#16: Industrial Symphony No. 1 (1990)

Hello! My name is Ed and I am trying to win the lottery by watching Nicolas Cage films.

I am happy to announce that this is the first ever Winning The Lottery With Nicolas Cage THEME WEEK. That’s right:

Strictly speaking, Industrial Symphony No. 1 isn’t a film, but Nicolas Cage is in it, albeit briefly. Lynch had been invited to contribute to a festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and decided to stage an elaborate live presentation songs he and composer Angelo Badalamenti had written for singer Julee Cruise.

Production on his next film, Wild At Heart, was underway, so he filmed a short phone call between the two leads — Cage and Laura Dern, as a loose framing device. There is not a vast amount to say about this. He breaks up with her and then the live portion of the production is a typically surreal Lynchian representation of her internal state, complete with giant deer-men and the little bloke from Twin Peaks.

Julee Cruise mimes along to her songs, mostly while suspended in mid-air but sometimes while locked in a car’s boot. Dancers writhe around the stage. Some dolls are lowered on strings. I imagine it was quite spectacular if you were there on the night, but on tape it starts to drag a bit — both music and visuals becoming a bit repetitive.

It has its moments — there are charmingly odd sequences where Michael J. Anderson (the aforementioned smaller actor better known as The Man from Another Place in Twin Peaks) silently saws logs, then later recites the dialogue from the Cage/Dern sequence while someone plays clarinet next to him. But ultimately it’s not much more than a very long, very weird Top Of The Pops performance.

THE NUMBERS

1 — I mean, it’s called Industrial Symphony No. 1.

2 —Lynch only had about 2 weeks to put the whole thing together, which probably explains why it makes so little sense even by the standards of David Lynch.

10 — It was only performed twice, on November 10th 1989 (it was released on video the following year).

14 — At one point a weird giant deer man appears for some reason. He’s 14 foot tall, according to a book of interviews with David Lynch I found in the library. (Look, it’s quite hard to pick lottery numbers based on avant-garde theatre pieces.)

15 — The song Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart would later reappear on the soundtrack to the 15th episode of Twin Peaks, in which we finally learn who killed Laura Palmer.

49 — Including credits, Industrial Symphony No. 1 lasts for about 49 and a half minutes.

THE RESULT

1 number. Why must I be tested?

NEXT TIME ON NICOLAS CAGE:

David Lynch week concludes, with an actual proper film: Wild At Heart.