Key Points
- David Lynch, who developed a cult status with films like Blue Velvet and the TV series Twin Peaks, has died.
- His family confirmed the news with a statement, saying there’s now a “big hole in the world”.
- Lynch’s distinctive style of filmmaking was highly influential, prompting the term ‘Lynchian’.
David Lynch — the groundbreaking director behind Mulholland Drive and television’s Twin Peaks, who gained a cult following for his unsettling portraits of American life — has died. He was 78 years old.
An enigmatic artist who turned his hand to arthouse and blockbuster film, television, painting and music, Lynch was considered first and foremost one of United States cinema’s great creators.
“It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch,” read a statement on his official Facebook page.
“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.'”
The cause and location of death were not specified. Lynch, who lived in Los Angeles, had suffered from emphysema after years of heavy smoking.
With his visually stunning, disturbing and inscrutable works filled with dream sequences and bizarre images, Lynch was considered a master of surrealism and one of the most innovative filmmakers of his generation.
He emerged on the US indie scene with his groundbreaking 1977 horror Eraserhead, a creepy and now cult classic shot on a shoestring budget over five years because he kept running out of money and had a wife and daughter to support.
David Lynch developed a cult following for his surreal, distinctive films and the TV series Twin Peaks. Source: AAP / Nina Prommer
Lynch acquired a devoted following with critically adored films, including the mystery Blue Velvet (1986) and the surreal thriller Mulholland Drive (2001).
But he may be best remembered for his 1990s series Twin Peaks, which paved the way for many a prestige television drama to follow.
With four Oscar nominations, including a trio of best director nods, the filmmaker took home just one honorary statuette in 2019.
Rise to fame
Born in small-town Montana in 1946, the son of a US Department of Agriculture research scientist, Lynch travelled extensively around Middle America as a young man.
He excelled at art at high school in Virginia, and attended fine arts colleges in both Boston and Philadelphia, where he studied painting.
A one-minute animated film caught the eye of the American Film Institute, where he began work on what would later become Eraserhead.
That was followed by The Elephant Man in 1980, based on the diary of Joseph Merrick, the so-called “Elephant Man” born in the US in 1862 with a condition that gave him a severely deformed physical appearance. It starred Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, Anne Bancroft and John Gielgud.
David Lynch and his wife Emily Stofle. Source: AAP / Sebastien Nogier
Hurt in the title role earned one of the film’s eight Oscar nominations — as did Lynch for best director.
An attempt to adapt the sci-fi novel Dune into a blockbuster in 1984 would be one of Lynch’s less well-received efforts, although it still has its admirers.
Lynch pivoted back to his arthouse roots with Blue Velvet, about a young man who comes home from college and finds a severed ear. His investigation uncovers the sinister side of small-town America.
It starred Isabella Rossellini and Dennis Hopper, along with his regular collaborators Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern, and is often heralded as his greatest work. It also earned Lynch’s second Academy Award nomination for directing.
Lynch turned his attention to television with Twin Peaks, which captivated and shocked America in equal measure from its 1990 launch.
Twin Peaks has become a cult classic in the decades since it first aired.
The tale of a small and tight-knit northwestern town reacting to the rape and murder of a popular but troubled high school girl was years ahead of its time.
But ratings plummeted as the show’s second series lost its direction after the purported meddling of ABC executives.
An even darker 1992 prequel film was initially panned by critics, but is now considered a classic.
Later years
After returning to film with Lost Highway and The Straight Story, Lynch made the film Mulholland Drive, which brought him his third best director Oscar nomination.
Film writer David Thomson called it “one of the greatest films ever made about the cultural devastation caused by Hollywood”.
Lynch’s final full-length feature film was 2006’s Inland Empire, although he returned to the world of Twin Peaks with an acclaimed sequel series for cable network Showtime in 2017.
But he never retired, continuing to produce short films, music and paintings from his studio and home — appropriately located just outside Hollywood, on Mulholland Drive.
“It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way,” said the statement from his family, nodding to Lynch’s regular, whimsical online postings about the weather.
