David Lynch, who directed ‘Blue Velvet’ and ‘Twin Peaks,’ dies at 78: NPR

Director David Lynch has died. His dark, surreal vision of America made him a leading counterculture auteur in the 1980s and 1990s, with films such as Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and Mulholland Driveas well as the groundbreaking television series he co-created with Mark Frost, Twin Peaks.

Lynch’s family shared the news of his death Thursday in a Facebook post. He announced in 2024 that he would no longer leave his home after a diagnosis of emphysema from a lifetime of smoking and concerns about contracting COVID-19.

Lynch, who was born in Missoula, Mont., in 1946, spent much of his childhood in Boise, Idaho. For the rest of his life, Lynch looked like he stepped out of the 1950s, with a messy pompadour of silver hair and simple outfits of slacks and white shirts, buttoned all the way to the top.

In his 2018 memoir, Room to dream, Lynch said he grew up in “a super happy household” with a huge amount of freedom. But he recalled a haunting memory of riding his bike at night with his brother on a small, quiet street when a naked woman appeared out of nowhere with a bloody mouth. She walked towards the boys in a daze and sat down on the curb.

That image could come straight from one of Lynch’s movies. During his life, he created dozens of works ranging from feature films to television series to short animations to commercials for luxury perfumes.

His first feature film, from 1977, was a black-and-white surrealist horror film. Eraser head centers on a stressed-out man who finds himself thrust into fatherhood, with a sickly newborn who barely resembles a human child.

Lynch began making it while in his mid-20s as a student at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. The film initially received mixed reviews but became a stealth hit in theaters in the evening.

“When I get an idea, I see it, hear it, feel it, it’s like it’s just there in your brain,” Lynch told NPR in 2007. “There’s an idea and it comes to life. You fall in love with some of these ideas.”

Lynch’s mainstream breakthrough was another black-and-white film, The Elephant Manstarring Anthony Hopkins and John Hurt. Based on the real-life experiences of a British man with severe deformities, the 1980 film was nominated for eight Oscars.

But even with these accolades, Lynch didn’t make the final cut for his film version of Dunebased on Frank Herbert’s science fiction novel. He hated the end result, released in 1984, and told NPR that he learned the hard way to always be in creative control.

His Blue velvetfrom 1986, is a full expression of the director’s imagination. A severed ear in a field leads to a twisted mystery filled with sexual violence and driven by a criminal underworld. Cultural critic Melanie McFarland told NPR before the director’s death that he was obsessed with images of American innocence and what lay beneath idealized facades of normality.

“The girl with the saddle shoes, the homecoming queen, the plain FBI agent,” she said, pointing Twin Peaks as an example.

Twin Peaks originally ran on ABC for only two seasons, in 1990 and 1991. The drama focused on the murder of a high school student, Laura Palmer, and the investigation by a quirky FBI agent played by Kyle MacLachlan. Lynch co-created the series with Mark Frost, who previously wrote for the series Hill Street Blues.

Lynch later made film versions of Twin Peaks, and in 2017 he revived the franchise with a limited series for Showtime.

twin peaks’ The mashup of supernatural drama, mystery and soap opera was innovative at the time, McFarland said, transforming television in its cinematic complexity and influencing later shows such as Mad Men, The Sopranosand Six feet under.

One of Lynch’s most famous films came out in 2001.”Mulholland Drive is a pretty quintessential David Lynch picture, which is to say it’s evocative, atmospheric and beautiful to look at,” noted Bob Mondello in his NPR review, noting that “it also takes a flying leap through the looking glass toward the end. “

“I have to say I’ve thought about this movie a lot more than I’ve thought about anything else that’s come out of Hollywood in a while,” he said. “Lynch really knows how to wrap you up in a fantasy. And when he sends this one spiraling through more curves than you’ll find on the real Mulholland Drive, the journey is quite thrilling, even if it leaves you with no idea where you has been.”

Over the years, Lynch often spoke of his devotion to transcendental meditation, which he said he practiced twice a day for more than five decades. He built furniture and exhibited his paintings in galleries around the world. In 2005, he started the David Lynch Foundation to teach Transcendental Meditation to adults and children.

But more than anything, the director will be remembered for his unconventional style, now known as “Lynchian”.