Kyle MacLachlan

“So the first one I'm going to pick is Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Steven Soderbergh. I was going to be in this actually, but, but it didn't end up happening, for the Spader role. I thought Spader was great, he, he's wonderful and he's perfect. And, I love Steven. He also has a, he has an investment in, in an alcohol, Singani, which is a, grape brandy, I think, coming out of Bolivia. So I also make wine, and so we get together, for cocktails sometimes and talk about what it's like to distribute an alcohol product. Both of us in this other industry and then yet we're involved in the, in the wine and wine trade, in the alcohol business, so there you go. We share that as well.”

“So this is Le cercle Rouge, starring Alain Delon, Yves Montand. And I was like, until I got into the noir, I was sort of like, who's this Alain Delon? What's the big deal about Alain Delon? And I watch him and it's like the guy, first of all, he's incredibly handsome, but he's so tough. You just don't expect him to be as tough as he is looking that way. Gave me hope.”

“Oh, okay, so this is, oh, I'm still, I can still reach it, Manchurian Candidate. This is a film I don't, I've seen, I saw it a long, long, long time ago, but I don't remember, but it was directed by the late John Frankenheimer. And, John was, was a character, oh my lord. He had some, you know, he had a great career and then he had some personal difficulties and then he got through those, and then he was coming back directing. And on his, on what I call the comeback trail for John, he directed a movie called Against the Wall. I was in it, Samuel Jackson was in it, the late Anne Heche, I'm so sorry to hear what's happened to her. And John was kind of my champion. He reached out to me and he said, "I really want you for this movie." And I was like, John Frankenheimer, I was like, "Absolutely." Well, the guys at HBO, Bob Cooper, they weren't sure. So they said, "Well, he's going to have to audition." So John was like, "Well, Kyle, we're going to do this and we're going to audition at my house, we're going to make it happen." My John Frankenheimer and my John Huston are very, very similar, so don't pay attention to that. Anyway, directed by John Frankenheimer. Loved John. Tough on his crew, but, loved his actors, loved his actors.”

“Being There. Oh my god, this is great. Peter Sellers. Peter Sellers' performance was, again, I borrowed, you know, just or was inspired by, let's say, his character for again, for, the Dougie character in, in Twin Peaks: The Return. I just, the, the, the, the childlike quality that he had in his eyes and just the wonder and the way he looked at the world, it was very helpful to me.”

“And this one is great, it just caught my eye, Roma. Wow, that's heavy. Alfonso, such a beautiful movie, such a delicate movie. So I worked with Alfonso on, a series called Believe a number of years ago, and it was such a pleasure. I, I had been working, I kind of had a lull in my career I guess, and, had been working and, but I hadn't really worked with anyone of this caliber, of Alfonso's caliber. And I just had a couple days on, on the series, but something washed over me like a kiss, a remembrance. I, I said, "Oh, this reminds me of Lynch, this reminds me of Frankenheimer, this reminds me of the great directors that I worked with." And I kind of lost that feeling somehow, and he gave it back to me, and I'll ever be forever grateful for that.”

“Here's David's, David Lynch. We can't go any more time without talking about David. So David and I, you know, we have a long collaboration together, starting with Dune in '83 and then Blue Velvet and then Twin Peaks. And he is a good friend and I cherish that relationship, and then count myself incredibly lucky to have worked with him so frequently and collaborated with him. We have such a good time, it's, it's not work at all, it's just playtime. The Elephant Man is a beautiful, beautiful film and I know that he felt a great affinity with that character, and John Hurt did an extraordinary job, Anthony Hopkins. I worked with Anthony later on, we did a movie called, The Trial together, and we spent three nights in Kutná Hora in Czechoslovakia, at that time Czechoslovakia, Czech Republic, filming in this cold, cold church. And we'd basically do impersonations of actors, so I would do my best and then he would do, oh my god, Clark Gable was, was, he was amazing Clark Gable. And then he, and then we would do David Lynch together, so we'd be doing dueling Davids because he worked on this one, of course I knew David very well, so it's kind of like this, we were talking like this, and to hear Anthony Hopkins do a David Lynch, well, you haven't lived until you've heard that.”

“Now this one, Blue Velvet was kind of the, kind of a rebirth for me, because we'd done Dune together in '83 and Dune didn't really turn out that well. In fact, I was kind of after that, it was sort of, I felt like I was a pariah in the business. No work, no nothing. But David, bless his heart, he'd given me the script to Blue Velvet when we were filming, while we were filming Dune in Mexico City. And I read it and I was like, "Whoa, this is, this is very, very intense." And I really liked it and I really identified with the character of Jeffrey. But David and I were planning to go shoot Blue Velvet right after Dune was released in '84, winter of '84. And because Dune didn't do so well, they postponed it and so things happened, and then finally Blue Velvet came to pass in, in the summer of that year, in the summer of '85 we shot this in Wilmington, North Carolina. And we had such a lovely time, I mean it was Dennis Hopper, Isabella Rossellini, Laura Dern, myself, Dean Stockwell, Brad Dourif. As traumatic as Dune was for him, I know it was, Blue Velvet was a whole different reality, and we were in our element. And, and it was, and he came back to me, that's the point I guess is, you know, he did, we did Dune together and he could easily have said, "Well, that, you know, Kyle, he didn't really help the movie and so I'm going to find somebody else." And, he didn't do that, he, he wanted me, and I'll be forever grateful. Thanks, David. I actually have Blue Velvet, so I'm going to put this one back for someone else to find and experience and enjoy.”