David Lynch, visionary filmmaker behind ‘Twin Peaks’, dies

David Lynch, the filmmaker celebrated for his unique dark and dreamlike vision in films such as “Blue Velvet” and “Mulholland Drive” and The TV series “Twin Peaks”, has died a few days before his 79th birthday.

His family announced the death in a Facebook post Thursday.

“There is a big hole in the world now that he is no longer with us. But, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not the hole,'” the family’s post read. “It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.”

The cause of death and location were not immediately available. Last summer, Lynch revealed to Sight and Sound that he had been diagnosed with emphysema and would not leave his home for fear of catching the coronavirus or “even a cold”.

“I’ve had emphysema from smoking for so long, and so I’m a stay-at-home mom whether I like it or not,” Lynch said, adding that he didn’t expect to make another movie.

“I would try to do it externally if it comes to that,” Lynch said. “I wouldn’t like it that much.”

Lynch was a former painter who broke through in the 1970s with the surrealist “Eraserhead” and rarely failed to surprise and inspire audiences, peers and critics in the following decades. His notable releases ranged from the neo-noir “Mulholland Drive” to the warped gothic of “Blue Velvet” to the eclectic and eccentric “Twin Peaks”, which won three Golden Globes, two Emmys and even a Grammy for its theme music. Pauline Kael, the film critic, called Lynch “the first populist surrealist—a Frank Capra of dream logic.”

“‘Blue Velvet,’ ‘Mulholland Drive’ and ‘Elephant Man’ defined him as a singular, visionary dreamer who directed films that felt handcrafted,” director Steven Spielberg said in a statement. Spielberg noted that he had cast Lynch as director John Ford, one of his early influences, in his The 2022 film “The Fabelmans.”

“It was surreal and seemed like a scene from one of David’s own movies,” Spielberg said. “The world will miss such an original and unique voice.”

“Lynchian” became a style of his own, but a style that ultimately belonged only to him. Lynch’s films drew unsettling surreal mysteries and unsettling noir nightmares out of ordinary life. In the opening scenes of “Blue Velvet,” among suburban homes and picket fences, an investigator finds a severed ear lying in a manicured lawn.

Steven Soderbergh, who told The Associated Press Thursday that he was the proud owner of two end tables made by Lynch (his many hobbies included furniture design), called “Elephant Man” a perfect movie.

“He’s one of those filmmakers who was influential but impossible to imitate. People would try, but he had a kind of algorithm that worked for him, and you tried to recreate it at your peril,” Soderbergh told the AP. “As non-linear and illogical as they often seemed, they were clearly very organized in his mind.”

Lynch has never won a competitive Academy Award. He received nominations for directing “The Elephant Man”, “Blue Velvet” and “Mulholland Drive”, and in 2019 he was presented with an honorary Oscar for joy of life.

“Thanks to the Academy and everyone who helped me along the way,” he said at the time in characteristically off-beat remarks. “You have a very nice face. Good night.”

His other credits included the crime story “Wild at Heart”, winning the Palme d’Or for it Cannes Film Festival; the biographical drama “The Elephant Man” and the G-rated, appropriately straightforward “The Straight Story.” Actors who regularly appeared in his films include Kyle McLachlan, Laura Dern, Naomi Watts and Richard Farnsworth.

Lynch was a native of Missoula, Montana who moved around often with his family as a child and long wanted to feel most at home away from the classroom, free to explore his fascination with the world. Lynch’s mother was an English teacher and his father a researcher at the United States Department of Agriculture. He was raised in the Pacific Northwest before the family settled in Virginia. By all accounts, Lynch’s childhood was free of trauma. He praised his parents as “loving” and “fair” in his memoirs, though he also recalled formative memories that shaped his sensibilities.

One day near his family’s home in the Pacific Northwest, Lynch recalled seeing a beautiful, naked woman come out of the woods, bloody and crying.

“I saw a lot of strange things happening in the woods,” Lynch told Rolling Stone. “And it just seemed to me that people only told you 10% of what they knew and it was up to you to discover the other 90%.”

He had an early gift for visual arts and a passion for travel and discovery. He dropped out of several high schools before enrolling at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, beginning a decades-long apprenticeship as a short film maker. He was working as a printer in 1966 when he made his first film, a four-minute short called “Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times).” That and other work earned Lynch a seat at the then-burgeoning American Film Institute.

There he began work on what would become his feature film debut in 1977, “Eraserhead”.

“David has always had a cheerful mind and a sunny personality, but he’s always been drawn to dark things,” a childhood friend is quoted as saying in “Room to Dream,” a 2018 book by Lynch and Kristine McKenna. It is one of David’s mysteries.”

In addition to furniture making and painting, Lynch was a coffee maker, composer, sculptor and cartoonist. He exuded a Zen-like serenity that he attributed to Transcendental Meditation, which his David Lynch Foundation promoted. In the 2017 short film “What Did Jack Do?” he played a detective interrogating a monkey.

Lynch himself was a singular presence, almost as seductive and deadpan as his own films. For years he posted videos of daily weather reports from Southern California. When asked for an analysis of his film, Lynch typically hesitated.

“I like things that leave room for dreaming,” he told the New York Times in 1995. “A lot of mysteries are sewn up at the end, and that kills the dream.”

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AP National Writer Hillel Italy contributed reporting.