David Lynch, influential director of surrealistic films and "Twin Peaks," passed away at 78. He received an honorary Oscar in 2020, leaving a lasting impact on cinema and storytelling.
David Lynch, the influential director known for his surrealistic films and groundbreaking television series, has passed away at the age of 78. His family announced his death, highlighting the significant void left in the world. Lynch's career began with the cult classic "Eraserhead" in 1977, which established his unique style. He gained wider recognition with "The Elephant Man," earning multiple Academy Award nominations. Lynch's notable works include "Blue Velvet," "Wild at Heart," and the iconic series "Twin Peaks," which revolutionized television storytelling. Despite facing challenges, such as the box office failure of "Dune," Lynch's artistic vision continued to evolve, culminating in acclaimed films like "Mulholland Drive" and "Inland Empire." He received an honorary Oscar in 2020 for his lifetime achievements. Lynch's work often explored complex themes and left audiences pondering their meanings, as he preferred to let viewers interpret his narratives. His legacy is marked by a distinctive blend of horror, noir, and surrealism, influencing generations of filmmakers and artists.
- David Lynch passed away at 78, leaving a significant impact on film and television.
- He was known for iconic works like "Blue Velvet," "Mulholland Drive," and "Twin Peaks."
- Lynch received an honorary Oscar in 2020 for his contributions to cinema.
- His films often featured complex themes and surreal narratives, inviting diverse interpretations.
- Lynch's unique style has influenced many filmmakers and continues to resonate in the industry.
David Lynch's passing has elicited a profound response from fans and admirers, reflecting on his unique contributions to cinema and art.
Many commenters express deep sadness and a sense of loss, highlighting Lynch's impact on their lives and creativity.
His works, particularly "Twin Peaks" and "Mulholland Drive," are frequently mentioned as transformative experiences that evoke strong emotions.
Several comments note Lynch's unconventional style and ability to create surreal, thought-provoking narratives that challenge viewers.
Fans appreciate his humor and personality, recalling memorable moments from his public appearances and projects.
There is a shared sentiment that Lynch's legacy will endure, influencing future generations of filmmakers and artists.
104 comments
By @handfuloflight - about 1 month
"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
By @jonhohle - about 1 month
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.”
By @antognini - about 1 month
During the pandemic David Lynch released a daily weather video in which he reported what the weather was at his home in Los Angeles.
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.
By @Trasmatta - about 1 month
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.
By @ryanmcbride - about 1 month
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
By @sharkweek - about 1 month
The late David Foster Wallace said one of the only directors he found interesting was David Lynch.
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.
By @philipov - about 1 month
Here's a non-facebook link for anyone who refuses to use that site:
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
By @dfxm12 - about 1 month
He saved a lot of great dialog for himself: "I told all your colleagues, those clown comics, to fix their hearts or die".
RIP.
By @phantom_wizard - about 1 month
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.
By @saucymew - about 1 month
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.
By @tannhaeuser - about 1 month
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
By @evanelias - about 1 month
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.
By @shanecleveland - about 1 month
Love Twin Peaks. Puget Sound resident here. I can see the big driftwood log Laura Palmer was found next to from my window.
By @onosendai - about 1 month
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:
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
By @Lerc - about 1 month
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.
Mulholland Drive is one of my all-time favorites. A genius director!
By @Fricken - about 1 month
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.
By @UniverseHacker - about 1 month
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.
By @jncfhnb - about 1 month
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
By @fumeux_fume - about 1 month
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.
By @canucker2016 - about 1 month
Eraserhead - my mind is still trying to make sense of it
By @Frummy - about 1 month
He said something like, in speaking with a therapist, ”if i get therapy, is there a risk i’ll lose my creativity?”, and she said ”yes”. So he didn’t take it if i recall, and did this transcendental meditation thing instead. That’s someone who loves his art.
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.
By @gordon_freeman - about 1 month
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!
By @andrewstuart - about 1 month
Lynch's was still my favorite version of Dune despite flaws.
By @bilekas - about 1 month
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.
By @frereubu - about 1 month
I think this is one of those moments where the phrase "don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened" feels appropriate given his rich body of work.
By @retinaros - about 1 month
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).
David Lynch embodies the quote from Thelonious Monk: "The genius is the one most like himself."
No matter what he did, no matter what you think of his works, he never compromised on being himself.
By @UncleOxidant - about 1 month
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/
Time to rewatch most of his films this weekend, a true visionary that we lost today and his contributions will live on forever.
By @ErigmolCt - about 1 month
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...
By @miguelxpn - about 1 month
The third season of Twin Peaks is the best piece of television I ever watched. Rest in peace, you will be missed.
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.
By @usrnm - about 1 month
This is incredibly sad news. I guess I'm rewatching "Mulholland Drive" tonight
By @Barrin92 - about 1 month
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.
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.
By @pyuser583 - about 1 month
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.
By @tonymet - about 1 month
One of the few mainstream Directors capable of producing an "emotional experience" rather than a strict narrative. If you've found his movies baffling, or non-sensical try to approach them with this mindset.
By @AIorNot - about 1 month
I found this video of his on his spiritual beliefs to be very insightful
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.
By @ElDji - about 1 month
In heaven everything is fine.
Thanks you David to have shared with us your art life.
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
By @ilamont - about 1 month
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.
By @sitkack - about 1 month
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.
By @Dukuo - about 1 month
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)
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?
Awww We knew the day would come. What a legend of a man and artist. A recent living Dali, but far more underappreciated (even by those who loved him and didn't quite understand what his art was saying). I only hope to see more like him.
By @darepublic - about 1 month
Loved the Twin Peaks tv series. Also the eighties Dune movie is a gold mine for awesome clips. 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.
By @xtiansimon - about 1 month
Family announced on Facebook? Ironic, since David had said he was not on Facebook.
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.
By @UncleSlacky - about 1 month
"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?"
Sad day for film fans and a sad day for Phillip Morris stockholders.
By @sergiotapia - about 1 month
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.
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 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)
* [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.
"You know about death...that it's just a change, not an end." – The Log Lady
By @mesofile - about 1 month
“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.”
By @f00l82 - about 1 month
A Facebook post? Gross
By @roiboosxh - about 1 month
Today, no movies…
By @whism - about 1 month
One of the greats
By @dhdjruf - about 1 month
Roman polanski defender. He signed the letter. Never forget
By @tumsfestival - about 1 month
Shit. I wasn't expecting him to die anytime soon, so this came as a surprise.
RIP
By @psyclobe - about 1 month
Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!
Never tripped out harder than watching Blue Velvet one lonely night.
104 comments