EXCLUSIVE: Legend Of The Happy Worker, one of David Lynch’s last feature credits, will debut this week at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. The film is directed by Lynch’s long-time collaborator Duwayne Dunham, and we can share the first trailer above.
Lynch is an exec producer on the film alongside Leo Matchett. In the press notes, Dunham explains that the Twin Peaks filmmaker brought him the screenplay for Legend Of The Happy Worker.
“As I recall, producers Bob Katz and Moctezuma Esparza got the screenplay to Lynch,” Dunham said. “He passed it on to me, thinking it might suit my sensibilities. I was immediately drawn to this strange world and the wonderful rhythm of the dialogue.”
The film’s official synopsis reads: Legend of the Happy Worker is a human comedy about a simple man who is thrust into power, falls, and finds redemption. A story of faith, work, good versus evil, and the search for life’s meaning in an imperfect world.
Writers on the film are S.E. Feinberg, Dunham, and Jerold Pearson. The screenplay was based on a play by S.E. Feinberg. Dunham is an American film and television editor and director, best known for his long-standing collaborations with George Lucas and David Lynch. Born in Los Angeles in 1952, Dunham studied film at San Francisco State University. He began his career as an apprentice editor on One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and as an assistant editor on The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and went on to co-edit Return of the Jedi (1983).
In the mid-1980s, Dunham began working closely with David Lynch, editing Blue Velvet (1986) and Wild at Heart (1990), and later the pilot episode of Twin Peaks (1990), for which he received a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Editing. He made his directorial debut on the Twin Peaks series, directing three episodes. He edited all 18 episodes of Twin Peaks: The Return.
Check out the Legend Of The Happy Worker trailer above.
