The death of the visionary filmmaker David Lynch at the start of this year was a deep loss to the industry.
Gloriously idiosyncratic, his back catalogue included films such as The Elephant Man and 1984’s Dune, as well as the LA based noir mysteries Mullholland Drive, Inland Empire and Lost Highway.
On television, creating the remarkable Twin Peaks which had viewers gripped as we puzzled the question of “Who killed Laura Palmer?”
In his final few years, Lynch was on a new project, apparently Netflix bound. At the time of his passing, the show was referenced in a tribute from Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos.
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Now, one of David Lynch’s collaborators, Cinematographer Peter Demming, has also spoken about the project called Unrecorded Night.
He told The Film Stage:
“Shortly before he passed – well, like a year, because it was pre-Covid – there was Unrecorded Night, which he had written. I’d read it, and we actually went on one scout, looking at locations. Then Covid hit, so everything shut down and it never rekindled.
“It’s definitely its own original thing… It was going to be a lot of episodes, because David really liked what he called ‘the continuing story.’…[When we made] Twin Peaks: The Return, we weren’t really sure how many episodes there were going to be until it got into post-production, because it wasn’t really written that way; it was written as a 550-page film. So how that was sliced and diced really was a post-production question. Unrecorded Night was the same way. It took me three sittings to read it because it was so thick, but it was definitely not Twin Peaks. It was definitely a really interesting… mystery, I would say.”
Talking to Variety, Deming has since suggested that the project might see the light of day in prose:
“Now, just recently, I know Jennifer (Lynch) and the kids are talking about publishing it as a book, because I think it was a discussion that began when David started having health problems and whether he would be able to make it”
Let’s hope Unrecorded Night doesn’t remain a mystery! We’ll keep our fingers crossed and, of course, we’ll keep you posted.