It's only January, but to glance daily at the news, one can't help but keep asking: what year is this? Turns out it’s the year that the man known as 'Jimmy Stewart from Mars’ ascends.
This unlikely moniker was assigned to filmmaker and painter David Lynch, who has died aged 78, by his producer on The Elephant Man, Mel Brooks.
Brooks hired him after experiencing Lynch's first film, the low-budget, utterly original Eraserhead.
You don't really watch a David Lynch film: you experience it.
Arguably, no other filmmaker has come close to translating the experience of dreaming to film as Lynch has done. And I don't mean trite dream-like imagery, but dreams as narrative and logic, a prism used to experience the world as it really is - at least as far as this mid-western American chain-smoker saw it.
Following artistic and box-office success in 1981 with The Elephant Man, it was, for the most part, all downhill from there - but only if one uses money as a measure. Especially when it came to his heavily compromised attempt to film Dune (he chose this after turning down George Lucas’s offer to direct Return of the Jedi). The resulting blockbuster didn’t bust any blocks after it was unceremoniously taken from him and re-edited by the movie’s producers.
The resulting mess left whatever audiences did show up scratching their heads, and Lynch refused to discuss the film to his dying day. It’s still an entertaining and fascinating watch. And it did introduce him to many actors, such as Kyle McLachlan and Everett McGill, who went on to populate his work during the decades ahead.
His 1986 small-town crime thriller Blue Velvet didn't make much impact at the box office, either. But it was impossible to ignore, with Lynch scoring another Oscar nom for directing. In video shops and on cable TV over the years, people like me (and my teenage kind) watched it repeatedly, wallowing in that uniquely Lynchian mire of surrealism and erotic sentimentality. I mean…Dean Stockwell lip syncing to Roy Orbison’s In Dreams into a torch-lit microphone as Dennis Hopper weeps, overwhelmed by emotion, before vowing to fornicate with "anything that moooooooves".
Smash cut to 1990, or The Year of the Lynch, thanks to a Palme d'Or win at Cannes for his road-movie-from-hell Wild at Heart and, what will no doubt turn out to be his abiding mainstream legacy, the beloved cult TV series Twin Peaks. On the surface, it's a dreamy whodunit in small-town America, populated with genuinely eccentric (but warm) characters. A place shot through with true predatory cosmic awfulness - all wrapped up in the most haunting ear-bug of a theme.
For a time there, Lynch went from surrealist to zeigeist. Twin Peaks was canceled after its second season, largely thanks to interference by producers. A badly received - albeit still fascinating - theatrical prequel followed, entitled Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. It was in retrospect all for the best. The foundation was thusly laid for what is in my view, his greatest achievement. And I’m not talking about his failed sitcom from 1992, On The Air, made with his Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost. Of which only seven episodes were made. Four of them not even airing. Of course it’s funny and unlike any sitcom you’ve ever seen.
Watch: David Lynch posted a daily weather report online for several years
Following a long break, Lynch ended out the nineties with two contrasting films. The neo-noir thriller Lost Highway - again pretty much dismissed as incoherent on its initial release, but now recognised as a major work - and the sweet Straight Story, about a man (played by Richard Farnsworth) driving a lawnmower cross-country to meet one last time with his estranged brother, Harry Dean Stanton. This was a David Lynch movie you could pretty much watch with your kids. It was even released by Disney. Yes, you read that correctly.
2001's Mulholland Drive was supposed to be his eagerly-anticipated return to television - instead, he ended up with another Oscar nomination for Best Director. Following the pilot episode's rejection by TV networks, Lynch raised a bit more money, shot more scenes and edited it into a theatrical release. The result was a beguiling masterwork. Ostensibly a Hollywood noir puzzle to be worked out by the audience (he even published a set of clues online). But really, as far as I’m concerned, there is no solution. The search for answers is the point.
Technically, 2006’s Inland Empire, an experimental psychological thriller starring Laura Dern and running to three hours was Lynch’s final theatrical feature film. But as a pure visual artist - he never stopped painting, his whole life, right to the end - the line between television and cinema was irrelevant. This point of view lead to what is arguably the greatest piece of television ever made: episode eight of 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return, "Gotta Light?".
David Lynch directing the iconic "Gotta light" scene in "Twin Peaks: The Return" (2017)pic.twitter.com/sC2FU10oV3
— DepressedBergman (@DannyDrinksWine) August 5, 2024
Lynch’s much-hyped return to the Twin Peaks universe was a wolf in sheep's clothing. You want that cherry pie? That damn fine coffee? The hilariouslog lady? Okay, well, here’s the log lady. She’s dying of cancer now (Actor Cathrine E. Coulson was dying of cancer at the time and shot all her scenes with an oxygen tank). Oh and no damn fine coffee and pie for us. Instead we get nostalgic pollution and the cosmic foundation stone of all that is evil. "Gotta Light?"
It's Twin Peaks’ origin story; why the town is the way it is and why all our much loved characters have died or are dying (as many of the real-life actors had or were at the time) - not just my favourite film of 2017, but one of my favorite pieces of visual art in any medium.
Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.
— NASA (@NASA) January 16, 2025
In memory of David Lynch, we will continue to explore the otherworldly and the unknown. We will focus not on the loss, but on what we gained from the years we shared this planet with you. We will see you in our dreams. pic.twitter.com/PRZkYKkcsN
I consider myself lucky to have lived during the lifetime of such a unique interpreter of all that is beautiful and horribly beguiling in our world. David Lynch lived the art life. He saw this is the water and this is the well, drank his fill and has now ascended. To quote "Gotta Light", the horse is the white of the eyes, and dark within.
