David Lynch (1946-2025)

[beamish14]

Something I want to add that I doubt the obituaries will mention is what a terrific director of actors Lynch was. He had this ability to pull astonishing, notable performances out of actors who otherwise went on to do very little of note--and when he did work with an actor of the calibre of, say, Laura Dern, the results were transformative. He's genuinely one of the best actor directors to ever do it, although it's rarely remarked on just because his eccentric artistic vision kinda overwhelms everything else.

He directed so many actors to their career-best performances, even at their outsets. Naomi Watts, as accomplished as she's been since, still stuns in Mulholland Dr.. Same with Maclachlan and Twin Peaks.

He culled great performances from a slew of musicians as well

[soundchaser]

Not to mention what a fun actor he was in his own right! His grace note role in The Fabelmans is probably my favorite scene in the film.

[hearthesilence]

A real gut punch. Not a surprise given his age and his earlier announcement of how serious his emphysema had become, but he clearly had it in him to produce more work and had no shortage of ideas, but unfortunately it's always been difficult financing his films and it certainly hasn't gotten easier.

Nevertheless, he still had incredible success for someone so idiosyncratic and uncompromising, and without hesitation I'd say he's easily one of the greatest filmmakers of the last 50 years. Once in a while a great surrealist manages to break through to the masses, as Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali did before Lynch, but I'm not sure if there's another filmmaker currently out there who can scale the same heights and accomplish that same feat as them, and it makes Lynch's passing even harder.

[GaryC]

David Lynch directed a film that changed my life. I saw The Elephant Man on its first release at my local cinema in 1980 and it knocked this rather lonely, shy and somewhat alienated sixteen-year-old for six. I vividly recall actually trembling in the bus shelter afterwards waiting for the bus home. I saw it a second time when it came round again six months or so later, and a third time in 35mm in my first term at University. I haven't seen it in a cinema since (missed a chance last year) but I've seen it ten times in all, a joint personal record.

Some Lynchians tend to regard it as something of a commercial assignment, seeing Eraserhead before it and Blue Velvet, Mulholland Dr. and others as the pure Lynch. In part it was, but it was nobody's idea of the conventional biopic it could have been in other hands. It was the first new film in black and white that I saw in a cinema, and I still remember my reaction to the surreal dream/birth prologue, which was like nothing I'd ever seen up to that point. Lynch's ability with actors is self-evident, and the sheer look of the film is engraved on my memory so that I can play many scenes now in my head. Some of that is due to Freddie Francis's black and white Scope photography, for which he had returned to his original job as cinematographer after some fifteen years of directing.

I've been up and down on several of Lynch's films since, and still haven't seen Inland Empire, but for directing a film which is all-time personal top ten for me I will be forever grateful.

[domino harvey]

He directed so many actors to their career-best performances, even at their outsets. Naomi Watts, as accomplished as she's been since, still stuns in Mulholland Dr..

Without exaggeration she owes her subsequent career to Lynch and the film. He obviously saw something in her that wasn't on display in stuff like Tank Girl and she's certainly proved him correct in the interim years

[therewillbeblus]

He directed so many actors to their career-best performances, even at their outsets. Naomi Watts, as accomplished as she's been since, still stuns in Mulholland Dr..

Without exaggeration she owes her subsequent career to Lynch and the film. He obviously saw something in her that wasn't on display in stuff like Tank Girl and she's certainly proved him correct in the interim years

She kills in The Shook-Up Shopping Cart

[Matt]

The first thing that came to my mind when I heard the news was the (possibly apocryphal) anecdote by Billy Wilder: at Lubitsch’s funeral, William Wyler said to Wilder, "No more Lubitsch." To which Wilder replied, "Worse. No more Lubitsch films."

“The Return” felt elegiac in many ways, but it’s beyond sad that he wasn’t able to get something made in the decade after. If there indeed was something he left unfinished, I actually hope we never see it. He would have wanted to finesse the sound and image up to the last minute, and without those final touches, it would not be a David Lynch project.

[Never Cursed]

I think the first art-house movie I ever saw was Eraserhead, off the Criterion blu-ray gotten as a 14th birthday present. A summer camp counselor who liked movies told me to seek it out, and so 2 days after coming back I made what was either a tremendous mistake or an invaluable life decision by watching it late at night. To say it freaked me out is an understatement, but it also left me with the desire to see more. And so I did. All of this is to say that I've been living in dread of this news for a little while, especially given his disclosure of his emphysema last year, but I'm also so happy Lynch left us with his body of work.

[pistolwink]

just having him around sharing his wisdom, his thoughts, really brightened my view. That's really where the sadness comes from for me.

That's it. He leaves behind a profound body of work, a generous accomplishment, but his kindness and decency go with him.

He was hardly a perfect person, and he was compulsively unfaithful to his romantic partners, but it's striking how few (if any) of his collaborators and lovers have had anything bad to say about him over the years.

I don't really know what more to say, Lynch and his work have been an integral part of my life since I was 11 and played Floating into the Night over and over and then watched the Twin Peaks pilot when it showed on ABC.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

I have to agree with Sausage that Lynch never gets his due with actors - Naomi Watts is a great example but for me it's Sheryl Lee who always blows me away - and Matt because let's all be honest we really hoped there'd be one more. It's so difficult to process that there won't be. It really makes me sad this is it but he found his audience so it's not like we haven't been rewarded by that work. And thank god FWWM got its due in his lifetime. It was my only access at sixteen to Twin Peaks and it completely upended how I experienced movies. And that was before I got into Bergman and Fellini which was also due to Lynch! But in 1997 watching that vhs it was bewildering, beautiful, and entrancing. I'm glad that Lee is still alive because a lot of my love for Twin Peaks and Lynch is down to her. Lynch's work is the director that I've studied and thought about the most. So while as an artist and man he came into focus more and more even in really frustrating ways when it came to the movies they never stopped being these tremendous dreams full of beauty and struggle and power. I still enjoy reading about his collaborators and everyone who contributed to what makes me love his movies. So I still really wish there was one more that Lynch could have done but at least what we have hasn't diminished in my eyes. I really really hope more get to enjoy those movies and relate to them as personally as so many of us have done already. The news of his death feels so sudden that I'm terribly haunted by that shot in The Return of Lynch, Maclachlan, and Dern in the blackness together for the last time but an image like that is part of what makes his work so great to me.

[TechnicolorAcid]

Genuinely saddening news, I remember seeing finding out about Eraserhead in my early movie days and it was a surreal experience, to say the least, that still stuck with me after all these years (I still that monstrous turkey and occasionally pops up in my nightmares). He was the truest of artists, an eccentric who crafted out meaning and mystery into his works that still connect with millions. Thank god for David Lynch, may he fly off with the moths into heaven.

[TechnicolorAcid]

Also real quickly I’d to post a tribute to David Lynch that I remembered just now that perfectly encapsulates why I love him so much as an artist:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=TqZpi8zAqe0 ... ZnVubnk%3D

[Tommaso]

Very, very sad. Lynch was one of the directors who really made me interested in cinema when I grew up in the 80s in the first place, and his work always remained and got even more fascinating over time. Many people here have already mentioned how great a director of actors he was, but I'd like to add that I enormously enjoyed his own occasional appearances as an actor, too. His role as FBI director Gordon Cole is one of the truly memorable things about Twin Peaks, especially because of his unique vocal delivery which also makes his interview appearances such a treat. And cooking and talking about "Quinoa" is one of the greatest solo shows I've ever seen by anyone. And what a thoughtful and inspiring personality he was. A terrible loss, not just for cinema.

[Forrest Taft]

I was 11 or 12 when I discovered Lynch, renting the (extended) pilot of Twin Peaks. I made a copy of it, obviously, and saw it again and again. Elephant Man, Wild at Heart and Fire Walk with Me followed soon after. It seemed fitting revisiting the extended pilot today, it's been a while since I last saw it in this version. Those final scenes are quite effective, actually, and not without a sense of mystery. I'll be watching all of TP during the next few weeks. Probably some of his films too.

[Finch]

The last 10 mins and end credits of Part 18 feel even more funereal now than before.

[Richard]

David Lynch was probably the director that got me interested in arthouse film. Elephant Man, Wild at Heart and Twin Peaks were probably what did it sometime in the late 80's. I always love his work but only recently did I realise how important he was in the development of my taste in film. His death is a hard blow.

[FrauBlucher]

Very sad and sadly he went before Mel Brooks who interestingly saw something in him after watching Eraserhead, giving Lynch the go ahead for the Elephant Man. Always thought it was such a wildy provocative get together from opposite ends of Hollywood. I believe cinematic history will look very, very kindly at Lynch's body of work. RIP

[Finch]

If there indeed was something he left unfinished, I actually hope we never see it. He would have wanted to finesse the sound and image up to the last minute, and without those final touches, it would not be a David Lynch project.

That actually leaves a big question mark over any outstanding upgrades of his films and Twin Peaks at large. I figure we'll get some answers later in the year.

[Captain Paranoia]

I'd never thought he would pass away before The Straight Story would see a release in the US, but I guess that's the timeline we live in. "Stay alert. Do your work. And don’t worry about the world going by. Translate your ideas, and figure out a way to get it done."

You know now that I think about I haven't even gotten around to seeing much of Lynch's work, admittedly.

[flyonthewall2983]

The last 10 mins and end credits of Part 18 feel even more funereal now than before.

That was such a perfect ending

[Toland's Mitchell]

His producer said last week he had evacuated his home because of the fires, and I have to wonder if all the junk in the air was too much for his lungs.

That could have played a part, in addition to the stress of needing to abandon his home. None of the articles I've come across mentioned where he died, so it's possible he never returned to his house. I'm sure more details will emerge. Sad loss.

[Roger Ryan]

Lynch is the first filmmaker I followed in real time throughout his feature film career (starting with Eraserhead, not the earlier shorts) who has now passed away. No more David Lynch films (or TV shows, music, or painting).

I attended a lecture he gave in 2005 to promote transcendental meditation when during the opening Q and A segment, the Ann Arbor crowd only wanted to ask about Dune! He was so uncomfortable that after the third Dune-related question, I quickly left my seat for a microphone to ask how he used TM to envision Muholland Drive as a stand-alone feature. Lynch looked at me, let out a small sigh, and said “That is a very nice question”!

I’m writing this in a suburban Chicago hotel room positioned near a freeway in such a way that the traffic going by sounds for all the world like a ghostly Lynchian wind sound effect. I’ve learned to see the world in a different way because of David Lynch; I’m exceedingly grateful for that.

[hearthesilence]

The first thing that came to my mind when I heard the news was the (possibly apocryphal) anecdote by Billy Wilder: at Lubitsch’s funeral, William Wyler said to Wilder, "No more Lubitsch." To which Wilder replied, "Worse. No more Lubitsch films."

Same here. Even sadder, Lubitsch was cranking them out - he died in the middle of making another movie. Lynch had been struggling to get anything financed - Twin Peaks: The Return is a glorious exception, one that ironically was motivated by the same risk-averse mentality that now dominates the industry to a greater degree, where something so idiosyncratic is possible because it's ostensibly a fucking "reboot" of a past idiosyncratic work that has a devoted following. Take that out of the equation and his last film was almost 20 years ago - not microbudget, but given the name stars in it, still extremely low budget for a union production. He likely could've done so much more.

[DimitriL]

We almost had another. Netflix was going to produce a series he was directing called Unrecorded Night, but Lynch’s producer said it was cancelled when COVID hit. Supposedly a decent amount of footage had already been shot. A real pity.

[mteller]

I think the first art-house movie I ever saw was Eraserhead, off the Criterion blu-ray gotten as a 14th birthday present.

Well now I'm grieving AND feeling hella old. I saw Eraserhead a decade before DVDs existed, let alone Blu-Rays.