David Lynch
David Keith Lynch (January 20th 1946 - January 16th 2025) is an American film director, painter, visual artist, actor, musician, and writer. He is best known for his films such as his 1977 debut Eraserhead, 1980's The Elephant Man, the 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune, 1986's Blue Velvet, and 2001's Mulholland Drive.
Lynch was trained as a painter prior to his career as a filmmaker, and has also worked as a musician, creating music and sound design for a number of his films and releasing a number of studio albums. He has created numerous works of painting and photography, and has directed several music videos and advertisements.
In 1990 Lynch co-created the murder mystery television series Twin Peaks with writer Mark Frost, which continued for two seasons, and was followed by a 1992 prequel film directed by Lynch, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Twin Peaks returned for a belated third season in 2017; Lynch co-wrote and directed every episode of the revival.
Lynch has been associated with The Residents occasionally since 1979, when the group's short film "The Third Reich 'n Roll" was shown alongside Eraserhead in midnight screenings in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. Lynch and The Residents have come close to collaborating on at least two occasions; the first was a concept for a feature film titled The Teds in the early 1990s, and the second was a planned (but never produced) TV series based on the group's CD-ROM game Bad Day on the Midway in 1997.
In August 2024, Lynch announced that he had been diagnosed with emphysema, which he attributed to many years of smoking. He died on January 15th 2025, five days short of his 79th birthday.
David Lynch and The Residents
The Residents are known to be longstanding fans of the work of David Lynch, dating back to his first feature film Eraserhead, which the group are known to have seen with their former collaborator Roland Sheehan, when Sheehan visited San Francisco around the time of the film's release in 1977. By 1979, Eraserhead was being screened alongside The Residents' 1977 short film The Third Reich 'n Roll in midnight screenings in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle.
In the early 1990s, The Residents developed a story concept which they titled The Teds, intended variously as either a film or a live performance piece, revolving around "two guys that together made one person". The group hoped to co-direct the film with Lynch, however the project failed to get off the ground (despite The Residents recording an introductory EP, Prelude To "The Teds", in 1993) and remained on the shelf until 2020, when it was adapted into a short comic in the Italian magazine Capek by artist Sergio Ponchione. The comic (printed in Italian) premiered in the July 2020 issue of the magazine.
The Residents again came close to collaborating with Lynch in early 1998, when it was announced that they had signed a deal with Touchstone Pictures, Lynch's The Picture Factory and Ron Howard's Imagine, to produce a two hour television pilot based on the group's CD-ROM game Bad Day on the Midway. The Bad Day pilot was planned to air in Fall 1999, however negotiations stalled in September 1998 when Lynch was contracted to direct a new film, The Straight Story. The Cryptic Corporation and Touchstone both felt that Lynch was the only man for the job, and so the project was permanently shelved.
Partial filmography
Feature films
- Eraserhead (1977)
- The Elephant Man (1980)
- Dune (1984)
- Blue Velvet (1986)
- Wild At Heart (1990)
- Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
- Lost Highway (1997)
- The Straight Story (1999)
- Mulholland Drive (2001)
- Inland Empire (2006)
Television
- Twin Peaks (1990-1991, 2017) - co-created with Mark Frost
- On the Air (1992) - co-created with Mark Frost
- Hotel Room (1993)
- Mulholland Drive (1999) - unaired pilot
Discography
Solo recordings
- Crazy Clown Time (2011)
- The Big Dream (2013)
Collaborative works
- BlueBOB with John Neff (2001)
- The Air Is On Fire with Dean Hurley (2007)
- Polish Night Music with Marek Zebrowski (2007)
- This Train with Chrystabell (2011)
- Somewhere in the Nowhere with Chrystabell (2016)
- Thought Gang with Angelo Badalamenti (2018)
- Cellophane Memories with Chrystabell (2024)