Filmmaker David Lynch, whose mind-bending and surreal creative vision enraptured mainstream audiences and elite cinematic connoisseurs alike, has died. The Oscar-nominated director of Mulholland Dr., Blue Velvet, and the TV series Twin Peaks was 78.
David Lynch’s death was announced Thursday in a Facebook post from his family.
“It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch. We would appreciate some privacy at this time. There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.’ … It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.”
No cause of death was mentioned. Lynch, a longtime Los Angeles resident, said last year that he had been diagnosed with emphysema following a lifetime of smoking.
Widely regarded as one of the most important auteurs of the last forty years, David Lynch made movies that often defied description, creating non-linear narratives and swapped identities that broke totally with Hollywood cliches and conventions. As surreal and at times avant-garde as they could be, many of his works were grounded in an all-American and almost old-fashioned folksiness, with roots in Lynch’s own small-town upbringing.
Lynch was both a part of and completely separate from the Hollywood entertainment industry. He worked for major studios and TV networks and yet managed to retain his singular creative voice — though sometimes not without a fight.
Mulholland Dr., considered by many as his masterpiece, began life as a TV series for ABC but the network pulled the plug after the pilot was shot. The experience was so traumatic for Lynch that he abandoned the project — until French producer Alain Sarde stepped in, giving him the money to shoot additional scenes to turn the pilot into a feature film.
The result stands as one of the most original movies of the 2000s. Both a love and hate letter to Hollywood, with dreams both bad and good serving as the central structuring device, the movie begins by following a young ingenue (Naomi Watts, in her star-making role) and a mysterious amnesiac (Laura Elena Haring) as they seek to uncover a series of mysteries — only for the storyline to completely fissure halfway through with the lead actresses taking on different characters.
Or are they the same characters, but inhabiting a different dream world? Lynch’s ability to both confuse and entice viewers made even his most challenging works successful with audiences who might not usually gravitate to challenging cinema.
Blue Velvet (1986) was another unlikely hit, drawing on Lynch’s small-town upbringing while infusing the almost naive Americana with surreal undercurrents of menace, violence, and sex. The movie helped coin the term “Lynchian” — a cinematic descriptor for something disturbing and dream-like.
Both Mulholland Dr. and Blue Velvet earned Lynch Oscar nominations for best director.
His ABC series Twin Peaks was one of the most talked about shows of the early 90s. Once again, Lynch disrupted small-town Americana with the surreal, using the murder of the character Laura Palmer as a vehicle to explore a town’s eccentric characters.
ABC cancelled the series after two seasons, but Twin Peaks fandom lived on. Lynch made the movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me — widely panned at the time but now somewhat respected — and a sequel series Twin Peaks: The Return in 2017 for Showtime.
The Showtime series was Lynch’s last major project.
Among Lynch’s other movies were Wild at Heart, his ultra-violent, post-modern road movie that earned him the Palme d’Or at Cannes; Lost Highway, another mind-bending, shape-shifting experiment; The Straight Story, his lovely ode to rural America; and Inland Empire, his three-hour digital provocation about the nature of Hollywood acting.
Lynch started his movie career with the avant-garde Eraserhead (1977) — a non-linear, black-and-white exploration of dream consciousness. He followed up with two relatively mainstream projects — The Elephant Man (1980), starring John Hurt and Anthony Hopkins, and the ill-fated Dune (1984), his sci-fi epic that bombed with critics.
Throughout his career, Lynch never let go of his small-town upbringing, which began in Missoula, Montana. He was proudly an Eagle Scout — a fact that he frequently highlighted through his career.
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