Remembering David Lynch

Modern American cinema lost one of its greats with the passing of David Lynch at the age of 78. Cinema Paradiso pays tribute to a unique talent who went his own way.

No one made films like David Lynch. The term 'Lynchian' was coined to try and sum up what he brought to cinema and the Oxford English Dictionary added this rider to its definition: 'Lynch is noted for juxtaposing surreal or sinister elements with mundane, everyday environments, and for using compelling visual images to emphasise a dreamlike quality of mystery or menace.' Yet, with its shifts from the folksy to the gnomic and from the beautiful to the bleak, his style remains as elusive as his personality.

A still from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)

'Life is very, very confusing,' he once said, 'and so films should be allowed to be, too.' It's why the small towns or suburbs in his films hide dark secrets beneath their deceptively placid surfaces. He knew all about the depravity and sinister depths of US society, but recognised that audiences would be reluctant to accept such harsh truths without a sugar-coating of whimsy or eccentricity. Hence, he used dream logic to expose the nightmare of everyday living. He tapped into the conscious subconscious to mine an ordinariness that could help fend off the irrational with a patented blend of humanism, satire, deadpan, strangeness, and empathy.

Esteemed critic Pauline Kael called Lynch 'the first populist surrealist', while the Paris Review declared him 'the Edward Hopper of American film'. Actress Lara Flynn Boyle dubbed him the 'true Willy Wonka of film-making', while actor-musician Sting labelled him 'a madman in sheep's clothing'. Novelist novelist David Foster Wallace claimed, 'It's hard to tell if he's a genius or an idiot,' while Mel Brooks reckoned he was 'Jimmy Stewart from Mars'.

The latter suggestion certainly ties in with the notion that Lynch created milieux that were equal parts Frank Capra and Franz Kafka. But maybe he was more the David Bowie of movies, as he brought experimentation to the mainstream and tried various artistic mediums before finding his ideal mode of expression. Also like Bowie, Lynch got his ideas in fragments. 'It's as if in the other room there's a puzzle,' he told Patti Smith on Newsnight in 2014, 'all the pieces are together. But in my room, they just flip one piece at a time into me.'

In announcing his death, the Lynch family wrote: '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."' Wise words, indeed!

Eagle Scout, Missoula Montana

David Keith Lynch was born in Missoula, Montana on 20 January 1946. Father Donald was a research scientist for the US Department of Agriculture, while mother Edwina (who was known as 'Sunny') was an English teacher of Finnish descent. They had met as students at Duke University and, two months after the baby's birth, the family relocated to Sandpoint, Idaho and further moves to Durham, North Carolina, Spokane, Washington, Boise, Idaho, and Alexandria, Virginia followed over the next 14 years, as David was joined by siblings John and Martha.

The timberlands of the Pacific Northwest left a lasting impression on the young Lynch, although he never said whether he met any log ladies. However, he endured bouts of agoraphobia after being scared during a screening of Henry King's Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie (1952). He later wrote: 'My childhood was elegant homes, tree-lined streets, the milkman, building backyard forts, droning airplanes, blue skies, picket fences, green grass, cherry trees. Middle America as it's supposed to be. But on the cherry tree there's this pitch oozing out - some black, some yellow, and millions of red ants crawling all over it. I discovered that if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world, there are always red ants underneath. Because I grew up in a perfect world, other things were a contrast.'

Later declaring himself to have been a 'troubled' child who realised too soon that life was not as peachy as it seemed. 'I learned,' he wrote years later, 'that just beneath the surface there's another world, and still different worlds as you dig deeper. I knew it as a kid, but I couldn't find the proof. It was just a feeling. There is goodness in blue skies and flowers, but another force - a wild pain and decay - also accompanies everything.'

Elsewhere, he confided: 'I found the world completely and totally fantastic as a child. Of course, I had the usual fears, like going to school...for me, back then, school was a crime against young people. It destroyed the seeds of liberty. The teachers didn't encourage knowledge or a positive attitude.' However, he adored his family. 'My parents were so loving and good,' he wrote in his memoir. 'They'd had good parents, too, and everybody loved my parents. They were just fair.' He was particularly grateful for the fact that they encouraged his artistic ambitions, recalling that his mother had urged him to draw on scraps of paper rather than use colouring books that required him to stay between the lines.

Finding it easy to make friends as the class 'outsider', Lynch survived his elementary education in Boise and his high school years in Alexandria. Yet he always felt he was waiting for 'something out of the ordinary to happen' and he got into trouble for detonating bottle rockets and pipe bombs as a teenager. He later joked that his rebellious streak had lasted from the age of 14 to 30. 'People rebel that long these days,' he opined, 'because we're built to live longer.' For all his James Dean posturing, however, Lynch joined the Boy Scouts of America and rose to the rank of Eagle Scout. Indeed, he spent his 15th birthday on parade at President John F. Kennedy's inauguration in Washington, DC.

While staying with an aunt in Hungry Horse, Montana, Lynch met artist Ace Powell, who let him use his painting materials. He also go to know Bushnell Keeler, who allowed him and school pal Jack Fisk to use part of his studio. Keeler became a key mentor and starred in Sailing With Bushnell Keeler (1967), a 16mm Bolex home movie that Lynch made when he was still a student. Keeler encouraged Lynch to enrol at Corcoran School of Art in Washington. But a transfer to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston proved disastrous. As he later put it, 'I was not inspired AT ALL in that place.'

Plans to spend three years in Europe with Fisk studying with the painter Oskar Kokoschka in Vienna were abandoned after just 15 days. On returning home, therefore, Lynch enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where he married pregnant girlfriend Peggy Reavey before she gave birth to their daughter, Jennifer. Despite developing as a painter and sculptor, as his work became more influenced by Francis Bacon, Lynch hated the city.

'We lived cheap,' he wrote in his memoir, 'but the city was full of fear. A kid was shot to death down the street...we were robbed twice, had windows shot out and a car stolen. The house was first broken into only three days after we moved in...The feeling was so close to extreme danger, and the fear was so intense. There was violence and hate and filth. But the biggest influence in my whole life was that city.'

Moreover, during his time there, he was spared conscription for the Vietnam War after being declared 'unfit for military service' because of intestinal spasms and dislocated vertebrae. His lucky break coincided with another change of direction.

The Accidental Auteur

Film had not been a major preoccupation in Lynch's youth, but he became more engrossed as the 1960s progressed. He numbered Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950) among his favourite pictures, along with Jacques Tati's Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (1953), Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954), Stanley Kubrick's Lolita, Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls (both 1962), and Federico Fellini's 8½ (1963) - all of which are available with a single click from Cinema Paradiso. Auteurs like Jean-Luc Godard, Ingmar Bergman, Werner Herzog, and Roman Polanski were also much admired, as they made works that 'get down and thrill your soul'. Yet, as Alexandre O. Philippe identified in his 2022 documentary, Lynch/Oz, the film that kept recurring throughout Lynch's oeuvre was Victor Fleming's The Wizard of Oz (1939).

Lynch claimed he was inspired to make moving pictures after seeing a painting he was working on ripple on the canvas in a sudden breeze. After a proposed collaboration with animator Bruce Samuelson foundered, he got his chance in 1966, when Jack Fisk helped him create the 60-second animated short, Six Figures Getting Sick. Costing $150, the looped images were cast on to a bust of Lynch's head and depicted six people becoming vomitously nauseous to the accompanying sound of an air-raid siren.

Fellow art student H. Barton Wasserman was suitably impressed by this '57 seconds of growth and fire, and three seconds of vomit' to commission a $1000 variation on the theme for his home. But, while Lynch used the money to buy a wind-up Bolex camera, an error during the developing stage meant that the installation was never completed. However, Lynch was hooked and he studied film-making techniques while working on The Alphabet (1968). This mix of animation and live-action was inspired by the fact that his niece had once recited the alphabet aloud while having a nightmare. Wife Peggy appears in the 16mm abstract short, which also contains the distorted sound of daughter Jennifer crying, which was recorded with a faulty tape machine that Lynch returned for a refund after completing the project.

Bushnell Keeler was impressed by his prodigy's efforts and suggested he applied to the newly formed American Film Institute for a grant to make The Grandmother (1969). In all, the AFI provided $7200 towards a 34-minute meld of animation and live-action that was filmed at Lynch's Philadelphia home and revealed how a lonely boy who is endlessly abused by his parents grows himself a grandma from a seed.

The powers at the new AFI Conservatory recognised Lynch's talents and offered him a scholarship that saw him relocate to Los Angeles to take classes alongside Paul Schrader and Terrence Malick. Despite being tempted to rebel against the structured course, Lynch was persuaded to stay when he was offered the chance to use the campus to make a film. He submitted a script for a surrealist treatise on adultery entitled 'Gardenback', which had been inspired by one of his own paintings. However, his tutors felt the 45-minute project represented a risky use of their restricted resources and suggested that Lynch came up with an alternative.

Believing that the 21-page outline would yield a film running around 20 minutes, the AFI Conservatory board greenlit Eraserhead with a grant of $10,000. However, such was Lynch's ambition for this investigation into a man's fear of fatherhood (which reflected the director's own) that it became clear he intended the action to run to feature length and he had to work as a paperboy over the next five years to provide for his family and fund a project that was also backed by Jack Fisk and his film star wife, Sissy Spacek, and by leading man Jack Nance and his actress wife, Catherine Coulson, who donated the cash she made from waitressing.

A still from Eraserhead (1977) With Jack Nance

Shooting began on 29 May 1972 on what Lynch called his 'Philadelphia Story', as the dystopian industrial wasteland in which Henry (Jack Nance) raises a deformed infant after his girlfriend abandons him was inspired by the City of Brotherly Love. He was briefly sidelined when the AFI offered him the chance to make a nine-minute short, The Amputee (1974), using a batch of experimental film stock that needed testing before an order was placed. Lynch also had to cope with divorcing Peggy and moving on to the film set because he had nowhere else to go. In 1977, however, he would marry Jack Fisk's sister, Mary, with whom he would have a son, Austin.

Having failed to have Eraserhead accepted by the festivals at Cannes and New York, Lynch secured a spot at Filmex in Los Angeles, where it played to just 26 people on 19 March 1977. It was noticed, however, by Ben Barenholtz, who was a key player on the midnight matinee circuit that had made cult hits out of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968), Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo (1970), John Waters's Pink Flamingos, Perry Henzell's The Harder They Come (both 1972), and Jim Sheridan's The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). Lynch's monochrome debut feature spent over two years on screens in New York. As its cult status grew, Stanley Kubrick proclaimed it his favourite movie and it would go on to gross $7 million over the next 45 years. But notoriety wasn't enough to help Lynch fund his proposed follow-up, Ronnie Rocket, which was to have been a film 'about electricity and a three-foot guy with red hair'. However, luck was about to intervene once more.

Highs and Lows

Among those to show interest in backing Lynch's vision was Stuart Cornfeld, a producer at Brooksfilms. Mel Brooks had supposedly greeted Lynch after a screening of Eraserhead with the words, 'You're a madman. I love you!' Realising that Ronnie Rocket was not going to get funding, Lynch asked Cornfield to dig out some screenplays that he could consider. The moment he saw the title for The Elephant Man, he knew he had found his next project.

Based on Frederick Treves's The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences (1923) and Ashley Montagu's The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity (1971), Christopher De Vore, and Eric Bergren's scenario chronicled the life of Joseph Merrick (renamed John for the film), a Victorian man had lived with lymphatic filariasis and had been cruelly mistreated before Treves befriended him. Despite Dustin Hoffman's eagerness to take the title role, John Hurt was cast, while Anthony Hopkins was chosen as Treves, with Hannah Gordon as his wife, Ann, and Anne Bancroft (who was married to Brooks), as compassionate actress Madge Kendall.

The temperamental Hopkins was unimpressed with the sophomore's directing skills and sought to have him fired. On one occasion, the Welshman bellowed at Lynch to make his instructions clearer and the director later recalled: 'this anger comes up in me in a way that's happened just a couple of times in my life. It rose up like you can't ***in' believe - I can't even imitate the way I was yelling, because I'd hurt my voice. I screamed some stuff at him, then screamed what I wanted him to do, and Wendy Hiller [who was playing Mrs Mothershead] turns to Tony and quietly says, "I would do what he says." So he did.'

Lynch earned Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, as The Elephant Man (1980) drew eight nods, including Best Picture and Best Actor. It won none, although the outcry over the lack of recognition for Christopher Tucker's make-up (after Lynch had disastrously attempted his own designs) led to the inauguration of the Academy Award for Best Make-Up the following year.

Suddenly finding himself on the Hollywood A list, Lynch turned down invitations to direct Fast Times At Ridgemont High (1982) and Return of the Jedi (1983). Instead, he launched a comic strip, 'The Angriest Dog in the World', which was published in The Village Voice and other alternative outlets between 1983-92. However, he also agreed to take on the adaptation of Frank Herbert's sci-fi classic, Dune, which had already frustrated such film-makers as Alejandro Jodorowsky and Ridley Scott. Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis was unconvinced by Lynch's insistence that the text should be divided into two films and an air of uneasiness characterised a project that centred on the battle for control of the arid planet of Arrakis (and its precious spice, melange) between the former overlords, House Harkonnen, and the family of Paul Atreides. Tom Cruise, Kevin Costner, Lewis Smith, Zach Galligan, Michael Biehn, Kenneth Branagh, and Val Kilmer all coveted the role. But Lynch chose first-timer Kyle MacLachlan, who would become a key collaborator over the next decade.

Working in Mexico on 80 sets, Lynch made it through a sometimes problematical six-month shoot, as he followed the seventh draft of the screenplay. However, his three-hour edit was deemed too long by De Laurentiis, who asked daughter Raffaella to supervise a revision that removed some scenes and added others to simplify the action. 'It was horrible, just horrible,' Lynch later lamented. 'It was like a nightmare what was being done to the film to make this two-hour-and-17-minute running time that was required. Things were truncated, and whispered voice-overs were added because everybody thought audiences wouldn't understand what was going on.'

Fans of the books were appalled and the $45 million epic only recouped $27.4 million at the domestic box office. 'I'm proud of everything except Dune,' Lynch would later claim and he distanced himself from later versions produced for television and home media formats. Indeed, he had his name removed from the Universal 'expanded cut' and chose Alan Smithee for the directing credit and Judas Booth for the script. For once, Lynch's luck had run out and he feared his career was over.

Young Hearts Run Free

Still owing De Laurentiis a picture after the sequel to Dune was cancelled, Lynch dusted down an idea he had been nurturing since 1973. He later explained that it was a Bobby Vinton hit that inspired Blue Velvet (1989), which laid the cornerstone for his reputation as the chronicler of dysfunctional America. 'It was the song that sparked the movie,' he said. 'There was something mysterious about it. It made me think about things. And the first things I thought about were lawns - lawns and the neighbourhood.'

Drawing on childhood memories, the setting for this 'dream of strange desires wrapped inside a mystery story' was Lumberton, North Carolina. But college student Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) soon learns that things aren't as wholesome as they seem when he finds a severed human ear in a field. Despite the misgivings of his classmate, Sandy Williams (Laura Dern), he starts to investigate and discovers that the psychotic Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) has kidnapped the family of singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini)

Helen Mirren had been Lynch's first choice for Dorothy, while Molly Ringwald had rejected the role of Sandy. Harry Dean Stanton and Steven Berkoff had likewise been offered Frank before Dennis Hopper pleaded, 'I have to play Frank Booth because I am Frank Booth,' a revelation that prompted Lynch to reply, 'That's good news and bad news.' But the shoot went ahead with few problems and culminated in Lynch and Rossellini becoming lovers.

With Roy Orbison's 'In Dreams' proving another highlight of the songscore that complemented the atmospheric music of Angelo Badalamenti, the film tapped into the neo-noir trend that had been launched by Joel and Ethan Coen's Blood Simple (1984). Yet test audiences were unimpressed and, even after critics sang its praises, Blue Velvet struggled at the box office. Once again, Lynch doubled up at the Oscars, but left empty handed, as he and Hopper had done at the Golden Globes.

As we shall see below, the small screen was to dominate the next few years after Lynch had gone to Paris to make The Cowboy and the Frenchman (1989) for French television. However, the discovery of a Barry Gifford novel pushed him back towards the cinema to direct Wild At Heart (1990) after he had initially been approached to produce it by his friend Monty Montgomery. Stymied by the bankruptcy of Dino De Laurentiis from making either Ronnie Rocket or One Saliva Bubble, Lynch latched on to the misadventures of Sailor Ripley (Nicolas Cage) and Lula Pace Fortune (Laura Dern), which he felt echoed the odyssey of Dorothy Gale and her friends in The Wizard of Oz.

A hint of Elvis Presley attitude, a snakeskin jacket, and some erotic byplay were added to the mix that persuaded Bernardo Bertolucci's jury to present Lynch with the Palme d'or at Cannes. However, the Motion Picture Association of America insisted on cuts before awarding an NC-17 certificate, while the press was split over the picture's merits. As a consequence, it performed modestly at the box-office, even though Diane Ladd earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for playing her daughter's on-screen mother, Marietta Fortune. Lynch stood by the film, however, writing, 'This is the way America is to me. There's a very innocent, naive quality to life, and there's a horror and a sickness as well.'

Wonderful and Strange

In the late 1980s, Warners asked Lynch to make a biopic of Marilyn Monroe entitled, Venus Descending. They had paired him with writer Mark Frost, who had been working on Hill Street Blues (1981-87). But, while they got along famously, the pair realised that the film wasn't coming together. Lynch's agent, Tony Krantz, suggested they switched to a mini-series about a small American town and they watched old episodes of Peyton Place (1964-69), as North Dakota evolved into Northwest Passage and eventually into Twin Peaks (1990-91).

Basing the mystery surrounding schoolgirl Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) on the unsolved murder of Hazel Irene Drew in Sand Lake, New York in 1901, Lynch and Frost decided to temper the whodunit with offbeat soap opera to convey the queasily cosy tone of life in a remote Washington burg. In the pilot episode, Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) comes to Twin Peaks to help Sheriff Harry S. Truman (Michael Ontkean) with his investigation and his dictaphone messages to Diane soon became as compelling to audiences around the world as his obsession with cherry pie and a damn fine cup of hot joe.

Having directed only two episodes, Lynch decamped to make Wild At Heart, leaving Tim Hunter, Lesli Linka Glatter, Caleb Deschanel, and Mark Frost to complete the first season. After helming the first two episodes of Season 2, Lynch again ceded the director's chair, with Todd Holland, Graeme Clfford, Tina Rathbone, Duwayne Dunham, Uli Edel, Diane Keaton, James Foley, Jonathan Sanger, and Stephen Gyllenhaal all guesting alongside the returning hirelings and Lynch himself, who chipped in with Parts 15 and 30.

When not devoting a week to his episodes or cameoing as hard-of-hearing FBI agent Gordon Cole, Lynch was off shooting commercials for Yves Saint Laurent, Calvin Klein, and Giorgio Armani, as well as the Japanese coffee company, Namoi. He and composer Angelo Badalamenti also teamed on 'Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted', a musical item produced at the behest of the Brooklyn Academy of Music for the 1989 New Music America Festival. Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern appeared in the piece, which contained five songs by Julee Cruise, which Lynch recorded in a 50-minute video.

Despite Twin Peaks winning Golden Globes for Best TV Drama Series and Best Actor in a TV Drama, the suits at ABC were sufficiently concerned by the ratings drop during the second season to ask Lynch and Frost to wrap things up and reveal the killer. Although Lynch had misgivings about Season 2, he felt the network had let the side down and insisted on putting his own spin on proceedings in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), a big-screen prequel that centred on Laura Palmer, while having to make do without Donna Hayward (Lara Flynn Boyle) and Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn). Lynch trimmed down his five hours of footage to 134 minutes (with the excised material turning up in Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces, 2014). But critics and audiences were disappointed and the film flopped.

After years of rumour and speculation, Lynch and Frost finally announced a third season of Twin Peaks, which added the subtitle, A Limited Event. Shooting began in September 2015, with several alumni returning, including Catherine Coulson, who died four days after completing her final scene as the Log Lady. Indeed, several cast members made their swan song in the 18 episodes, which saw Dale Cooper striving to emerge from the Black Lodge in order to reclaim his body from the evil Bob. In addition to scripting with Frost, Lynch also directed each episode and even reprised the role of Gordon Cole. Cahiers du Cinéma deemed it the best 'film' of 2017, while Kyle MacLachlan picked up a Golden Globe nomination.

Reflecting on his viewpoint, Lynch said, 'I look at the world and I see absurdity all around me. People do strange things constantly, to the point that, for the most part, we manage not to see it. That's why I love coffee shops and public places - I mean, they're all out there.' Nowhere was more 'out there' than Twin Peaks. But when someone asked him what Season 3 was about, Lynch contented himself with the quip, ' It's about 18 hours.'

The LA Trilogy

After a lengthy period away, during which he contributed a 54-second short to the centenary of cinema celebration, Lumière and Company (1995), Lynch returned to features with Lost Highway (1997), which saw him reunite with writer Barry Gifford. Initially, the pair struggled to find a storyline, but drew on the case of O.J. Simpson to fashion a twisting plot about Fred Madison (Bill Pullman), a musician who starts receiving videotapes of himself and wife Renee (Patricia Arquette) in their home. Shortly afterwards, Fred is arrested for murder, only for him to disappear from his cell and be replaced by young mechanic, Pete Drayton (Balthazar Getty), who is leading an entirely different life.

Steeped in German Expressionism and film noir, this would be the entry in the Los Angeles trilogy with which Lynch would end his cinematic career. But, while they admired the precision and polish of the film-making, critics were divided over its emotional and intellectual value. After a limited release following a Sundance debut, Lost Highway has since been reclaimed as a significant work because it sought so consciously to depart from the mainstream.

Which makes it all the more amusing that, when it came to his next feature, Lynch decided opt for such a doggedly linear venture as The Straight Story (1999). Longtime companion Mary Sweeney co-wrote the narrative with John E. Roach about Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth), a Second World War veteran who had travelled 240 miles from Laurens, Iowa to Mount Zion, Wisconsin on a John Deere 110 Lawn Tractor in order to visit the estranged brother (Harry Dean Stanton) who had suffered a stroke. Delighting in the deadpan folksiness of the saga, Lynch filmed in sequence along the route and liked to joke that this was his 'most experimental movie'.

Playing a character Lynch described as 'like James Dean, except he's old', Farnsworth became the oldest man to that time to have been nominated for Best Actor, while the reviews were almost unanimously popular. Lynch was thrilled to overhear someone at a preview screening opine, 'Isn't it odd that there are two directors called David Lynch?' But he couldn't resist setting off on another tangent, as he sought to return to television following the misfiring duo of On the Air (1992), which he had created with Frost and was cancelled after just three episodes, and the three-part HBO mini-series, Hotel Room (1993), which he had co-written with Monty Montgomery.

Designed to set the scene for an ABC series, Mulholland Drive (2002) ended up becoming a feature after a studio executive rejected the pilot and Lynch's producer friend, Pierre Edelman, found him French money to shoot a new ending to make it a stand-alone story. An extra 18 pages were added to the screenplay to allow Lynch to return to material that he had cut from the teleplay he had submitted to the network.

At the heart of the action is Betty Elms (Naomi Watts), an aspiring actress who has arranged to stay at a property belonging to her aunt in Los Angeles. There she finds a woman suffering from amnesia, who takes the name Rita (Laura Harring) from a poster for the Rita Hayworth classic, Gilda (1946). Having found a blue key and a large amount of money in Rita's purse, they start looking for clues as to her identity and their search brings them into the orbit of Hollywood director, Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux).

The less one knows about the plot the better, as this is a film that demands the right to lead you wherever it chooses. 'When I saw it the first time, Harring remarked, 'I thought it was the story of Hollywood dreams, illusion and obsession. It touches on the idea that nothing is quite as it seems, especially the idea of being a Hollywood movie star. The second and third times I saw it, I thought it dealt with identity. Do we know who we are? And then I kept seeing different things in it...There's no right or wrong to what someone takes away from it or what they think the film is really about. It's a movie that makes you continuously ponder, makes you ask questions. I've heard over and over: "This is a movie that I'll see again," or, "This is a movie you've got to see again." It intrigues you. You want to get it, but I don't think it's a movie to be gotten. It's achieved its goal if it makes you ask questions.'

Lynch refused to discuss the meaning of the film, as he added a Best Director prize at Cannes to his third and final Oscar nomination for Best Director. In 2016, Mulholland Drive was named the Best Film of the 21st Century in a BBC poll and it was placed eighth in the 2022 edition of Sight and Sound's decennial survey of the greatest films of all time.

Seizing on the possibilities presented by the Internet, Lynch released an eight-part web series entitled DumbLand, which he followed with the surreal sitcom, Rabbits (both 2002). In 2008, he released the J-horror short, Darkened Room, which quickly acquired a cult following. However, he had already made what was to prove to be his final return to the big screen for Inland Empire (2005), which follows Hollywood actress Nikki Grace (Laura Dern), as she becomes haunted by her character in On High in Blue Tomorrows, a remake of a German film that had been abandoned after its leads had been found murdered 'inside the story'.

Running three hours and with Lynch also taking credits for cinematography, editing, sound design, and score, this labyrinthine 'mystery about a woman in trouble' was co-produced by new wife Mary Sweeney. In addition to finding guest slots for several stock company members, the action also included clips from Rabbits and the weirdness ran through to Lynch promoting the film by appearing with a cow while holding a placard reading, 'Without cheese there would be no Inland Empire.'

The critics weren't wholly swayed, although most advised readers to stick with 'a riddle by an enigma'. One even linked it to some of the most influential films of all time. 'When people say Inland Empire is Lynch's Sunset Boulevard Lynch's Persona or Lynch's 8½, they're quite right,' wrote Jim Emerson, 'but it also explicitly invokes connections to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le Fou, Buñuel and Dalí's Un Chien Andalou, Maya Deren's LA-experimental Meshes of the Afternoon (a Lynch favorite) and others.' All bar the last of the cited titles are available to rent on high quality DVD and Blu-ray from Cinema Paradiso.

The Rest Is Silence

Lynch was never one to rest on his laurels. He never stopped painting and exhibitions of his work were hosted by the Fondation Cartier in Paris and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. 'All my paintings are organic, violent comedies,' he explained. 'They have to be violently done and primitive and crude, and to achieve that I try to let nature paint more than I paint.'

Away from the easel, Lynch also made music, releasing albums of experimental rock, ambient soundscaping, and avant-garde electropop. He worked on stage sets for

Duran Duran and produced the animated short, I Touch a Red Button Man, for Interpol's 2011 tour screens. In addition to directing videos for his own musical output, he also made promos for Nine Inch Nails, Michael Jackson, and Donovan. On 4 April 2009, he organised the 'Change Begins Within' benefit concert for the David Lynch Foundation, which brought former Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr to Radio City Music Hall, along with Beach Boy Mike Love, Donovan, Sheryl Crow, Eddie Vedder, Moby, Bettye LaVette, and Ben Harper.

In 2011, Lynch helped design the Silencio nightclub in Paris and later opened branches in Ibiza, Miami, and New York. Diverting into literature, he followed an insight into his creative processes, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity (2006), with Room to Dream (2018), a hybrid biography-memoir co-written with Kristine McKenna.

Online, Lynch gave daily weather reports on his website, while also hosting the series, What Is David Lynch Working on Today? and Today's Number Is..., which saw his pick a numbered ping-pong ball from a jar. In 2005, he launched the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and Peace, which tapped into the fascination with Transcendental Meditation that dated back to the early 1970s. German documentarist David Sieveking examined his beliefs in David Wants to Fly (2010), while Lynch collaborated with dyslexic film student Dana Farley on Beyond the Noise: My Transcendental Meditation Journey (2012). Cinema Paradiso members can also find him in Roy Orbison: In Dreams: The Roy Orbison Story (1990), Midnight Movies (2005), Rock 'n' Roll Legends: The Platters and the Coasters (2006), Lynch One (2007), Pearl Jam: Twenty (2011), Side By Side (2012), Confessions of a Prodigal Son, Brand: A Second Coming (both 2015), David Lynch: The Art Life (2016), Lucky (2017), and Making Waves (2019).

Lynch was still periodically involved with cinema. In 2009, he produced and introduced son Austin Lynch's web series, Interview Project, and teamed with Werner Herzog by releasing My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? through his Absurda production company. The following year, Lynch began voicing Gus the Bartender in The Cleveland Show (2009-13) before directing and editing the 16-minute Dior promo, Lady Blue Shanghai (2010). Three years later, he made Idem Paris, a short documentary about lithography. But he created more waves with What Did Jack Do? (2017), a 17-minute short in which he also starred as a detective interrogating a monkey.

When it came to feature projects, however, Lynch seemed unconcerned. 'If I got an idea that I fell in love with,' he told one reporter, 'I'd go to work tomorrow.' But nothing came. In 2019, he received an Honorary Academy Award for 'fearlessly breaking boundaries in pursuit of his singular cinematic vision'. Isabella Rossellini, Kyle MacLachlan, and Laura Dern made the presentation, but Lynch contented himself with following his thanks with the line, 'You have a very interesting face.'

For his final involvement with cinema, Lynch accepted Steven Spielberg's invitation to play legendary Hollywood director John Ford in The Fabelmans (2022). He continued to work on projects, including a Netflix show provisionally entitled Wisteria (or Unrecorded Night), as well as such long-gestating items as Antelope Don't Run No More and Snootworld. However, Lynch revealed in August 2024 that he had been diagnosed with emphysema, after having started smoking at the age of eight.

He had no regrets, despite needing oxygen to walk around a room. His family rallied round, even though his divorce from fourth wife, Emily Stofle, was going through the courts. Addressing children Jennifer, Austin, Riley, and Lula, he had apologised for not being the best father. 'I love all my children and we get along great, but in the early years, before you can have a relationship of talking to them, it's tough. The work is the main thing, and I know I've caused suffering because of that.'

In January 2025, Lynch had to be evacuated from his home in Southern California because of the raging wildfires and his health took a turn for the worse. He died on 15 January, five days shy of his 79th birthday. David Lynch was one of a kind and we shall not see his like again. Luckily, he left us plenty to remember him by - even if we don't always have the first clue what he was driving at.