The Lip-Synching Scene in David Lynch's 'Blue Velvet' as a Touchstone Transcendent Moment

David Lynch was 76 years yesterday -- happy birthday! That made me think about my favorite scene in all of David Lynch's great work, and, for that matter, probably in any movie I've ever scene: Dean Stockwell lip synching Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" in Blue Velvet back in 1986, with Dennis Hopper doing a fine job as that deeply sick guy, who tries to join in the lip-synching, but whose demons won't allow him the succor of dreams.

That scene also represents what I think of as a nexus in popular culture, with several different careers revived and propelled in that one scene. Dean Stockwell had been a moderately important star, playing angry and sensitive young men, in the 1950s and 1960s. Lynch had begun using him in Dune in 1984, but his performance in that Blue Velvet lip synching was incandescent and brought him to everyone's attention, including the people who cast him in a co-starring role in Quantum Leap. Blue Velvet had nothing to do with science fiction, but that Roy Orbison moment would forever and anon and make Stockwell a science fiction icon.

Meanwhile, Orbison's career, which also had been flagging, suddenly skyrocketed in the next few years. His voice in The Traveling Wilburys was one of the most prominent parts of their signature sound, and made them the best supergroup ever, surpassing Crosby, Still, and Nash, the previous holders of that position, in my humble opinion. Orbison's solo 1989 "You Got It" was also at least a minor masterpiece. And here I always mention Anne Reburn (and her clones)' cover of "You Got It" as a high water mark of music video production.

Science fiction and rock music have been my life's two cultural passions. Blue Velvet the movie was neither, but it gave rebirth to careers and soaring performances in both, and made David Lynch an enduring hero well before Twin Peaks and all the rest.