Director David Lynch has always been quirky, but the legendary filmmaker was also way ahead when he realized the internet could make him and his projects go viral. In a new special feature for the Criterion Collection release of his 2006 film Domestic Empirestar Laura Dern sits down with Lynch’s friend and frequent collaborator Kyle MacLachlan to talk about the director’s famous early internet moment he shared with a cow.
As part of the prize campaign season Domestic Empire, Lynch decided to promote Dern in a very unconventional way in the Best Actress category. Instead of spending millions of dollars on a traditional advertising campaign, the director simply sat out on the street in Los Angeles with a large sign and a cow.
According to Dern, Lynch insisted that word of his very strange activity spread through the Internet and it wouldn’t be long before more people knew about it and thought about it. Domestic Empire than any traditional pricing campaign could. And while Dern was never actually nominated for the Academy Award, Lynch wasn’t wrong. The stunt drew attention and now, 17 years later, it may be more famous than the movie it was supposed to promote.
Fortunately, the new Criterion Collection edition of Domestic Empire should help rectify that sad fact a bit. Part of the reason Domestic Empire not talked about, like Lynch’s most watched movies, is that it’s been hard to come by in recent years. Due to the format Lynch used to shoot the film (a low-resolution hand-held Sony camera), remastering the film for Blu-ray and 4K releases was a complicated job that only happened last year when Lynch himself oversaw stopped the restoration. .
The remastered version of Criterion Collection from Domestic Empire is out now. It is available for $27.99 through Criterion, AmazonAnd Best Buy.