| David Lynch |
US director whose wildly unconventional films burrowed into the unsavoury depths of his nation’s psyche
Rayan Gilbey
Friday 17 January 2025
David Lynch, who has died aged 78, was the most original film-maker to emerge in postwar America, as well as the greatest cinematic surrealist since Buñuel. His understanding of desire, fantasy and dread was unparalleled; the Paris Review called him “the Edward Hopper of American film”.
David Lynch, the visionary director who reshaped independent cinema in the United States in the 1980s, has passed away. His death was confirmed by his family on Facebook, with a statement reflecting on Lynch’s legacy as the creator of iconic works like Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man, and the cult TV series Twin Peaks.
Steven Spielberg, Naomi Watts, Nicolas Cage, Kyle MacLachlan and others share their respects for film-maker who died this week at 78
Actors and directors have been paying tribute to the director David Lynch, who died this week at the age of 78.
The death of Lynch, whose works include Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive, was announced by his family on Facebook earlier on Thursday. “There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us,” they wrote. “But, as he would say: ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.’”
Steven Spielberg, who cast Lynch as John Ford in his semi-autobiographical drama The Fabelmans praised him as “a singular, visionary dreamer who directed films that felt handmade” in a statement.
| David Lynch |
He quit in 2022, but smoking was previously an integral part of the film-maker’s life and art
Xan Brooks
17 January 2025
It was a cold autumn day when I interviewed David Lynch inside his Paris art studio. The film-maker sat at an ink-splattered table while I ran through my questions with a sense of mounting desperation. “Well, yes and no,” Lynch would reply with a smile. “No, well, maybe,” he’d say, beaming at the far wall. He lit one cigarette from the butt of another and asked Mindy, his assistant, to keep him supplied with hot coffee. The tobacco smoke mingled with the steam from his mug. It felt as though he were kicking up clouds to hide himself from view.
“My heart is broken. My Buddy Dave…” began Mulholland Drive star Naomi Watts on Instagram about the death of that movie’s filmmaker David Lynch.
| David Lynch |
The visionary film-maker and prolific artist, purveyor of the dark, mysterious, abstract and unspoken, died aged 78 visionary film-maker and prolific artist, purveyor of the dark, mysterious, abstract and unspoken, died aged 78
Adrian Horton
Friday 17 January 2025
avid Lynch, the enigmatic film-maker who revolutionized American cinema and television through his dark, surrealist vision, has died at the age of 78, less than a year after the lifelong smoker publicly revealed his struggles with emphysema.
Film-maker who specialised in surreal, noir style mysteries made a string of influential, critically acclaimed works including Wild at Heart and EraserheadDavid Lynch, the maverick American director who sustained a successful mainstream career while also probing the bizarre, the radical and the experimental, has died aged 78.
“There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us,” his family wrote in a Facebook post. “But, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.’”
Last August, Lynch said he had been diagnosed with emphysema and in November, spoke further about his breathing difficulties. “I can hardly walk across a room,” he said. “It’s like you’re walking around with a plastic bag around your head.”
| DAVID LYCH |
In the first two seasons of Twin Peaks, Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook) is a classic David Lynch character: a high school football player dating the homecoming queen, with a private life full of ugly secrets. He sells drugs, sleeps with his supplier’s wife, even kills a man (in self-defense, but still). Twenty-five years later, in Twin Peaks: The Return, Bobby still lives in Twin Peaks, but now he’s a graying cop, devoted to preserving the peace he was once so intent on disturbing. In the intervening years, he has married and divorced his onetime lover Shelley (Mädchen Amick), and the two of them have an adult daughter. We aren’t told how he got to this point, or if anyone knows about the man he killed, but you know there’s a story there. A person doesn’t change that much without a rich, conflicted inner life and the capacity for self-examination, regret, and the ability to imagine being another kind of man.
| Hans Ruedi Giger |
| David Lynch Photo by Sandro |
Since Eraserhead in 1977, David Lynch has reigned as one of our most compellingly enigmatic directors. Whether it’s films like Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive or TV’s Twin Peaks (that is, 1990’s first season and last year’s triumphant Twin Peaks: The Return — skip season two), Lynch has shown himself to be a master of haunting surreality. He also long ago proved to be adept at concealing the intentions behind his work. Which is why the arrival of a new sort-of memoir, Room to Dream, is so surprising. “I know people will read the book for clues,” says Lynch, sitting with a cup of coffee and a pack of cigarettes in the painting studio at his home in the Hollywood Hills. “But giving anybody clues has nothing to do with why I did it.”
| David Lynch |
For David Lynch, Coming Back to Twin Peaks Was Like Rolling Off a Log
As Twin Peaks returns to TV, its iconic creator has a few things to say about it. Very few things, it turns out.
Twin Peaks has become a common shorthand description for darkly comic and surreal TV shows. Do you see that influence out there in the world?
No. I don’t see it at all.
| David Lynch Photo by Josh Telles |
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