Sad news broke within the last couple of hours. David Lynch has passed. The American filmmaker, known for surrealist cult classics like Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks, has died aged 78. His death was announced on his official Facebook page by his family:
“There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us, but, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.’ … It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.”
Last August Lynch revealed he had the chronic lung disease emphysema from a lifetime of smoking but he pledged it wouldn’t slow him down. He was considered a cinematic maverick, but he still received three best director Oscar nominations for Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man, and Mulholland Drive.
Director Ron Howard has paid tribute to Lynch on social media, saying he was a:
“…gracious man and fearless artist who followed his heart & soul proved that radical experimentation could yield unforgettable cinema”.
He won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival for Wild at Heart in 1990, and was given an honorary Academy Award in 2020. Born in Missoula, Montana, Lynch first began a career in painting before switching to making short films during the 1960s.
Lynch went to art college in the 1960s and made his first experimental short, Six Men Getting Sick, while a student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. When he moved to Los Angeles in 1971 he went on to study film at the AFI Conservatory, where he began filming his first feature Eraserhead.
The film took him nearly five years to finish and was rejected from most film festivals until the late 70s when it became a big hit on the midnight movie circuit.
One of his most mainstream projects was the 1984 adaption of Frank Herbert’s Dune for Dino DeLaurentis. The movie was poorly received on release but is an almost textbook definition of how a movie obtains a cult following years after release.
One of the most interesting, and most challenging, filmmakers of modern times has passed away. Rest in peace David.