From what I can gather in the '80s a bunch of foreign directors were commissioned to make a movie about how the rest of the world sees France. Lynch said he was asked but turned it down, but on the way home from the meeting where it was first suggested to him, he started getting ideas. The guy who offered him the job heard the ideas and said they were two clichés for the price of one.
The movie is shot like a Technicolor western, featuring Lynch standbys Harry Dean Stanton and Jack Nance, who are regrettably now no longer with us. Stanton, apparently like Lynch himself, projects his voice due to a hearing impairment he suffered when a rifle went off too close to his ears. He and his cowboy buddies lasso themselves a French guy, who is unable to communicate with them. They go through his suitcase and discover a bunch of stereotypical French items like snails and cheese that smells so strong Stanton thinks it's gone bad.
Eventually, they make friends with the Frenchman and are joined by a Native American man and some lady singers. There is a constant soundtrack of instrumental country music throughout.
This might be one of the hardest Lynch flicks to rate. People are saying it proves he could do comedy, but I disagree, because one, a humourous tone is present through a lot of his output, especially "Twin Peaks", and two, because it's never really laugh-out-loud funny. Some Lynch things have this tone, in addition to other things going on at the time, but "The Cowboy and the Frenchman" really doesn't have much else to it.
Even the supposed point of the flick, showing how Americans see the French, seems undeveloped. It feels more like Lynch just wanted to try his hand at making an old-timey Western.
The movie is shot like a Technicolor western, featuring Lynch standbys Harry Dean Stanton and Jack Nance, who are regrettably now no longer with us. Stanton, apparently like Lynch himself, projects his voice due to a hearing impairment he suffered when a rifle went off too close to his ears. He and his cowboy buddies lasso themselves a French guy, who is unable to communicate with them. They go through his suitcase and discover a bunch of stereotypical French items like snails and cheese that smells so strong Stanton thinks it's gone bad.
Eventually, they make friends with the Frenchman and are joined by a Native American man and some lady singers. There is a constant soundtrack of instrumental country music throughout.
This might be one of the hardest Lynch flicks to rate. People are saying it proves he could do comedy, but I disagree, because one, a humourous tone is present through a lot of his output, especially "Twin Peaks", and two, because it's never really laugh-out-loud funny. Some Lynch things have this tone, in addition to other things going on at the time, but "The Cowboy and the Frenchman" really doesn't have much else to it.
Even the supposed point of the flick, showing how Americans see the French, seems undeveloped. It feels more like Lynch just wanted to try his hand at making an old-timey Western.