David Lynch has died
(variety.com)1147 points by wut42 2 days ago
1147 points by wut42 2 days ago
"What a heavy load Einstein must've had. Fuckin' morons, everywhere."
David Lynch
I have never seen a single one of his movies but I love watching interviews with him, he had an amazing presence and so much energy.
I'm also ashamed to say I've also never seen any of his movies and TV series but this still hits hard because of his influence on some my most cherished fictional properties. These are Alan Wake/Control, Silent Hill 1&2, Returnal and Disco Elysium.
Actually, his influence on how surrealist fiction is presented throughout all media cannot be understated. I was surprised to read even the original Zelda has him as an influence. Majora's Mask does feel particularly Lynchian.
It would not surprise me if the Souls games and at least the later Berserks (late 90s/early 2000s forward) were either directly or 1-step indirectly influenced by Lynch.
I'm gonna say start with Blue Velvet. It still has the backbone of a classical noir, but it is completely run through with the character of his work. Mulholland Drive reflects the apex of his vision and talents, but there's a learning curve to appreciating it.
Start with "Eraserhead" and then go from there. Surreal is the word I associate with his movies and tv show (Twin Peaks) and I absolutely love watching such movies!
Whether you've seen his movies or not, this 35 second video clip is David Lynch gold ("David Lynch on product placement"):
https://youtu.be/F4wh_mc8hRE?si=SJwtz31ZEWuW9rk7
(Has swearing off that matters for your use!) Rest in peace.
Can recommend the documentary "David Lynch, The Art Life". For now appears to be here:
(Sorry — it appears to be 360p, not very hi-res. Other higher res versions can be found but with subtitles or dubbed in... maybe Farsi?)
If you only watch one, I think Fire Walk With Me is the most representative. If you like it, there's a lot more to explore. If not, then maybe Lynch isn't your thing.
Ha, I kind of agree with you, and I'm a little embarrassed it's as upvoted as it is. I just love the silly little video of him saying it and then cracking up. It pops into my head a lot and gives me a laugh. I just felt like sharing it to be goofy. Didn't imagine it would end up at the top of the thread!
I find it interesting how much Ebert hated that movie. I'm not sure how I feel about it myself, tbh, but I am certain I don't have his conviction to state it clearly and unambiguously. The film certainly made me feel things no other movie has.
But for the sound track. The scene where Kyle and Laura are in the car and she's talking about — what — birds? The scene, with that sound track, is so haunting.
EDIT: yeah, this scene: https://youtu.be/ncnq2pu4PlE
I think he was talking about literal ants.
David Lynch’s work was never symbolic. You only ever got what was right in front of you.
The moment you start seeing symbols in his work, you know you’re viewing it wrong.
Edit: Lynch’s YT channel is filled with weather reports and random numbers. How much more anti-symbolic can you get?
You could merge his daily weather updates into a long rambling video.
During Covid I started watching his daily weather update, even though I didn’t live in LA. Virtually every day was the same. Very clear. Very still.
I’m not sure if anyone could ever “get” one of his movies completely beyond the experience and the narrative. He always left so much unsaid and open to interpretation, just like life. They are movies designed to make the viewer feel a certain way, rather than literally what’s in the screen. He was one of the few directors that I thought of as making weird things that I would enjoy (most of the time), but how could anyone else?
“I like to remember things my own way. How I remembered them, not necessarily the way they happened.”
It took me a little while to be convinced that he was actually reporting the weather as it was like at his home rather than saying the same thing every day. But, no, he was really reporting the weather and the weather is really just always like that in LA.
"Los Angeles, every day, hot and sunny, today, hot and sunny, tomorrow, hot and, for the rest of the… hot and sunny, every single day, hot and sunny. And they love it. 'Isn’t great, every day, hot and sunny?' What are you, a @$%^& lizard?"
- Bill Hicks
I've been in LA for 14 years, and I always say LA has great weather in the same way a mall has good weather. It's never unpleasant and is always "perfect", but at some point you miss the feeling of breeze and slight variations and it feels like you're breathing air from a can.
> I’m not sure if anyone could ever “get” one of his movies completely beyond the experience and the narrative.
The plots of his movies are often more concrete than people expect. I'm not saying a movie like Mulholland Drive is easy to follow, but it does have a legible plot. Feel free to read the wiki or something if you are not sure who some character is or what they are doing.
If you are just letting the experience wash over you, you may be missing some plot points that are not meant to be mysterious.
Obviously his movies are weird and not entirely legible, but don't assume everything in them is meant to be inscrutable.
I wasn’t implying that there was no narrative, just that his movies were so much more than just the narrative. And often things that seemed perplexing were just things he thought were interesting or beautiful so he put them there for no other reason.
That’s, in my opinion, where some of the intractability comes from: is this bug buzzing around a ceiling light meaningful to the plot or just something he saw one day and wanted others to experience as well. Every once in a while he’d give a tell, often unintentionally, while talking about something else. But most of the time he let things into the world without explanation.
All of the comments about how hard Mullholland Drive was to follow are making me wonder if I missed something. I watched it a couple of times when it was in the theater and enjoyed it, but I don't remember being all that confused. Certainly not like Twin Peaks confused. I guess now is as good a time as any to rewatch it.
in my experience, this is just a very individual thing, warying from person to person. i watch a lot of movies on my own, and when i watch movies with others, i'm sometimes very surprised how much troube some people have understanding a movie.
i mean, Inception is one of those movies which is a tiny bit more difficult to understand, but i've watched it with people who had zero clue what was going on.
enough trashing other people - i loved watching Memento, but i must confess that i should watch it again, as i didn't really understand the full story while watching it.
then there are movies like tenet which just feel complicated as a gimmick, reminding me of the rick&morty copypasta, "To Be Fair, You Have To Have a Very High IQ to Understand X"
in summary, some people are good with abstract thinking and understanding, others are not.
Mulholland drives plot isn’t even that hard to follow once you figure out the twist. You can definitely go crazy deep with the symbolism though
> I’m not sure if anyone could ever “get” one of his movies completely beyond the experience and the narrative.
I actually found "Mulholland Drive" to be incredibly accessible for a Lynch movie. Twin Peaks remains an absolute (and highly fascinating) enigma to me, especially the third season, but "Mulholland Drive" always felt like an enigma with a satisfying solution.
> I’m not sure if anyone could ever “get” one of his movies completely beyond the experience and the narrative.
His movies are not supposed to be "got" completely. They are surrealist. They have the logic of dreams. Or nightmares. There are things in them that won't ever make literal sense.
Any film school graduate can string together some random images and call it "surreal", and mostly those would be boring. but Lynch was a master: in his films, all too often, just as your conscious mind was going "wait, what?" some subconscious voice would be nodding "yes, that fits".
I want to push back on the surreal end slightly. It's true that his movies are extremely resistant to analysis, and it's true that much of his imagery is de-facto surreal. But his movies still have narratives assembled from humans in concrete situations with concrete problems and easily understandable actions and reactions. In other words, you can enjoy his movies as an experience at relative face-value in a way many other forms of surreal art resist.
Some more than others, perhaps—the man produced Dune and Eraserhead pretty damn close together, and Eraserhead is not generally considered an easy movie to watch. But the man was never afraid or dismissive of giving us straightforwardly enjoyable cinema, even if we can't easily articulate why!
Sort of. The plot is not always clear, but what is always clear is how you are supposed to feel in each scene.
During the pandemic David Lynch released a daily weather video in which he reported what the weather was at his home in Los Angeles.
First video was May 11, 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krIj6eLF4mU
Last video was December 16, 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l21GFyOO8Ug
He also released a daily video in which he drew a bingo number. I can't really imagine any other major director doing something like that in their late 70s.
HIs final video was sent to his foundation's fundraiser last year because he couldn't attend:
https://www.reddit.com/r/davidlynch/comments/1fg3npu/david_l...
These were the very last words he spoke:
______
May everyone be happy.
May everyone be free of disease.
May auspiciousness be seen everywhere.
May suffering belong to no-one.
Peace.
Jai guru dev
________
I also liked his interview project: https://youtube.com/@davidlynchpresentsIP
As part of his pre-YouTube digital media website along other works like Rabbits
I'm so grateful he was able to make Twin Peaks: The Return before he passed. It's one of the most brilliant and moving pieces of fiction I've ever experienced. If they had started it just a few years later it may have never been finished.
Some of the people who returned for it died not long after it wrapped. The "Log Lady" might have died before it wrapped, even, can't recall. Miguel Ferrer wasn't around much longer. Even with Lynch living a good while past it, it'd have been far more limited production if it'd started even a couple years after it did. They already had to do without Bowie and a few others that it seems Lynch might have liked to use (given what he did with the season), like Frank Silva (BOB) of course, and notably Don Davis (Major Garland Briggs).
Wow, what a great point. The Return actually being created is a miracle in so many ways.
And the fact that it actually was released 25 years after Laura said "I'll see you in 25 years"? I'm not a spiritual person, but it does feel like the universe wanted that show to be made!
> The "Log Lady" might have died before it wrapped
Yes, she was terminally ill and in hospice care. Lynch moved up the filming of her scenes as well as writing the part so she wouldn't need to travel. The fans really embraced her in the years after the original show aired, inviting her to conventions, etc. She wanted to finish her character's role for the fans before she died.
I literally just finished The Return two days ago, because the Blank Check Podcast, a very long form podcast about filmographies that I love, is covering Lynch.
The fact that The Return exists at all is amazing. The fact that it is not what you expected or wanted is really compelling. I absolutely loved it, even if I honestly have no idea what much of it means. Lynch's ability to use pacing -- lingering on a scene -- to cause unease is really something special.
> or wanted
I forget if this is something Lynch ever explicitly talked about, but the way he pulled this off was masterful. We’re in an era of franchises, sequels, and reboots, and all a lot of people wanted from The Return was more Dale Cooper being Dale Cooper. And we get what, maybe 15 minutes of that out of 15 hours? Yet it’s one of the best seasons of television I’ve ever seen.
I finished that show with such mixed emotions. Dismay at the lack of closure. Foolishness for ever thinking that a Lynch production would provide anything approaching closure. But after letting things settle, it was the perfect ending.
Watching it as it aired, fans of the show were SO mixed on their opinions. Many people were so upset that we get very little OG Dale Cooper and so little closure on so many things.
But it couldn't have gone any other way. The director that gave us "how's Annie? how's Annie?!" approaching it any other way would have not been genuine.
Yes, I came here just to post this. I loved Twin Peaks and was devastated when it was canceled after the second season. It was just too deep and cerebral for early 90s prime time TV. But I somehow never even heard about Twin Peaks: The Return in 2018 because it was only on Showtime and I was busy with life stuff at the time.
Discovering it existed and watching it a couple years ago was such an awesome experience.
I hate season 3 so much. I don't even consider it part of the story.
The greatest ending ever to a TV show is the end of season 2. Nothing can ever touch that as an ending. Season 3 was not needed but I am just glad I got to watch the show when it aired originally.
That ending in 1991 on prime time network TV next to corny sitcoms is just so out of time. Like a transmission from another dimension.
Season 3 is so great it easily eclipses the first two, despite my pretty strong nostalgia-bias. It's like the first two were just a warm-up - and we needed the 25 years just to prepare ourselves for what he really wanted to do.
Interesting you liked the ending of Season 2. About 1/3 of the way through, Lynch distanced himself from the series and stopped directing it. He stated that he caved to network pressure to resolve the murder early and combined with actor off and on-set drama, it derailed his plans for the second season. Mark Frost took over as the de facto show runner, but without that partnership, he just basically babysat it until the show was killed off.
I still enjoyed the season, but arguably, it's the most un-Lynchian.
It has always been on my list, but I haven't watched it yet. Thanks for the reminder!
Like most reboots/long awaited sequels I was very skeptical of it and it absolutely blew my mind. It's one of the most beautifully shot and hallucinatory TV series I've ever seen. I think it's his best work.
The late David Foster Wallace said one of the only directors he found interesting was David Lynch.
https://youtu.be/C0Cvtu2FfGw?si=1_wk8fPMeeHYLrxl
I love that DFW wrote an essay about Lost Highway and used the term “Lynchian” (something horrific sitting right next to something mundane in a scene).
Charlie Rose asked Lynch about the phrase and didn’t really know how to respond.
Rose then brings this up with DFW who kinda chuckles and implies that was what he would expect.
Two extremely talented and intelligent creatives, but where DFW cared quite a bit how he was perceived, I don’t think Lynch ever gave a shit.
Lynch was on another plane of creativity and I’m not sure he even really knew it. He just did what he wanted to do (except for the original Dune film…)and let people take away from it what they might.
I honestly cant say I “enjoy” Lynch films but I will be the first to admit there is heart and soul poured into them by a genius.
David Lynch has been my favorite director and one of my favorite people for most of my life. His work and outlook has influenced almost everything I've ever created. He changed the way I saw the world for better. I'm really sincerely going to miss what he brought to the world
Same here.
Julee Cruise/Lynch/Badalamenti - Floating into the Night album is really fitting music for right now.
Into the Night https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsLJxUEbkG8
I am going to miss him. Not only his art but his personality.
We need that kind of crazy.
Here's a non-facebook link for anyone who refuses to use that site:
https://variety.com/2025/film/news/david-lynch-dead-director...
Ok, we'll use that above, since it has so much more information. (Submitted url was https://www.facebook.com/davidlynchofficial/posts/it-is-with....)
Another relevant link people may want to look at:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/david-ly...
Looks like NYT haven't published their full obituary yet.
At the bottom of the last link it says "a full obituary will be published soon". But it seems they've done so now: https://archive.ph/vyxDJ.
My apologies for the lack of completeness at the time of my comment.
HN guidelines prefer the original source when possible, so you did the right thing IMHO.
Apparently not! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42729717
Funny :)
Oh damn haha, a good example I suppose that "guidelines" aren't meant to be hard rules :-)
Also on The Grauniad
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/jan/16/david-lynch-twi...
Oh man! that's depressing... I always remember the appearances he made on "Louie", as a talent agent... He was so funny, I choose to believe that he wasn't acting at all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlEJbs02wAM
Oh! Thanks for reminding me why his face is so familiar.
(I’m not someone who knows anything about film…)
Sad news, he was a genius creator - I like to think about him as Salvador Dali of our times. For sure his works will be remembered.
Having just read Lynch's Catching Big Fish, two quotes stood out to me:
"There's safety in thinking in a diner. You can have your coffee or your milk shake, and you can go off into strange dark areas, and always come back to the safety of the diner. "
"The light can make all the difference in a film, even in a character. I love seeing people come out of darkness."
What an interesting man. RIP.
I have enjoyed pretty much all of David Lynch's work. A particular standout for me is episode 8 of Twin Peaks season 3, titled "Got a Light?" - for my money the greatest TV episode ever, an incredible high cultural landmark. In one breathtaking sequence David Lynch uses Krzysztof Penderecki's "Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima", which depicts the Trinity atomic bomb test. The piece, composed in 1961 for 52 string instruments, mirrors the destruction and chaos of the atomic bomb detonation. Lynch used the composition during the startling sequence tracking into the heart of the nuclear test's mushroom cloud. https://youtu.be/vYg8nos8SdA?feature=shared
+1 This scene was so moving. Seeing it for the first time floored me.
How sad. Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive (the IMO under-appreciated pilot), and yes his Dune even though he didn't like it are some of my favourite movies of all time. RIP
We discovered a cut that was about three hours that people who hadn’t read the book seemed to understand. Had a different intro and flowed better.
I’ve seen three versions of this movie. The theatrical and the longest one both sucked for anyone not a Herbert fan. I thought the longest was the director’s cut but he never did one. Perhaps it was the TV movie cut. But I don’t know what the “good” one was called.
This page on IMDB has all the "legitimate" versions I'm aware of, but I'm sure there are unauthorized cuts out there:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087182/alternateversions/
A non-theatrical "director's cut" is a Mandela Effect moment for me. I don't know what I watched. It wasn't the TV version, because that was the first version I watched. I can only guess that it was a common mistake to call some version "the director's cut" among viewers (or maybe just my friends) in the past.
The list I've linked to certainly wasn't illuminating for me, but maybe it will be for you.
Interesting. I understand he wasn't satisfied with the introductory narrative and other non-cinematic means of storytelling. But I love how the movie focuses on inner dialog to approach the novel and how decidedly non-techie, for sci-fi of all things, the movie was at the time, believably telling the story of a post-tech society that had room for style and decadence. And the Dune remake pays tribute to it.
I was also in awe how time travel was depicted by music; might help that the cheesy guild navigator scene operating the spacecraft wasn't shown (or was it? I didn't notice it when I first viewed it, and I like to think that's one of those scenes David Lynch would've rather left out).
I camped out in line on Hollywood Blvd for several hours to be in the first public screening of Dune at the Chinese Theater. So I know I saw the release print and to my then college-aged perceptions, I didn't really connect with it. I didn't think it was bad but I didn't think it was good either.
I blame this on the muddled mess that was the release edit and how misleadingly the film was promoted by the studio. I was a huge fan of pop sci-fi like Star Wars, Alien and Blade Runner and the advertising set a very different audience expectation than what the film delivered. Unfortunately, that experience kind of tainted Lynch's Dune for me.
I didn't really begin to appreciate Lynch as a great filmmaker until Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, both of which I loved. Someone linked a 'highly-regarded' three hour fan edit of Lynch's Dune which I've bookmarked to check out.
Blue Velvet and Elephant Man. Discover them or help someone else discover them.
Of course I know them (actually watched Elephant Man as a kid on the big screen!). Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive just sting harder as unspeakable reflection on who we pretend to be to ourselves vs how we might look in the eyes of a cruel society IMO if my interpretation isn't totally nuts. I think I'm going to watch MD right now in memoriam!
Rest in peace to a one-of-a-kind creative genius. Strangely I just rewatched Inland Empire last night for the first time since seeing it in the theater, so this is hitting extra hard.
In addition to his incredible film/television work, I'd like to give a shout-out to his other forms of artistic expression which often got less attention. His musical output captured the same unique vibe as his films, for example his album Crazy Clown Time is almost certainly best enjoyed in a smoky room with syncopated strobe lights and patterned flooring. His mixed-media paintings and sculpture were also impressively unsettling.
This video of Angelo Badalamenti explaining how they came up with Laura Palmer's theme is a neat little look into his creativity.
For Lynch his most important work was promoting his foundation
Here's a nationally televised discussion he had with the President of Ukraine about teaching 100,000 veterans to meditate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf7-mErKWlc
.
His final public appearance was a video he sent to a fundraiser for his foundation last year:
https://www.reddit.com/r/davidlynch/comments/1fg3npu/david_l...
______
* May everyone be happy.
May everyone be free of disease.
May auspiciousness be seen everywhere.
May suffering belong to no-one.
Peace.
Jai guru dev
________
Love Twin Peaks. Puget Sound resident here. I can see the big driftwood log Laura Palmer was found next to from my window.
Twin Peaks was delightfully weird. It was the sole reason I bought a TV, believe it or not.
A lot of beautiful scenery, and the locations themselves are like characters in the show.
I'm incredibly saddened by his passing away, even if it was expected given the recent decline of his health.
I'm not going to touch on his films, which are all special and definitely worth watching, but if anyone who didn't know him wants a primer on his complex, sometimes surreal, but I think ultimately endearing personality, then this is a nice introduction:
He knew he was about to die. He sent this to his Foundation's fundraiser last year:
https://www.reddit.com/r/davidlynch/comments/1fg3npu/david_l...
His last words were: ______
* May everyone be happy.
May everyone be free of disease.
May auspiciousness be seen everywhere.
May suffering belong to no-one.
Peace.
Jai guru dev
________
Somedays I long for a world where everyone has a touch more of the mad creativity he had.
Perhaps we do and we just need to nurture it more.
Also the Mr Plow-ish of all playstation advertisements.
Good lord. He put a bunch of things in that that he'd use in Twin Peaks: The Return. Wild.
Regardless of how his films come together as a whole, Lynch is without a doubt the most prolific producer of haunting and unforgettable imagery that inhabits my mind. A few months ago I rewatched, on Youtube a scene from the Elephant Man, a film I saw once 30 years ago. The scene was just like I remember it, I only to watch it that one time and it was etched into my mind forever, crystalline.
Dune is more fun to watch and seems to have emerged as my all-time favorite film. In spite of it's flaws and Lynch's own disdain for it, the orphaned film is no less visionary, and is as strikingly original as anything Lynch has made.
> Dune is more fun to watch and seems to have emerged as my all-time favorite film. In spite of it's flaws and Lynch's own disdain for it, the orphaned film is no less visionary, and is as strikingly original as anything Lynch has made.
I don't get all the disdain for his Dune. For its time, I found it quite entertaining. The scene of the menacing black tank containing the guild navigator emerging out of fumes at the emperor's court will stay with me. Obviously it can't compare in terms of effects or the subtleties of the latest version but it was impressive nevertheless. Without his version, I wouldn't even have known about Dune.
Mulholland Drive is one of my all-time favorites. A genius director!
My favorite is Lost Highway. And here's what I think it is "about": unbearable remorse.
Lynch's ability to make the most unnerving scenes I've ever seen was incredible. And he ostensibly wasn't even making horror movies. Something about this scene (and so many others): triggers something deep in my soul: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZowK0NAvig
Just when his work seemed like it was about to come back around and start to make sense, he would throw you for another loop that was the furthest thing from making any sense- and as a result could consistently create a set of childlike wonder, curiosity, and awe that are rarely experienced by adults nowadays.
Like a zen koan, the unexplainably of it could consistently shock the viewer back into experiencing the entire breadth of human emotion and experience that is outside of rational understanding.
David Lynch's work was mind blowingly creative and original work in a sea of boring media made by committees trying to extract a little more profit from the same few banal formulas over and over.
I'm shocked and grateful he was able to fund and produce things that were so weird and fascinating. The owls are not what they seem.
I’ve slowly become aware, over time, that David Lynch and David Bowie seemed to be the social bridge that was secretly connecting all of the artists I like across seemingly every medium. Like an erdos number for these two davids that seemed to drive good outcomes
RIP to a legend. I remember renting the world's worst quality VHS tapes of Twin Peaks before the DVD remaster came out, but loving every second of it (excluding the James and Donna duet of course). Coincidentally, I'm on a road trip across the state and made plans to stop at Tweede's for lunch.
I was relaxing with my family in the living room this evening, and suddenly I heard familiar trance-like guitar sounds from the kitchen radio. I listened for a few seconds, then my wife heard it, and said, "ah, Twin Peaks". We all listened quietly for a while to Falling by Julee Cruise, and I wondered why a mainstream radio station would play this song.
Now I know why.
Eraserhead - my mind is still trying to make sense of it
Believe it or not, it was his most spiritual film.
====
Host: "Elaborate on that..."
David Lynch: "No, I won't." [Host and audience laughs]
====
Gee - that creates even more questions.
[edit]
Here's the start of the Eraserhead portion of the interview - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpomrL0qA-E&t=372s
It's OK to just not care for things. Sometimes those things will be good. It's still OK to not care for them.
It's also OK to like bad things. I like lots of bad things.
Ouch.. I'm sad to just see this here for the first time. He's for sure, 100% had an impact on how my mind had grown as a child. It's sending shivers down my back to think of the people I was with when we touched the edge of the reality through 1 person.
I'm happy I never met him, not in the sense of meeting your heros, but in the sense of, 'some things are better left unsaid'. I took that with me after blue velvet, I didn't get that movie when i first saw it, I didn't pretend to, but I took that experience with me..
I argue sometimes how some topics are unrelated to Tech (hn) that get a good ratio, but this one really is one that makes me appreciate the method of madness.
Rest in peace big man. I'm who I am thanks to your work.
Edit with appreciation " (I still don't 'get' his movies) They impact my thinking.
David Lynch was a giant in film directing with his unique vision and surreal style and he gave us so many great movies. But more importantly I feel that he inspired so many modern movie directors such as Ari Aster and Yorgos Lanthimos to make movies like that. I put Lynch in the same category of greatness as Kubrick and Tarkovsky. True genius!
This is an odd coincidence only because I've been stuck on playing https://soundcloud.com/overwerk/beyond today, which culminates in a sample from a Twin Peaks episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc_6kDHWsEM (it's the "I've been looking out beyond the edge of the board" scene)
It's very sad. Two projects by David Lynch remain unfinished due to the director's illness: the film Antelope Don’t Run No More, which rumors suggest was completed back in 2010, and a Netflix series titled Wisteria/Unrecorded Night. I hope we get to see at least something from these...
Lots already said about his films here, I'll just add that I recently watched "Lynch/Oz" which is a documentary that explores Lynch's lifelong obsession with The Wizard of Oz and how he often worked the themes of Oz into his films: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15399286/
May he rest in peace. I started watching everything he filmed when I was around 14 and immediately fell in love with his artistry. I recommend watching The Art Life (2018), about him, or just about any video featuring him that you can find on the Internet. Great character, indeed.
Time to rewatch most of his films this weekend, a true visionary that we lost today and his contributions will live on forever.
In old enough I’ve seen many heros die. But this is the first time I’m honestly surprised.
I was holding out hope he was actually immortal.
I know that sounds really weird, but that’s the sort of thing he inspired.
If anybody was going to live for ever it would be him.
I'm surprised, sad. Maybe the last of the big directors, certainly my favorite.
Here's Lynch making quinoa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSP-ewdJYJc&ab_channel=scayn...
Ha ha, first time I’ve seen another reference to this! Back in the day, I got such a kick out of his description that I began imitating it myself, calling it my “David Lynch Special” dish.
I found this video of his on his spiritual beliefs to be very insightful
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4mTxm9sQg0
RIP
Family announced on Facebook? Ironic, since David had said he was not on Facebook.
God speed you shinny diamond.
At 1:26 https://youtu.be/UwPprWxt9oo
He made DUNE. Few could at that time.
His thoughts on it: https://youtu.be/fG18Na5PDTg?si=eC-DtnuEWwouhr07
Very sad. I had the privilege of watching the late Roger Ebert deconstruct "Mulholland Drive" at the Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado during the daily Cinema Interruptus. Each day for a week, we spent an hour or two analyzing the film, with anyone in the audience able to shout "stop" to pause the screening and discuss any aspect of the movie with Ebert. His insights and thoughtful manner of speaking about film left a lasting impression on me. RIP.
I made a simple tribute site out of grief, just launched it. https://lynchforever.vercel.app ... Would love for you to leave a message, or feedback on how we can improve it (it was made in a couple of hours)
David Lynch's final message to the world:
https://www.reddit.com/r/davidlynch/comments/1fg3npu/david_l...
_____
May everyone be happy. May everyone be free of disease. May auspiciousness be seen everywhere. May suffering belong to no-one. Peace. Jai guru dev __________
.
RIP David Lynch, 20 January 1946 - 16 January 2025
Loved the Twin Peaks tv series. Also the eighties Dune movie is a gold mine for awesome clips. RIP.
His secret to his creativity and life:
Lynch's was still my favorite version of Dune despite flaws.
Yep, no contest. Compared to the sterile, boring, brooding Villeneuve version - a tone that worked well in Blade Runner 2049 however - it's so much more entertaining and interesting.
I liked the first one from Villeneuve because for the most part it stuck to the story but the second one veered off into its own story.
I know its nerdy but I absolutely hate when movies of classic books think the story needs to be changed (I'm looking at you, Peter Jackson).
I appreciated the change to make Chani fill a role like Sherif Ali in the film Lawrence Of Arabia (the book Seven Pillars of Wisdom, if not the film, is plainly a huge influence on Herbert's Dune, and it's probably impossible for a director to film so much as a scene set in the desert without thinking of Lean's film).
So much of Dune takes place inside people's heads that it's basically unfilmable if you don't make some changes. Plus, even with five hours of film, you're going to be cutting whole scenes from the book whether you want to or not. Lynch's solution was to make it a more straightforward hero's journey—and given the length of his film, and no expectation of sequels, I can't really blame him. Villeneuve had more space and so could tell a darker and more foreboding story, closer to the original, but still needed to externalize some of that internal struggle and foreshadowing, for which he used, especially, Chani.
[EDIT] Oh and as for this:
> I know its nerdy but I absolutely hate when movies of classic books think the story needs to be changed
Every now and then such a deviation ends up being excellent as its own way, while still benefitting from the connection to the original and being better as an "adaptation" than an independent property. Verhoeven's Starship Troopers would be one of the more extreme examples of this kind of outcome. A gentler one might be Kubrick's The Shining.
I'm still reserving judgement.
In a vacuum I don't love the changes he made to Part 2 but I can also see how they will make it flow much better into Part 3 than Dune > Dune Messiah ever did (that always felt disjointed to me); as well as make that story more compelling.
I thought I was the only one who preferred David Lynch's Dune. I'm glad to find out I'm not alone. I explain to people that it depends on if you're a bigger David Lynch fan or a Frank Herbert fan. I have nothing against Herbert, but I guess there's something about Lynch's work that speaks to me, even a movie like Dune that he himself hated.
I really like the original Dune. While uncommon I think that hearing what people thought worked well. I also like the visuals, like the guild navigator or the disgusting baron.
That said I appreciate the new films too, in different ways. It looked amazing watching it in the IMAX theater, and I liked how the visions were presented. Not perfect films though, especially I think casting fewer big stars could have helped. I almost got distracted by the familiar faces.
It's amazing how some of the smaller, passing shots from his films stick with you. I haven't seen Elephant Man for decades but the scene at the beginning when he's at a freak show and his handler is forcing him to turn around for the audience still haunts me. Same for many of the scenes in Wild At Heart.
I saw Dune in the theater when I 9, I had no concept of who DL was at the time. But by the time I was in my teens ad saw Eraserhead and Twin Peaks it all gelled into the kind of creative breadth that one person could accomplish.
The world is so much better for having been visited by DL.
His bit with the Cow on median in Hollywood is hilarious.
skimmed through comments, and it seems like no one mentioned his music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbtUAlFN8po
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QJpY2VNP0E
rip
I actually cried when I heard the news, not because he was one of my favorite directors exactly, but because you could feel a sense that an archetype for the arts of a generation left the earth. A seismic passing.
David Foster Wallace on David Lynch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0Cvtu2FfGw
Sad to hear. Personally I think I've only seen Mulholland Drive before, but long time ago. I enjoy surreal movies in general, so kind of weird I haven't seen more of Lynch's work. What personal favorites do other HNers have, of what he'd done?
My best Mullholland Drive experience: A couple of years ago a local arthouse cinema showed the movie again. It was brilliant, just like I remembered it.
After the showing, the projectionist came into the room and apologized for the confusing movie: "I must have mixed up the reels..."
She didn't.
I love Lost Highway. But, you have to watch the whole thing confused. Then have someone explain what's happening in the last scene. Then watch the whole thing again amazed. Also, the soundtrack was one of the first produced by Trent Reznor --long before he made a hobby of collecting Oscars.
And, I grew up watching Lynch's Dune over and over until it made sense :P
The soundtrack to Lost Highway is one of my top albums, all categories. Equally as fascinating, weird, violent and beautiful as the film itself. The tracks are masterfully sequenced, often blend into each other and form a complete work in itself.
It has long been my testbed for gapless playback on various hardware and software, often to my disappointment. (I'm not sure the experience is even available on streaming platforms, where things are normally playlists of disparate blobs of data, where perhaps "this track is not available in your region".)
As well as soundtracks, Lynch is a huge figure in sound design generally. He is a pioneer and master of several techniques that have entered the standard repertoire now, like foreshadowing, looming, use of rhythmic leitmotifs. A very creative pioneer. Will be missed. RIP.
To me that was his movie that made most sense. It seems a perfect allegorical depiction of what it means to have bad conscience.
If you enjoy surreal movies then definitely Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart. Just don't watch them with your kids. (Or parents...)
They are not 'normal', which is something I always admired about David Lynch. He had a very personal style and vision, and stuck with it.
Random anecdote along those lines: I got along great with my manager at my first full-time job, but was surprised when he mentioned one day that he wasn't interested in independent film at all. As an indie film lover myself, I asked him why.
He grew up in a very straight-laced conservative community, and he said that he and his friends tried to watch an independent film once, but they all found the film was far too disturbing. So after that he never tried again.
I asked what film they watched, and he answered Blue Velvet, and suddenly his perspective made a lot more sense to me!
The Straight Story is not at all surreal, but rather simple and heart-warming, and somehow still somewhat weird.
But it's very much redeemed by the third season, which is every bit as good as the first season, albeit rather different in tone.
Last few episodes are great again, and then we got Fire Walk With Me which is awesome. Also check out the feature-length The Missing Pieces composed of scenes cut from Fire Walk, if you haven't.
Frankly I find even the "bad" stretch of S2 better than more than half of allegedly-good TV, anyway.
What Did Jack Do? (netflix)
His PS2 commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Laf9vpJMDjA
Rabbits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drjQfQtv2BQ
Aside from his films, I'd also suggest his still art (here's a video of him walking through an exhibition of his work at his alma mater: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmkJ3ff22gI). He's also got his music (I should note, the video was not directed by Lynch): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IugOfDBWcGc
Blue Velvet and Wild At Heart are my two personal favorites. And as stated before, Twin Peaks is one of the greatest shows ever made.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqZpi8zAqe0
This little video is such a great tribute to him. RIP David.
"Don't you think when people tell you you're allowed to do whatever you want as long as it's not sexually X-rated that they should stand behind their word and show your cow?"
- David Lynch
Wow -- I am shocked to read this news.
I don't consider too many people to be personal heroes but I did think of David Lynch in this way.
Rest in peace. Thank you for your creative output and your mad-passion for film and meditation.
Probably didn't help, but the man had been smoking since he was 8 years old and was at the point where he needed supplemental oxygen just to walk.
David Lynch's final message to the world, a video he sent to a fundraiser for his foundation last year:
https://www.reddit.com/r/davidlynch/comments/1fg3npu/david_l...
___________
May everyone be happy. May everyone be free of disease. May auspiciousness be seen everywhere. May suffering belong to no-one. Peace. Jai guru dev
_______
RIP David Lynch, 20 January 1946 - 16 January 2025
This video of him raging against the corporate machine, really humanizes him here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5kaMQCbKn4
In his own views: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/nov/15/david-lynch-emp...
Terribly sad. His movies were a significant discovery for me and are now forever in my heart.
I will eat quinoa for dinner tonight in his honor.
“Beautiful blue skies and golden sunshine all along the way…”
“The time has come for you to seek the Path. Your soul has set you face to face before the clear light ... and now you are about to experience it in its Reality, wherein all things are like the void and cloudless sky, and the naked, spotless intellect is like a transparent vacuum, without circumference or center... At this moment, know yourself and abide in that state.”
For David Lynch, his work with his foundation was the most important thing he did.
.
* [Here's the CEO of the David Lynch Foundation receiving the thanks of the Herndon, Virginia police department for teaching them TM for free:](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikMi0xqS8fU)
* Here's David Lynch chatting with President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, about teaching Ukrainian 100,000 veterans TM to help them with their PTSD.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf7-mErKWlc)
* [Here's David Lynch meditating with 5,000 kids that his Foundation taught TM for free to in Brazil.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJD-M2FpKNU)
* [Here's Smithsonian Magazine's take on the David LynchFoundation (they gave him an award as Innovator of the Year for the work of his Foundation)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iBaJ2K7JOo)
* [David Lynch discussing the work of his Foundation.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dxhkd_fZUTE)
* [Excerpts from the first David Lynch Foundation benefit concert (billed as "the Beatles Reunion concert by the press as it was headlined by Sir Paul and Sir Ringo)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJg5mKuCh7A)
* [Saving the disposable ones](https://www.cultureunplugged.com/documentary/watch-online/pl...) — a David Lynch Foundation. documentary about the work of Father Gabriel Mejia, a Roman Catholic priest whose Foundation has rescued 40,000 child prostitutes over the past 2 decades and taught them TM as therapy for PTSD.
* [Impacting Children’s Health Through Meditation Globally](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVCQJl1XVmg&t=230s) - the David Lynch Foundation's invited presentation at the Vatican about their work.
For more info, see: [The David Lynch Foundation](http://www.davidlynchfoundation.org) and [Fundación David Lynch de América Latina](https://fundaciondavidlynch.org)
I was young when dune was released and a big fan of herbert books. there was also star wars that ive seen at the same time. Dune is still today to me one of the great SF movies and I count a very few I really love (cloud atlas is another more recent one, speed racer too).
All his weirder movies were great experiences but my favorite ever Lynch movie is the Straight Story. such a perfect beautiful movie. I loved badalamenti music as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCzAetSFRC8&ab_channel=amast...
I always thought writing and directing a movie of pure kindness and making it interesting as a piece of great art was the real mark of genius.
I don't know if this is the thing to remember him for, but given that we're on a long running message board, Lynch actually also used to run one long after he was already famous, and it probably produced one of the most Lynchian videos on the internet, him trying to read out an unpronounceable forum members username with panties from another fan in his mouth.
https://x.com/JFrankensteiner/status/1480286294634909697
He wasn't just a great creator with all the stuff that made him famous but genuinely funny and creative as a person, sad day.
I was thinking of him last night after watching an old David Foster Wallace interview. Lynch was one of a kind.
Haven't seen a director before or since with such a grasp of mystery and command of dreamlike sequences. The world lost one of the great directors of our time.
Thanks for sharing. TIL that there's a band named after a quote in "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure".
Shit. I wasn't expecting him to die anytime soon, so this came as a surprise.
RIP
I wasn't keeping up with his personal life, so it makes more sense now considering his illness. I still find it crazy how he remained a smoker for basically all his life even after it was proven to be awful for your health.
"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."
David Lynch