In 2006, director David Lynch shared his personal design for a bird feeder that also keeps squirrels at bay.
Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive director David Lynch seldom gives interviews, but when he does, they often provide a valuable insight into his unusual, ingenious mind.
Case in point: a 2006 interview in which Lynch took the time to explain and sketch out his design for a squirrel-proof bird feeder. His construction employs a pair of metal discs, suspended above and below the feeder, which mean greedy squirrels can’t climb up and steal the food from below or try to jump onto it from above.
It’s a thoroughly charming moment that occurs right at the beginning of a lengthier, 40-minute discussion about Lynch’s career as a filmmaker. And as frivolous as it sounds, the exchange gets to the heart of Lynch as both an artist and a person – how quiet he is, how carefully he thinks about even small details, and how his ideas tread the line between the ingenious and the childlike.
In his deadpan delivery, it’s also hard to tell how serious he’s being when he describes the squirrel’s reaction to the bird feeder’s impregnable defences.
“He’s looking here, and he begins to cry, because he can’t get there,” Lynch says, sketching out a squirrel and a line of teardrops falling from its eyes.
The sketch is even given a title: ‘Larcenous Squirrel Thwarted By “The Disc Of Sorrow” Cries In Despair.’
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It’s all of a piece with Lynch’s work as a filmmaker, which often dances a line between surrealism, tragedy and black comedy. The interview was sensitively conducted by writer and filmmaker Stuart Mabey in 2006, around the time Lynch was in the early stages of making what would become Inland Empire, but wasn’t made public in its entirety until about 13 years afterwards.
Unfortunately, it can’t be embedded here, but you can find the whole video on Mabey’s YouTube channel, KGSM MediaCache. On there you’ll also find similarly fascinating discussions with the likes of Gene Wilder, Ellen Burstyn, Terry Gilliam and Meryl Streep.
