A visionary for all time

I never really got the chance to interview David Lynch, but I distinctly remember the one time I actually spoke with him, something I recounted in my Deadline coverage of the American Film Institute’s celebration of its 50th anniversary for the AFI Conservatory at its fabled Greystone Mansion, where it all began in 1969 and was housed there until 1981, when it moved. The date was 19 September 2019, and many graduates from the 50 years were gathered for the party. One of them was Lynch from the class of 1970 (the second AFI class), whom I saw walking alone through the hallowed halls of this mansion, clearly in a nostalgic moment for a filmmaker I’ve always thought of as never looking back. This day he was looking back, revisiting his cinematic beginnings and telling me he hadn’t been to Greystone in at least 25 years “or ever,” he couldn’t remember. But he perfectly described to me exactly where the projection booth was and all the equipment it had from 16mm to 70mm. As I wrote at the time, Lynch famously slept down the hill at Greystone Stables while making his first feature, the cult classic Eraser head under the auspices of AFI (new AFI chief Jean Firstenberg joked that night when she saw Eraser head she “didn’t know what we were getting into!”) Lynch was a renaissance man of many talents, and for this celebration he showed up in a shirt full of paint, having spent the day performing one of his many passions as a painter. It was David Lynch. He died today at the age of 78.

His acceptance speech for a long-deserved honorary Oscar just a month later was too very David Lynch. Sure, he wore a tuxedo with no visible paint to the occasion, but his speech was the shortest in the history of the Governors Awards, and probably one of the shortest for any Oscar acceptance: “Thank you very much to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Thank you for this honor. And to all the people who helped me along. Congratulations to the other honorees tonight,” pointing to the Oscar statuette on his arm, he added, “You have a very interesting figure . Goodnight.”

Lynch kept the mystery of all the work leading up to this moment intact with the terse thanks after receiving a massive standing ovation. In a career that spanned just 10 features and one seminal television series, Twin Peaks (1990-91 and a reboot in 2017), this highest award from the industry seemed somehow overdue. Lynch was always admired by the Academy’s executive branch, which had nominated him three times, including The Elephant Man in 1980, Blue velvet in 1986, and Mulholland Drive in 2001, the latter two recipients only a director nomination and nothing else. It’s not surprising since Lynch was an innovator, a filmmaker who chose dark, dreamy, not always comprehensible paths to tell his often surreal stories, and which can leave some people scratching their heads. I always thought that Alfred Hitchcock, who died in 1980 just as Lynch started rolling, would be his biggest fan. Both will live on throughout cinema history known for a particular style, be it “Hitchcockian” or “Lynchian”, distinctive and apart from all others to the point that their work is mostly instantly recognizable and forever.

I will never forget to see Blue velvet at a press screening in 1986 when I was a film segment producer on Entertainment tonight. It was in what was known as the DEG Screening Room in Beverly Hills at the offices of Dino De Laurentiis the producer (it’s now the Wilshire Screening Room in what has otherwise been turned into a medical building). I walked out into the blazing sunlight on Wilshire Blvd after the credits rolled and was immediately approached by one of the film’s publicists, Roger Armstrong, who eagerly asked what I thought. PR people often do that after screenings, and I’m not usually speechless, but this time I was I couldn’t really speak. What I had seen was unlike anything. It was a movie for days I couldn’t get out of my head like a strange dream I kept reliving, a dark mystery like no other, which is why, almost 40 years later, the first screening is so vivid for me.

To see Mulholland Drive at its 22:30 premiere at Cannes in 2001 was another Lynchian memory, and he ended up taking the Best Director award at the fest that year for a film he rightly chose never to interpret or discuss its meaning(s). So MGM dancing star Ann Miller shows up out of the blue with baby dog, no worries. But when I can forget entire movies hours after watching them these days, I still remember such scenes that come out of nowhere and still stay with me like I’m still sitting in the mansion watching it for the first time. Set now Mulholland Drive stands as one of them great LA film, and regularly appears on Sight And Sound polls in the top ten of the greatest films ever made. Not sure about that, but like Lynch in his zone, it will be interpreted and reinterpreted forever.

It’s somehow ironic that Lynch would die at a time when Denis Villeneuve continues to win high praise for his Dune film. Lynch’s 1984 stab at Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel was an unmitigated disaster, one where he didn’t have final cut and much of his footage removed before release and became a box office and critical flop. The light at the end of the sad tunnel was that Lynch’s deal, including two other films for producer Dino De Laurentiis, and one of them was the aforementioned Blue velvet two years later. It’s strange we have Lynch’s sad journey Dune to thank for it, but a good thing.

I also have to say that I got a lot of pleasure out of seeing Lynch as one actor when Steven Spielberg convinced the reluctant director to actually game one of the greatest directors of all, John Ford, in a scene at the end of Spielberg’s autobiographical Fableman. He was perfect.

Lynch could also bring his signature style to network television Twin Peaks in a time before streaming, where it would land today, is also a tribute to a filmmaker with a vision like few others. In fact, it is ridiculous to call him only a filmmaker. He was a painter from the beginning, visual artist, musician, designer, writer and a great advocate of transcendental meditation, among other things that will let his legacy live on in many ways.

It’s hopeful to say that the industry will continue to welcome visionaries like David Lynch, but it’s also safe to say that there will never be another David Lynch.