David Lynch
David Keith Lynch was born at St. Patrick's Hospital in Missoula, Montana, on the 20th of January 1946. His father worked as a USDA research scientist and drove him through the woods in a green Forest Service truck over dirt roads. Lynch recalled seeing shafts of sunlight come down into mountain streams where rainbow trout leaped out. He described this experience as weird yet comforting while his father would drop him off to play alone.
The family moved frequently according to where the USDA assigned his father. They lived in Sandpoint, Idaho, Spokane, Washington, Durham, North Carolina, Boise, Idaho, and Alexandria, Virginia. Lynch adjusted to this transitory life with relative ease. He noted that he usually had no difficulty making friends when attending a new school.
At Francis C. Hammond High School in Alexandria, Lynch did not excel academically but was popular with other students. He joined the Boy Scouts and rose to the highest rank of Eagle Scout despite later claiming he only joined so he could quit. A friend named Toby Keeler gave him a copy of Robert Henri's book The Art Spirit which inspired Lynch to dedicate himself to the art life.
Filming began on the 29th of May 1972 at night in some abandoned stables. The production team included Lynch, Sissy Spacek, Jack Fisk, cinematographer Frederick Elmes, and sound designer Alan Splet. They set up a camera room, green room, editing room, sets, food room, and bathroom within the location.
Lynch spent $150 to produce his first short film Six Men Getting Sick using the cheapest 16mm camera he could find. He called it fifty-seven seconds of growth and fire plus three seconds of vomit. Later he purchased a second-hand Bolex camera for four hundred seventy-eight dollars after receiving a thousand dollar commission from H. Barton Wasserman.
The feature film Eraserhead took five years to complete due to financial issues. It ended up being eighty-nine minutes long instead of the planned forty-two minutes. The script was only twenty-one pages yet the final product became one of the most important midnight movies of the 1970s alongside Night of the Living Dead and Pink Flamingos.
Stanley Kubrick said it was one of his all-time favorite films. Ben Barenholtz distributed the movie around the United States in 1977 after hearing about it at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Lynch later stated that not a single reviewer understood the film as he intended.
The Elephant Man starred John Hurt as John Merrick and Anthony Hopkins as Frederick Treves. Filming took place in London though the surrealistic black-and-white film has been called one of the most conventional of Lynch's works. It earned eight Academy Award nominations including Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay.
George Lucas offered Lynch the opportunity to direct Return of the Jedi but Lynch declined saying he had next to zero interest. Dino de Laurentiis then asked him to create a film adaptation of Frank Herbert's novel Dune which cost forty-five million dollars to make.
Dune grossed twenty-seven point four million dollars domestically making it a critical and commercial dud. Much of Lynch's footage was removed from the final theatrical cut dramatically condensing the plot. Universal Studios later released an extended cut containing almost an hour of cutting-room-floor footage with new narration.
Lynch objected to the changes and had his name struck from the extended cut. Alan Smithee received credit as director while Judas Booth appeared as screenwriter. This pseudonym reflected Lynch's feelings of betrayal regarding the studio interference.
Lynch met television producer Mark Frost and they started working together on a project first called Northwest Passage before becoming Twin Peaks. The series premiered in April 1990 with high ratings in the United States and many other countries. Richard Corliss wrote that the two-hour pilot did not disappoint viewers expecting the unexpected.
The show featured FBI agent Dale Cooper played by Kyle MacLachlan investigating the murder of Laura Palmer portrayed by Sheryl Lee. Lynch directed two of the first season's seven episodes and carefully chose directors for the others. He also appeared in several episodes as FBI agent Gordon Cole.
ABC executives believed public interest was declining during production of the second season. They insisted that Lynch reveal the identity of Laura's killer prematurely which he grudgingly agreed to do. After identifying the murderer and moving from Thursday to Saturday night the series continued for several more episodes before being canceled after a ratings drop.
Lynch directed the final episode ending it with a cliffhanger. He later said that was not the actual ending but simply what people were stuck with. The series is considered a landmark turning point in television often listed among the greatest television series of all time.
In 1999 ABC gave Lynch the go-ahead to shoot a two-hour pilot for Mulholland Drive but disputes over content led to the project being shelved indefinitely. With seven million dollars from StudioCanal Lynch completed the pilot as a film released in 2001. It starred Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, and Justin Theroux.
The nonlinear surrealist tale performed relatively well at the box office worldwide earning Best Director at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival shared with Joel Coen. Roger Ebert wrote that the movie was a surrealist dreamscape in the form of a Hollywood film noir where the less sense it made the more viewers could not stop watching it.
In 2006 Lynch released his longest feature film Inland Empire which ran three hours. Like Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway it lacked a traditional narrative structure. The film starred Laura Dern, Harry Dean Stanton, and Justin Theroux with cameos by Naomi Watts and Laura Harring.
Lynch called Inland Empire a mystery about a woman in trouble. He promoted it by making appearances with a cow and a placard bearing the slogan Without cheese there would be no Inland Empire.
Lynch produced and wrote lyrics for Julee Cruise's first two albums Floating into the Night and The Voice of Love in collaboration with Angelo Badalamenti who wrote the music. His album genres included experimental rock ambient soundscapes and avant-garde electropop music.
In 2001 he released BlueBob a blues album performed by Lynch and John Neff. He played upside down and backwards like a lap guitar relying heavily on effects pedals. In 2011 he released Crazy Clown Time described as an electronic blues album sung by Lynch with guest vocals from Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
Design work began when Lynch constructed furniture for his 1997 film Lost Highway including a small table in the Madison house and a VCR case. Several scenes were shot inside his Los Angeles home known as the David Lynch Compound designed by Lloyd Wright.
Working with designer Raphael Navot and architectural agency Enia Lynch conceived and designed a Paris nightclub named Silencio which opened in October 2011. Patrons have access to concerts films and other performances by artists and guests after midnight.
Lynch was initiated into Transcendental Meditation in July 1973 and practiced the technique consistently thereafter. He met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi for the first time in 1975 at the Spiritual Regeneration Movement center in Los Angeles.
A month-long Millionaire's Enlightenment Course held in 2003 had a fee of one million dollars. In July 2005 Lynch launched the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and Peace established to help finance scholarships for students interested in learning Transcendental Meditation.
The foundation has funded meditation lessons for veterans and other at-risk populations. Lynch estimated the cost of building seven facilities where eight thousand salaried people would practice advanced techniques at seventy billion dollars. As of December 2005 he had spent four hundred thousand dollars of his own money and raised one million dollars in donations.
In April 2022 Lynch announced a five-hundred-million-dollar transcendental meditation world peace initiative to fund meditation for thirty thousand college students. He made his last published broadcast speech at Meditate America 2024 discussing the Beatles' practice during their visit to India in 1968.
He died at his daughter Jennifer's home soon thereafter on the 16th of January 2025. The divorce settlement agreement between him and Emily Stofle was reached on the 20th of December 2024 but the court had not issued a final decree at the time of his death.
His final films included The Fabelmans released in 2022 where he played director John Ford. Variety called his role a closely guarded secret while film critic J. Hoberman described it as a sentimental gesture that could only be called Lynchian.
Lynch received numerous accolades including a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival and an Academy Honorary Award. A posthumous Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement recognized his contributions to cinema spanning more than five decades.
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Common questions
When and where was David Lynch born?
David Keith Lynch was born at St. Patrick's Hospital in Missoula, Montana, on the 20th of January 1946.
What happened to the Dune film after David Lynch objected to studio changes?
Lynch had his name struck from the extended cut and Alan Smithee received credit as director while Judas Booth appeared as screenwriter.
How long did it take to complete Eraserhead and what were its final dimensions?
Eraserhead took five years to complete due to financial issues and ended up being eighty-nine minutes long instead of the planned forty-two minutes.
Why was Twin Peaks canceled after its second season?
ABC executives insisted that Lynch reveal the identity of Laura's killer prematurely which led to a ratings drop before the series was canceled.
When did David Lynch die and where did he pass away?
He died at his daughter Jennifer's home soon thereafter on the 16th of January 2025.