w w w v w w 'ILI WIZARD OF ODD BY MARK CHRISTENSEN Director David Lynch, the boyish wonder of weird, explores new realms of strangeness in his latest film, Blue Velvet. Mark Christensen is a Los Angeles-based free-lance writer whose workappears frequently in Rolling Stone. 10 - omeone once said betore meeting David Lynch, producer and director of the best weird movie ever made-Eraserhead, that they expected some nervous, with- drawn, intense, rumpled little guy with soup stains splattering his tie and dandruff falling from his thinning hair like driven snow. No. On the other hand, because Lynch was also director ofone of the most expensive and techni- cally extravagant films ever made, Dune, you might expect a space age Otto Preminger. Flam- boyant, demanding, maybe a bit of a schmuck. Lynch isn't that either. What you've got here is your basic tall, blond, clean-cut auteur in the young Jimmy Stewart mold. For someone whose movies-Eraser- head, The Elephant Man, Dune and now his lat- est, Blue Velvet-represent the quirkiest and among the most original visions in American film, it's surprising to shake hands with a chip- per, enthusiastic man who would look at home hawking GLT Turbos at a Volvo dealership. Out- wardly, Lynch's lone bow to strangeness is his gambit of keeping the collars on his shirts but- toned. He saves the freaky stuff for the screen. His latest effort, Blue Velvet, is set for release this fall, and Lynch had just set up rather modest digs in a brand new West Los Angeles condo- minium complex to supervise its birth. New grey carpet. Stereo on the floor. Two or three chairs. His fishing pole leaning against walls that are bare white except for some of his paintings. That's it. Spare. Normal. Middle America. But in an age when most mainstream movies are packaged so carefully that you can smell the cellophane, Lynch, the writer/director, sticks to a sideways vision of the world that's radical, pro- vocative and spooky. Blue Velvet stars Kyle MacLachlan as young Jeffrey Beaumont, who returns home from col- lege following his father's heart attack and who, walking home from the hospital, discovers a hu- man ear lying in a field. That's the everyday pas- toral part. It's from there on out that Blue Velvet gets, well, how else to say it, unusual? The film also stars Laura Dern and Isabella Rossellini as the alternating objects of MacLach- Ian's affections-Dern as the middle-class daughter of a local police detective and Rossel- lini as a kinky torch singer who works at a local watering hole known as The Slow Club. Rosselini has had both her husband and son kidnapped by Frank Booth, played by Dennis Hopper. He's blackmailing her in exchange for sex. Something akin to sex, anyway. Because Frank Booth is no lovey-dovey conventional hearts-and-flowers celluloid Romeo. No way. He's a masterpiece of pure unadulterated badguyness, a viciously electric scumbag who s it possible that Johnny Carson may find himself knocked off his perch as the king of the talk show, not by Joan Rivers but by a fast-talking, stuttering computer, Max Headroom. Max's chiseled good looks and quick wit have made him a mega-star in England. Only Madonna adorns more T-shirts than Max. Currently, Max-watchers in this country have to be content with his chat show on Cinemax and his role as the spokesperson for Coke. But there's more to come. "Max Headroom really is the face for the Eighties,'' says Peter Wagg without a trace of irony. "The reason that he's so good is that he's really the first character that is right for the cur- rent generation," Wagg continues. "He's a computer-generated character, and he appeals to a generation of people who are growing up with computers and computer graphics. Max is also the first literal talking head. That's it. He may talk about playing golf (according to his bio it's his favorite sport) but no one has ever actually seen him do it. And if anyone has a right to discuss Max, it's Wagg. After all, Max was Wagg's idea, and he produces Max's show. But five years ago, Wagg himself had no idea that Max would even exist. At the time, Wagg was an ad man who had become the Director of Creative Services for Chrysalis Records in Lon- don. As such, he was responsible for the label's videos (including the first video album, Blondie's "Eat to the Beat. ") As the sometimes director and producer of the clips, he found himself, in those pre-MTV days, in a state of high frustra- tion. There were clever, innovative videos being shot, but really nowhere to show them. A clip show seemed natural. He convinced the label and London's Channel 4 TV to sponsor a video program. But a funny thing happened on the way to the monitor: Max Headroom was born. "When it all started," says Wagg, still some- what suprised that it actually has, "I felt there to be a need for a linking device between the vid- eos. I wanted to play videos that had never been seen before and videos that had been banned from TV, so obviously we needed a way to con- vey it. ButtI didn't want a human being, because there was no point to making this just for British television. It needed to be something that we could sell internationally, and I didn't think that personalities would travel well. What might be great in England wouldn't necessarily go down well in America but would be okay in Japan and Australia. I didn't want that.'' The idea of using a sassy, computer-generat- ed host to keep the whole show moving at a fast pace came about through some serious brain- storming with the rest of the team, which had grown to include former advertising man George Stone and animators-turned-directors Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton. The actual visual pic- ture of Max is a combination of the talents of actor Matt Frewer, computer graphics and ani- mation. Exactly what the special recipe is, though, Wagg claims is a well-guarded trade se- cret. "There has to be some mystery to Max," he laughs. Perhaps. But simply because how he's made is confidential doesn't mean that Max himself will be a secret in this country for long. Already Max the chat show host is a hit. He's slick with- out being smarmy and is cool enough that all six of last year's guests were pop stars. Artists from Sting to Duran Duran were lining up to be asked such hard-hitting questions as, ''What are your favorite shoes?" This year Max will be seen with a more diverse crowd, ranging from Michael Caine to Vidal Sas- soon. Apparently, most of the guests have a good old time bantering with Max-except for Roger Daltrey, who reportedly found being ha- rassed by a computer monitor a bit hard to stom- ach and walked off the set. Starting next spring, however, fans of the pi- lot-the one-hour show which explained how ace reporter Edison Carter's brain was cloned into a computer to become Max-will have a place to see more adventure stories. Starting mid-season, with a two-hour movie, Max will have his own weekly hour-long adventure show-starring actor Edison Carter. The show can be seen as pure serendipity. Originally, there was going to be no story behind Max They were lust going to put him out there. \ 1 "We had Max all ready to go," recalls Wagg, "and then Andy Parker of Channel 4 said, 'But why is he called Max? Why does he look the way he does? Why does he sound the way he does? Who is he?' So we went away, and primarily George came up with the storyline." They gathered together a wickedly funny group of writers, some patient technicians, and Max was born. If Wagg and company have their way, he'll have a long life as well far beyond the confines of TV. Can you spell merchandising? Wagg can. Coke (and stereo shops in England and Toshiba in Spain) are just the beginning. There are books (currently three: the picture book of the pilot show, Max Headroom's Guide to the Universe and Max Headroom's Guide to Foreigners), a videocassette of the pilot, computer games, cal- endars and T-shirts. But according to Wagg, they aren't just taking the money and running. Each item is examined, not only for quality, but also for the "coolness" factor. Max is, after all, also a rock star- he has a hit song in England done with the Art of Noise called "Paranoia." Only over Peter Wagg's dead body will Max Headroom become this year's "My Little Pony." "We're not selling out," Wagg insists,"by having him sell Coca-Cola or by his being in a feature film. He works on every level. It's always been important that everything you could ever see with Max or buy with him on it, deliver. There is a little rule that the integrity of the character be maintained. There is so much depth to the char- acter. This is not just a superficial linking device. It's on every level: the books, the videocassette, everything. We did sell the package around the world," he states. "Basically, Max is a product. But he's also a major, multi-national personality. He's a combi- nation of Johnny Carson and David Letterman. He's a cult. And the moment we make him a sell- out and make him superficial, he'll die overnight. But at the same time there's no reason he can't go on chat shows or open stores. Because that's what he is- an image on the screen. Pure entertainment." It's unlikely that Max is about to die. His popu- larity has not yet peaked in England; they just got their first view at the Story of Max in late sum- mer, and he's hardly begin to storm the gates yet here. It seems that the only thing that ould stop Max now is a power failure.. * Sharon Liveten writes about music and enter- tainment for severalnationalpublications. 15 Ampersand Ampersand