David Lynch
David Lynch
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.
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/12/feature_how_david_...
The original Zelda was released way before Lynch's Twin Peaks, which was a hit in Japan, was even in production. The look of the protagonist of Zelda was inspired by Disney's Peter Pan. The pig villain was inspired by a pig man in Journey to the West.
https://www.reddit.com/r/bloodborne/comments/xgu21c/eraserhe...
After that Mullholland Drive is absolutely brilliant and has that unforgettable masterpiece diner scene: https://youtu.be/UozhOo0Dt4o?si=GedzAdMh0KIXoHz4
I wouldn't call it his best work, but it is Lynch at his most singular and uncompromising.
It was the last thing he made for TV/cinema and for me feels like the culmination of everything he did before it.
I had to watch Mulholland Drive at least 5 times to get a sense of what it's even about, and I think I must have been the audience for which he made that film, if it wasn't indeed just art to make himself happy (which is the BEST kind).
Anyway, it kind of endears another person to you when you connect with their work. So this one hit kind of hard.
I lost a fellow weirdo, and he'll be missed!
There's just something in it that made me viscerally hate it, and I'm usually fond of surreal movies.
And when they dance together at the end with "Mysteries of Love" playing - wow.
There is nothing worse than getting excited to see a famous director's debut film, thinking you're going to have a good time, and then getting Eraserhead.
First two seasons of Twin Peaks are his masterpiece IMO and his most watchable.
Those are some of the best characters of any film/tv show ever.
From there I would go to Lost Highway next for a stronger dose of the more out there stuff.
For me, the second step would either be The Elephant Man or Mulholland Dr. -- many of his works tackle very dark subject matter and include sexualized violence that can be downright disturbing to watch, but those two omit those elements. The Straight Story is much lighter, but largely lacks the surrealism Lynch is known for.
it's not like i'm not used to watching long movies and i would call myself some form of cinephile, but for some reason Twin Peaks felt unbelievably slow.
It is a film explicitly designed to be unpleasant. This may be artistically interesting, but it's certainly no going to appeal to most people.
When people say "surreal" they mean "real", it's just most of your life is not very real, just repetition and routine. - Norm MacdonaldFor Eraserhead, I understand the metaphor of how parenting can be larger-than-life and terrifying and I see how Eraserhead was trying to embody that but I very much didn't appreciate the highly pessimistic ending. It's an early movie that would have benefited immensely from an alternate ending on its DVD.
Lynch: "Believe it or not, Eraserhead is my most spiritual film."
Lean: "Elaborate on that?"
Lynch: "No, I wont. No one sees it."
It isn't the elusive puzzle that many cinephiles value in his work, but it is clearly a Lynch film, even if it's not a stereotypical one.
Watch a few interviews where he is asked what a film of his means. A smirk comes on his face and he repeats his mantra.
He never let on.
Unless you are a narcissist (probable billionare) who feels the need to go back and explain every detail about the wizarding world you created a few decades later and reveal what kind of piece of crap you are.
These days you'll have to be more specific.
I spent the whole time trying to work out what was different between the "two".
I mean, it’s exactly the sort of thing he would do and I still loved it.
Magic!
I liked the season after a rewatch but the Dougie stuff is still tedious.
https://youtu.be/F4wh_mc8hRE?si=SJwtz31ZEWuW9rk7
(Has swearing off that matters for your use!) Rest in peace.
(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?)
Blue Velvet challenges you as a viewer to look at the abuse Dorothy suffers and to be a witness -- and that's hard to do as a viewer because it is ugly. Ebert did what a lot of people did and attempted to defend Isabella Rossellini, who had signed on to the movie knowing full well what would be required.
Lynch made two other movies in that same "the audience needs to bear witness and empathize" theme (Fire Walk With Me, Lost Highway) before Ebert caught on with Mulholland Dr.
> His reviews aren't any less interesting even when you disagree with him.
100%
EDIT: yeah, this scene: https://youtu.be/ncnq2pu4PlE
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?
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.”
- Bill Hicks
Then comes that random rainy day at the end of the heatwave, gives the city a shower it needs and the fresh smell is unbeatable.
I’m not sure what heaven smells like, but if I had to guess it’s like the air after summer rain in my city.
There's no other options :P
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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!
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.
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
________
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Mitchum (sp?) brothers arc evokes so much joy it’s just hilarious.
Discovering it existed and watching it a couple years ago was such an awesome experience.
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.
I still enjoyed the season, but arguably, it's the most un-Lynchian.
The compelling thing here is that Lynch disagreed with you.
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.
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
We need that kind of crazy.
https://variety.com/2025/film/news/david-lynch-dead-director...
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.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/16/movies/david-lynch-dead.h...
Funny :)
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/jan/16/david-lynch-twi...
(I’m not someone who knows anything about film…)
RIP.
user: zhuu
created: 11 minutes ago
The fact that it should be available implies that its expected functionality and that one should expect prior posts to be visible and read.
In this case the info obtained is that you know this opinion is disfavored enough that you created a separate account to express it. Again pretty obvious and in itself unlike the opinion pretty noncontroversial
"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’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.
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.
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 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.
His Dune was the only one close to the book and the atmosphere of the book.
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.
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
________
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:
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
________
Perhaps we do and we just need to nurture it more.
Also the Mr Plow-ish of all playstation advertisements.
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.
The news makes me sad, I feel like I've lost a friend, even though I never met Lynch.
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.
Now I know why.
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 also OK to like bad things. I like lots of bad things.
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.
“You’ve been seen associating with chickens Jack!”
Without David Lynch the world is just a little bit duller today. :(
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.
Here's Lynch making quinoa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSP-ewdJYJc&ab_channel=scayn...
God speed you shinny diamond.
At 1:26 https://youtu.be/UwPprWxt9oo
His thoughts on it: https://youtu.be/fG18Na5PDTg?si=eC-DtnuEWwouhr07
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4mTxm9sQg0
RIP
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
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbtUAlFN8po
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QJpY2VNP0E
rip
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).
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.
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've read Dune at least a dozen times and followed up with Dune Messiah a few times. Sometimes I get that feeling of disjointedness. At its most extreme, Paul feels like a total stranger. (Stilgar might as well be a different characters; we see a changed character, but not the change.) Sometimes it feels like the books flows nicely despite the time jump. My best guess is that it depends on what aspects I've been most focused on while reading.
I'm reserving judgment as well, but one part is really stuck in my craw. Although I felt like Villeneuve's Chani was generally stronger I felt the last scene made her look like a child and my first thought was that it was a weak attempt to set up a particular relationship for Part 3.
Lynch could have made a Dune Messiah. Villeneuve is not able to express the mysticism.
For example, 2001 was a great movie but Clarke's worst book imo because he collaborated with Kubrick to write it for for big screen.
Not really. The biggest issue is time. As far as i noticed, one needs 2 hours of movie for 100 pages of a book. Anything below this (fitting 400 pages in 2 hours) is art. That's why Lynch's version is better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Smithee
"Alan Smithee (also Allen Smithee) is an official pseudonym used by film directors who wish to disown a project."
Here’s more into for anyone interested.
https://www.cinedump.com/reviews/2021/6/3/dune-alan-smithee-...
Perhaps in a few years AI will have progressed to the point people can spin up their own literal version and see this for themselves.
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.
Villeneuve version is the superior adaptation.
The world is so much better for having been visited by DL.
His bit with the Cow on median in Hollywood is hilarious.
This little video is such a great tribute to him. RIP David.
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.
And, I grew up watching Lynch's Dune over and over until it made sense :P
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".)
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.
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!
(I had to check if that was part 8 - but of course it is.)
Frankly I find even the "bad" stretch of S2 better than more than half of allegedly-good TV, anyway.
https://www.tinymixtapes.com/features/why-we-hate-james-hurl...
I think about the "Watching Twin Peaks" comic around 2/3 down that page pretty much every time he's on screen. "Ugh yes please go," indeed.
Oddly, I liked him in The Return.
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
- David Lynch
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.
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
No words, just a feeling somewhere between waking and dreaming.
No matter what he did, no matter what you think of his works, he never compromised on being himself.
.
* [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)
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.
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.
Among everything else, he made me discover one of my favourite bands, Au Revoir Simone
Never tripped out harder than watching Blue Velvet one lonely night.
Also Twin Peaks, so trippy.
A true legend RIP
RIP
The work of his Foundation continues (as though anyone here takes it seriously).