David Lynch grills a mon­key in a new short on Netflix

How’s this for a Mon­day morn­ing sur­prise: David Lynch has released his first prop­er new work since 2018’s dis­turb­ing yet mes­mer­iz­ing ​“Ant Head”, and you can watch it right now. ​“WHAT DID JACK DO” appeared with­out warn­ing today on Net­flix, rip­ping open a por­tal into a sur­re­al noir nether­world to break up the stream­ing binges – and just in time for Lynch’s 74^th birthday!

Filmed in 2016, the 17-minute short was shown for the first time at the Fon­da­tion Carti­er pour l’Art Con­tem­po­rain in 2017 and then again at Lynch’s Fes­ti­val of Dis­rup­tion one year lat­er. After float­ing around for a few years, the deep-pock­et­ed bene­fac­tors at Net­flix have giv­en it a fit­ting home, where Lynch devo­tees can watch and rewatch as they obses­sive­ly search for clues unlock­ing its meaning.

In the short, the film­mak­er por­trays a tough-cus­tomer cop at a train sta­tion, inter­ro­gat­ing a small pri­mate that he sus­pects of mur­der. He grills the lit­tle mon­key while the sus­pect deliv­ers clas­si­cal­ly Lynchi­an non sequiturs about birds, until the ani­mal launch­es into a musi­cal num­ber of stran­gu­lat­ed pas­sion and scam­pers away.

What it all means is anyone’s guess, as is the usu­al case with the sui gener­is work of Lynch. The famil­iar atmos­phere of stark unease has returned, as has the elab­o­rate back­ground hiss of his metic­u­lous sound design, and the faint genre sig­ni­fiers that most recent­ly informed the Twin Peaks series. It’s Lynch doing Lynch, and as long as he still have the space in the indus­try to do that, we can count it as a win.

Which is to say that while the short’s mean­ing may be inscrutable, its larg­er sig­nif­i­cance to the busi­ness of film is clear. Lynch sub­sists pri­mar­i­ly on the gen­eros­i­ty of insti­tu­tion­al bene­fac­tors these days, most recent­ly Show­time and now Netflix.

And even that is ten­u­ous; any­one with an impres­sion of Netflix’s busi­ness mod­el under­stands that they’ve licensed this short not out of any desire to fos­ter a cul­ture of inde­pen­dent film, or even to cham­pi­on the work of Lynch and his ilk. He’s a name, and the cachet attached to that name can get checks signed.

WHAT DID JACK DO is stream­ing now on Net­flix worldwide.