Home · Book Reports · 2025 · Catching the Big Fish

designates my notes. / designates important. / designates very important.

Thoughts

This book feels like it is Twitter before Twitter. It feels like a book written by someone who doesn’t write for people who don’t read. There is a lot of interesting tidbits sprinkled throughout, and if you are a Lynch fan I can see the appeal, but overall I would pass on this one. If nothing else it is a breeze to read in only a few hours.

There are a few “chapters” near the end where Lynch offers some practical advice for aspiring film makers and makes a few predictions about the future of film (that were hit or miss).

Exceptional Quotes

• It’s crucial to have a setup, so that, at any given moment, when you get an idea, you have the place and the tools to make it happen.

• Sleep is really important. You need to rest the physiology to be able to work well and meditate well.

Table of Contents

There are no chapters.

page 11:

• My thirty-three-year practice of the Transcendental Meditation program has been central to my work in film and painting and to all areas of my life. For me it has been the way to dive deeper in search of the big fish.

page 16:

• Anger and depression and sorrow are beautiful things in a story, but they’re like poison to the filmmaker or artist. They’re like a vise grip on creativity.

page 20:

• So the art life means a freedom to have time for the good things to happen.There’s not always a lot of time for other things.

page 26:

• A film should stand on its own. It’s absurd if a filmmaker needs to say what a film means in words.

page 38:

• At one time, I actually thought of building a small figure of the character Henry, maybe eight inches tall, and constructing a small set out of cardboard, and just stop-motioning him through and finishing it. ^f7bb2c

page 85:

• It’s good for the artist to understand conflict and stress.Those things can give you ideas. But I guarantee you, if you have enough stress, you won’t be able to create. And if you have enough conflict, it will just get in the way of your creativity. You can understand conflict, but you don’t have to live in it.

page 110:

• It’s crucial to have a setup, so that, at any given moment, when you get an idea, you have the place and the tools to make it happen.

page 112:

• Often, in a scene, the room and the light together signify a mood. So even if the room isn’t perfect, you can work with the light and get it to feel correct, so that it has the mood that came with the original idea.

• The light can make all the difference in a film, even in a character.

page 126:

• My advice is to use the opportunity DV (digital video) brings to do what you truly believe in. Keep your own voice. Don’t do anything for the sole purpose of impressing any studio or some money people. That always seems to backfire, in my experience. It’s great to go to film school, and you can get a lot of intellectual knowledge there, but learn by doing. And now that costs have fallen, you can really go and do it on your own. Then there are lots of film festivals that you can enter and see if you can catch some distribution or financial help later on.

page 132:

• Sleep is really important. You need to rest the physiology to be able to work well and meditate well.