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David Keith Lynch (born
January 20, 1946, in Missoula, Montana) is an American filmmaker.
Lynch's films are known
for their elements of surrealism, their nightmarish and dreamlike sequences,
their stark and strange images, and their meticulously crafted audio. Often his
work explores the seedy underside of small-town U.S.A. (e.g. Blue Velvet and the
Twin Peaks television series) or sprawling metropolises (Lost Highway,
Mulholland Drive). Due to his peculiar style and focus on the American psyche,
comedian Mel Brooks once called Lynch "Jimmy Stewart from Mars."
Over a lengthy career,
Lynch has developed a consistent approach to narrative and visual style that has
become instantly recognizable to audiences worldwide. Although not a box office
giant, he is a consistent favorite of film critics and has maintained a strong
cult following.
****
Born: January 20, 1946
Missoula, Montana, US
Occupation: Actor, Film
Director, and Screenwriter.
****
Career
Early
days
Lynch grew up an
archetypal all-American boy. His father, Donald, was a U.S. Department of
Agriculture research scientist and his mother, Sunny, a language tutor. He was
raised throughout the Pacific Northwest. He attained the rank of Eagle Scout,
and on his fifteenth birthday served as an usher at John F. Kennedy's
Presidential inauguration.
With the intention of
becoming an artist, Lynch attended classes at Corcoran School of Art in
Washington, D.C. while finishing high school in Alexandria, Virginia. He
enrolled in the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for one year before
leaving for Europe with his friend and fellow artist Jack Fisk with the plan to
study with German expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka. Though he had planned
to stay for three years, Lynch returned to the US after 15 days.
Philadelphia and the short films
In 1966, Lynch relocated
to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA)
and made a series of complex mosaics in geometric shapes which he called
Industrial Symphonies. At this time, he also began working in film. His first
short film Six Figures Getting Sick (1966), which he described as "57 seconds of
growth and fire, and three seconds of vomit," was played on a loop at an art
exhibit. It won the Academy’s annual film contest. This led to a commission from
H. Barton Wasserman to do a film installation in his home. After a disastrous
first attempt that resulted in a completely blurred, frameless print, Wasserman
allowed Lynch to keep the remaining portion of the commission. Using this, he
created The Alphabet.
In 1970, Lynch turned his
attention away from visual art and focused primarily on film. He won a $5,000
grant from the American Film Institute to produce The Grandmother, about a
neglected boy who “grows” a grandmother from a seed. The 30-minute film
exhibited many elements that would become Lynch trademarks, including unsettling
sound and imagery and a focus on unconscious desires instead of traditional
narration.
Eraserhead
In 1971, Lynch moved to
Los Angeles to attend the M.F.A. studies at the AFI Conservatory. At the
Conservatory, Lynch began working on his first feature-length film, Eraserhead,
using a $10,000 grant from the AFI. The grant did not provide enough money to
complete the film and, due to lack of a sufficient budget, Eraserhead was filmed
intermittently until 1977. Lynch used money from friends and family, including
boyhood friend Jack Fisk, a production designer and the husband of actress Sissy
Spacek, and even took a paper route to finish it.
A stark and enigmatic
film, Eraserhead tells the story of a quiet young man (Jack Nance) living in an
industrial wasteland, whose girlfriend gives birth to a constantly hissing
mutant baby. Lynch has referred to Eraserhead as "my Philadelphia story",
meaning it reflects all of the dangerous and fearful elements he encountered
while studying and living in Philadelphia ([1]). He said "this feeling left its
traces deep down inside me. And when it came out again, it became Eraserhead".
The film also reflects
the director's own fears and anxieties about fatherhood, personified in the form
of the bizarre baby, which has become one of the most notorious props in film
history. Lynch refuses to discuss how the baby was made, and a long-standing
urban legend claims that it was created using an embalmed cow fetus [2].
The final film was
initially judged to be almost unreleasable, but thanks to the efforts of
distributor Ben Barenholtz, it became an instant cult classic and was a staple
of midnight movie showings for the next decade. It was also a critical success,
launching Lynch to the forefront of avant-garde filmmaking. Stanley Kubrick said
that it was one of his all-time favorite films. It cemented the team of actors
and technicians who would continue to define the texture of his work for years
to come, including cinematographer Frederick Elmes, sound designer Alan Splet,
and actor Jack Nance.
The
Elephant Man and Dune
Eraserhead brought Lynch
to the attention of producer Mel Brooks who hired him to direct 1980’s The
Elephant Man, a biopic of deformed Victorian era socialite Joseph Merrick. The
film was a huge financial and commercial success and earned eight Academy Award
nominations, including Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay nods for Lynch.
It also established his place as a commercially viable, if somewhat dark and
unconventional, Hollywood director.
Afterwards, Lynch agreed
to direct a big budget adaptation of Frank Herbert’s science fiction novel Dune
for Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis’s De Laurentiis Entertainment Group on
the condition that the company release a second Lynch project, over which the
director would have complete creative control. Although De Laurentiis hoped it
would be the next Star Wars, Lynch’s Dune (1984) was a critical and commercial
dud, costing $45 million to make and grossing a mere $27.4 million domestically.
The studio released an "extended cut" of the film for syndicated television in
which some footage was reinstated; however, the main caveat was that certain
shots from elsewhere in the film were repeated throughout the story to give the
impression that other footage had been added. Whatever the case, this was not
representative of Lynch’s intended cut, but rather a cut that the studios felt
was more comprehensible than the original theatrical cut. Lynch objected to
these changes and disowned the extended cut, which has Allen Smithee credited as
the director. This version has since been released on video worldwide.
Blue
Velvet
Lynch’s second De
Laurentiis-financed project was 1986’s Blue Velvet, the story of a college
student (Kyle MacLachlan) who discovers the dark side of his small hometown
after investigating a severed ear he finds in a field. The film featured
memorable performances from Isabella Rossellini as a tormented lounge singer and
Dennis Hopper as a crude, sociopathic criminal and leader of a small gang of
backwater hoodlums.
Blue Velvet was a huge
critical success and earned Lynch his second Academy Award nomination for Best
Director. The film introduced several common elements of his work, including
abused women, the dark underbelly of small towns, and unconventional uses of
vintage songs. Bobby Vinton’s "Blue Velvet" and Roy Orbison’s "In Dreams" are
both featured in disturbing ways. It was also the first time Lynch worked with
composer Angelo Badalamenti, who would contribute to all of his future
full-length films.
Woody Allen, whose film
Hannah and Her Sisters was nominated for best picture, said the best picture of
the year was Blue Velvet.
Twin Peaks, Wild at
Heart, Industrial Symphonies, American Chronicles and Hotel Room
After failing to secure
funding for several completed scripts in the late 1980s, Lynch collaborated with
television producer Mark Frost on the show Twin Peaks, about a small Washington
town that is the site of several bizarre happenings. The show centered around
the investigation by FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) into the
death of popular high school student Laura Palmer, an investigation that
unearthed the secrets of many town residents. Lynch directed six episodes of the
series, including the pilot, wrote or co-wrote several more and even acted in
some episodes.
The show debuted on the
ABC Network on April 8, 1990 and slowly rose from cult hit to cultural
phenomenon. No other Lynch-related project has gained such mainstream
acceptance. Catch phrases from the show entered the cultural dialect and
parodies of it were seen on Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons. Lynch appeared
on the cover of Time magazine largely because of the success of the series.
Lynch, who has seldom acted in his career, also appeared on the show as the
partially-deaf, continually-shouting FBI Regional Bureau Chief Gordon Cole.
However, Lynch clashed
with the ABC Network on several matters, particularly whether or not to reveal
Laura Palmer’s killer. The network insisted that the revelation be made during
the second season but Lynch wanted the mystery to last as long as the series.
Lynch soon became disenchanted with the series (many cast members would complain
of feeling abandoned) and, after shooting the first episode of the second
season, set off to work on the film Wild at Heart.
Adapted from the novel by
Barry Gifford, Wild at Heart was an almost hallucinatory crime/road movie
starring Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern. It won the coveted Palme d'Or at the 1990
Cannes Film Festival but met with a muted response from American critics and
viewers. Reportedly, several people walked out of test screenings.
The missing link between
Twin Peaks and Wild at Heart, however, is Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream
of the Broken Hearted. It was originally presented on-stage at the Brooklyn
Academy of Music in New York City on November 10, 1989 as a part of the New
Music America Festival. Industrial Symphony No. 1 is another collaboration
between composer Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch. It features ten songs by
Julee Cruise and stars several members of the Twin Peaks cast as well as Nick
Cage, Laura Dern and Julee Cruise. Lynch described this musical spectacle as the
"sound effects and music and ... happening on the stage. And, it has something
to do with, uh, a relationship ending." David Lynch produced a 50 minute video
of the performance in 1990.
Twin Peaks suffered a
severe ratings drop, and was cancelled in 1991. Still, Lynch scripted a prequel
to the series, about the last seven days in the life of Laura Palmer. The
resulting film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), flopped at the box office
and garnered the most negative reviews of Lynch’s career.
As a quick blip during
this time period, he and Mark Frost wrote and directed several episodes of the
short lived comedy series On the Air for ABC, which followed the zany antics at
a 1950's TV studio. In the US only three episodes were aired, although seven
were filmed; In the Netherlands all 7 were aired by VPRO. Lynch also produced
(with Frost) and directed the Documentary television series American Chronicles.
His next project was much
more low-key; he directed two episodes of a three-episode HBO mini-series called
Hotel Room about events that happened in the same hotel room in a span of
decades.
Lost Highway, The
Straight Story, Mulholland Drive, INLAND EMPIRE
In 1997, Lynch returned
with the non-linear, noir-like film Lost Highway, co-written by Barry Gifford
and starring Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette. The film failed commercially
and received a mixed response from critics. However, thanks in part to a
soundtrack featuring Marilyn Manson, Rammstein, Nine Inch Nails and Smashing
Pumpkins, it helped gain Lynch a new audience of Generation X viewers.
In 1999, Lynch surprised
fans and critics with the G-rated, Disney-produced The Straight Story, which
was, on the surface, a simple and humble movie telling the true story of an Iowa
man (played by Richard Farnsworth) who rides a lawnmower to Wisconsin to make
peace with his ailing brother. The film garnered positive reviews and reached a
new audience for its director.
The same year, Lynch
approached ABC once again with an idea for a television drama. The network gave
Lynch the go-ahead to shoot a two-hour pilot for the series Mulholland Drive,
but disputes over content and running time led to the project being shelved
indefinitely.
With seven million
dollars from the French distributor Canal Plus, Lynch completed the pilot as a
film. Mulholland Drive is an enigmatic tale of the dark side of Hollywood and
stars Naomi Watts, Laura Harring and Justin Theroux. The film performed
relatively well at the box office worldwide and was a critical success earning
Lynch a Best Director prize at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival (shared with Joel
Coen for The Man Who Wasn't There) and a Best Director award from the New York
Film Critics Association.
In 2002, Lynch created a
series of online shorts entitled Dumb Land. Intentionally crude both in content
and execution, the eight-episode series was later released on DVD.[3]
The same year, Lynch
treated his fans to his own version of a sitcom via his website - Rabbits, eight
episodes of surrealism in a rabbit suit. Later, he showed his experiments with
Digital Video (DV) in the form of the Japanese style horror short Darkened Room.
At the 2005 Cannes Film
Festival, Lynch announced that he had spent over a year shooting his new film
digitally in Poland. The film, titled INLAND EMPIRE (in capitals), included
Lynch regulars such as Laura Dern, Harry Dean Stanton, and Justin Theroux, as
well as Jeremy Irons. Lynch described the film as "a mystery about a woman in
trouble". It was released in December 2006.
Awards
and honors
Lynch has twice won
France's César Award for Best Foreign Film and served as President of the jury
at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, where he had previously won the Palme d'Or in
1990. He was also honored in 2002 by the French government with the Legion of
Honor. On September 6, 2006 Lynch received a Golden Lion award for lifetime
achievement at the Venice Film Festival. He also premiered his latest film,
INLAND EMPIRE, at the festival. [4]
To date he has received
four Academy Award nominations: Best Director for The Elephant Man (1980), Blue
Velvet (1986) and Mulholland Drive (2001), as well as Best Adapted Screenplay
for The Elephant Man (1980). He has yet to win.
Frequent collaborators
Lynch often uses the same
actors in his productions:
7 Productions
Jack Nance appears in
Eraserhead, Dune, Blue Velvet, The Cowboy and the Frenchman, Twin Peaks, Wild at
Heart and Lost Highway
6 Productions
Harry Dean Stanton
appears in The Cowboy and the Frenchman, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk
With Me, Hotel Room, The Straight Story and INLAND EMPIRE
5 Productions
Angelo Badalamenti
appears in Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Wild at Heart, Lost Highway and Mulholland
Drive
Scott Coffey appears in
Wild at Heart, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, Rabbits and INLAND EMPIRE
Freddie Jones appears in
The Elephant Man, Dune, Wild at Heart, Hotel Room and On the Air
4 Productions
Michael J. Anderson
appears in Twin Peaks, Industrial Symphony No. 1, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me,
and Mulholland Drive
Laura Dern appears in
Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Industrial Symphony No. 1, and INLAND EMPIRE
Kyle MacLachlan appears
in Dune, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
Grace Zabriskie appears
in Twin Peaks, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and INLAND EMPIRE
3 Productions
Frances Bay appears in
Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks and Wild at Heart
Catherine E. Coulson
appears in The Amputee, Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
Miguel Ferrer appears in
Twin Peaks, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and On the Air
Laura Harring appears in
Mulholland Drive, Rabbits and INLAND EMPIRE
Sheryl Lee appears in
Twin Peaks, Wild at Heart and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
Everett McGill appears in
Dune, Twin Peaks and The Straight Story;
Charlotte Stewart appears
in Eraserhead, Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
Naomi Watts appears in
Mulholland Drive, Rabbits and INLAND EMPIRE
Alicia Witt appears in
Dune, Twin Peaks, and Hotel Room
2 Productions
Jeanne Bates appears in
Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive
Nicholas Cage appears in
Wild at Heart and Industrial Symphony No. 1
Brad Dourif appears in
Blue Velvet and Dune
Sherilyn Fenn appears in
Twin Peaks and Wild at Heart
Crispin Glover appears in
Wild at Heart and Hotel Room
Dean Stockwell appears in
Dune and Blue Velvet
Justin Theroux appears in
Mulholland Drive and INLAND EMPIRE
Many of Lynch's films
have bit parts played by musicians who have various degrees of acting
experience: Sting in Dune, Chris Isaak in Fire Walk With Me, David Bowie in Fire
Walk With Me, Julee Cruise in Twin Peaks and Fire Walk With Me, John Lurie in
Wild at Heart, Marilyn Manson and Twiggy Ramirez in Lost Highway, Henry Rollins
in Lost Highway, and Billy Ray Cyrus in Mullholland Drive.
Lynch himself appears in
The Amputee, Dune, Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. He is also in a
deleted scene from Lost Highway.
Influences
Lynch admires filmmaker
Stanley Kubrick, writer Franz Kafka, and artist Francis Bacon. He states that
the majority of Kubrick films are in his top ten, that he really loves Kafka,
and that Bacon paints images that are both visually stunning, and emotionally
touching. He has also cited the Austrian expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka
as an inspiration for his works. Lynch has a love for the film The Wizard of Oz
and frequently makes reference to it in his films, the most obvious being Wild
at Heart.
An early influence on
Lynch was the book The Art Spirit by American turn-of-the-century artist and
teacher Robert Henri. When he was in high school, Bushnell Keeler, an artist who
was the stepfather of one of his friends, introduced Lynch to Henri's book,
which became his bible. As Lynch said in Chris Rodley's book Lynch on Lynch, "it
helped me decide my course for painting – 100 percent right there." Lynch, like
Henri, moved from rural America to an urban environment to pursue an artistic
career. Henri was an urban realist painter, legitimizing every day city life as
the subject of his work, much in the same way that Lynch first drew street
scenes. Henri's work also bridged changing centuries, from America's
agricultural 19th century into the industrial 20th century, much in the same
fashion as Lynch's films blend the nostalgic happiness of the fifties to the
twisted weirdness of the eighties and nineties.
Private life
Lynch has been married
three times:
Peggy Lentz (1967-1974),
(one daughter Jennifer Chambers Lynch, the film director)
Mary Fisk (21 June
1977-1987), (one son-- Austin Jack Lynch)
Mary Sweeney (May
2006-July 2006), (one son Riley Lynch)
Trivia
Despite his almost
exclusive focus on America, Lynch, like Woody Allen, has found a large audience
in France; INLAND EMPIRE, Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway and Fire Walk With Me
were all funded through French production companies.
Lynch is notoriously
evasive and cagey in interviews, and refuses to discuss the plot details and
"true meanings" of his films, preferring viewers to come away with their own
interpretations. None of his films released on DVD have director commentary
tracks, and some (rather unusually) do not even have chapter selections. This is
due, at least in part, to his belief that a film should be viewed from beginning
to end without interruption or distraction.
Certain images or types
of images are common trademarks in Lynch's films. These include smoke, fire,
electricity and electric lights (especially flickering or damaged), traumatic
head injuries and deformities, highways at night, dogs, diners, red curtains,
cigarettes, the binding or crippling of hands or arms, various uses of the color
blue, angelic or heavenly female figures and extreme close ups. Though
interpretations do vary, those who study Lynch's work generally do find such
images to represent consistent or semi-consistent themes throughout his body of
work.
Film critic Roger Ebert
has been notoriously unfavorable towards Lynch, even accusing him of misogyny in
his reviews of Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart. [5] [6] Ebert was one of few major
critics to dislike Blue Velvet. He did, however, write enthusiastic reviews of
Mulholland Drive [7] and The Straight Story [8].
Was a roommate of Peter
Wolf while they attended the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts.[9]
In the 1980s Lynch was an
admirer of Ronald Reagan and had dinner with the Reagans at the White House.
Years later when someone made a disparaging comment about Nancy Reagan he spoke
up and defended her. [citation needed]
Despite his professional
accomplishments, Lynch once characterized himself simply as, "Eagle Scout,
Missoula, Montana."[10]
George Lucas, a fan of
Eraserhead, offered Lynch the opportunity to direct Return of the Jedi, which he
refused, feeling that it would be more Lucas' vision than his own. [11] Also, he
was offered Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which he said was funny but not his
thing. [citation needed]
In the "Stories" feature
on the Eraserhead DVD, Lynch mentions that he ate french fries and grilled
cheese almost every day while on the set.
In an effort to promote
the film Inland Empire he made appearances with a cow and a placard bearing the
slogan "Without cows there would be no cheese in the Inland Empire"
Appearing on Dutch
television station VPRO on December 3, 2006, Lynch played clips from Loose
Change and discussed his doubts about the official story of the September 11,
2001 attacks.[12]
Transcendental meditation
In December 2005, Lynch
told the Washington Post that he had been practicing transcendental meditation
twice a day, for 20 minutes each time, for 32 years. [13]. He advocates its use
in bringing peace to the world. He has launched the David Lynch Foundation For
Consciousness-Based Education and Peace to fund research about TM's positive
effects, and he promotes the technique and his vision by an ongoing tour of
college campuses that began in September 2005. [14] A streaming video of one of
Lynch's public performances is available at his foundation's website.
Lynch is working for the
establishment of seven "peace factories," each with 8000 salaried people
practicing advanced techniques of TM, "pumping peace for the world". He
estimates the cost at $7 billion; as of December 2005 he had spent $400,000 of
his own money and raised $1 million in donations from a handful of wealthy
individuals and organizations. [15]
Unfinished/unrealized projects
Gardenback: After the
success he had enjoyed with "The Grandmother," Lynch moved to Beverly Hills to
participate in the AFI's Center for Advanced Film. Lynch began working on a
script for a short film called "Gardenback" in 1970. Lynch spent the whole year
working on a 45-page script. The film was to explore the physical
materialization of what grows inside a man's head when he desires a woman that
he sees. This manifestation metamorphoses into a monster.
Cinematographer/director
Caleb Deschanel, who was also at the AFI at the time and wanted to shoot the
film, introduced Lynch to a producer at 20th Century Fox. The studio was
interested in making a series of low-budget horror films and wanted to expand
"Gardenback" into a feature film. The studio was willing to give Lynch $50,000
to make it but wanted the 45-page script to be expanded. This involved writing
dialogue -- something Lynch had never tried before. Lynch said in Lynch on
Lynch, "What I wrote was pretty much worthless, but something happened inside me
about structure, about scenes. And I don't even know what it was, but it sort of
percolated down and became part of me. But the script was pretty much worthless.
I knew I'd just watered it down." Consequently, Lynch became disenchanted with
the project. Some of the elements in "Gardenback" would later surface in
Eraserhead, like its main characters Henry and Mary X.
Dune Messiah: Lynch was
in the process of writing the sequel script to Dune, but the box office failure
of the first film killed the project. From the Inner Views Lynch interview,
"...I was really getting into Dune II. I wrote about half the script, maybe
more, and I was really getting excited about it. It was much tighter, a better
story." From a Prevue article from 1984: "Lynch has written two sequel
screenplays to Dune – Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, based on Herbert's
succeeding novels – which currently await the author's approval. Back-to-back
lensing is expected if the first film is a success. Although Kyle MacLachan will
portray Paul Atreides in the three Dune spectacles, Lynch promises a different
cast each time."
Untitled animated short,
1969 or 1970: Though David doesn't remember what the film itself was about, he
distinctly recalls that he was paid to produce a short film and the negatives
came back from the lab messed up.
Ronnie Rocket
Red Dragon: Before making
Blue Velvet, the film's producer, Richard Roth, approached Lynch with another
project -- an adaptation of Thomas Harris' novel, Red Dragon. Lynch was turned
off by the content of the book and Roth subsequently took the project to Michael
Mann who went on to direct the film as Manhunter (1986).
The Lemurians: This was a
TV show that Lynch was going to do with Mark Frost based on the continent of
Lemuria. Their premise for the show was that Lemurian essence was leaking from
the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and becomes a threat to the world. It was
intended to be a comedy but when Lynch and Frost tried to pitch this show to
NBC, the network rejected it.
Goddess: When Lynch and
Frost first met, they began working on a project about Marilyn Monroe. Lynch had
been fascinated by the actress' life and met with Anthony Summers, who wrote a
biography of the same name. The more they worked on it, the more they became
embroiled in conspiracy theories involving Monroe and the Kennedys which turned
Lynch off the project.
One Saliva Bubble: This
was a comedy that Lynch co-wrote with Mark Frost and intended to direct with
Steve Martin and Martin Short starring. It was set in Kansas. Robert Engels
describes the premise of the film in Lynch on Lynch, "It's about an electric
bubble from a computer that bursts over this town and changes people's
personalities -- like these five cattlemen, who suddenly think they're Chinese
gymnasts. It's insane!"
I'll Test My Log With
Every Branch of Knowledge: Around the time that Lynch and Catherine Coulson made
"The Amputee," he had an idea for a TV show. He told Chris Rodley in Lynch on
Lynch, "It's a half-hour television show starring Catherine as the lady with the
log. Her husband has been killed in a forest fire and his ashes are on the
mantelpiece, with his pipes and his sock hat. He was a woodsman. But the
fireplace is completely boarded up. Because she now is very afraid of fire."
This project never got off the ground, but when it came time to film the pilot
for Twin Peaks, Lynch remembered this idea and called Coulson up to appear as
the Log Lady.
Metamorphosis: This was
intended to be an adaptation of the story written by Franz Kafka. Lynch has
expressed on several accounts his desire to film the story of Metamorphosis. He
has even written a script. The main reason that Lynch has not filmed it is a
matter of money and technology involving the transformation of man into a
beetle.
The Dream of the Bovine:
Lynch and Robert Engels wrote the screenplay for this film after Twin Peaks:
Fire Walk with Me. According to Engels in Lynch on Lynch, the film was about
"three guys, who used to be cows, living in Van Nuys and trying to assimilate
their lives."
Other
interests
Lynch maintains an
interest in other art forms. He described the twentieth century artist Francis
Bacon as "to me, the main guy, the number one kinda hero painter". He continues
to present art installations and stage designs. In his spare time, he also
designs and builds furniture. He started building furniture from his own designs
as far back as his art school days. He built sheds during the making of
Eraserhead, and many of the sets and furniture used in that movie are made by
Lynch. In addition, he also made some of the furniture for Fred Madison's house
in Lost Highway.
Between the years of 1983
and 1992, Lynch wrote and drew a weekly comic strip called The Angriest Dog in
the World for the L.A. Reader. The drawings in the panels never change -- just
the captions. The comic strip originated from a time in Lynch's life when he was
filled with anger.
Lynch is a big fan of
Bob's Big Boy restaurants, an Americana restaurant chain whose chief icon is a
chubby cartoon male with a tray of dinner plates. Lynch has said that early on
in his career he got a chocolate milkshake at one restaurant near his house
almost every day for seven years in a row, along with "four, five, six, seven
cups of coffee--with lots of sugar" [16]. Although he doesn't eat sugar anymore
[17], the director attributes the inspiration for many of his films and ideas to
his daily sugar rushes in this period.
Lynch also designed
davidlynch.com, a site exclusive to paying members, where he posts short films
and his absurdist series "Dumb Land", plus interviews and other items. The site
also features a daily weather report, where Lynch gives a brief description of
the weather in Los Angeles, where he resides.
Filmography
As director
Six Figures Getting Sick
(Short film) (1966)
The Alphabet (Short film)
(1968)
The Grandmother (Short
film) (1970)
The Amputee (Short film)
(1974)
Eraserhead (1978)
The Elephant Man (1980)-
nominated Best Director
Dune (1984)
Blue Velvet (1986)
The Cowboy and the
Frenchman (Short film) (1988)
Twin Peaks (TV series)
(1990-91)
Wild at Heart (1990)
Industrial Symphony No.
1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted (Short film) (1990)
American Chronicles
(documentary television series) (1990)
On the Air (TV series)
(1992)
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk
With Me (1992)
Hotel Room (TV
mini-series) (1993)
Lumière:Premonitions
Following an Evil Deed (Short film) (1996)
Lost Highway (1997)
The Straight Story (1999)
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Rabbits (Online series)
(2002)
Dumb Land (Online Flash
animation series) (2002)
Darkened Room (Short
film) (2002)
Rammstein: Lichtspielhaus
(video "Rammstein") 2003
INLAND EMPIRE (2006)
As an actor
The Amputee (1974) as a
male nurse
Heart Beat (1980) as a
painter (uncredited)
Dune (1984) as a spice
miner (uncredited)
Zelly and Me (1988) as
Willie, Isabella Rossellini's character's love interest
Twin Peaks (1990) as
Agent Cooper's boss, FBI Regional Bureau Chief Gordon Cole
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk
with Me (1992) as FBI Regional Bureau Chief Gordon Cole
Nadja (1994) brief scene
as a morgue receptionist
Dumb Land (2002) - Lynch
provides the voices for this made-for-internet animated series.
See also
The Short Films of David
Lynch
References
Lynch on Lynch, a book of
interviews with Lynch, conducted, edited, and introduced by filmmaker Chris
Rodley (Faber & Faber Ltd., 1997, ISBN 0-571-19548-2; revised edition published
by Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2005, ISBN 0-571-22018-5).
The Passion of David
Lynch: Wild at Heart in Hollywood by Martha Nochimson (University of Texas
Press, 1997, ISBN 0-292-75565-1).
The Complete Lynch by
David Hughes (Virgin Virgin, 2002, ISBN 0-7535-0598-3)
Weirdsville U.S.A.: The
Obsessive Universe of David Lynch by Paul A. Woods (Plexus Publishing. UK,
Reprint edition, 2000, ISBN 0-85965-291-2).
David Lynch (Twayne's
Filmmakers Series) by Kenneth C. Kaleta (Twayne Publishers, 1992, ISBN
0-8057-9323-2).
Pervert in the Pulpit:
Morality in the Works of David Lynch by Jeff Johnson (McFarland & Company, 2004,
ISBN 0-7864-1753-6).
****
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