Videos: John Malkovich Plays Dale Cooper And Other Iconic David Lynch Characters

As an actor, John Malkovich has nearly 100 credits to his name on IMDB, and many of those roles were celebrated ones. He'd portrayed the acclaimed director F.W. Murnau in 2000's Shadow of the Vampire. And he'd tried his hand at playing Tom Ripley in 2002, replacing Matt Damon in the role.

Now, in perhaps Malkovich's most challenging task, he'll recreate a rogues gallery of David Lynch's most memorable characters. The project, called "Playing Lynch," is part of a charity held by the David Lynch Foundation, which touts the merits of transcendental meditation as a means of coping with traumatic stress. For the next few days, a new video will be released each day of Malkovich playing a new character. The video of him playing Agent Dale Cooper (of Twin Peaks) was released today.

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Future characters include the infamous Log Lady (also of Twin Peaks), Blue Velvet's Frank Booth, and The Elephant Man's John Merrick. All put together, the video clips comprise a short film called Psychogenic Fugue. Also, each video will feature music from notables like Lykke Li and Sky Ferreira.

You can watch the individual clips once they're released on the website. But, in order to watch the entirety of Psychogenic Fugue, you'll have to pay for the video.

The site offers 3 donation options. For $5 you can get the music album. For $10 you get the album as well as the director's cut of Psychogenic Fugue. And for $25 you get the album, the film, as well as a "collector's pack of limited-issue" prints.

How did this come about? As reported at The Wall Street Journal, Malkovich's music producer (yes, he has a music producer) had wanted to get involved with a benefit concert held by the foundation. It never happened because of a scheduling conflict. So "Playing Lynch" is a way for Malkovich (and his producer) to make up for it.

Here's a photo of Malkovich as the Log Lady:

There's also a brief (and unsettling) clip that Lynch himself has posted on Twitter: