A Lynchian lunch, complete with finger flurries

James Wolcott's David Lynch impersonation, it pains me to report, is much better than mine. He packs a better mid-Western accent, at just the right saw-like pitch, complete with those sea anemone finger flurries Lynch uses to suggest feeling his way towards an idea. Lynch figured greatly during my lunch with Wolcott today, during which the following topics were tackled:- whether transcendental meditation has harmed Lynch's filmmaking; his inability to end a movie possibly being related to his inability to start one; Pauline Kael's phone message to Lynch upon first seeing Blue Velvet ("please tell him that I loved it"); Lynch's message back ("God bless"); the current ubiquity of actors and directors exploring their "dark sides"; whether James Cameron was robbed at the Oscars; the use of pop music in Mad Men; the likelihood and desirability of John Hamm's breakthrough with The Town; air-conditioning; Israel; the uses to which directors should be putting Amanda Seyfried; anti-Americanism; cats; the tonal wobbles of The Departed; Robert Duvall.