“Dear David, My name’s Tom Waits. I kinda hope you heard of me, heh heh,” the letter begins. Waits goes on to tell Lynch that he’d be cordially honored if he would put his “hand to the helm and try and get this rickety ol’ ship of a project off of the blunt rocks before the scarecrows attack with their penknives and tattoos of weeping clowns.” The message is chalked with dark, outlandish wisecracks that read like the ramblings of a madman muttering to himself on a rusty old porch swing. You can read the entire letter here.
One might assume that anyone on the receiving end of the letter would be caught somewhere between totally flabbergasted and inexplicably charmed by the jarring dialogue. That’s probably what Waits intended in his own tongue-in-cheek way, but being fluently versed in all things wacky and surreal himself, David Lynch was locked and loaded with a reply that got straight to the point.
