David Lynch

David Lynch, an acclaimed surrealist director best known for challenging works like "Eraserhead," "Mulholland Drive," and "Blue Velvet," as well as the cult hit television show "Twin Peaks," died January 16, 2025, with emphysema at the age of 78.

Lynch did not make films like other directors. Opaque, challenging, and uncompromising, his was a vision that existed at the very fringes of Hollywood, yet which still managed to garner audience enough to allow him to make films for nearly 60 years. Works like “The Elephant Man” were nominated for Academy Awards, and his television show, “Twin Peaks,” was an inexplicable and daringly bizarre hit, yet he never altered his singular, surrealistic vision to suit mainstream audiences. Lynch’s work was always decidedly his own.

After studying at both the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design in Washington, D.C., and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Lynch found his way to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where he began merging his passion for painting with moving images. This fusion of mediums led to early experimental films like “The Alphabet” (1968) and “The Grandmother” (1970), both of which provided early glimpses at his otherworldly approach to filmmaking.

Lynch’s first feature film, 1977’s “Eraserhead,” became an underground phenomenon thanks to his unique blending of surreal imagery, unsettling sound design, and dreamlike narratives. The film’s success as a cult classic soon caught the attention of Hollywood, and to this day it remains a landmark of fringe cinema.

He entered the mainstream with “The Elephant Man” (1980), a historical drama starring John Hurt (1940–2017) based on the real life of Joseph Merrick. The film was both critically and commercially successful, earning eight Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. He followed this with the sci-fi epic “Dune” in 1984. However, the movie’s strange take on Frank Herbert’s classic novel garnered mixed reviews, signaling that mainstream fare was perhaps not right for the director.

Lynch returned to seeing his own vision brought to the screen with 1986’s “Blue Velvet,” a daring, provocative and profane film that earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Director and which has since become a highly quotable cult classic.

In 1990, his vision landed in an unusual place: television. Co-created with Mark Frost, “Twin Peaks” mixed small-town storytelling, befuddling mystery, and supernatural elements in a way that made it a cultural phenomenon as viewers tried to puzzle out who killed high school student Laura Palmer. It was a heady mix that proved hard to sustain over the long term. The show’s original run petered out after two seasons, though it was revived in 2017 for a third and final season. There was also a 1992 film, “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.”

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Lynch continued to push cinematic boundaries with films like “Wild at Heart” (1990), which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, “Lost Highway” (1997), 2001’s neo-noir masterpiece “Mulholland Drive” (which garnered him another Oscar nomination for Best Director), and others.

The director’s refusal to explain his often puzzling work only served to enhance the mystique around his art.

Though nominated by the Academy for Best Director three times, along with four Golden Globe nominations, two BAFTA nominations, and nine Emmy nominations, Lynch never won a single one of them, in some ways a testament to just how outside the norm his work was. However, in 2019 he was recognized by the Academy with an Academy Honorary Award to recognize his full body of work.

Often photographed while smoking a cigarette, in 2024 he revealed he had been diagnosed with emphysema, a chronic and debilitating lung disease.

Notable quote

“This idea comes to you, you can see it, but to accomplish it you need what I call a ‘setup.’ For example, you may need a working shop or a working painting studio. …If you don’t have a setup, there are many times when you get the inspiration, the idea, but you have no tools, no place to put it together. And the idea just sits there and festers. Over time, it will go away. You didn’t fulfill it – and that’s just a heartache.”—Excerpt from “Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity”

(Photo: Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic/Getty Images)