Debbie Zoller drives LOST HIGHWAY

Make-up and prosthetics artist Debbie Zoller (LOST HIGHWAY, TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN) first worked with David Lynch on LOST HIGHWAY. She discusses their two decades of friendship, and how she designed the look for some of his most iconic femme fatales.

LADIES OF LYNCH explores the subversive female characters created by the late David Lynch, and the singular women who helped shape them. Season 9’s guests include celebrated actor and filmmaker Isabella Rossellini; Lynch’s daughter Jennifer Lynch; his producer of more than 30 years, Sabrina Sutherland; TWIN PEAKS co-creator Mark Frost; and the award-winning novelist Deborah Levy.

Written and guest hosted by culture writer Simran Hans, these conversations with actors, writers, producers and craftspeople who worked directly with Lynch reveal insights about the enigmatic and much-missed filmmaker, and the provocative women he put on screen.

TWIN PEAKS and TWIN PEAKS: A LIMITED EVENT SERIES are now streaming on MUBI in the US, UK, Ireland, Latin America, Germany, Turkey, Italy, Netherlands and India. 

LOST HIGHWAY is now streaming on MUBI in Latin America, India and France. 

MUBI is a global streaming service, production company and film distributor dedicated to elevating great cinema. MUBI makes, acquires, curates, and champions extraordinary films, connecting them to audiences all over the world. A place to discover ambitious new films and singular voices, from iconic directors to emerging auteurs. Each carefully chosen by MUBI’s curators.

Transcript

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Heads up, this episode includes adult language descriptions of sexual violence and spoilers, but it doesn't include me. Your regular host Rico Gagliano this season is being helmed by UK film writer Simran Hans. You'll find her work in<i>The New York Times</i>,<i>The Guardian</i> and many more. She's a great guide through the Lynchian universe. Enjoy. In 1995 the makeup artist Debbie Zoller was working on a David Lynch film called <i>Lost Highway</i>. She was used to bringing lots of things to set, and one thing she always traveled with was her chair. It was a high chair that was the same height as a director's chair, but the director's chairs seemed to always be so rickety. And David saw it, and he loved the chair. Lynch had to have this chair, and so his producer offered Debbie 50 bucks for it. And I said, what are you talking about? I said, I need my chair, you can't have my chair. And I said, I paid $200 for this chair, you know. But Lynch wouldn't let it go. So finally, I was like, here, give David the chair. I said, it'll be my honor for him to have my chair. So Debbie gave up the chair, and when she saw it again, it looked kind of different. David had basically rearranged it. He attached this, like, silver tray that he could write on. He attached a coffee cup holder on one side, an ashtray for cigarettes on the other side. He made more of a foot rest. It's so, David, because David makes furniture so that he just made it his own. And then when we got on <i>The Return</i>, he still had that chair. Welcome back to the MUBI Podcast. MUBI is the global film company that champions great cinema. And on this show we tell you the stories behind great cinema. I'm your guest host, Simran Hans, and this is season nine. We're calling it Ladies of Lynch. Conversations about the subversive female characters created by David Lynch and the singular women who helped shape them, including today's guest: Hi, I'm Debbie Zoller, a makeup designer in this crazy industry for 35 years and have worked with David a majority of my career, probably going on 28, 29 years now. Debbie is a makeup and prosthetics designer and a bit of a Hollywood legend. She's worked on films and TV shows including <i>Kill Bill</i>, <i>Mad Men</i>,<i>A Star Is Born</i> and <i>Fosse/Verdon</i>, for which she won an Emmy. She worked with Lynch on <i>Lost Highway</i>, and in 2017 they collaborated

on <i>Twin Peaks: 2:45

The Return</i>. She's been an essential part of bringing many of his best loved characters to life. In today's episode, we'll learn all about how makeup can tell a story. Here's this girl who's scared out of her mind, but she's trying to fake it, that she's in control. And so that's why we put the red lipstick on her. And how to design a character's look on a set where secrecy is everything. We were not allowed to have any photos up in the trailer of any actors that had shot previously. I had to hide my continuity book in a drawer and lock it. But first, I learned how she ended up as part of Lynchs tight knit crew. Debbie was in her mid 20s, and at the very start of her career as a makeup artist for TV and film. One day she got a phone call. It was the producer, Deepak Nayar. He had a job for her, but she'd have to come in for an interview. He said, I want you to meet Patty Norris and sit with her first. Patty Norris was Patricia Norris, the legendary costume and production designer who had worked with Lynch since 1980. I hadn't read a script. I had no idea it was even a David Lynch movie. They didn't tell me that when I was interviewing. Debbie entered the office to find Patty sitting at her desk smoking a cigarette. She had all these visuals behind her of colors and curtains and fabrics because she was both costume designer and production designer. And I'm looking behind her at all the different pictures. And I was like, "Is there someone that plays two characters in this project?" I said, "'cause I can see different visuals." And she just looked at me and she got up with her cigarette. She said, "I'll be right back." Turns out, Debbie had intuitively nailed it. The film was actually all about doppelgangers. Before she knew it, she had the job. She was then told it was a David Lynch movie, <i>Lost Highway</i>. And at that moment, I think I realized there's no accidents. Yeah, that sounds like kismet to me. And when you had kind of been growing up in college watching David's films, what did you connect with? I think the visuals, especially, you have to see how a character moves within the color palette, within the visuals that you're automatically given. Like the colors of the red curtain, the colors of the wallpaper, minimalist furniture like in <i>Lost Highway</i>, the dark and the light in shadows. All of those things take into consideration what I do,'cause I'm kind of the last person that fills in what's missing. And that's the face. But of course, the face, as we know, is everything. Right? Well, in my in my world. How did David explain the film to you? If he explained it at all? Oh, he did not explain it to me at all. You listen very intently to what he's saying, and then I would interpret it very specifically. I would never ask him if I was right or wrong. I would never ask him"Could you please explain this?" Because he, as a filmmaker, wants you and the audience to bring with you whatever experiences you've had in your life to interpret what he's saying. And how would you describe the film to somebody who hasn't seen it? Oh, I don't think I've ever had to describe it. I think I've always just said it's a David Lynch movie. You're in for a wild ride and keep your mind open and take it in.<i>Lost Highway</i> is a kind of neo noir about a jealous and violent jazz musician named Fred. Patricia Arquette plays his wife, Renee. Here's Arquette in a behind the scenes clip talking about their marriage in the film.<i>They have a very dishonest relationship.</i><i>I mean, I think she's in a way very fearful of him.</i><i>She doesn't know what he's really capable of.</i> Turns out he may be capable of murder. Halfway through the film, Renee ends up dead in their bedroom. But then Arquette reappears as a character called Alice Wakefield. While Renee was a vampy brunet, Alice is a seductive blond. But both of them are in trouble. And Arquette says, according to Lynch:<i>He kept saying to me they are the same person.</i><i>They are the same person.</i> One actor playing two characters who were actually one character. Now Debbie had to get that across visually. I looked at it as one person bringing lightness and one person bringing darkness. And I don't mean darkness like evil. It was darkness as a contrast. So that's how I approached Patricia and those characters. She had that beautiful blond wig that Tony Walker put on her, and this beautiful silk dress. Kind of a beigey white tone. And I just was like, how do I bring this lightness to this character? And then when you see Renee and you see the darker wig and the darker clothing and the shadows that she would walk through in the house, that's how I approached her look. Let's start with Alice, the blond. How did you enhance that lightness? I would keep Patricia's makeup, like, shiny. The white eyeshadow had a shimmer to it. Her nail polish would always have a shimmer to it, so that wherever she was in the scene, there would always be a pop of color, a pop of light David and I discussed no pink. We didn't want pink in this, and so I put a peach colored lipstick on her and then popped the eyeshadow on top of it as a highlight. Her hands were constantly on people's faces, and so I wanted to make sure that her nails also portrayed that similar character. And Patricia Arquette has talked about this, about changing her nails throughout the shoot, so they always corresponded with whichever character she was supposed to be playing in any given scene, sometimes multiple times a day. Yes, because we weren't supposed to ever do both of the girls in the same day. That was a question that I had in the very beginning, because we would need to take time to take the polish off, put her in the other polish and change her wig and change her makeup. And they were like, oh, don't worry, we won't do that. And of course we did. Many times. So I work very quickly. Tell me about Renee's nails,- Which are dark but not black.- Right. What does that choice reveal? I didn't want black because it would be more goth like. And at the time in the mid 90s, there was a color that Chanel made called 'Vamp' which was like a very dark maroon purple color. And I thought, oh, that would be perfect. And then they had a lipstick that they came out with, which was very similar in tone. And so I used both of those'cause, you know, in the 90s, you know, you wore a lipstick that matched your nails, that matched your shoes, that matched your purse. So I kind of incorporated that into it. And then also I remember going in to the hospital and they had to put one of those things on my finger where, you know, it tests your heart and your heartbeat, and I would wear this blue-black nail polish. That was my thing. And they said, "We have to take your nail polish off because we can't read it through the nail polish." And I remember I always thought about that and I thought, how interesting is that? When you wear nail polish that is opaque, you can't see into a woman's soul. You can't see into their health. You can't see anything deeper than what she allows you to see. And I think I always kept that somewhere in the back of my head, thinking, I'm going to use that for a character someday. And I suppose with Renee, you know, the subtext of that is that the relationship is is not a healthy one, but her presentation is very glamorous, very stoic. And what she allows you to see. Yes. And I just think that's such a a kind of genius detail. Obviously, Renee has this sort of almost like Bettie Page style sort of baby bangs and, you know, very glamorous dark hair. And Alice is blond, when she steps out of the car and when we first meet her in that sort of silk white dress, it's a sort of Marilyn Monroe moment. Why do you think David was so fond of playing with the blond versus brunet trope? I think it's just his way of telling a character's story and then also making you guess who she is. He wants you to find something in them that maybe is relatable. It's self-expression. And I think that was the thing with David is that he loved women, and he wrote character specifically for women to express themselves. In one of <i>Lost Highway</i>'s flashbacks, we see the first time that Alice meets her pimp, Mr Eddie. She's wearing red lipstick. For Debbie, this was no afterthought. Red is a power color. Back when I was in college, all of my friends who were graduating were given trips to Europe and cars, and I was given a briefcase by my dad and said, "You're going to go to work." And I remember there was a woman that I had met after I graduated and she said, "You know, in order for you to interview with these companies"in New York, you need to wear red."Red is your power color." And I said, "What about red lipstick?" And she said, "Absolutely, because people will focus on what you're saying"if you're wearing red lipstick. Because they won't be looking anywhere else,"but they'll be watching your lips move." In the scene Alice is forced to perform a striptease to a crowd of gangsters. A man holds a gun to her head. Arquette looks terrified and her red lips begin to quiver. But as the character removes her clothes, her facial expression shifts from fear to something like power. And when we were doing the <i>Lost Highway</i> character, when Patricia was younger, when she first meets Mr Eddie, I thought to myself, here's this girl who's scared out of her mind, but she's trying to fake it, that she's in control. And so that's why we put the red lipstick on her. I'm curious to know if there's anything that you kept the same across. Alice and Renee, across both of those character's looks in order to play with this idea that they may or may not be the same person. Her eyebrows. Her eyebrows and her teeth. I mean, she's got that lovely little snaggletooth that I love so much. I kept her eyebrows the same so that you weren't quite sure. And as a makeup artist, you're often the last person that the actor is with before they step out of their trailer and in front of the camera. You're literally getting them into character. Tell me about the intimacy of that. In general, it's the best place you want to be and the hardest place you want to be. Because depending on the character and depending on how the actor approaches the character, you have to be very sensitive to where they are when they sit in your chair. Patricia many times would refuse to look in the mirror, and she would look down. Reading a book or a magazine or something. So that once I was done with her makeup, she would then look up into the mirror and she would be that character. Tell me more about how you remember Patricia on the set of <i>Lost Highway</i>. What was your relationship like while you were making this film? Well, that was the first time I had worked with her. I ultimately ended up working with her for about ten years and she was so brave. I would call her my hero all the time, because she allowed herself to be so vulnerable that I felt like I had to protect her in certain scenes, not protecting her from David or not protecting her from, say, Mr Eddie. I would just protect her characters, making sure that we got from point A to point B and that she was comfortable. She was always putting herself in these uncomfortable positions in the roles. I think she one time called David the Devil or something, like, it was on set. She was like,"You're the devil" you know, jokingly. And David just laughed because of how uncomfortable she was. She was uncomfortable with the nudity. She was uncomfortable with many of the scenes that David had written. But she did it full throttle. And I was just like, I was just in awe. I remember I said to myself,"If she can do it, I can do it. You know, if she can get through this, I can get her through this." How do you reflect on that discomfort now? Because, you know, obviously <i>Lost Highway</i> is an incredible piece of art. So everything that everybody went through, you know, we have that to show for it. But also the way we reflect on, you know, things like the nudity, things like women being uncomfortable on set with a male director. Those things are approached completely differently, sort of in this day and age. So how do you think about that aspect of making the film now? Well, now we have, you know, intimacy coordinators and women have it in their contracts, whether or not they do nudity or how much nudity. Now, men also have that in their contracts because they're asking for full frontal and you know more of the shock value type things. I think if it furthers the character and it's appropriate for the scene, I don't think an actor has an issue with it. If it's gratuitous... that's when they start putting their foot down. You said before that making <i>Lost Highway</i> changed you as a makeup artist. In what way? David changed me as a makeup artist. He's kind of ruined me for other directors, to be quite honest, because he and I had a really unique way of communicating. Lucky for her, it wasn't the end of their conversation. Nearly 20 years after <i>Lost Highway</i>, Debbie would receive a message out of the blue. It would pull her back into the David Lynch universe for his most ambitious project yet. More on that after the break. All right, everybody, your regular host Rico Gagliano here, taking just a moment to tell you about MUBI. It is the global film company that champions great cinema, bringing it to you wherever you are, in as many ways as we possibly can. We stream movies, we produce them. We release them in theaters. Movies from any country, from legendary auteurs or brilliant first timers. We've always got something new for you to discover. And now showing on MUBI for you to discover is David Lynch's TV breakthrough<i>Twin Peaks</i>. Created with Mark Frost, this is the show that kind of ushered in the whole concept of prestige television, and was arguably the template for freaky crime thriller shows that came years later, like <i>True Detective</i>. And if you've never watched the show, it is kind of a crime thriller, but also throws in supernatural horror, soap opera, melodrama and deadpan comedy, plus a soundtrack that goes from ethereal to groovy. It's just what you want from a Lynch joint. And we've got every episode for you to flash back to or get into for the very first time. The two original seasons and 2017's<i>Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series</i>

aka <i>Twin Peaks: 19:33

The Return</i>. You will hear Debbie Zoller tell us all about that show in just a minute. Subscribe to MUBI at mubi.com and you'll be ready to dive in. As usual, you will find all the links and info you need in the show notes of this episode. Speaking of which, let's get back to Simran, Debbie Zoller and the rest of the episode. It was 2014 when Debbie received a somewhat cryptic email. It was from David's producer, Sabrina Sutherland, who we spoke to earlier in this series. She had a seemingly random problem that had to do with fabricating a human face. She asked me how to make like multiple faces, I remember... and how to do it, like, 25 times with multiple people. And I was like, "Oh!", I'm like,"Well, there's a few ways."You would have to do this. You would have to do that."You know, we would have to figure this out. You would have to make a mold." And it was so obscure that all she basically said was "Okay, thanks, Debbie." And that was it. Several months later, Debbie was working on another TV show. I was sitting in my chair in the trailer, and I was looking at Twitter, waiting for an actor to come in. And I remember seeing on David's Twitter it said,"The gum you like is going to come back in style." And I jumped out of my chair, ran out of the trailer and immediately called Sabrina. And I said, "Do you have something you need to tell me?" And she started laughing and she said,"Yeah, we were getting around to it." And that's how I found out about <i>The Return</i>. When you signed on to the project it was famously secretive. More secretive than perhaps any other previous David Lynch project. How did you read the scripts? I had to go to David's house and read them. I was not allowed to have one, and I had to take very cryptic notes because David was so concerned. He's like, "Debbie, if if you put these in your bag and your bag gets stolen or,"you know..." he would think of these ways that it would get out. And I told him, I said, "Don't worry, I completely understand." But at the time it was like a 400 page script. I have a good memory, but I don't have a photographic memory. So I needed to take notes like there was no names, there was only initials and specific scenes so that I knew what I was up against as far as creating like the prosthetics and all of the looks and who was in it. We were not allowed to have any photos up in the trailer of any actors that had shot previously. I had to hide my continuity book in a drawer and lock it. It was very, very secretive. And then there were a couple times when I was on set and I was like,"Sabrina, I can't remember..." And I can't even read my own notes at this point. And so she had one script in the trailer, in a lockbox, in a safe. And I would go in there, Michael would open up the safe, and I would sit and I would, you know, read the scenes. So I knew what was coming up and what I was preparing for. The only person I think that was allowed to have a script was, I think, the production designer and the costume designer. And the rest of us were out of luck. Tell me about navigating the tension between needing to get into the mindset of these characters to figure out their look, but also David's quite notorious resistance to over explanation. He doesn't read actors, like he wouldn't have them come in and do a reading. They would sit with him and he would just talk. And so there were times when I would just sit with David and we would just talk, and somehow through that, I would be able to get a little bit of insight again, never asking him"So what do you think about this character?" I would just wait for it to kind of unfold. Knowing what the set looked like, knowing what the costume would be. Would give me enough clues that I could fill in. Also the hair, the hair was very important because the hair is the frame to my work. And so if I could see what the hair was and I could see what their costumes were and the walls they walked in. It helped tremendously for me to be able to approach something, and I always knew when David was happy because the character would walk on set and his face would light up and his hand would start moving like it was its own person. Like his hand would show the excitement with the way that his fingers would twist and move, and his wrist would twist and move. And you know, I didn't do the original <i>Twin Peaks</i>, so I was picking up the torch from the previous makeup artist, who is amazing. I wanted to make her happy as well as making David happy and not change anything. One of the things that made Lynch happy was incorporating food products into the makeup department. Yeah, that's right, food. And so it became one of Debbie's tools in scenes featuring everyone from Lynch's favorite actress to the gang of coal blackened, bearded guys called the Woodsmen. When he wanted a face to melt, he asked that we get this pizza dough. And there's a video online of Laura Dern sitting in the red room, and David is applying pizza dough that looks like her face is, you know, melting. On the Woodsmen, because they were so dark, I had to do layering of colors and reflection because they were in the dark most of the time. So I used this yellow Snack Pack pudding that I found in the grocery store, and that was the last thing I applied to them into their beards, so that when the light hit them, you would see this kind of wet reflection because there was nothing else that I could find that would do that. And when we would do scenes like, with Kyle and he was all bloody and the Woodsmen were smearing the blood all over him, or in any scene where there was blood, I would always bring out a little tray of the different color bloods and some brushes, and asked David if he wants to put the final thing together and paint with the blood. And so he would. And that's how we would complete a look. Also on Debbie's list of looks, a mysterious character that fans of <i>Twin Peaks</i> knew by name but hadn't yet seen. Diane, agent Dale Cooper's off screen assistant to whom he dictates messages throughout series one and two. In <i>The Return</i>, we finally get to meet her, and she's played by Laura Dern. Right. That was the biggest issue I think I had on the whole movie, because that was a huge amount of pressure. David and Laura got together many times prior to figure out what her costume would be. And then I got sent a photo and said,"This is the direction we're going in." The nails were so prominent, the hair was so prominent, the blond and the red. And I thought to myself, okay, we have to do something a little bit more monochromatic. But then also looking at her costume, I thought, you know, I want to change her eye shape. She's also the smartest one in the room, and she's been leading Cooper on this journey the whole time. And so that's where the eyeliner came from, because I didn't want a cat eye. I didn't want a 60s look. I'd done that. I wanted something different for her face specifically. And so that's when we did more the geisha, where we pulled the eye out. And then David insisted on a pink lipstick when she was in the blond wig. And for the life of me, I tried probably 10 to 20 different colors and none of them were what he wanted. And so I brought out swatches of pinks, and I brought a white lipstick, and I brought a black lipstick, and I said, here you go, let's figure it out and let's make it. And so that's what we did. And he took one pink and he took a white, and he mixed it together and we put it on her. He said "That's what I want." I mean he was a painter as well, right? So you probably had an affinity through that kind of very innate- understanding of texture and of color.- Right. What do you think that reveals about Diane, that she's got this kind of mismatched manicure? I have no idea, and I didn't ask. All I know is, when we switched her to the red wig, I said to Laura and David, "Are you okay if we do the black and white nails? Every other one" I said, "because I think it's a yin and yang with this character." And they both agreed. On <i>The Return</i>, we're re-encountering these characters that we knew in the prime of their youth, characters like Shelly or Audrey. How did you want the audience to think about their beauty and to convey this sense of time passing? Even though 25 years had gone by, I wanted them to still be in that moment of when we first saw them. Yes, everyone aged, but they aged naturally. They aged gracefully. I didn't want to do anything makeup wise that you see on Instagram. None of the crazy Instagram eyebrows, none of the cut crease, none of the outlandish highlighting and shadowing and all of that. I just made them look beautiful. And that to me was really important because that's what David wanted. Something that strikes me about the particular beauty of David's characters is that it's a very classic beauty. Why do you think that is? Where do you place those beauty ideals and that old fashioned glamor that David was so drawn to? You don't want to know what era they're in. That's exactly it. I didn't want you to look at it and go,"Oh, that's so 80s" or "Oh, that's 90s" or-- <i>Lost Highway</i> is more 90s just because it was made in the 90s. And when you look back, you go, yeah, that's early 90s. But with <i>Twin Peaks</i>, because it was in the 80s and then it came back I didn't want you to be taken out of any time period because it was a multi-dimensional world. Like especially with Carrie Page, I looked at it as if Laura Palmer was living in another dimension as herself, but made different choices. What would she look like now? Something that Debbie is getting at here is the timeless beauty of Lynch's heroines. I think Isabella Rossellini is the classic, and I think Laura Dern is the classic. I think they're chameleons. And also Patricia. And when you think of those three examples of Isabella Rossellini as Dorothy Vallens, Laura Dern, obviously she's worked with David many times, and Patricia Arquette as well as Renee / Alice, these kind of muses and embodiments of a particular kind of femininity. How would you describe the thing that they have in common in terms of how they present, and the look? Well, David loved women. He loved the sexuality of women. He loved what women bring to the table. He loves their strength. He loves their femininity, he loves their vulnerabilities. And I think all of that is portrayed in every movie that he puts these women in and makes them more vulnerable because they're his movies. No character has ever been the same in all of his projects. They're all different, but they're all feminine. And women, we're so multifaceted that we're one person one day we're another person another day, depends on what kind of day we're having, you know? We change our clothes every day. We change our hair color. We change our our moods. And he embraced that. And he allowed his characters to also embrace that. Over the years you also worked with David on various commercials and also on some projects for his website. Can you tell us a little bit about some of the other non-film things that you did together? I would go over to his house every now and then on Friday nights we would have martini night, way back in the day. And then we did a bunch of commercials together. We did a Peugeot commercial with Claudia Schiffer that was a bucking bronco. The car had to buck. We did a Clearblue Easy commercial. We did PlayStation, and I just remember that after each commercial, he would do some kind of remodel or construction to one of the homes. You know, he would build a sound studio, he would do some artwork. He would always do something creative in his world after doing a commercial or a film, or so I always thought"Oh, that's really interesting how you incorporate making money on a project"and then taking that money and building something of your own with it." Debbie's friendship with Lynch continued throughout the years, and they were even beginning to plan their next collaboration. I was working on a film in Kentucky earlier this year, when I got the news that David had passed, and we were supposed to be on a project now. Doing, I think it was called <i>Wisteria</i>. All of us, Sabrina, we were all approached and said,"You know, we've got this coming up."So just letting you know." And then I got the terrible news that he had passed in January, and it was the day before my birthday. And I'll never forget it. When you look back on your work with David Lynch, what do you think is the most important thing that you learned from him? Just being in his presence... You're gonna make me cry. I miss him a lot. There's no one like him. And I'm truly grateful for the opportunity that he gave me, because he saw something in me... that I didn't know what was even there. What do you think he saw in you? I'm hoping a light. That's what I hope for. I just look back, and I'm so grateful for the time that I had with him. The way Lynch worked seemed to impact everybody on set, from his actors to his producers to the craftspeople behind the scenes like Debbie. The cliché of the great director is a powerful and domineering man marshaling his vision to life. But speaking to Debbie and many of the other people in this series, it seems clear that a David Lynch movie wasn't a one man show. Lynch instilled a confidence in his collaborators and especially in women. It meant that everyone could bring their A-game. And that's this week's episode of The MUBI Podcast. Follow us to hear more stories about the Ladies of Lynch. Next week we're wrapping up this season with something a little different. To be a lady of Lynch you don't have to have worked with him or even have met him. It's more a state of mind. Lynch probably has been the biggest influence on my novel writing much more than any other writer. Our final guest is Deborah Levy. She's the author of books including <i>The Cost of Living</i><i>Hot Milk</i> and <i>August Blue</i>. And like me, she's something of a Lynch superfan. Make sure you follow us so you don't miss it. Meanwhile, if you love the show, leave a five star review wherever you listen. And if you've got questions, comments or spare blond wig. Our email is podcast@mubi.com And now let's roll credits. This show is written and hosted by me, Simran Hans. Ciara McEniff is our producer with help from assistant producer Kat Kowalczyk. Christian Koons is our editor. Our booking producer is Ollie Charles, Martin Austwick composed our original music. Special thanks to Adam Riedel at Adam Studios who recorded Debbie and to Paul Smith who recorded me. This show is executive produced by Efe Çakarel, Rico Gagliano, Michael Tacca and Daniel Kasman. And finally, to watch the best in cinema, subscribe to mubi.com Thanks for listening. And by the way, we've met before, haven't we?