Remembering David Lynch: 1946-2025

David Lynch has died. The infamous and prolific film and television director passed away at the age of 78, shortly after announcing his retirement due to illness. But just like any person who lived the hell out of his years on Earth, his death is the least notable thing about him.

From Missoula, Montana, Lynch often moved around as a child with his family due to his father’s federal job. While in college in Pennsylvania, Lynch started making his first short films. Surreal and lyrical, these lovely little oddities were setting the stage for his imminent career in the pictures.

His first feature film, Eraserhead, was initially planned to be a short film as well, but the contains of the shorter format had to bend and break to accommodate the vision of this new filmmaker in his first foray into longer formats. Production took five years, and what he created is still watched and admired and worn on tee shirts of cinephiles as a homing signal to identify their fellow oddballs.

Eraserhead

If his process of adjusting Eraserhead’s length to suit the needs of the film, rather than the other way around, is any indication of his agnostic attitude towards format, it is no surprise that Lynch went on to be both a film and television director in an era where other media creatives tend to stick to one lane. Twin Peaks is possibly his best known work, which spans two separate series and a film. Short, long, or epic, Lynch’s work has no care for the confines of running time expectations.

Rather than go through yet another laundry list of his works, as worthy as a venture that is, it bares attention to what Lynch’s works bring out of his audience.

Twin Peaks

His characters could be wild, dangerous and violent, and even otherworldly. But for all of the threats within them, there was a unique authenticity to each and every one of them. These were people who lived in the heightened reality of Lynch’s creation, a touch absurd and ton of humour, but their own particular purity of self was admirable, even for the most detestable ones.

That feeling of confidence in your own skin, from both Lynch and his creations, brought together an audience who felt like their reality was surreality, and they wanted to have that same stoicism and comfort. Who has not felt like Agent Dale Cooper, surrounded by inexplicable events, and wanted to feel confident they can make sense of it all? And who has not wanted to go to a nightclub where all the people are beautiful and the singer is crooning “Blue Velvet” in the most hypnotizing way? His worlds were equal parts escapism and grounding, and that odd mix feels honest to the human condition.

Blue Velvet

Lynch did this all with a transversive sliver of optimism. Sure, the world is strange and scary, but even in a town in mourning like Twin Peaks can have excellent coffee and a nearly deaf man can fall in love with the waitress. That quirky balance not only made for some of the greatest television and film ever to grace their respective screens, but it also gave the weird kids and outcasts (myself included) permission to dream and to be optimistic. Life might not always be ok or feel ok, but there is still pie.

Lynch’s legacy will forever continue to spread like a cloud of gas across the globe and through time, as his singular voice and forceful vision has touched generations of filmmakers. The long list of filmmakers influenced by Lynch might as well be the entire Wikipedia listing of anyone born after 1970 who has ever held a camera. You only need to look as far as the Oxford English Dictionary to see that his style is so identifiable, it is worthy as a new word in the English language.

It is terribly sad to think that there is an upcoming wave of not-yet-born creatives who will only ever be able to refer to Lynch in the past tense. His pervasive and permeable legacy will forever keep his influence and memory afloat.



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