This week marks the official 25th anniversary of what many believe to be David Lynch’s cinematic magnum opus — yes, even more than Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive — so being as there’s no other real movie news today, grab your oxygen tank and crank up the Roy Orbison. It’s time to hit the f*ckin road back in time and celebrate what is both one of the most hated and beloved movies in the entire history of cinema.

David Lynch is a guy you either hate, love, or maybe love to hate. I remember the time I was with some friends at a Blockbuster and they said they wanted to watch ‘something weird.’ Thus, the introduction to the town of Lumberton and Frank Booth; and, to quote one of said friends years later, “I still (expletive) hate you for that.” I mean, they hated this movie.

To be fair, it’s not hard to see why: the movie sort of walks a fine line between absurd and avant garde. To others, the humorous bits — in small traces, here and there — seem to throw off its dark and melancholy milieu. From its damaged characters, like Frank Booth and Dorothy, to the screams and subwoofers of its soundtrack, it’s easy to be turned off by it. Its uneven pace lies in limbo between frenetic and maddeningly…unhurried. Others just think Lynch is weird for the sake of being weird, maybe even downright pretentious.

But without getting too Pauline Kael, it’s like that infamous ‘lawn’ scene: you’ve got to rip open the soil to get to the good stuff. Yes, the film is rife with subtext, with metaphors, even satirical in parts, but like Mulholland Drive Lynch managed to find the right mix of all of this without coming across like a film school student. I can’t think of a movie more perfectly suited to the years of Reaganomics and the Cold War and, just the 80s. Like that opening montage, the denizens of Lumberton weren’t a far cry from Wally or The Beav, or The Donna Reed Show. It was as if Lynch was holding a mirror up about a millimeter away from our faces — and things were blurry and tentative, but we couldn’t ignore the pock marks, the clogged pores, the bloodshot eyes. The big-ass wrinkles.

And since so many things 80s are all the rage again lately, looking back on that decade, man, it makes you realize that some bad sh*t came out then. Music, television, commercials, a lot of pop culture in general, it was all so bright and cheery and just f*cking terrible on so many levels. Maybe we could have used a few more movies like this one. But then Lynch might never had made so much of a name for himself.

Enough proselytizing:here’s a few fun facts about Lynch’s film you might not have known and a picture of Kyle with that gangrene ear. My arms hurt.

* Robert Loggia was originally the one to battle for the part of Booth and got pissed at Lynch when he picked Hopper for the role. (Hopper reportedly yelled, “I’ve got to play Frank! I AM Frank!”) Lynch sort of made it up to Loggia by casting him as Mister Eddie in Lost Highway.

* Lynch originally wanted Hopper’s tank to be full of helium, but during the filming, Hopper kept insisting it would be hard to take the character seriously if he had a deviated septum. Lynch finally relented. Hopper speaks more on the role here:

* The film came out the same weekend as Top Gun, and suffered a bit of box office defeat because of it. Buzz about Velvet started generating a week or two later, and at at a small independent movie theater near Lynch’s house, there was a line around the block.

*Minutes before he filmed the In Dreams karaoke scene, Lynch found the light bulb that Dean Stockwell sang into. It was his idea to use it as a microphone.

* The scene that featured Isabella Rosselini’s Dorothy stumbling naked down the street was taken directly from Lynch’s own childhood, when he saw the exact same thing happen. It was such a wrenching experience the poor lad cried, and he’d always wanted to commit the visual to film.

* On a sadder note, actress Frances Bay, who portrayed Jeffrey Beaumont’s grandother in the pic (and Happy Gilmore’s, and the ‘old bag’ Jerry Seinfeld stole his marble rye from), passed away this week. RIP Grandma.