David Lynch: Famous US filmmaker confirmed dead by family on Friday January 17

Singular. No better word describes the genius of famously weird US filmmaker David Lynch, whose influence over Hollywood is being keenly felt as the entertainment industry mourns his death at age 78. His family used Facebook on Friday morning to confirm the passing of a man who changed the complexion of American cinema with movies such as Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, while also doing the same to network television with Twin Peaks. “It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch,” the Facebook post read. “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.” Lynch announced last year he had been diagnosed with emphysema following a lifetime of smoking, and could no longer leave his home in Los Angeles to work, or, as he admitted in an interview with People magazine, “hardly walk across a room” without supplemental oxygen. But it was his work that left audiences, film school students and fellow directors breathless for decades. In 1977, Lynch released the first of only 10 films he made in his career, Eraserhead, after five years of sporadic shooting across LA sound stages. This unsettling, black and white movie about a man left to raise a grossly deformed baby quickly became a cult hit on the midnight screening circuit, and, as an early example of the body horror genre, greatly influenced Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror classic, The Shining. It also led to Mel Brooks’ production company tapping the former arts school drop out to direct what would be Lynch’s first big studio project, The Elephant Man. Starring John Hurt, Anthony Hopkins, Anne Bancroft and John Gielgud, this 1980 biographical drama loosely based on the life of Joseph Merrick was a commercial success for Lynch, and earned eight Academy Award nominations, including best director. The director’s vision for recreating Merrick’s extreme deformities on Hurt directly led to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences introducing an Oscar category for best makeup the following year. With a place in Hollywood’s establishment beckoning, Lynch then suffered his biggest failure - the 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sprawling sci-fi novel, Dune. Landing at a time when Star Wars space operas were huge business at the box office, Lynch’s attempt at the genre bombed spectacularly, despite a huge budget and all-star international cast. The director later distanced himself from the film, remarking that he didn’t receive final cut privileges, although the movie has come to enjoy a low-key cult status, even with Denis Villeneuve’s Dune reboot with Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya becoming the definitive big screen version. In hindsight, the abject disaster that was Lynch’s Dune adaptation likely confirmed to the filmmaker his true path was that of the auteur, because his next project, 1986’s Blue Velvet, was career defining. Capturing the filmmaker’s signature neo-noir surrealism, while treading the line between dreamscape and nightmare, this sexually-charged and violent psychological thriller is now considered one of the most important films of the 20th century. Starring Kyle McLachlan and Laura Dern, and with Dennis Hopper perfectly cast as the deranged villain Frank Booth, the film’s cast also included the great Isabella Rossellini, who Lynch would become romantically involved with. That affair with Rossellini, combined with his distinctively coiffed hair and button-up shirts made Lynch as much of a pop culture icon as his work. Certainly, very few artists ever reach the heights where their surname becomes a widely recognised descriptor for a specific style, and you can bet Lynch derived some satisfaction from knowing “Lynchian” enjoys a place in the Oxford English Dictionary along with Kafkaesque. Then, in 1990, Lynch did to TV what he’d done to cinema, with the debut of Twin Peaks, a surrealist mystery series about the murder of a teenager, Laura Palmer, who was found “dead ... wrapped in plastic” in a small town in the Pacific Northwest. The show reunited Lynch with McLachlan, who played FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, and was an instant hit, although was prematurely cancelled after two seasons (and then belatedly revived in 2017). Regardless, it is considered the archetype of modern prestige television, and hugely influential on everything from The X-Files and The Sopranos to Desperate Housewives and True Detective. The filmmaker’s influence is similarly apparent in the Hollywood heavyweights paying tribute to his visionary work. Oscar-winner Nicolas Cage starred as an ex-con in Lynch’s 1990 black comedy, Wild at Heart, which won the director the Palme d’Or at Cannes and launched the career of Chris Isaak after it featured his song, Wicked Game, in the soundtrack (Lynch directed the music video BTW). In a statement following Lynch’s death, Cage said, “David was a singular genius in cinema, one of the greatest artists of this or any time”. Aussie actor Naomi Watts, who starred in the 2001 neo-noir mystery Mulholland Drive, considered by many to be Lynch’s best film, shared her grief on Instagram. “My heart is broken. My Buddy Dave… The world will not be the same without him,” Watts wrote. “Every moment together felt charged with a presence I’ve rarely seen or known. Probably because, yes, he seemed to live in an altered world, one that I feel beyond lucky to have been a small part of.” Posting on X, Oscar-winning director Ron Howard described Lynch as a “fearless artist who followed his heart and soul and proved that radical experimentation could yield unforgettable cinema”, while Steven Spielberg said in a statement the director’s “films have already stood the test of time and they always will”. As Lynch’s most frequent collaborator, McLachlan perhaps put it best in a post on Instagram, mourning the loss of “a dear friend” who allowed him “to travel in worlds I could never have conceived on my own”. This was always Lynch’s greatest skill as a filmmaker, and the quality that sees him so beloved by fans and contemporaries alike. Lynch was also a painter, who exhibited his work internationally, and a musician with numerous albums to his name. Though he never won an Academy Award from his four career nominations, he received an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement in 2020, 14 years after releasing his final film, the experimental psychological thriller, Inland Empire. Lynch was married four times and is survived by two daughters and two sons.