Blue Velvet is not a movie for everybody. Some people are going to really dig it, but we’ve experienced some extremely negative reactions, too. We had a sneak preview in the Valley that was a disaster. People thought it was disgusting and sick. I believe that films should have power, the power of good and the power of darkness, so you can get some thrills and shake things up. […]
Blue Velvet is a very American movie. The look of it was inspired by my childhood in Spokane, Washington. Lumberton is a real name; there are many Lumbertons in America. I picked it because we could get police insignias and stuff, because it was an actual town. But then it took off in my mind and we started getting lumber trucks going through the frame and that jingle on the radio – “At the sound of the falling tree…” – that all came about because of the name.
There is an autobiographical level to the movie. Kyle is dressed like me. My father was a research scientist for the Department of Agriculture in Washington. We were in the woods all the time. I’d sorta had enough of the woods by the time I left, but still, lumber and lumberjacks, all this kinda thing, that’s America to me – like the picket fences and the roses in the opening shot. It’s so burned in, that image, and it makes me feel so happy. That was in a lot of our childhoods. […]
Blue Velvet is a trip beneath the surface of a small American town, but it’s also a probe into the subconscious or a place where you face things that you don’t normally face. One of the sound mixers said it’s like Norman Rockwell meets Hieronymous Bosch. It’s a trip into that, as close as you can get, and then a trip out. There’s an innermost point, and from then on it pulls back.

David Lynch, interview by David Chute, Out to Lynch, “Film Comment”, vol. 22, n. 5, October 1986