Remembering David Lynch (1946-2025)

Anders: When the news dropped on Thursday, Jan 16, 2025, initially via a Facebook post from his family, that David Lynch had died, it hit me in a way few other notable deaths do. Lynch, who had suffered for many years from emphysema, died at the age of 78 (I should note that it sounds now that the wildfires in Los Angeles played a contributing role in his death, given the impact on air quality and Lynch’s status as a shut in). I’d probably have to look back to the January 2016 passing of David Bowie (who starred in Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me!) to find a comparable impact over a celebrity death.

Given the outpouring of love and appreciation online, it’s clear that in his nearly 60 years of creative output, Lynch shaped our understanding of American art, cinema, and television. Even if some of the posts and memes come across as incredibly performative or focused on Lynch’s “weirdness,” that doesn’t diminish his artistic accomplishments. Whether you “got” it or hated his work, it is undeniable that you can recognize Lynch’s style and thematic obsessions. There’s a reason the descriptor “Lynchian” has entered the lexicon, easily used to identify something hard to define, making it as graspable as “Kafkaesque.”

And perhaps that’s a great comparison. I saw one post that described Lynch as synthesizing elements of the Czech writer, Franz Kafka, with Frank Capra. In his best works, he captures the absurdity, hidden darkness, and intense beauty of the American experience. His films and television shows can be at turns hilarious, horrifying, and deeply moving.

Perhaps no film sums up the Lynchian better than Blue Velvet from 1986. A distillation of sexual obsession, small town American values, and the power of cinema, the film divided critics deeply. Famously, Roger Ebert hated it. But, it grabs your imagination, and like protagonist Jeffrey Beaumont, played by his frequent collaborator Kyle McLachlan, you can’t look away.

Aren: “Can’t look away.” That kind of sums up the impact of Lynch’s work. It’s so singular, so bold, so uniquely its own, that you’re kind of powerless to resist it, regardless of whether you actually like it or not. Lynch wasn’t interested in whether you liked it or not. He didn’t approach art programmatically. He approached it intuitively, moved by the mysterious energies of the universe to share his dreams with the world.

You mention that Lynch’s death feels like a massive loss personally. I agree, and I know we’re not alone. I think it’s because Lynch is so inseparable from his art that people have such massive affection for him because the art seemed so meaningful and particular. There was nothing cookie cutter about Lynch, and so if you connected with his work, it was as if you were connecting with it. Watching his movies felt like he was speaking to you personally, tapping into something that you thought only you had observed about the world.

I remember in the early weeks of film school in 2012 in a screenwriting course, we were asked to name a movie character we identified with the most. I chose Jeffrey from Blue Velvet because I thought he personified the experience of a filmgoer who wants to become a filmmaker. He is a watcher who is so tantalized by what he sees that he has to insert himself into the scenario. He has to become an actor within his own viewing, engaged in the drama at all costs. People snickered that the choice was revealing some kind of personal sexual deviancy, but it wasn’t the voyeurism of Jeffrey that I connected with but rather his desire to transform his mundane life into something more exciting. Of course, with Jeffrey, there is a cost to such a decision. I think Lynch understood that there’s a cost to becoming an artist in his own life. He had four failed marriages. He didn’t have the greatest relationships with some past collaborators. But I don’t think anyone thinks Lynch was being disingenuous or manipulative in the course of his career or personal life. It was more that Lynch was chasing the big dream, so dedicated to catching the big fish, that he prioritized it above all else. There was a cost to leaving the sidelines and entering the field of play.

Blue Velvet is one of my very favourite movies and along with Twin Peaks, I think it’s Lynch’s definitive masterpiece. If I’m asked what the greatest work of American cinematic art is, I would likely say Blue Velvet. So knowing that we’re not ever going to get another work from Lynch hurts. The oeuvre is now complete.

Anders: It’s hard to argue with that assessment of Blue Velvet, I’m a big fan of the film. But as you also note Twin Peaks is equally singular, even if it’s a work for television and not the big screen. I suspect it may be his crowning achievement, even if it’s less “perfect” than Blue Velvet. I genuinely love Twin Peaks and think about it all the time, the characters, situations, and dark heart of the two television series and the film prequel, Fire Walk With Me from 1992. In this collaboration with writer Mark Frost, Lynch proved that television could be a compelling art form for exploring deeper ideas, nearly a decade before The Sopranos or the HBO television renaissance.

Starring Kyle McLachlan as the iconic FBI Agent Dale Cooper, the series weaves a complex mythos around the town of Twin Peaks, Washington and dark forces from beyond our realm into the format of a television soap opera. And I think that is part of its genius; it doesn’t condescend to the medium. It gets what TV is good at, employing this huge cast of characters and genre entertainment conventions without needing to “transcend” the genre. Opinions are mixed on the second season, but to me there is no doubt it is among the greatest television shows of all time.

Aren: If I had to name the greatest television show ever made, I’d be hard pressed to choose between The Sopranos, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Twin Peaks. But if I had to name the one that has burrowed the deepest into my mind, I’d have to say Twin Peaks. It captures so much of what I love about mystery, about Americana, about the supernatural and nature and the struggle of good versus evil. The quotes alone are insane, from “Coffee black as midnight on a moonless night” to “a damn fine cup of coffee” to “That gum you like is going to come back in style,” delivered in the backwards gibberish of the Black Lodge.

In first year university, I was crazy enough to watch the entire first two seasons in one sitting with a few friends. That’s around 33 hours of Twin Peaks injected straight into my sleep-addled brain. I blanche at thinking about what kind of weird neural pathways were created during that session, and how they’ve impacted other parts of my life.

Anders: Wow, that’s a really intense marathon of Lynch!

I think that the way that Lynch’s films impact your understanding of the medium itself and the possibilities is key here. They deliver these unforgettable images and concepts that burrow deep into your unconscious. Thus, I would also point to a couple of his later works as the most important Lynch works to me personally. Mulholland Drive might be my favourite of his films. Stylistically reminiscent of Twin Peaks at its darkest, it shows both the power of Hollywood and also the dark side of the dream of stardom. And for sheer memorable movie moments in my life, few rank with my first viewing of the film and the “Winkie’s Diner” sequence for sheer slowburn terror. It’s one of the best films of the early millennium, no doubt.

Aren: The sequence is perhaps the scariest movie scene in a non-horror movie.

Before we wrap up, I just wanted to briefly comment that unlike a lot of other filmmakers, my affection for Lynch was about more than just the movies he made. It was also about the eccentric person he was.

In the hours after I learned of Lynch’s death, I was texting with a friend who knew that Lynch was a hero of mine. It got me thinking about the directors who have had the greatest impact on me, the ones who I have engaged with the most, not only through their works, but through their personalities and their writings and their public appearances. And during my formative years as a young cinephile, there was maybe no one more important than Lynch.

I remember going to see Inland Empire in 35mm during its theatrical release in August 2007 at the Broadway Theatre in Saskatoon, sitting in the front row and being absolutely baffled by the three-hour experience. Anton was there as well and wasn’t a fan of the movie. I can’t say I loved it then either. But I watched it again. And again. And that experience stuck in my mind. Me and my friends would rewatch scenes from the film in our basements on weekends or go through the special features on the DVD like we were discovering vinyl bootlegs. We got so much mileage out of the featurette where Lynch cooks quinoa, for instance, where he walks you through his process in his kitchen, commenting on how much he likes the dish. It’s absurd to think that I dedicated so many hours to engaging with a filmmaker doing anything other than directing, but here we are. Lynch was so fascinating as a person. He was a true artist and I couldn’t get enough of his thoughts on the world, on life, on art, on, yes, quinoa.

Anders: Absolutely. I think that in the new world of the internet, this is why, as I alluded to at the start, it’s very easy for Lynch to be assimilated into a meme or set of quirks. But as you note, he was a genuinely fascinating person. As Mel Brooks, who hand picked him after Eraserhead to direct The Elephant Man (another deeply moving portrait of flawed humanity that Lynch gave his personal touch) described him, he was “Jimmy Stewart from Mars.”

A couple last things I want to mention that will go down as moments from the last decade that showed his continued legacy. First, even though he never made another feature after Inland Empire,  I want to specifically mention Part 8 of Twin Peaks: The Return, also known as “Gotta Light?” I really can’t describe the power of it, the way it manages to weave Lynch’s specific style, reminiscent of Eraserhead and the darker moments of the Black Lodge to avant garde practices. It expanded the meaning of Twin Peaks to a larger reflection on the link between personal evil and institutional evil, with the detonation of the Trinity test at Los Alamos. It’s one of the few TV episodes I immediately watched again the next day.

Finally, his cameo performance at the end of The Fabelmans as John Ford is such a touching and fitting end to that film. Knowing what it must mean about Steven Speilberg’s appreciation of Lynch to portray his filmmaking hero, what a compliment.

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