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Few filmmakers are influential enough that their very names become synonymous with the cinematic style their bodies of work present. To this day “Hitchcockian” means flights of movie mystery and nerve-tingling suspense. Sentimental melodramas of basic American values are dubbed “Capraesque.” And, over the last nearly 50 years, “Lynchian” has come to denote dreamlike, seemingly innocent depictions of everyday life which mask dark and disturbing undercurrents. On Wednesday the Oscar-winning writer/director whose often oddball oeuvre inspired the term, David Lynch, passed away at the age of 78.
Born in the very normal town of Missoula, Montana, in 1934, Lynch had a rather peripatetic childhood, constantly moving with his family from one part of the country to another due to his father’s research job with the USDA. An early interest in art led him to study painting in Washington, Boston, and–in the late 1960s–Philadelphia, at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. It was during his Philadelphia tenure, living in a run-down house in the city’s grimy Fairmount area, that Lynch turned his eye to filmmaking. These early works included 1967’s Six Men Getting Sick, Six Times (described by Lynch as “57 seconds of growth and fire, and three seconds of vomit”) and 1968’s The Alphabet (starring his first wife Peggy). With money from the American Film Institute, David also made the haunting short The Grandmother (1970), about a lonely child who grows his own grandparent from a seed.
By the early ’70s Lynch had moved to Southern California, but his time spent in the seedier sections of Philadelphia stayed with him (believe me, the city has that effect on people) and inspired his first feature-length picture, 1977’s Eraserhead. Dubbed “a dream of dark and troubling things” by its creator, the black-and-white glimpse into the life of oddly coiffed lead Henry Spencer (future Lynch regular Jack Nance) boasts several of what would become the director’s signature motifs: the outsider as passive protagonist; deformity and body horror, epitomized in the alien-like offspring of Henry and girlfriend Mary X (Charlotte Stewart); twisted takes on everyday life (Henry’s unappetizing “chicken” dinner with Mary’s family); and an incessant factory noise soundtrack.
Dubbed by one critic “a sickening bad-taste exercise,” a lengthy stay on the arthouse “midnight movie” circuit helped Eraserhead earn cult status. And one delighted viewer–Mr. Mel Brooks–was impressed enough to hire Lynch to direct his next production: a serious drama about the life of deformed 19th-century English sideshow attraction Joseph (renamed John in the film) Merrick.
Released in 1980, The Elephant Man takes the body horror elements of Eraserhead to new heights, thanks to John Hurt’s powerful performance in the title role; the intricate make-up (based on life and post mortem molds taken of the real Merrick’s tumor-covered body) of Christopher Tucker’s team; and Freddie Francis’s black-and-white cinematography. The film, which also starred Anthony Hopkins, John Gielgud, and Anne Bancroft, received eight Academy Award nominations (including the first for Lynch as Best Director), but went home winless.
The Elephant Man’s critical and box office success led George Lucas to offer Lynch the directing job for Return of the Jedi, but he declined, not wishing to work on another filmmaker’s vision. David did stick to science fiction when he teamed with producer Dino DeLaurentiis’ company to helm Dune. In production for over a decade, the long-awaited screen adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel was also scripted by Lynch, who had his work cut out for him trying to compress the saga into a 2 1/4-hour feature. The 1984 film boasted impressive effects work and a cast that included José Ferrer, Jürgen Prochnow, Patrick Stewart, Sting, Sean Young, and a debuting Kyle MacLachlan as Paul Atreides. Audiences and critics were less than enthused, and it came short of matching its estimated $40 million-plus budget.
Lynch’s next project was more down-to-earth…on its surface, anyway. 1986’s Blue Velvet found MacLachlan playing a college student whose discovery of a severed ear leads him into the mysterious orbits of a beautiful nightclub singer (Isabella Rossellini) and the gas-huffing psychopath (Dennis Hopper) coercing her into a bizarre relationship. The tale of suburban hypocrisy and erotic surrender also featured Laura Dern as McLachlan’s other, “pure” love interest and Dean Stockwell performing the most unusual karaoke version of Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” you’ll ever see.
If “Finding Love in Hell” was the theme of Blue Velvet, Lynch kicked it up with 1990’s Wild at Heart. Based on a novel by Barry Gifford, the film follows sweethearts Sailor Ripley (Nicolas Cage) and Lula Pace Fortune (Dern) on a disturbingly funny cross-country getaway from crook Johnny Peru (Willem Dafoe) and Lula’s psychotic mama Marietta (Dern’s real-life mother Diane Ladd), who sends her P.I. boyfriend Johnnie Farragut (Harry Dean Stanton) and a variety of assassins and voodoo gangsters to take out Sailor and bring Lula home. There are also allusions to The Wizard of Oz and (no surprise in a film starring Cage) Elvis Presley, plus the kind of frenetic scene-chewing competition one would expect in a movie starring Cage and Dafoe (not to mention supporting player Crispin Glover).
1990 was also the year that Lynch staked out his place in broadcast television history with the debut of the bizarro prime time suspense/soaper Twin Peaks. Developed by Lynch and Mark Frost, the series was set in a seemingly tranquil Washington mill town where the discovery of popular high school student Laura Palmer’s body–“wrapped in plastic”–leads to a cornucopia of secrets, cover-ups, strange twists, and otherworldly menaces. With an ensemble cast that included MacLachlan as pie-loving FBI agent Dale Cooper, Lara Flynn Boyle, Sherilyn Fenn, Piper Laurie, Peggy Lipton, and Michael Ontkean and a memorable soundtrack by frequent Lynch collaborator Angelo Badalamenti, the uber-quirky drama became a national sensation. After the reveal of who killed Laura Palmer, however, the show began to sag under the weight of its delightful eccentricities, and it was cancelled after just two seasons. It did manage to spin off the 1992 theatrical prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me and a 2017 Showtime revival series.
After Twin Peaks, David returned to the big screen with 1997’s Lost Highway, a (say it with me!) surreal take on obsession and loss of identity. The seemingly unconnected stories of a musician (Bill Pullman) and his wife (Patricia Arquette) who learn someone is videotaping them inside their home and an auto mechanic (Balthazar Getty) involved with the mistress (also Arquette) of a vindictive mob boss (Robert Loggia) are brought together, thanks to the machinations of a white-faced mystery man (Robert Blake). Two years later Lynch turned in a very different sort of drama. The Straight Story lives up to its name, the true tale of 73-year-old Iowa retiree Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth). Upon learning his estranged brother Lyle (Stanton) has suffered a stroke, and unable to drive a car, Alvin loads up his riding mower and sets out on the 300-mile trek to Wisconsin to see his sibling and, he hopes, make amends.
2001 saw the release of what some call the quintessential Lynch work, Mulholland Dr. (That’s “Dr.” as in “Drive,” by the way, not “Doctor.”) Originally conceived as a TV series, this thriller concerns three principal characters whose stories eventually intersect: an amnesiac (Laura Elena Harring) who has escaped a fiery car crash; a blonde wannabe actress (Naomi Watts) newly arrived in L.A.; and a promising young director (Justin Theroux) strong-armed by his producers into casting a particular actress in his movie. Dual identities, loss of self, and the fading away of Old Hollywood all combine for a multi-layered mystery that managed to mystify, enthrall, and enrage viewers and critics at the same time.
Lynch’s final feature film was another suspense tale in which an actress becomes caught between fiction and reality. Inland Empire (2006) finds film star Nikki Grace (Dern) banking on her new picture to jumpstart her sagging career. But between an ill-advised affair with her co-star (Theroux) and the discovery that the script’s a remake of a project abandoned because the leads were murdered, she becomes ever more unable to distinguish where the movie ends and her life…ends? Jeremy Irons and Julia Ormond also star in the labyrinthine story which David tersely explained as being “about a woman in trouble, and it’s a mystery, and that’s all I want to say about it.”
Since the dawn of the 2000s Lynch had been busy exploring other artistic avenues besides narrative motion pictures: web series (Rabbits, Today’s Number Is…), TV commercials for Dior, L’oreal, and Nissan; music videos with Moby and Nine Inch Nails; and directing the 2014 concert film Duran Duran: Unstaged. He also did voice work as Gus the Bartender on Seth MacFarlane’s animated The Cleveland Show and in 2022 played legendary director John Ford in Steven Spielberg’s paean to filmmaking, The Fablemans. In 2019 the three-time Best Director Oscar nominee was presented with an Academy Honorary Award “for fearlessly breaking boundaries in pursuit of his singular cinematic vision.”
It was just last August that Lynch announced in an interview that he was battling emphysema brought on by years of cigarette smoking. The condition had essentially left him unable to leave his Southern California home, until earlier this month when the ailing auteur had to be evacuated due to the area’s wildfires. Along with his four children (including filmmakers Jennifer and Austin), Lynch leaves behind a slew of unrealized film and TV projects stretching back as far as the late ’70s’ “Ronnie Rocket.” As Mel Brooks said regarding this outwardly quiet and conventional creative genius, “We need people like David. They make it okay for weird people to be accepted by society.”