Director and screenwriter David Lynch, who changed American cinema with a dark, surreal artistic vision in films such as Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive and in the TV series Twin Peaks, has died. He was 78 years old.
In 2024, Lynch revealed he had been diagnosed with emphysema of the lungs after a lifetime of smoking and would likely no longer be able to leave his home to direct. His family announced his death in a Facebook post, writing, "There's a big hole in the world now that he's no longer with us. But, as he would say, 'Keep your eyes on the donut, not the hole'."
The Twin Peaks TV series and films such as Blue Velvet, Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive fuse elements of horror, film noir, mystery and classic European surrealism. Lynch weaves tales not unlike those of his Spanish predecessor Luis Buñuel, which unfold according to their own impenetrable logic.
After years spent as a painter and creator of short animated and live-action films, Lynch burst onto the scene in 1977 with his feature debut, Eraserhead, a terrifying, darkly humorous work that became a disturbing part of the midnight movie landscape. His unconventional and uncompromising style quickly gained the attention of Hollywood and the international film industry.
He was hired by Mel Brooks' production company to write and direct The Elephant Man, a deeply affecting drama about a horribly deformed showman in Victorian England who becomes a national celebrity. The film received 8 Oscar nominations, including Lynch's first for Best Director.
He achieved less success with the 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert's sweeping science fiction novel Dune. The production, made on a $40 million budget during three years of intensive filming, was a colossal box office failure.
However, Lynch recovered from the disaster with two films that defined his mature style: 1986's Blue Velvet, a frightening journey through the psychosexual underbelly of a small American town, and 1990's sexually intense, violent Wild at Heart, which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
In 1990, he revolutionized American episodic television with the series Twin Peaks, which he created with screenwriter Mark Frost. The weekly ABC show, set in the aftermath of an investigation into the mysterious murder of a high school student in a Washington, D.C., lumber mill, tackled disturbing, previously taboo subjects and made the unexplained a staple of modern television history.
Later in his career, in films such as Lost Highway (1997), Mulholland Drive (which won him the Best Director award at Cannes in 2001) and Inland Empire (2006), Lynch deployed an over-the-top style based on plots that emphasized doubled personalities, inexplicable transformations and shocking acts of violence. The quiet but whimsical The Straight Story (1999) recalls the more restrained emotional pull of The Elephant Man.
The director himself is consistently restrained in terms of ordering the meaning of his works for viewers. In Lynch on Lynch (2005), a book-length collection of interviews, he discusses the enigmatic nature of his work with writer Chris Rodley.
Lynch's one-of-a-kind career was recognized with a special award (shared with his regular star Laura Dern) at the 2007 Independent Spirit Awards and a Golden Lion at the 2006 Venice Film Festival | BGNES
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