that’s saying something” says Leno, cutting off Lynch to thunderous applause. The schoolyard bully is back and he wants the attention. Part of him, though, remains on Lynch’s side of the desk: “I shall watch. I enjoy your work. I like wacko, weird things.”
My original intention for this piece was to encapsulate all of David Lynch’s Tonight Show appearances in one essay. It’s clear to me now that this will need to be a multi-part exploration — a Limited Event Series if you will. Subsequent parts of this series will take us through Lynch’s 1997 appearance promoting Lost Highway, a very strange 2000 appearance for The Straight Story that showcases a better mouse trap of Lynch’s design and a horny Wynona Judd after Lynch’s “tight end,” 2001’s Mulholland Drive press that is peak Jay Leno cringe, and some bonus material to help flesh out the saga.
If you’re enjoying the ride so far, I've got good news: that gum you like is going to come back in style, where we're from the birds sing a pretty song, and there's always music in the air. You hear about this?
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Yes! This is what I hoped for from you: something unexpected, unexplored as yet by me, and satisfying. I now want to know more about Lynch. How odd was Leno's audience's reaction!