Filmmaker David Lynch, director of Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet, dead at 78
'There's a big hole in the world now that he's no longer with us,' his family wrote on Facebook
David Lynch, the American filmmaker, writer and artist who scored best director Oscar nominations for Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man and Mulholland Drive and co-created the groundbreaking TV series Twin Peaks, has died at age 78, his family said on Thursday.
"There's a big hole in the world now that he's no longer with us," reads a family statement posted on Lynch's Facebook page. "But, as he would say, 'Keep your eye on the doughnut and not on the hole.' It's a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way."
Last summer, Lynch had revealed to Sight and Sound that he was diagnosed with emphysema and would not be leaving his home because of fears of contracting the coronavirus or "even a cold."
"I've gotten emphysema from smoking for so long and so I'm homebound whether I like it or not," Lynch said, adding he didn't expect to make another film.
Originally a painter who broke through in the 1970s with the esoteric film Eraserhead, Lynch preferred not to explain his complex, bewildering films, which included Wild at Heart — the Palme d'Or winner at the Cannes Film Festival in 1990 — and the 1997 mystery Lost Highway.
"A film or a painting, each thing is its own sort of language, and it's not right to try to say the same thing in words. The words are not there," he told the Guardian newspaper in a 2018 interview.
'Like going into a dream'
His style of filmmaking inspired the term "Lynchian," which Vanity Fair magazine described as weird, creepy and slow. In his films, Lynch inserted the macabre and disturbing into the ordinary and mundane, and heightened the impact with music.
Lynch said that he was not only interested in the story, but also the mood of a film, set by the visual elements and sound working together.
"I get ideas and I go with those ideas. It's not that I set out to disturb someone or do something to an audience — I set out to try to translate these ideas into film, and to create some sort of a world for me that I can say: 'Yes, this is what was in my mind,' " he told CBC's Valerie Pringle in a 1986 interview.
"A lot of it is like going into a dream."
Jason Gorber, editor-in-chief of online film magazine That Shelf, said Lynch's impact is easily observable today.
Horror and genre films increasingly make their way to mainstream audiences and awards shows; strange, surreal fare like The Substance can become household names now, he said, where in the past they would be relegated to fringe audiences. The change has gone so far that, in that film's case, its critical acclaim helped earn star Demi Moore her first ever major acting award despite having worked in the industry for decades.
"If there's any major change that has taken place over the last several decades, it's that genre films have become the absolute talisman for the way that cinema can actually tell stories," Gorber said, giving large credit to the success of Lynch's surreal productions.
"He very much shepherded multiple generations of filmmakers and film-goers to visit his world, his vision."
Filmmakers, actors and institutions alike Thursday expressed their appreciation for that work, and sorrow at Lynch's passing. On X, Ron Howard called Lynch a "gracious man and fearless artist," while Patton Oswalt playfully referenced Lynch's surreal inclinations: "David Lynch, RIP. At least that's what the horse wearing a fez just told me* in a dream. (*Backwards and in Swedish)"
David Lynch, RIP. At least that’s what the horse wearing a fez just told me* in a dream. (*Backwards and in Swedish) <a href="https://t.co/Kt1bkryELQ">pic.twitter.com/Kt1bkryELQ</a>
—@pattonoswaltMeanwhile, director Steven Spielberg had a more personal memory to share.
"Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and Elephant Man defined him as a singular, visionary dreamer who directed films that felt handmade," he said in a statement, noting he had cast Lynch as director John Ford, one of his early influences, in the 2022 film The Fabelmans.
"It was surreal and seemed like a scene out of one of David's own movies," Spielberg said. "The world is going to miss such an original and unique voice."
Lynch never won a competitive Academy Award, though he received nominations for directing The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive. In 2019, he was presented an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement.
At the time, he thanked the Academy in characteristically off-beat remarks: "You have a very nice face. Good night."
Lynch was a Missoula, Mont., native who moved around often with his family as a child and would feel most at home away from the classroom, free to explore his fascination with the world. He had an early gift for visual arts and a passion for travel and discovery that led to his enrolment in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
As an art student, he encountered the seedier side of America while living in a crime-ridden, run-down area of Philadelphia with his wife and baby daughter. He described the city as the biggest influence of his life.
The experience inspired Eraserhead, his unsettling, hallucinatory debut feature, which became a cult hit in midnight cinemas. After seeing the film, Mel Brooks hired Lynch to direct The Elephant Man.
A film about a severely deformed man in Victorian London, The Elephant Man was nominated for eight Academy Awards in 1981.
'Proud of everything — except Dune'
His next film, the 1984 science fiction epic Dune, bombed at the box office. But it was more the experience making it than the critical reception that guided Lynch's next moves, programmer and film critic Norm Wilner told CBC News.
A hands-on obsessive, Lynch would pore over details for years until he believed he got exactly what he wanted. In crafting Dune, a big-budget blockbuster, he told NPR he made a mistake in not demanding final cut privileges in his contract. That lead to heavy-handed producer interference and — most worryingly — studio recuts that so horrified him he asked to have his name removed from the later extended, TV broadcast of the film.
"He never touched science fiction again. Not really," Wilner said. "But that almost worked in his favour, because it made him even more determined to do his own thing, his own way, and just not compromise and not work with producers who didn't understand him."
He seemingly confirmed that later in his life. When asked about his work in a 2020 Youtube Q&A, he said he was "proud of everything — except Dune."
But despite the rough period, only two years after that film Lynch was back on top with Blue Velvet, which delved into the mysterious underworld in a small North Carolina town. Some critics consider it his masterpiece and the best film of the '80s.
Lynch switched to the small screen in 1990, when he created the mystery crime series Twin Peaks with Mark Frost for ABC. The Emmy-winning series became a cultural phenomenon and was revived in 2017.
His 2001 film Mulholland Drive began as a TV pilot, but was dropped by the network and eventually made it to the big screen. A 2016 BBC poll of 177 critics worldwide named it the best film of the 21st century so far.
In his later years, Lynch, a true Renaissance man, devoted himself to making documentaries, short films, painting and running a YouTube channel. He also released albums, music videos, soundtracks and books, including the 2018 memoir Room to Dream.
The acclaimed director was married four times and fathered four children.
"I love what I do and I get to work on stuff I want to work on. I wish everybody had that opportunity," he told Vulture.com in a 2018 interview.
With files from Reuters, The Associated Press and CBC's Jackson Weaver and Eli Glasner