Iconic American filmmaker David Lynch passed away Jan. 15. For those unfamiliar with Lynch, he directed many films and television shows, including “Twin Peaks,” “Mulholland Drive,” “Beatles ’64,” “Eraserhead” and several more. His first film, “Eraserhead,” came out in 1977, and his career spanned until his death, with his most recent film in 2024.
His recent death is making big waves within the film industry. Friends and colleagues are voicing their sadness about his death. Laura Dern, a friend and Oscar-winning actress who starred in Lynch’s “Blue Velvet,” published a letter to her dear friend in The Los Angeles Times following his passing.
“You believed in the ritual of art and the grace that deserves to be given to it,” Dern wrote. “You gave me an opportunity to explore every aspect of the female psyche, to play out archetypes and then shatter any former understanding of them […] you made me believe in all that is good in our country and fear all that lies beneath.”
Actor Kyle MacLachlan also wrote a piece published in The New York Times last week in tribute of David Lynch. MacLachlan was part of “The Elephant Man” and has said in several moments that he owes his career to Lynch. This article, titled “Kyle MacLachlan: How David Lynch Invented Me” is, in many ways, another letter to Lynch.
“To David, what you thought mattered, too,” MacLaughlan wrote. “With his actors, he didn’t want to give straight direction because he saw us as artists […] with his audience, he was the same way.”
Colgate University students, including senior Harper Hollander, also reflected on Lynch’s impact within the film and television industry.
“He didn’t make films that were meant to be understood in the traditional sense, they were meant to be felt and experienced,” Hollander said. “He doesn’t spoon-feed the audience.”
In his five decades of filmmaking, Lynch created a very particular style characterized by particular imagery and evil. These films definitely divide viewers based on whether Lynch is taking these ideas too far.
Lynch clearly impacted those that he worked with, and also the industry in general. He will be missed by those who surrounded him and will leave a dent in Hollywood and filmmaking. For those reasons, his life should be celebrated and given tribute to.
Lynch was born in 1946 in Missoula, Mont. For most of his early life, he wanted to be a painter. He enrolled in the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and later the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he created his first short film, “Six Men Getting Sick.” “Eraserhead” was a product of another film school, the American Film Institute Center for Advanced Film Studies. This film, which took five years for Lynch to make, became a cult favorite but baffled many viewers when it first came out because of its surreal nature and nonlinear storyline. However, there is an obvious appreciation among critics of Lynch’s ability to write, direct and produce the entire film on his own. While the plot of the film is incredibly confusing due to its structure, there is some speculation that it was inspired by Lynch’s own fear of fatherhood.
Regardless of its early unpopularity, “Eraserhead” jumpstarted Lynch’s long and successful career. Following the creation of this film, Lynch was hired to direct “The Elephant Man,” which won several awards and gave Lynch his first nomination for an Academy Award for best director. Many of his following films carried on that same surreal and horrifying nature that he brought to the screen with “Eraserhead.” The term “Lynchian” was coined to describe this very particular form of filmmaking. Lynch’s films often exhibited an intentional paradox between horrifying acts of cruelty and social normality. In a way, this could be looked at as a social commentary on American life and the quest to appear normal despite something deeper going on behind the scenes. While some critics have found this narrative of performative normality to be incredibly cynical of American life, others find it brilliant and complex.
“He never wanted to explain his work,” MacLaughlan wrote. “It’s just that explaining his art after the fact seemed antithetical to the very point of making it.”
“Blue Velvet” was rejected by the Venice Film Festival due to its perverted themes and a 20-minute-long sex scene that included voyeurism, rape and other disturbing themes. Regardless of this, he had major impacts on the film industry, even when he was getting rejected from film festivals.
“He’s super important because he was one of the first American filmmakers to actively shrink the major studies in favor of working with smaller financiers to make art and movies that still received national distribution,” Hollander said. “‘Twin Peaks’ reinvented TV plotting too — it combined opera with serialized mystery.”
In other words, regardless of critics or personal opinions on the plots of his movies or his not-so-delicate experiment with disturbing themes, it is clear he had a lasting impact on the film and media industry.
Lynch’s death was announced by his family via social media with few details. However, Lynch himself was open about his emphysema in 2024. Lynch was married four times and had four children who now live on in his legacy. One of his daughters, Jennifer Lynch, is also a filmmaker. While he never made a complete crowd-pleasing movie and did not have the same sense of Hollywood filmmaking as other big-name directors and producers, Lynch can only be appreciated. His distinct style and psychologically horrifying films are unlike anything else, and for that reason, Hollywood lost something very unique last week.
