Steven Spielberg, Nicolas Cage, Naomi Watts share tribute

Numerous entertainment executives, celebrities and former collaborators have mourned the death of David Lynch, the multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker whose spectacularly unnerving work united dreams and nightmares and forever changed the landscape of filmmaking.

Steven Spielberg, who starred Lynch in his semi-autobiographical film The Fabelman family, remembered him as “a singular, visionary dreamer who directed films that felt handcrafted. He added, “The world is going to miss such an original and unique voice. His films have already stood the test of time, and they always will.”

Lynch’s longtime friend and collaborator for the past four decades, actor Kyle MacLachlan, shared a moving tribute to the director on social media, along with photos of them together over the years. “What I saw in him was an enigmatic and intuitive man with a creative sea bursting forth within him. He was in touch with something the rest of us wish we could get to,” wrote MacLachlan, who starred in Lynch’s 1984 film. Dunepsychological thriller Blue velvet in 1986, and Twin Peaks only four years after.

“While the world has lost a remarkable artist, I have lost a dear friend who envisioned a future for me and allowed me to travel in worlds I could never have conceived on my own,” MacLachlan continued. “I will miss him more than the limits of my language can tell and my heart can bear. My world is so much fuller because I knew him and so much emptier now that he is gone.”

Mulholland Drive star Naomi Watts shared a heartfelt tribute to Lynch on Instagram, along with a tender clip of the director on set. “My heart is broken,” she began in her post, while crediting him for putting her “on the map.” Watts, who also appeared in Twin Peaks reboot, wrote “David invited everyone to glimpse into that world through his exquisite storytelling, which elevated cinema and inspired generations of filmmakers across the globe. … I shout from the bullhorn: Godspeed, Buddy Dave!

companion Mulholland Drive star Laura Harring took to Instagram to remember Lynch: “All artists and people who encountered you will mourn your passing, but I know that you create films, write, paint and meditate from above.”

Lee Grant, who also starred in the 2001 film, divided by X which she was first fascinated by Twin Peaks‘s “dreamscapes” in the nineties, as a production manager for a film she worked on a planned part of their shooting schedule around the broadcast of the TV show, which “the crew refused to miss.”

“Years later, when I got the chance to work with him for a day, I pounced to see how such a mind operated. It was a day on Mulholland Drive,” Grant said. “He really was a one-of-a-kind artist. .”

Nicolas Cage, who starred in Lynch’s Wild at heart in 1990, called Lynch “one of the greatest artists of this or any time” in a statement to Deadline. “He was brave, brilliant and a maverick with a happy sense of humor,” Cage continued. “I’ve never had more fun on a film set than working with David Lynch. He will always be solid gold.”

The Roots drummer Questlove praised Lynch on Thread for being “the first human/creative to emphasize the importance of not overexerting myself and taking time to breathe and meditate and search for creative avenues that are not in my comfort zone.” The producer and author added that Lynch was his “leading creative light for the 2016 Somethingtofoodabout book.”

Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn wrote X: “RIP David Lynch. You inspired so many of us.” Ron Howard also took to the platform to remember Lynch as a “gracious man and fearless artist who followed his heart and soul and proved that radical experimentation could make for unforgettable cinema.”

The Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan, whose band’s song “Eye” was featured on the soundtrack to Lynch’s 1997 film Lost Highway, wrote X that working with him was “like a dream out of one of his movies, and I treasure the times I got to talk to him and hear his vision for a movie firsthand.” He added: “He was a true artist, through and through.”