Filmmaker David Lynch, who created surreal television shows and films such as Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet, has died at 78.
His television and film work often examined the disturbing secrets, of suburbia and small-town America. He used sparse lighting to create ominous atmospheres that he would punctuate with distorted images and unsettling ambient noises.
He grew up in elegant homes and tree-lined streets — “Middle America as it’s supposed to be” — but was often troubled by life’s darkness and fascinated by its contrasts.
Lynch studied art in Boston and Philadelphia in the 1960s. He later studied film in Los Angeles and created Eraserhead, his first feature film, as a student in 1977. The film was a surrealist horror film shot in black-and-white, which told the story of a man raising a deformed child. It became a cult hit.
He was nominated for an Academy Award for directing and adapting the screenplay for his next film, The Elephant Man. Lynch later earned two more director nominations for Blue Velvet from 1986, which examined the dark side of American suburban life, and Mulholland Drive from 2001.
Mulholland Drive, a neo-noir mystery set in Los Angeles, was Naomi Watts’s breakthrough role and is considered among Lynch’s finest films, replete with fantasy sequences and a surrealistic feel.
Lynch’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel Dune, released in 1984, bombed at the box office but developed a devoted following among die-hard Lynch fans.
Actor Kyle MacLachlan described Lynch, with whom he worked on Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, as “the most authentically alive person I’ve ever met.”
Twin Peaks made its debut in 1990 and ran for two seasons on ABC. It was a darkly funny and creepy tale of the murder of a high-school girl in a small town in Washington state, and the FBI agent sent to investigate it. A critical and ratings success, it became a cultural touchstone that, decades later, had Lynch directing and co-writing Twin Peaks: The Return.
When he was given an honorary Academy Award in 2019, he ended his thank-you speech by glancing down at his statuette and said: “You have a very interesting face. Good night.”
Lynch’s other interests included drawing and sculpture. He released three studio albums of ‘modern blues’.
He was married and divorced several times, and had four children.