Director says Iowa movie made an impression

The Hollywood director of the film “The Straight Story,” which followed the true-life journey of an elderly Iowan, is in the Hawkeye State this weekend. David Lynch is best known for violent, bizarre films like “Blue Velvet” and “Mulholland Drive,” but says he was smitten with the touching story of 73-year-old Alvin Straight of Laurens. Lynch says he enjoys creating and translating stories from one medium to the other. “What happens is, you get ideas and some ideas you don’t fall in love with and some ideas, for some reason, you just fall in love with those and you see the possibilities.” The movie followed Straight on his long 1994 trek from Laurens to Mount Zion, Wisconsin, which he took on a riding lawn mower, to visit his ill, estranged 75-year-old brother. Lynch admits it’s not the type of story he is usually drawn to, but he says the tale of Alvin Straight reached something deep inside him.Lynch is in Iowa to speak at the “Creating Peace” conference tomorrow (Sunday) in Fairfield. He’s practiced transcendental meditation for 31 years and believes in a plan for perpetual world peace, revolving around the assembling of eight-thousand people practicing T-M together. Still, he says he won’t be doing a movie on T-M anytime soon.Lynch says “Films for me are my own personal experience and T-M was for many years. So if it leaked out in a very natural, organic way, fine, but to put an idea first, a theme first, is the cart before the horse.” Lynch is a 58-year-old Montana native who has been nominated three times for Academy Awards.