Remembering David Lynch

Dirt contributors and friends reflect on the career of David Lynch.

Charlie Markbreiter

Beyond the loving, horrifying genius of his work, Lynch represented an epoch in American cinematic production in which directors could make weird, good movies for a monocultural audience. Lynch’s career began in the seventies, as American film studios began taking risks on alt white male directors like Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese. Eraserhead, Lynch’s breakout hit, came out in 1977. By 1984, he was directing Dune, and, even though it flopped, the film industry was still flush enough for him to direct Blue Velvet (1986) with full creative control. 

This epoch is over, of course. Instead, we have A24, whose “dark” and “quirky” features LARP Lynchianism without the emotion, and whose modes of production are streaming, content, and a monopolistic lock on independent cinema. Meanwhile, Lynch himself was unable to secure funding in the final years of his life; he had outlived the mode of cinematic production that engendered his rise. On January 17th, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos admitted that Lynch had been working on a limited streaming series with them, but it came after years of rejection. By the time Netflix was ready, Lynch was gone.

James Webster

It runs somewhat contrary to public perception, but I think David Lynch’s work is actually pretty easy to understand. His preoccupations were downright normal, all things considered. He loved junk food, diners and motels and gas stations, bad wallpaper and thick carpeting. If you can get down into the basement, beneath yourself, you can recognize that Lynch was depicting something like a collective unconscious. An American pathology. 

It makes his work approachable. He could be just like anyone else, feeling around in the dark and asking the same questions we do. But what set David Lynch apart was less about his ideas, or the endlessly-discussed atmosphere of his work, and more about his total commitment to exploration. It’s possible that other people could have conceived of Eraserhead, or the eighth episode of Twin Peaks: The Return, but they surely would not have had the requisite guts to take them as far as they needed to go. 

David Lynch simply allowed us to join him wherever he was headed. It takes real integrity to owe nothing to the audience, not even answers. He’s one of a handful of people that have ever done it, and I’ll always love him for it.

Angella D’Avignon

Lynch's Lamps

David Lynch loved light bulbs and he loved lamps—on Lynch’s screen lamps flicker, spotlight, and strobe when a mood goes awry; his photosensitivity was attuned to the filaments of emotion, how a feeling can change with a filter.

"Now, we walk away," says Lynch, in his 2003 film Lamp, in which he, for 31 minutes, builds a two-toned lamp—a sculpture—made with a gauze-wrapped pole and yellow and grey fix-all plaster. "Take a look at that color in this afternoon light. It's summertime." As he rifles through his paint box, he names each color as he pulls them out and on the last one, he grins big: "Lamp Black."

Lynch loves Los Angeles. He especially loves the lighting, he found it "bright and smooth," and that it filled him with "the feeling that all possibilities are available," he sensed a type of spiritualism in the way particles spread across the sprawl. A moth drawn to bright light in stretches of darkness.

Laura Wynne

David Lynch changed my life. Concretely, I changed my name because of Fire Walk With Me. A prequel to a TV show I hadn't seen. He showed me myself at 13. Events I never voiced to another living soul happen to Laura Palmer. I remember being here, in this dining room, in this bedroom. In these moments. If I think about it too long I start shaking.

So many have said "I didn't think he could die." His final masterwork (Twin Peaks: The Return) was about accepting death. Beyond that, accepting that this world isn't something to be defeated. There are things outside of us that feed on our suffering, that want to turn us into cruel, savage versions of ourselves that only experience our worst impulses. It's presented in a mystical way but it hurts because it's true.

He showed that it was possible to be so singular, so strange and speak to millions of people. His death seemed to hit every woman I know. He was ours. My unspoken reaction to Lynch has always been "How is this guy the only one who understands?" There is an irrational feeling now that there's no one left who understands, who could show the whole world the world as I felt it.  "Your Laura disappeared... It's just me now." 

Ben Firke

I love David Lynch because David Lynch loved me.

Lynch is the most generous filmmaker to ever live. He gives you a fair deal. You will see a ton of stuff that defies logic and upsets you to your core. But in exchange, David Lynch doesn’t waste a second of your time. And if you pay attention, he will nourish your soul.

When I saw Mulholland Drive, I went full Q-Anon for weeks, hand-drawing diagrams of the scenes to determine chronology and recording every possible interpretation in my phone notes. Obviously, this was a fool’s errand. But in the process, I learned that refusing to spoon-feed easy answers to the audience isn’t selfish trolling. It’s a gift. Yes, you get to have your own unique interpretation of the story, but you get something even better—the full affirmation of your feelings, your existence.  

When Betty and Rita weep to the lip-synched concert at Café Silencio, we cry along with them. We know they’re crying to something “fake,” a performance, but we know their feelings are real, because we’re feeling the exact same thing in real life. Critics will tell you about how fiction can have more truth than “reality,” but Lynch shows you this. 

Mulholland Drive never coheres into something rational. I’ll never understand it. But I get it, because no other film captures what it actually means to desire, to envy, to fail, to dream, to be alive. There are scenes of unimaginable cruelty, and yet all I take away from the whole is that some weird guy from the woods of Idaho realized what it meant to be human: that life is really really fucked up and also beautiful and always full of meaning. And he made his life’s work sharing that revelation with all of us. I can’t think of something more loving than that. ☕