David Lynch, Twin Peaks Creator and Mulholland Drive Director, Dies at 7821471
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 "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," read a message on Facebook. "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," they added. Lynch, who would have turned 79 this Monday, Jan. 20, was best known for creating the 1990 TV series Twin Peaks. The show spawned a 1992 feature film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and a 2017 revival season. A four-time Oscar nominee, he also directed films including The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive. He was known for his distinctive style that became described as “Lynchian.” Lynch was born in Missoula, Mont., in 1946 and grew up in Spokane, Wash., and Boise, Idaho. His father was a forest research scientist, and Lynch spent much of his childhood outside, exploring. Those same mysterious Pacific Northwest woods would eventually inspire Twin Peaks. When he was a teenager, the family moved to Alexandria, Va. He had "a kind of happy persona” there, he told PEOPLE in 1990, but soon learned “all the thrilling things happened just after school or between classes. It added up to some sort of pitiful joke — so constricting it would drive you nuts. It inspired me to try to break rules. Behind it all, I was getting it together to be a painter.” Lynch went to Philadelphia to study art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and there he began experimenting with film and animation. "I loved Philadelphia," he said in 1990. "The most corrupt, fear-ridden city I've ever seen. It's one of my major film influences." In 1975, he released The Grandmother, a 35-minute blent of live-action and animation about a lonely boy whose dead grandmother comes back to life. It earned him a spot in the American Film Institute's Center for Advanced Film Studies in L.A. He spent the next five years working on his feature debut, 1977’s Eraserhead. To support himself, he held a series of odd jobs, including a paper route. "$9.80 a night was not a thrilling rate, so I was pretty depressed," he said in 1990. "But I worked it to where I was shooting the route in one hour, almost to the second — a totally efficient hour. You learn to fold, bag and drive at the same time." "I got an awful lot of pressure to abandon Eraserhead and do something worthwhile," he added. "I just couldn't. It was frustrating, but also beautiful." Eraserhead had a small opening, but gained interest as a midnight movie and ultimately became a cult favorite. One fan was Mel Brooks, who hired Lynch to create a film about Joseph Merrick. That movie, 1980’s The Elephant Man was a hit and garnered eight Oscar nominations, including best director and best adapted screenplay for Lynch. Next he directed an adaptation of Dune, released in 1984. It received mostly negative reviews upon it release, though it went on to be a cult favorite. “It was a heartache for me. It was a failure, and I didn’t have final cut,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2020. “I’ve told this story a billion times. It’s not the film I wanted to make. I like certain parts of it very much — but it was a total failure for me." He released Blue Velvet, starring Isabella Rossellini, in 1986. The erotic thriller was criticized by some for being too violent, but he received a second Oscar nomination for best director. "When people first meet David, they expect him to be neurotic and crazy and sick, but he's not," Rossellini, who was romantically involved with Lynch at the time, told PEOPLE in 1990. “It's just that he looks at life in a different way.” He said of his creative inclinations, “I'm in love with ideas, and I'm out there trying to catch them.” His next major film was 1990's Wild at Heart, starring Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern, who had also appeared in Blue Velvet. She told PEOPLE in 1990, “David's greatest gift is that he sees making a movie like a trip to Disneyland." Lynch described Wild at Heart as a “violent comedy, a love story in a twisted world.” He explained, “Wild at Heart goes to extremes — it's not a film for everybody. But as shocking as some things in it are, they're based on the truth of human nature, and there's a lot of humor and love wrapped up in that.” Twin Peaks also premiered that same year. "Working at this speed is unusually intense, but I really like it," the director told PEOPLE. “It gets kind of crazy.” The mystery TV series reunited him with Dune and Blue Velvet star Kyle MacLachlan. Set in the titular, fictional Washington town, Twin Peaks explored the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), though the surreal series came to mean so much more to fans. Not that Lynch was forthcoming about any of the ideas he intentionally incorporated into his work. "I never talk about themes," he said in 1990. "No way. A film should stand on its own. People talk way too much about a film up front, and that diminishes it." MacLachlan praised Lynch as “a sound, mood and rhythm director. David hasn't forgotten the images, fears and desires you have when you're 10 or 18 or 25. They're so pure, these images, that they have a lot of impact.” "I like things that go into hidden, mysterious places, places I want to explore that are very disturbing," Lynch said. "In that disturbing thing, there is sometimes tremendous poetry and truth." The combination of violence, surrealism, mysticism and blue-collar life would come to define the “Lynchian” aesthetic. Twin Peaks aired for two seasons on ABC. It was an instant success when it premiered; PEOPLE included Laura Palmer on it annual list of most interesting people at the end of 1990. But the second season was derailed when ABC executive Bob Iger made Lynch reveal in the premiere who had killed Palmer, a mystery the director had wanted to save for the end of the series. Ratings declined, Lynch was unhappy, and the show was canceled. In 1992, Lynch visited the story again in the prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. And he returned for a third season of the series, which aired on Showtime, in 2017. “I called all the regulars — or most everyone — and I had a chat,” Lynch told Deadline in 2018 about bringing the cast back together. “These people are like family, so it was so beautiful calling them and talking to them again and getting together like for a family reunion.” He guessed that 99 percent of the surviving cast was happy to return. Dern also joined the show for the third season. Lynch felt season three was more comparable in quality to the first than the second, which he did not like. He received nine Emmy nominations for his work on Twin Peaks. Lynch directed four more films: 1997’s Lost Highway, 1999’s The Straight Story, 2001’s Mulholland Drive and 2006’s Inland Empire. He received his third Oscar nomination for best director (and fourth overall) for helming Mulholland Drive, which followed an aspiring actress in Los Angeles played by Naomi Watts. It was originally conceived as a TV show. “It was a closed-ended pilot, and then the ideas came to make it into a feature,” he told Interview in 2012. “I was meditating, and all these ideas just flowed in, in one meditation — all the ideas to finish that into a feature.” In 2019, Lynch received an honorary Oscar for his contributions to film. Lynch never gave up his early love of painting and continued to create visual art throughout his life. In 1994, he published Images, a book that featured painting, photographs and images from his films. He was also involved in several music projects, including working on the scores of several of his films. In 2006, he published a book, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity, about transcendental meditation, and in 2018, he published Room to Dream, which was a hybrid of memoir and biography. He directed music videos for artists like Moby, Nine Inch Nails and Donovan, as well as many commercials. He also portrayed director John Ford in Steven Spielberg's 2022 film The Fabelmans. Lynch was married to first wife Peggy from 1967 to 1974. They shared daughter Jennifer, who also became a director. Jennifer told PEOPLE in 1990, “He was not your normal dad, but he's been the best dad he could be, and we've had a blast.” From 1977 to 1987, he was married to Mary Fisk. They shared son Austin. From 2006 to 2007, he was married to Mary Sweeney, with whom he shared son Riley. In 2009, he married Emily Stofle, who appeared in Inland Empire and the third season of Twin Peaks. They shared daughter Lula Boginia. Stofle filed for divorce in 2023. Looking back on his one-of-a-kind career, Lynch was mostly content. “Well, I'm sort of proud of everything except Dune,” he said in a 2020 YouTube video. "I’ve liked so much working in different mediums. It’s not a thing about pride, it’s more like the enjoyment of the doing, enjoyment of the work." He added, "I’ve just enjoyed working in all these different mediums, and I feel, again, really lucky to have been able to enjoy those things and be able to live." |
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karn9 private msg quote post Address this user | |
| An honor to be alive at the same time at David Lynch. Peter Wolf tells an old story about how, when they were living together in Boston, Lynch decided that he could no longer stand him, so he kicked him out. Wolf got back into the apartment to retrieve some of his art, and Lynch immediately called the Boston Police, telling them that the Boston Strangler was in his apartment trying to murder him. RIP |
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Davethebrave private msg quote post Address this user | |
| RIP. Big fan of the series Twin Peaks, as well as some of his other work. |
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 How do I know this? Because I've done it myself.
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lawguy1977 private msg quote post Address this user | |
| RIP I'm not sure how much I liked his movies, but they remain seared in my brain, so I think that says something about the filmmaker he was. |
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 I wish I had a title.
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ComicNinja0215 private msg quote post Address this user | |
Well, 2025 can kick rocks  |
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 past performance is no guarantee of future actions.
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KatKomics private msg quote post Address this user | |
| RIP Loved so much of his work - even Dune! |
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GothamBridge private msg quote post Address this user | |
Quote:Originally Posted by lawguy1977 agreed |
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GanaSoth private msg quote post Address this user | |
| RIP David Lynch... I really liked his strange movies and tv series... | ||
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 I've spent years perfecting my brand of assholery.
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DrWatson private msg quote post Address this user | |
| I enjoyed Twin Peaks immensely. I wrote a term paper in my college English class on Blue Velvet. Wild at Heart was crazy. | ||
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