Pioneering Filmmaker David Lynch Dies At 78

Pioneering filmmaker, writer, artist and musician David Lynch, who upended storytelling norms with Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and Eraserhead and introduced thousands to the benefits of Transcendental Meditation through his David Lynch Foundation, had died at the age of 78, according to an announcement on his Facebook page.

“We would appreciate some privacy at this time,” the message reads. “There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.’ It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.”

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No cause of death was provided, although Lynch announced in August that he could no longer leave his Los Angeles home due to emphysema. He was a heavy smoker for many years.

Lynch was born in Missoula, Mt., on Jan. 20, 1946, but moved to Idaho and Washington state before his family settled in Virginia. He dropped out of New York’s Cooper Union and Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts before making his first short in 1966, the four-minute Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times). The experience led him to apply to and be accepted the American Film Institute.

His debut film, the surreal, black-and-white Eraserhead, was released in 1977 and quickly became a cult classic. One of its many unlikely champions was Mel Brooks, who hired him to direct the true story of the 19th century British sideshow performer Joseph Merrick, which was released as 1980’s The Elephant Man. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards and brought Lynch further into the corporate world of Hollywood, although his relationship with the more commercial side of the business was already tenuous when he agreed to oversee an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s supposedly unfilmable sci-fi classic Dune.

“I always knew [producer] Dino [DeLaurentis] had final cut on Dune, and because of that I started selling out before we even started shooting,” he wrote in his 2018 memoir Room To Dream. “It was pathetic is what it was, but it was the only way I could survive.” The film bombed upon its 1984 release, but Lynch forged an enduring working relationship during it with actor Kyle McLachlan, who starred in the auteur’s beloved 1986 noir movie Blue Velvet and later as Special Agent Dale Cooper in the Twin Peaks television and film universe.

“What I saw in him was an enigmatic and intuitive man with a creative ocean bursting forth inside of him,” MacLachlan wrote on Instagram. “He was in touch with something the rest of us wish we could get to.”

Described by AFI as “a sumptuous exploration of the rancid decadence behind a placid suburban facade,” Blue Velvet also made a star out of Laura Dern, garnered co-star Dennis Hopper an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor and led to a romance between Lynch and Isabella Rossellini, for whom the director left his then-wife, Mary Fisk.

Lynch made Twin Peaks his first TV project in 1990, immediately transfixing viewers with an enigmatic mystery centered around the murder of high school student Laura Palmer in the fictional town of Twin Peaks, Wa. — a vibe heightened by Angelo Badalamenti’s moody and atmospheric score. However, Lynch abruptly left Twin Peaks to shoot his 1990 film Wild at Heart with Dern, Rossellini and Nicolas Cage, and the show was canceled after two seasons on ABC.

Lynch clearly was not done with the larger Twin Peaks story, which was further developed by the 1992 prequel film Fire Walk With Me. In a move that stunned fans, he came back to the show in 2017 with the boundary-pushing, 18-episode Showtime series Twin Peaks: The Return, which revisited the story and characters 25 years after the events surrounding Palmer’s death.

Prior to that, his later work included 1997’s Lost Highway and 1999’s The Straight Story, which were eventually overshadowed by the 2001 masterpiece Mulholland Drive starring Naomi Watts and Laura Harring. At first envisioned as an ABC TV series, the project was transformed into a film that won Lynch the Best Director honor at the Cannes Film Festival and four Golden Globe nominations.

“At last his experiment doesn’t shatter the test tubes,” critic Roger Ebert wrote at the time. “The movie is a surrealist dreamscape in the form of a Hollywood film noir, and the less sense it makes, the more we can’t stop watching it.” Added New York Times film critic Stephen Holden, “its investigation into the power of movies pierces a void from which you can hear the screams of a ravenous demon whose appetites can never be slaked.”

In 2005, he launched the David Lynch Foundation to offer Transcendental Meditation training to people suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, including veterans and victims of abuse (Lynch himself meditated twice daily starting in 1973). To date, it has taught the practice to more than 500,000 people around the world. To help support the cause, Lynch in 2016 founded Festival of Disruption, a multi-disciplinary arts festival featuring musicians such as Robert Plant and Bon Iver and screenings of the films of Lynch and his favorite filmmakers such as Francis Ford Coppola.

The director’s final film was 2006’s Inland Empire, although he did act in both Twin Peaks: The Return and in Steven Spielberg’s 2022 movie The Fabelmans. “Things changed a lot,” Lynch told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2017 about his decision to abandon the medium. “So many films were not doing well at the box office even though they might have been great films and the things that were doing well at the box office weren’t the things that I would want to do.”

In recent years, when the COVID-19 pandemic made travel difficult, he devoted himself to creative projects at home, including painting, woodworking and a daily Los Angeles weather report he posted on social media. Lynch also received a Governors Award from the Motion Picture Academy in 2019.

In late 2024, he appeared in the Disney+ documentary Beatles ’64, relaying his experience of being present for the band’s first-ever U.S. concert in Washington D.C. in February of that year. Lynch was a musician and music aficionado in his own right, releasing three albums under his own name and several others with collaborators such as Badalamenti, Jocelyn Montgomery and Marek Zebrowski. He also contributed to projects by Flying Lotus, Twin Peaks vocalist Julee Cruise and Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse, and remixed music by Duran Duran and Moby.

“The world is going to miss such an original and unique voice,” Spielberg told Variety. “His films have already stood the test of time and they always will.”

Filmmaker Judd Apatow wrote on Instagram that he recently interviewed Lynch for a forthcoming Brooks documentary, and said “he was kind and hilarious and full of life. I took a ton of photos of him during the interview. Every one captures his joy and unique soul. His work was magnificent. It stays with you forever. His efforts to spread Transcendental Meditation through his Foundation changed the lives of countless people including mine. His book about creativity, Catching the Big Fish, is a game changer. He was a true gift to us all!

Lynch is survived by his wife, Emily Stofle, and four children.

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