Nightmare daddyDavid Lynchhas routinely pulled from the depths of the abyss for inspiration, whether it’stalking noir monkeysorthe atomic bomb, which is why it should come as a surprise to absolutely no one that the first film he ever made was about six men getting sick six times. The title?Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times). Beautiful! The film itself however is as nightmarish as anything Lynch has cooked up and certainly one of the most haunting of agreat director’s early debuts, subverting audience’s notions of narrative structure over four brisk minutes and replacing it with what can only be described as ‘weird sh*t’.
Prior to describing the film and its influences, it’s important to note that for such an elusive work, there can be no definitive interpretation. You could claim it’s about the Second Coming of Jesus or argue that it’s about some expired food served at the student cafeteria and both would be just as valid. There’s a reason Lynch never explains his films to people and in the case of his last feature filmInland Empirethat includes his own stars. His works aren’t merely intensely personal but so dreamlike that they can only speak to people on an intimate and individual level.
What Is David Lynch’s ‘Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times)’ About?
It was 1967 when Lynch was at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts before deciding to hone his filmmaking chops at the American Film Institute. Originally, the mad genius was a painter who washeavily inspired by the works ofFrancis Bacon.See the resemblance?Bacon’s work is always about externalizing emotion in the most surrealistic and anguish-inducing manner imaginable, something Lynch was clearly keen on expressing in his own body of workfrom the very beginning.In an interview onThe Late Late Show, Lynch describes the moment that he wanted to transition to film:
“I was painting, and the painting, as I said before, I was painting very dark paintings. And I saw some little part of this figure moving, and I hear a wind. And I really wanted these things to move and have a sound with them. And so I started making an animated film as a moving painting. And that was it.”
This is like the comic book origins of Batman when Bruce Wayne decided to take up the mantle after a bat crashed into his house through his window. Divine intervention in the form of the howling wind seemed to have pushed Lynch into the sphere of moving images. From this anecdote, the inspiration for thehorrifying animated natureofSix Men Getting Sickbecomes clear. Six despairing men are quickly introduced, formed from 2D stop-motion animation, only for their organs to become visible. A brief flame rises over the corner for the screen and the figures start vomiting profusive amount of bright red blood. All of this with a soundtrack comprised of a looping siren, and played on repeat six times, allowing the audience to delight in every stomach-churning detail.
What Inspired David Lynch to Make ‘Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times)’?
David Lynch was quick to realize the efficacy ofstop-motion animationin the horror space, recognizing the uncanny quality it possesses and the eeriness it can convey. And while Lynch didn’t offer any concrete explanation in regard to what the film is actually about, he did offer a reveal for the strongest source of inspiration for his early work. “My greatest influence was the city of Philadelphia,” Lynch said, later describing his time living in the “bad areas of town” where he’d routinely witness a series of oddities. Lynch was only specific about one particular curiosity during his time in the city, which included “a woman in a backyard squawking like a chicken, crawling on her hands and knees in tall, dry grass.” Between this andIt’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia(in which one scenebears a striking resemblance to Lynch’s first film), Philadelphia appears a treasure trove of inspiration for some of screen art’s most lovable weirdos. And speaking of treasure troves…
This ’60s Neo-Noir Film Inspired David Lynch, From ‘Twin Peaks’ to ‘Blue Velvet’
A psychotic killer torments a young woman in a town called Twin Peaks…sound familiar?
David Lynch’s Early Shorts Are a Treasure Trove of Nightmare Fuel
Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times)wasn’t the only short David Lynch saw through the production of before graduating to feature films and even after that, he routinely dipped back into the short format.His other early works continue to explore nightmarish realmsand have been compiled in a DVD titledThe Short Films of David Lynchwhich includes introductions to each entry. This includesThe Alphabet, inspired by his then-wifePeggy Reavy’s niece who had a nightmare about reciting the ABC’s, which opens on a sleeping woman (Reavy) as children chant ‘A-B-C’ in an almost demonic manner before dissolving into bizarre animated visuals and an even more frightening operatic voiceover. This also features a shot that may have birthed one of hismost unnerving imagesin the form of the Phantom’s face in the aforementionedInland Empire.
AfterThe Alphabet, Lynch madeThe GrandmotherandThe Amputee, both for the American Film Institute. The former runs 33 minutes long and combines mostly silent live action with animation to tell the story of a boy who grows a grandmother from a seed to escape the abuse of his parents. Sheesh… The latter runs just under five minutes and concerns a woman whose legs have been amputated writing a perplexing letter while a nurse attends to her wounds. This isn’t even countingLynch’s commercial work, which beforeTwin Peaksbegan in 1967 when he directed an untitled “Fictitious Anacin Commercial,” parodying the era’s commercials for a popular pain reliever in a manner through which his dark sense of humor really shines.
David Lynch hasn’t released a feature film since 2006’sInland Empireand while he has plenty ofunrealized projects under his belt, it could be a while before we see any of them come to life again on the big screen. Fret not, Lynch fans, as if you’re urging for a fix, the auteur has several demented shorts,cartoons, commercials, and television series for you to scratch your head over. Although famously indecipherable, if fans are keen on coming ever-so-slightly closer to cracking the code that is Lynch’s filmography, his early works are the best place to start.
