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| David Lynch at the Russian Tea Rooms Photo: Lauren |
Few people have ever made as dramatic an impact on the style and narrative form of cinema as David Lynch, a true original, who has passed away at the age of 78.
The creator of Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire and, of course, groundbreaking television series Twin Peaks, he always put his artistic vision ahead of commercial concerns, carving out a path all his own. Though he was primarily associated with surrealism and dark thrillers like Wild At Heart and Lost Highway, he proved with the likes of The Elephant Man and The Straight Story that he could also take on very different kinds of film and make them magical. He never lost interest in the short form with which his career began, and even ventures into animation with the sitcom like no other that was Rabbits.
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| Blue Velvet |
Lynch was known for his love of routine, going to the same café every day for much of his life, to drink the same coffee black as midnight on a moonless night. He was deeply attached to Fifties Americana and to classics like The Wizard Of Oz, at one point casting Sheryl Lee as the Good Witch before she went on to become Laura Palmer. Other regular collaborators included Isabella Rossellini and Laura Dern, with whom he also had romantic relationships, as well as Kyle MacLachlan (first seen in his take on Dune) and Harry Dean Stanton. He loved music, even opening his own nightclub in Paris, but though his tastes in that area were eclectic, it was his passion for Roy Orbison which stood out most in his work, changing the way those songs were understood and used in other films as recent as Last Stop In Yuma County.
Also a keen visual artist and photographer, Lynch felt a particular attraction to disused urban spaces, especially abandoned factories. Meditations on his work can be seen in the documentaries Lynch/Oz and David Lynch: The Art Life; director Jon Nguyen spoke with us about making the latter. Spiritually, he practised transcendental meditation, travelling the world to promote it and setting up a foundation so that his teaching about using meditation as a tool for the promotion of world peace could survive him.
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| Laura Dern as Lula and Nicolas Cage as Sailor in Wild At Heart |
Lynch, a lifelong smoker, had been suffering from emphysema for over a year, causing serious breathing difficulties. He was recently forced to flee from his Los Angeles home due to the wildfires, putting his body under a strain from which he was unable to recover. He is survived by four children from different relationships, including the filmmaker Jennifer Lynch, who has partnered on some of his projects, writing The Secret Diary Of Laura Palmer which in turn influenced Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.
Now on high in blue tomorrows, it’s likely that Lynch will continue to influence cinema for many decades to come.
"I always found him to be the most authentically alive person I'd ever met," said Kyle MacLachlan.
