David Lynch

Personal

Born January 20, 1946, in Missoula, MT; son of a tree scientist; married, 1967; wife's name, Peggy (divorced, 1974); married Mary Fisk, 1977 (divorced, 1987); children: Jennifer, Austin, Riley. Education: Attended Corcoran School of Art, Washington, DC, 1963-64; Boston Museum School, 1965; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, 1966-69; and Center for Advanced Film Studies of the American Film Institute, 1970.

Addresses

Agent—Rick Nicita, Creative Artists Agency, 1888 Century Park E., Los Angeles, CA 90067.

Career

Writer, director, producer, visual artist, songwriter, and actor. Actor in numerous films and television shows, including Heart Beat, 1980, Zelly and Me, 1988, and Twin Peaks, 1990-91. Director, with Angelo Badalamenti of video Industrial Symphony No. 1 (performance piece); executive producer of The Cabinet of Dr. Ramiriez, 1991, and Nadja, 1994. Contributor of segment to Lumiere et compagnie, 1995. Segment director of "Dangerous: Teaser," Dangerous (television program), Fox, 1991; creator, executive producer, and director of episodes for television programs, including "Blackout" and "Tricks," for Hotel Room, HBO, 1993, and premier episode of On the Air, ABC, 1992. Exhibitions: Art work displayed in exhibitions at the Paley Library Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, and in Mexico and Europe.

Member

Directors Guild of America.

Awards, Honors

Grants for filmmaking from American Film Institute, 1967 and c. 1972; awards from San Francisco, Belleview, and Atlanta film festivals, all for The Grandmother; special jury prize, Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival, 1978, for Eraserhead; British Academy of Film and Television Arts award for best film, 1980, for The Elephant Man; Academy Award nominations for best director and (with others) best screenplay adaptation, 1981, for The Elephant Man; National Society of Film Critics awards for best film and best director, Los Angeles Film Critics Association award for best director, SITGES (Spain) Fantasy Film Festival jury prize for best film, Rossellini award for film direction, and Academy Award nomination for best director, 1987, all for Blue Velvet; Palme d'Or, Cannes Film Festival, 1990, for Wild at Heart; Bodil Award for Best American Film, 1999, for The Straight Story; awards for best picture, National Society of Film Critics, and New York Film Critics Circle, both 2001, both for Mulholland Drive; award for best director, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Academy Award nomination for best director, and Cesar Award for Best Foreign Film, all 2002, and all for Mulholland Drive; Legion of Honor (France's highest civilian award), 2002; Bodil Award for Best American Film, 2003, for Mulholland Drive.

Writings

FILM SCRIPTS; AND DIRECTOR

The Alphabet (short film), 1968.

The Grandmother (short film), 1970.

(And producer and production designer) Eraserhead, Libra, 1978.

(With Christopher DeVore and Eric Bergren; and sound designer) The Elephant Man (adapted from The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences by Frederick Treves and The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity by Ashley Montagu), Paramount, 1980.

Dune (adapted from the novel by Frank Herbert), Universal, 1984.

Blue Velvet, De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, 1986.

Wild at Heart (adapted from the novel by Barry Gifford), Samuel Goldwyn, 1990.

(With Mark Frost) Storyville, 1991.

(And executive producer and sound designer) Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, New Line Cinema, 1992.

(With Barry Gifford), Lost Highway (October Films, 1997), Faber & Faber (London, England), 1997.

(With others) Driven to It, 1999.

(With others) The Straight Story, Disney, 1999.

Mulholland Drive, Canal Plus/Universal, 2001.

Rabbits (short film for Internet), 2002.

Axxon-N (short film for Internet), 2002.

Darkened Room (short film for Internet), 2002.

Dumbland (animated series for Internet), 2002.

Also author of unproduced screenplays, including Gardenback and Ronnie Rocket.

TELEVISION SCRIPTS; AND DIRECTOR

(With Mark Frost; and creator and director with others) Twin Peaks (series; also known as Northwest Passage), ABC, 1990-91.

Writer and director of the French television series The Cowboy and the Frenchman.

OTHER

(With Richard Saul Wurman and Mark Frost) Welcome to Twin Peaks: An Access Guide to the Town, Pocket Books (New York, NY), 1991.

Images, Hyperion (New York, NY), 1994.

Lynch on Lynch (interviews), edited by Chris Rodley, Faber & Faber (New York, NY), 1999.

Author of music and/or lyrics for songs featured in his movies and television shows. Author of cartoon strip "The Angriest Dog in the World," for Los Angeles Reader.

Work in Progress

Blue Bob, a musical CD.

Sidelights

Writer/director David Lynch has turned a trademark freakishness into an art form in films from The Elephant Man to Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive. Noting the element of horror in Lynch's films, M. P. McCrillis, writing in World and I, pointed out the "hidden, seamy side" that Lynch so often explores. "Lynch's films manage to catch us off guard by tempting us into thinking that art musts reaffirm an essential normalcy," McCrillis further commented. For LA Weekly writer John Powers, Lynch's movies "are torn between light and dark, blonde and brunette, goofy and primal, avant-garde and retro, the radiantly transcendent and the downright icky." Calling Lynch "one of America's most imaginative directors," Interview contributor Gerald L'Ecuyer praised the director's singular ability to "bring … an avant-garde sensibility to mainstream cinema." At a time when many filmmakers used proven formulas to entertain the public, Lynch confronted audiences with his distinctive personal vision, showing physical and psychological deformity with unsettling frankness. "Lynch is a kind of Jacques Cousteau of the postmodern nightmare," commented Salon.com writer Brian Libby, "where our cartoonish notions of family values and the American dream are ravaged by an undercurrent of forbidding treachery." Noting that Lynch's body of work comprises "one of the most ominous visions in cinema," Libby explained the thread connecting Lynch's vision as "about decent people cornered by obsessive evils we can't clearly see." Despite such subject matter, most Lynch films have been popular and profitable, garnering the director several Academy Award nominations. "Lynch," declared Sheila Benson in the Los Angeles Times, "has become a master at giving form to what is not permitted—rage, revulsion, our darkest imaginings—and by making them tangible, lets us acknowledge them."

Living with Extremes

Lynch's early life moved between extremes of beauty and ugliness. As Richard Combs observed in Monthly Film Bulletin, the director "often talks of the 'blue skies, red flowers, white picket fences and green grasses'" he knew as a child, when he lived in small, quiet towns and explored the woods with his tree-scientist father. But in the mid-1960s Lynch left home to study painting in Philadelphia, and as Combs quoted him, "I went to the big city and it scared me. It was real frightening." He lived in poverty with his wife and infant daughter; when he needed room for a painter's studio, he could only afford to buy a house in a slum. "The bricks [of the house] might as well have been paper," Lynch told Rolling Stone's Henry Bromell. "The feeling was so close to extreme danger, and the fear was so intense. A kid was shot and killed half a block away. Our house was broken into three times. There was violence and hate and filth." Lynch, Combs surmised, "relates the two halves of his experience … in terms of a collision of opposites with no internal coherence or connection at all." This view of life, Combs suggested, has in turn affected Lynch's vision as an artist. Vulnerability and decay are recurrent themes in Lynch's work; his characters are often afflicted with disease, deformity, or psychological torment. Lloyd Rose of Atlantic Monthly called Lynch's work "tumoresque" and surmised that the "underlying theme … is that you can't trust the flesh."

From Painting to Film

Lynch's interest in film stemmed from his painting. "I wanted my paintings to move," he told Nan Robertson of the New York Times, so he created three highly abstract films that combined live action with surreal animation and a minimum of dialogue. The first, a film loop that was designed to be projected onto a sculpture, showed six human forms as they developed, caught fire, and vomited. Next came a four-minute short called The Alphabet, showing a child menaced by animated letters; its unique style impressed the American Film Institute (AFI), which gave Lynch money through a program that usually favored veteran filmmakers. Lynch used the grant to create a half-hour film, The Grandmother, and then applied successfully to the AFI's Center for Advanced Film Studies.

At the Center's California campus Lynch studied film analysis and began to combine a painter's talent for visual imagery with a filmmaker's understanding of narrative structure. "Abstract things are important to a film," Lynch later said in Film Comment, but at the same time "film tells a story." When making a film, Lynch observed, "If you can't write your ideas down, or if you can't pitch them, or if they're so abstract that they can't be pitched properly, then they don't have a chance of surviving." As part of his studies Lynch began writing "Gardenback," a fairly conventional screenplay about adultery. He found the script's theme too limiting, however, and so he placed his unhappy couple in the more surreal landscape of a new screenplay, Eraserhead. With aid from the AFI, production began in 1972.

Filming Eraserhead consumed Lynch's life for several years. Using a total budget of only $20,000, Lynch worked personally on many aspects of production, from finances to exotic props and sound effects. After exhausting his AFI grants, he stopped filming for nearly a year and sought a commercial producer in vain. He resumed production with money from friends, supporting himself with a paper route. The AFI finally evicted Eraserhead from its makeshift studio on the film center's grounds, and the movie was finished in the cameraman's living room and a rented garage. Despite the setbacks, Lynch's cast and crew gave him remarkable loyalty, though lead actor John Nance, according to the book Midnight Movies, sometimes sighed that "making a film with you, Lynch, is one frame at a time." But Lynch's perfectionism paid off: as reviewers noted, the finished work shows a professional polish that transcends its modest origins.

Shot in a dim black-and-white, Eraserhead opens as Nance's character, Henry, walks through an industrial wasteland to his tiny apartment. The furnishings include a dead plant and a photo of an atomic blast. Henry joins his girlfriend Mary X and her parents for dinner, which consists of small, roasted birds that struggle and bleed as he tries to carve them. Told he is the father of Mary's premature baby, Henry blandly acquiesces to marriage. Mary moves into Henry's apartment with the child, a malformed baby whose constant crying soon drives its mother away. Now a single parent, Henry is unable to escape his demanding child. He imagines that his radiator conceals a paradise, where a deformed woman with curly blonde hair sings about heaven and smashes fetus-like objects underfoot. Inevitably, the baby's crying reclaims his attention. Finally Henry cuts open the baby's swaddling clothes with a pair of scissors, but the wrappings part to reveal the insides of its body; the infant shudders and begins to explode. Its head swells and looms towards Henry, who suddenly appears in "heaven" with the woman in the radiator while an apocalyptic blast occurs.

Lynch gave little thought to the audience potential of Eraserhead while it was in production. When the film premiered at the Los Angeles International Film Exposition (Filmex) in 1977, Variety gave readers in the industry a pessimistic review. "Dismal American Film Institute exercise in gore," said the headline; "Commercial prospects nil." But word of the movie reached Ben Barenholtz, a distributor known for his success at building audiences for unusual films. After screening Eraserhead, Barenholtz signed it eagerly. He introduced it to the midnight-movie circuit, where it became a cult hit with young adults and other late-night film goers.

To explain the popularity of Eraserhead, writers sometimes liken the film to the punk and new wave rock music that emerged at the same time, and which abandoned the sentimentality of 1960s youth culture to forecast a grim future. "I think Lynch knew about [conservative President Ronald] Reagan," said Barenholtz in Midnight Movies, "and that the bleakness of the landscape is coming true. There's a strong feeling of helplessness, of being controlled by forces that you don't know. Henry is the innocent; he doesn't know what he's doing. I think it's a general feeling that younger people have been coming to over the past few years. Eraserhead couldn't have done anything in the late sixties or early seventies. It's not an optimistic film."

Admirers of Eraserhead cite the film's ability to capture the actual experience of having a dream: it abounds in unexpected events and surreal images that the characters seem to find quite normal. Henry remains calm and dutiful; no one dwells on the odd look of the baby or notices that Henry's hair always stands straight up from his head. Some reviewers found the result a dark social comedy, parodying familiar situations of love and marriage. But writers such as Film Quarterly's K. George Godwin, who examined the "dream" from a psychological standpoint, contended that it is a nightmare of sexual repression. Sex made Henry a reluctant parent, and his sexuality remains as irrepressible and troubling as the baby. When Henry exchanges glances with a voluptuous woman who lives across the hall, she sees his head replaced by the baby's round, featureless face and long neck. Godwin, who called the baby the dominant image of the film, argued that its head and neck, combined with a bulbous body that lacks both arms and legs, "can only be one thing"—the male sex organs. Henry's destruction of the baby symbolizes the destruction of his own sexuality, gaining him a sterile heaven at the price of life itself. Lynch refuses to explain the symbolism of his films, but in an interview with Esquire's Toby Thompson he stressed that Eraserhead and his other works reflect an interest in the human subconscious. "During Eraserhead," Lynch continued, "I was able to live in a world beneath the surface for five years. … I never had to articulate any ideas. They could stay close to where I'd captured them. And keep their power."

Midnight Movies Go Mainstream

Eraserhead gained Lynch his next film job, The Elephant Man. The film is based on the true story of John Merrick, a nineteenth-century Englishman who was terribly deformed by a rare disease. Merrick has inspired numerous biographers and playwrights, as well as screenwriters Christopher DeVore and Eric Bergren. Their script attracted producer Jonathan Sanger and financier Mel Brooks, both of whom viewed Eraserhead and decided that Lynch, despite his limited experience, would be an asset to the project. Lynch helped write the final version of the script, then filmed under conditions far more generous than those of Eraserhead. He shot on location in London to re-create the look of Victorian England, and his cast included some of England's most esteemed actors, including John Hurt in the title role.

"The story of the Elephant Man," Lynch told Cineaste interviewer Laurent Bouzereau, is "about someone who was a monster on the outside but who inside was a beautiful and normal human being you fell in love with." The film follows John Merrick's progress from side-show freak to social celebrity, aided by a sympathetic London doctor, Frederick Treves. Throughout, Merrick's character—well-spoken, romantic, sentimental—contrasts with the brutality of early industrial England. Filming once more in shadowy black-and-white, Lynch lingers on scenes of English factories; he shows Treves operating on the mangled victim of an industrial accident. By contrast, Lynch avoids showing the Elephant Man's deformity until his gentle nature is clear to the audience; late in the film, Lynch dwells on Merrick's delighted reaction to the fantasy and spectacle of a play. Some reviewers disliked the tone of the film, arguing that the script was too sentimental, its distinction between good and evil too simply drawn. Many others, however, hailed Lynch's ability to humanize his subject, and some likened the film to a fairy tale or a novel by Charles Dickens. Lynch, declared Pauline Kael of New Yorker, possesses "extraordinary taste; it's not the kind of taste that enervates artists—it's closer to grace." The film gained Lynch Academy Award nominations as coauthor and as director.

After The Elephant Man, Lynch received—and turned down—an offer from producer George Lucas to direct the third film in the popular "Star Wars" saga. Instead Lynch prepared to film his own original screenplay, "Ronnie Rocket," which he described in American Film as the story of "a three-foot-tall guy with red hair and a sixty-cycle alternating current." But bankruptcy overtook Lynch's backer, director Francis Coppola, and "Ronnie Rocket" was abandoned. So Lynch went to work for film magnate Dino De Laurentiis, who wanted him to write and direct the film adaptation of Frank Herbert's science-fiction novel Dune. The book depicts an interstellar war fought among alliances of nobles, some monstrously evil, others led by a young idealist who is prophesied for greatness. The nobles battle for the planet Dune, an arid world where huge, vicious sandworms bar access to a drug that gives its users mastery of space and time. Herbert's novel, a lengthy work that admirers praise for its complexity and attention to detail, had defied the efforts of producers and directors since the early 1970s.

As scriptwriter, Lynch strove to capture as much as possible of the intricate detail that had made the book popular. Granted a budget of more than $40 million, he shot on location in stark regions of Mexico and oversaw the design of massive sets that combined the technology of the distant future with the archaic look of a feudal past. But Dune, more than three years in the making, proved a major box-office disappointment. In the Los Angeles Times,Michael Wilmington praised the film's "spellbinding, sometimes splendiferous, always bizarre imagery," but he observed that Lynch and novelist Herbert did not seem to share the same artistic vision. "Herbert's writing begins to soar," the critic wrote, "when he gets his hero … into the desert, into the open spaces"; Lynch, by contrast, "is more comfortable in the shadowy confines of the various castles, where plots are hatched and dark deeds unfold." Wilmington concluded: "The movie has that same weird, hermetic feel that infused the cul-de-sac of Eraserhead, something slightly inappropriate to its epic intentions." Many observers guessed that the sheer scope of Dune made it difficult to adapt the novel as a single feature-length film; some—including George Lucas—believed that Dune could not be filmed at all.

Tales of Muted Horror in Small Towns

Despite the failure of Dune, Lynch retained the faith of De Laurentiis, who funded the director's next feature, Blue Velvet. After Lynch agreed to keep the film on a low budget, his backer gave him total creative control of the project. The arrangement, as Lynch told L'Ecuyer, was "a very special deal." In the New York Times, Lynch described Blue Velvet as "a film about things that are hidden—within a small city and within people." The movie shows evil hiding beneath a small town's pleasant exterior; a concept, in Lynch's words, that is "the opposite of The Elephant Man." Using visual imagery, Lynch evokes the theme of Blue Velvet in the film's much-praised opening sequence. First he shows cheerful scenes of the town in unnaturally bright, saturated color. Suddenly a man watering his lawn is convulsed with a stroke, and as a nearby dog blithely drinks from the garden hose, the camera dives into the grass where it reveals a swarm of insects.

Considered by critics to be Lynch's masterpiece, Blue Velvet focuses on the sick man's son, Jeffrey Beaumont, who comes home from college to assist his father's recovery. While walking through a field, Jeffrey finds a severed human ear, and his efforts to solve the mystery lead him into the small town's criminal underworld. The ear, he discovers, came from the husband of a local nightclub singer; a gangster cut it off to frighten the singer into having a violent sexual affair with him. In several graphic scenes the film suggests that Jeffrey and the singer, while horrified by the gangster's obsessions, may at the same time find the mixture of sex and violence exciting and pleasurable. By the end of Blue Velvet, Jeffrey has killed the gangster and small-town tranquility seems to be restored. Lynch, however, closes the film by focusing on a robin with a writhing insect in its beak.

Blue Velvet attracted widespread interest, both in the film community and among the general public, and gained Lynch such honors as a second Academy Award nomination for best director. Its scenes of sexual torment, however, sparked great controversy. The reactions of reviewers and film goers, while generally intense, ranged from outrage to admiration, and often involved a confused mixture of each. "Blue Velvet leaves me hopeless and with a heavy heart, primarily because I continue to abhor the degradation of women for public entertainment," wrote Rita Kempley in the Washington Post. Many others voiced such sentiments, including television writer David Seidler, who said in Newsweek that "Lynch has reeled us back to the '50s madonna/whore stereotypes."

By contrast, the film was praised by feminist director Lizzie Borden. "It's Lynch's genius to put us inside the dangerous thrill of forbidden sex," wrote Borden in the Village Voice, calling Jeffrey's encounter with sexual violence "extraordinary in the complexity of emotions it arouses in him—and in us." She said the film's "grotesqueries" were not similar to the work of exploitation filmmakers, but rather to the surrealism of director Luis Buñuel. James M. Wall, editor of Christian Century, called Blue Velvet the best film of the year. He compared Lynch's insight to that of the biblical apostle Paul: "I have no way of knowing how much, if at all, Lynch is aware of Paul's description of the sinfulness of all creatures," Wall wrote, "but his film clearly resonates with that understanding." Wall suggested that Blue Velvet displays ugliness because "evil is an ugly reality." For Lynch, the strange sights and symbols of his films remain grounded in reality—not always that of the outside world, but of the inner world of human thought and emotion. "My work is full of abstract ideas but they are ideas I know about," he said in Cineaste. "My first inspiration is life, therefore everything makes sense because it is linked to life."

For Lynch's next project he shifted to the small screen and a collaboration with Hill Street Blues writer Mark Frost to create the 1990-91 television series Twin Peaks. Set in a small town reminiscent of Lynch's own Missoula, Montana, the series opens with the savage and unsolved murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer. In subsequent episodes, Lynch and Frost use the investigation of Palmer's murder as a springboard to expose the secrets and eccentric behavior of the town's inhabitants, and also to introduce further mysteries. A writer for theInternational Directory of Films and Filmmakers characterized Twin Peaks as "a strange offshoot of Blue Velvet, set in a similar town and with [Kyle] MacLachlan [from Blue Velvet] again the odd investigator of a crime the nature of which is hard to define." While lacking "the explicit tone of the earlier film," the writer observed, "Twin Peaks is also insidiously fascinating, using the labyrinthine plot convolutions of the typical soap opera … in addition to the puzzle-solving twists of the murder mystery to probe under the surface of a folksy America of junk food and picket fences."

Coincident with Twin Peaks, Lynch adapted and directed the feature motion picture Wild at Heart, a couple-on-the-run road film based on the novel of the same title by Barry Gifford. The film sparked divided opinions among critics, some finding it "even more violent and sexually explicit than Blue Velvet." The writer for the International Directory of Films and Filmmakers described it as "an undisciplined, half-satisfactory movie … which evokes Elvis in Nicolas Cage's subtly overwrought performance and straggles along towards its Wizard of Oz finale … in a surprisingly straight forward and above-board manner." The writer also noted the film's many references to Lynch's own career, and concluded that Wild at Heart "suffers perhaps from its relative predictability."

Although Twin Peaks initially scored high in the Nielsen Ratings, declining interest in the show led to its cancellation after only two seasons, leaving many of the mysteries it had introduced unresolved. Lynch next wrote and directed Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, a motion picture derived from the show and set in the same milieu. "Ironically," commented the writer for the International Directory of Films and Filmmakers, "it turned out to be a prequel to the events portrayed in the series rather than a sequel," and went on to note that the film was "overlong and oddly underheated … a commercial bomb, even with hardcore Peaks fans."

Returns to the Big Screen

With the appearance of Lost Highway in 1997, Interview reviewer Graham Fuller heralded Lynch's return to the big screen as a "cause for celebration," "since American movies have been lapsing into Milquetoastiness for months now." Lynch's first major film in over five years, the noirish Lost Highway stars Bill Pullman as a man who murders his wife (Patricia Arquette) and then descends into a nightmarish dreamworld after being confined to prison. Dubbed the "cinematic scud missile of 1997" by Salon.com contributor Bill Wyman, the film was viewed by several critics as redundant of Twin Peaks. Noting that Lost Highway "has a battered suitcase of references to old Hollywood film noir, the requisite gore for a scare show and … an eldritch harbinger of death like the dwarf in Twin Peaks," Time reviewer Richard Corliss concluded: "we've visited this planet before, become familiar with its obsessions and grotesqueries until they hold as little terror as garden gnomes." In Newsweek, Jack Kroll agreed, noting that "these mysteries become not fascinating but maddening, a Rubik's Cube that's metastasised into 256 sides." "A large part of what has confounded spectators in Lynch's enterprise is how to distinguish between scenes that reflect the characters' fantasies, and those that belong to the narrative 'reality,'" explained Film Quarterly essayist Eric Bryant Rhodes, adding that "only a recognition that its visual language communicates a descent deeper and deeper into madness can reveal Lost Highway's intricate conceptual meaning." Despite a preponderance of critical dismissal, Rhodes maintained that "Lynch has given audiences a complex and perplexing story to ponder and some astonishingly brilliant images to enjoy."

Lynch made a major artistic detour in the G-rated The Straight Story, a "sweet, decidedly linear fable," according to a contributor for Entertainment Weekly, about a retired Iowan, Alvin, who drives his lawn mower tractor across the state to visit and make up with his estranged brother, Lyle, who has just had a stroke. En route, his tractor breaks down and he needs to get a new one; he is adopted by a group of touring cyclists; and he rediscovers part of America and himself. "David Lynch is known for having directed some of the meanest, ugliest films on record," commented John Simon in the National Review. "Here, suddenly, he goes antithetical, and gives us one of the gentlest movies of recent times. And it works." America's Richard A. Blake also had praise for this change of direction, noting that The Straight Story "provides adult entertainment in the fullest sense of the word adult." The New Republic's Stanley Kauffmann felt this "extraordinary" film "presents a national self-image," and manages to do so "without satire [and] with calm admiration." Owen Gleiberman, writing in Entertainment Weekly likewise noted that The Straight Story "is Lynch's first movie since Blue Velvet that truly envelopes you in its spell. It's a piece of celestial Americana—his journey to the light side of the moon."

Mulholland Drive finds Lynch back in his more usual territory, focusing his surrealist lens this time on Hollywood. Originally produced as a television series for ABC, Mulholland Drive was given a thumbs-down by studio bosses, and Lynch turned it into a feature film instead, vowing never to work in television again. Characterizing the film as "a riddle of beauty and kitsch," Maclean's reviewer Brian D. Johnson added that it "conjures L.A. gothic more evocatively than any film since Chinatown—from the tarnished stucco bungalows of Old Hollywood to the coyote canyons that trail off into twilight zones of the Old West." Noting that Mulholland Drive "has all the trappings of a fairy tale," Nation contributor B. Ruby Rich maintained that Lynch's film "manages to seduce us and humbles us, one after the other, with its cleverness." The director's "superb command of mis en scene makes his images and situations their own reward," added Rich, "rendering even the simplest gesture creepy and imbuing any innocence with evil.…So what if it ultimately makes a terribly imperfect sense? God is in the details, and its details are sublime." Lynch tells the complex tale of a woman about to be murdered by her drivers when a car accident saves her, killing all the others. Suffering a loss of memory as a result, she manages to find her way to a bungalow where she finds another woman, an aspiring blond starlet, who promises to help the amnesiac stranger—who, by the way, just happens to have a purse stuffed with dollars. From there, things get decidedly more bizarre, involving the exploits of a young director on the run from the mob and the less-than-professional killer hired to kill the woman with the purse full of money. Despite, or perhaps because of its baffling plot elements and kaleidoscopic view of Tinseltown, Rex Roberts of Insight on News called the film a "fascinating and fun flick, a wild, loopy ride on Hollywood's route d'auteur." For Amy Taubin, writing in Film Comment, Lynch's Mulholland Drive "is constructed entirely in the language of dreams." Taubin further pointed out that for Freud's theory of dream interpretation to work, the dreamer needs to be conscious of his or her dreams. "But in Mulholland Drive," Taubin wrote, "there is no conclusive evidence that the dreamer ever awakes."

Although he is best known as a filmmaker, Lynch's creative energies have also explored numerous other media, including painting, comic strips, songwriting, novel writing, and more recently, theatrical work designed for the Internet. His David Lynch. com, launched in 2001, is a subscription service which could be, as Thane Peterson noted in Business Week, "the most ambitious Web-venture yet by a major filmmaker." On his Web site, Lynch streams original short films, both animated and live action, such as the sitcom Rabbits and the animated series, Dumbland, for which Lynch himself provides the animation. The Newsmakers 1990 writer described Lynch as "more a bundle of contradictions than anything else, fitting well Mel Brooks' description of him as 'Jimmy Stewart from Mars,'" and went on to note that "accompanying Lynch's unconventional visions is a dauntless determination to realize them." As Powers noted in the LA Weekly, "Lynch loves working more than anything in the world. Tireless as a silk worm, he just can't stop creating."

If you enjoy the works of David Lynch, you might want to check out the following films:

Brazil, directed by Terry Gilliam, 1985.

Dark City, directed by Alex Proyas, 1998.

eXistenZ, directed by David Cronenberg, 1999.

Biographical and Critical Sources

BOOKS

Hoberman, J., and Jonathan Rosenbaum, Midnight Movies, Harper (New York, NY), 1983.

International Directory of Films and Filmmakers, Volume 2, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.

Lynch, David, Lynch on Lynch, edited by Chris Rodley, Faber & Faber (New York, NY), 1999.

Naha, Ed, The Making of Dune, Berkley Publishing (New York, NY), 1984.

Newsmakers 1990, Issue 4, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1990.

Nicholls, Peter, The World of Fantastic Films: An Illustrated Survey, Dodd (New York, NY), 1984.

Peary, Danny, Cult Movies, Delta (New York, NY), 1981.

Sparks, Christine, The Elephant Man: The Book of the Film, Ballantine (New York, NY), 1980.

PERIODICALS

America, November 20, 1999, "Iowa Pastorale," p. 59.

American Film, December, 1984; March, 1987.

American Prospect, November 19, 2001, Wendy Lesser, review of Mulholland Drive, p. 36.

Atlantic Monthly, November, 1980; October, 1984.

Bravo! (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), May 6, 2002, Ana Maria Bahiana, "The Subversion of the Senses."

Business Week, October 16, 2001, Thane Peterson, "Moveable Feast: David Lynch's Weird, Wired World."

Chicago Tribune, April 22, 1984; September 25, 1986.

Christian Century, January 7-14, 1987.

Christian Science Monitor, January 3, 1985.

Cineaste, Number 3, 1987.

Cinefantastique, Numbers 4-5, 1984.

Empire, November, 2001, David Hughes, "Hall of Fame David Lynch, Weird on Top."

Entertainment Weekly, February 21, 1997, Owen Gleiberman, review of Lost Highway, p. 103; October 22, 1999, Owen Gleiberman, review of The Straight Story, p. 62; May 15, 2000, "Our Town," p. 92; November 2, 2001, "Naked Lynch," p. 34.

Esquire, January, 1985.

Film Comment, February, 1985; October, 1986; December, 1986; September-October, 2001, Amy Taubin, "In Dreams," pp. 51-54.

Film Quarterly, summer, 1981; fall, 1985; spring, 1998, Eric Bryant Rhodes, review of Lost Highway, p. 57.

Films and Filming, April, 1979.

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Canada), September 19, 1986; September 20, 1986.

Guardian (London, England), May 11, 2001, Andrew Pulver, "ABC Pulled the Plug on David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, So He Turned It into a Movie Instead."

Harper's, May, 1981.

Horizon, November, 1980; December, 1984.

Insight on the News, October 29, 2001, Rex Roberts, "Over Drive," p. 27.

International Herald Tribune, May 19-20, 2001, Joan Dupont, "A Smooth Exterior But Wild at Heart."

Interview, March, 1987; February, 1997, Graham Fuller, review of Lost Highway, p. 76.

Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, October 8, 2001, Bruce Newman, "David Lynch's 'Mulholland Drive' Squirms onto the Big Screen," p. K4028.

LA Weekly, October 19, 2001, John Powers, "Getting Lost Is Beautiful—The Light and Dark World of David Lynch."

Los Angeles Times, February 20, 1978; September 28, 1980; December 14, 1984; December 18, 1984; September 19, 1986; September 23, 1986; September 26, 1986.

Maclean's, October 13, 1980; December 24, 1984; September 29, 1986; November 5, 2001, Brian D. Johnson, review of Mulholland Drive, p. 60.

Monthly Film Bulletin, March, 1979; October, 1980; February, 1985; April, 1987.

Nation, October 18, 1980; October 18, 1986; November 12, 2001, B. Ruby Rich, review of Mulholland Drive, p. 44.

National Review, January 23, 1981; November 7, 1986; February 21, 2000, John Simon, "Life in the Slow Lane," p. 59.

New Architect, August, 2002, Amit Asaravala, "Inside davidlynch.com," pp. 12-14.

New Leader, September 22, 1980; November 1, 1999, "Social Outrage Season," p. 18.

New Republic, October 18, 1980; November 15, 1999, Stanley Kauffmann, "Character as Destiny," p. 28; October 29, 2001, Stanley Kauffmann, "Sense and Sensibility," p. 28.

New Statesman, October 10, 1980.

New Statesman & Society, January 14, 2002, Philip Kerr, review of Mulholland Drive, p. 44.

Newsweek, September 11, 1978; October 6, 1980; December 10, 1984; September 15, 1986; October 27, 1986; February 24, 1997, Jack Kroll, review of Lost Highway, p. 68.

New York, November 3, 1980; January 14, 1985; September 29, 1986.

New Yorker, October 27, 1980; December 24, 1984; September 22, 1986; March 10, 1997, Terrence Rafferty, review of Lost Highway, p. 98; August 30, 1999, Tad Friend, "Creative Differences," p. 56ff.

New York Times, May 1, 1979; June 1, 1979; September 26, 1980; October 3, 1980; October 17, 1980; December 14, 1984; September 19, 1986; October 11, 1986; October 12, 1986; November 23, 1986; December 21, 1986; February 22, 1987.

Observer (London, England), April 1, 1979.

People, September 22, 1986; October 20, 1986; March 3, 1997, Tom Gliatto, review of Lost Highway, p. 19.

Premiere, November, 1999, Kristin McKenna, "'Straight' Shooter" (interview), p. 71; November, 2001, review of Mulholland Drive, p. 94.

Rolling Stone, November 13, 1980; December 6, 1984; October 23, 1986.

Saturday Review, October, 1980.

Sight and Sound, winter, 1980-81.

Time, October 6, 1980; December 17, 1984; September 22, 1986; March 3, 1997, Richard Corliss, review of Lost Highway, p. 83; October 25, 1999, Richard Corliss, "A Grand Quest: Triumph and Regret in a David Lynch Surprise," p. 120; October 29, 2001, Richard Corliss, review of Mulholland Drive, p. 85.

Times (London, England), October 8, 1980; October 10, 1980; November 7, 1984; April 10, 1987.

Variety, March 23, 1977; July 18, 1979; September 24, 1986; May 24, 1999, Emmanuel Levy, review of The Straight Story, p. 73; May 21, 2001, Todd McCarthy, review of Mulholland Drive, p. 15; July 9, 2001, Cathy Dunley, "U Gets Lynch's 'Mulholland in Focus,'" p. 14.

Village Voice, October 24, 1977; October 1, 1980; April 26, 1983; December 25, 1984; September 23, 1986; June 30, 1987.

Washington Post, December 14, 1984; September 19, 1986.

World and I, July, 2003, M. P. McCrillis, "Lynching Stephen King," p. 268.

ONLINE

DavidLynch.com,http://www.davidlynch.com (March 21, 2002).

David Lynch on the Web,http://www.rarecelebs.net/lynch (March 21, 2002).

Forbes.com,http://www.forbes.com/ (October 7, 2002), G. Beato, "David Lynch Flies under the Radar."

LynchNet: The David Lynch Resource,http://www.davidlynch.topcities.com/ (August 30, 2001).

Salon.com,http://www.salon.com/ (October 23, 2001), Bill Wyman, Max Garrone, and Andy Klein, "Everything You Wanted to Know about Mulholland Drive "; (November 6, 2001) Brian Libby, "David Lynch."^*

Lynch, David 1946–

(Judas Booth, Alan Smithee)

PERSONAL

Full name, David Keith Lynch; born January 20, 1946, in Missoula, MT; son of Donald (a tree research scientist) and Sunny (a language tutor) Lynch; married Peggy Reavey, 1967 (divorced 1974); married Mary Fisk, June 21, 1977 (divorced 1987); children: (first marriage) Jennifer Chambers (a director and writer); (second marriage) Austin Jack; (with Mary Sweeney, a producer and editor) Riley. Education: Attended Corcoran School of Art, Boston Museum School, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and Center for Advanced Film Studies, American Film Institute.

Addresses: Agent—Rick Nicita, Creative Artists Agency, 9830 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90212. Contact—c/o David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace, P.O. Box 93158, Hollywood, CA 90093.

Career: Director, producer, writer, composer, and actor. Worked on television commercials for several products and services, including Monster cable, Cio and Opium colognes, Alka-Seltzer Plus pain reliever, Adidas athletic shoes, Jil Sander clothing, Sun Moon Stars, Parisiennes cigarettes, Georgia Coffee, Unipath Diagnostics pregnancy test, Playstation 2, and the Nissan Micra; director of promotional pieces for Michael Jackson's Dangerous; director of promotional tags; also worked on public service announcements. Worked as sound and sound effects technician. Musician, music producer and mixer, and member of the group Blue Bob; performer at various venues. Asymmetrical Studios/Asymmetrical Productions, principal. Cannes International Film Festival, jury president, 2002. Painter and furniture designer and producer of drawings and collographs. Art exhibited at various venues, including the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City, the Paley Library Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, and in galleries in Mexico and Europe; also designed machines and products. David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace (fund-raising and scholarship organization promoting world peace and mediation), Hollywood, CA, principal; Davidlynch.com (subscription web site), Internet Web site owner and retailer at the Davidlynch.com store, c. 2001–. Worked as an engineer, janitor, newspaper delivery person, and in retail. Involved with transcendental meditation.

Member: Directors Guild of America, Writers Guild of America, West.

Awards, Honors: Grants from the American Film Institute, c. 1968 and c. 1972; awards from the San Francisco, Belleview, and Atlanta film festivals, all c. 1970, for The Grandmother; special jury prize, Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival, 1978, and International Fantasy Film Award nomination, best film, Fantasporto, 1982, both for Eraserhead; grand prize, Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival, Academy Award nominations, best director, and best writing, screenplay based on material from another medium (with others), Golden Globe Award nomination, best director of a motion picture, Directors Guild of America Award nomination, outstanding directorial achievement in motion pictures, Screen Award nomination, best screenplay adapted from another medium (with others), Writers Guild of America, and Film Award nominations, best director and best screenplay (with others), British Academy of Film and Television Arts, all 1981, Cesar Award, Academie des Arts et Techniques du Cinema, and Critics Award, French Syndicate of Cinema Critics, both best foreign film, both 1982, all for The Elephant Man; Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award, best director, and Caixa de Catalunya, best film, Catalonian International Film Festival, both 1986, National Society of Film Critics awards, best director and best film, Boston Society of Film Critics Award, best director, grand prize, Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival, Fotogramas de Plata Award, best foreign film, Academy Award nomination, best director, Golden Globe Award nomination, best screenplay for a motion picture, Screen Award nomination, best screenplay written directly for the screen, Writers Guild of America, and Independent Sprit Award nominations, best director and best screenplay, Independent Features Project/West, all 1987, all for Blue Velvet; Emmy Award nominations, outstanding drama series (with others), and outstanding achievement in main title theme music (with Angelo Badalamenti), both 1990, for the series Twin Peaks; Emmy Award nominations, outstanding directing in a drama series and outstanding writing in a drama series (with others), both 1990, for the pilot of Twin Peaks; Emmy Award nomination, outstanding music and lyrics (with Badalamenti), 1990, for song "Into the Night," Twin Peaks; Golden Palm, best film, Cannes International Film Festival, 1990, and International Fantasy Film Award nomination, best film, 1991, both for Wild at Heart; Franklin J. Schaffner Award, American Film Institute, 1991; nomination for Golden Palm, 1992, and Saturn Award nomination (with Robert Engels), best writing, Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films, 1993, both for Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me; Life Career Award, Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films, 1993; San Diego Film Critics Society Award, best director, Screen International Award, European Film awards, and nomination for Golden Palm Award, all 1999, Bodil Award, Bodil Festival, and Robert Award, Robert Festival, both best American film, Independent Spirit Award nomination, best director, Sierra Award nomination, best director, Las Vegas Film Critics Society, and Chicago Film Critics Association Award nomination, best director, all 2000, Fotogramas de Plata Award and Sant Jordi Award, both best foreign film, both 2001, all for The Straight Story; Camerimage Special awards, best director-cinematographer (with Frederick Elmes) and film direction with a special visual sensitivity, 2000; Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award, Boston Society of Film Critics Award, Toronto Film Critics Association Award, and Cannes International Film Festival Award, all best director, National Society of Film Critics Award and New York Film Critics Circle Award, both best picture, French Academy of Cinema, best foreign film, named one of the top ten films of the year, National Board of Review, nomination for Golden Palm, Cannes International Film Festival, New York Film Critics Circle Award nomination, best director, Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award nomination, National Board of Review Award nomination, Toronto Film Critics Association Award nomination, and Catalonian International Film Festival Film Award nomination, all best picture, all 2001, Chicago Film Critics Association Award and Online Film Critics Society Award, both best director, Chicago Film Critics Association Award, best picture, and Cesar Award, best foreign film, all 2002, Academy Award nomination, best director, Golden Globe Award nominations, best director of a motion picture, best screenplay for a motion picture, and best motion picture—drama, AFI Film Award nominations, director of the year and best picture, American Film Institute (AFI), Saturn Award nomination, best director, nomination for Edgar Allan Poe Award, best motion picture, Mystery Writers of America, Chicago Film Critics Association Award nomination (with others), best original score, Broadcast Film Critics Association Award nomination, best picture, nomination for Silver Ribbon, best director of a foreign film, Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists, and Online Film Critics Society Award nomination, best original screenplay, all 2002, Bodil Award, best American film, 2003, and Sant Jordi Award, best foreign film, 2003, all for Mulholland Dr.; French Legion of Honor, 2002; Lifetime Achievement Award, Stockholm Film Festival, 2003; Camerimage Award, contribution to Polish culture, 2003.

CREDITS

Film Director:

Six Figures Getting Sick (short film; also known as Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times)), 1966.

The Alphabet (short film), c. 1968.

The Grandmother (live action and animated short film), 1970.

The Amputee (short film), 1974.

Eraserhead, Almi Cinema 5/Libra Films/Miramax, 1978.

The Elephant Man, Paramount, 1980.

Dune, Universal, 1984.

Blue Velvet, De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, 1986.

Wild at Heart (also known as David Lynch's "Wild at Heart"), Samuel Goldwyn Company, 1990.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (also known as Teresa Banks and the Last Seven Days of Laura Palmer and Twin Peaks), New Line Cinema, 1992.

"Premonitions following an Evil Deed," Lumiere and Company (also known as Lumiere et compagnie and Lumiere y compania), Pierre Grise Distribution, 1995.

Lost Highway, October Films, 1997.

The Straight Story (also known as Une histoire vraie), Buena Vista, 1999.

Mulholland Dr. (also known as Mulholland Drive), Universal Focus, 2000.

INLAND EMPIRE, Studio Canal, 2006.

Film Executive Producer:

The Cabinet of Dr. Ramirez (musical), 1991.

Hugh Hefner: Once upon a Time, I.R.S. Releasing, 1992.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (also known as Teresa Banks and the Last Seven Days of Laura Palmer and Twin Peaks), New Line Cinema, 1992.

Nadja, October Films, 1994.

Big Blow, c. 1999.

Driven to It, c. 1999.

Lighthouse at the End of the World, c. 1999.

Mulholland Dr. (also known as Mulholland Drive), Universal Focus, 2000.

Surveillance, 2006.

Film Producer:

Six Figures Getting Sick (short film; also known as Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times)), 1966.

The Alphabet (short film), c. 1968.

The Grandmother (live action and animated short film), 1970.

The Amputee (short film), 1974.

Eraserhead, Almi Cinema 5/Libra Films/Miramax, 1978.

Crumb, Films Transit International, 1994, Sony Pictures Classics, 1995.

Woodcutters from Fiery Ships, 2000.

INLAND EMPIRE, Studio Canal, 2006.

Film Animator; Short Films:

Six Figures Getting Sick (also known as Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times)), 1966.

The Alphabet, c. 1968.

The Grandmother (live action and animated), 1970.

Film Cinematographer; Short Films:

The Alphabet, c. 1968.

The Grandmother (live action and animated), 1970.

Film Editor:

The Alphabet (short film), c. 1968.

The Grandmother (live action and animated short film), 1970.

The Amputee (short film), 1974.

Eraserhead, Almi Cinema 5/Libra Films/Miramax, 1978.

INLAND EMPIRE, Studio Canal, 2006.

Film Sound Designer:

The Elephant Man, Paramount, 1980.

(And sound re-recording mixer) Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (also known as Teresa Banks and the Last Seven Days of Laura Palmer and Twin Peaks), New Line Cinema, 1992.

(And sound re-recording mixer) Lost Highway, October Films, 1997.

The Straight Story (also known as Une histoire vraie), Buena Vista, 1999.

(And sound re-recording mixer) Mulholland Dr. (also known as Mulholland Drive), Universal Focus, 2000.

Film Production Designer:

The Alphabet (short film), c. 1968.

Eraserhead, Almi Cinema 5/Libra Films/Miramax, 1978.

Film Work; Other:

Art director and special effects technician, Eraserhead, Almi Cinema 5/Libra Films/Miramax, 1978.

Designed and built furniture which appeared in his films.

Film Appearances:

Title role, The Grandmother (live action and animated short film), 1970.

Medical professional, The Amputee (short film), 1974.

(Uncredited) Painter, Heart Beat, Orion/Warner Bros., 1980.

(Uncredited) Spice worker, Dune, Universal, 1984.

Willie, Zelly and Me (also known as Phoebe), Columbia, 1989.

FBI regional bureau agent Gordon Cole, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (also known as Teresa Banks and the Last Seven Days of Laura Palmer and Twin Peaks), New Line Cinema, 1992.

Morgue receptionist, Nadja, October Films, 1994.

Lumiere and Company (also known as Lumiere et compagnie and Lumiere y compania), Pierre Grise Distribution, 1995.

Morgue attendant, Lost Highway, October Films, 1997.

Dennis Hopper: Create (or Die) (documentary), Easy Rider Productions, 2003.

Epreuves d'artistes (documentary; also known as Words in Progress), INA Enterprise, 2004.

Television Work; with Mark Frost; Series:

Creator and executive producer, American Chronicles (also known as Real Life), Fox, 1990.

Creator, Twin Peaks (also known as Northwest Passage), ABC, 1990–91.

Creator and executive producer, On the Air, ABC, 1992.

Television Work; Miniseries:

(As Alan Smithee) Director, Dune (extended version of the film), syndicated, c. 1984.

Director, "The Cowboy and the Frenchman," Les francais vus par (also known as The Cowboy and the Frenchman and The French as Seen by …), Antenne 2 (now France 2), 1988.

Creator, executive producer, sound designer, and director of segments "Blackout" and "Tricks," Hotel Room (also known as David Lynch's "Hotel Room"), HBO, 1993.

Television Work; Specials:

Special effects technician, "The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters," American Playhouse, PBS, 1982.

Director and producer, Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted (performance piece), 1990.

Television Work; Episodic:

Segment director, American Chronicles (also known as Real Life), Fox, 1990.

Producer, "Dinosaurs of the Gobi," Nova, PBS, 1993.

Television Work; Pilots:

Director and executive producer, Twin Peaks (also known as Northwest Passage), ABC, 1990.

Director, On the Air, ABC, 1992.

Television Appearances; Pilots:

Director of Mulholland Dr. (also known as Mulholland Drive), ABC, a pilot which later became the film of the same name.

Television Appearances; Series:

Agent Gordon Cole, Twin Peaks (also known as Northwest Passage), ABC, 1990–91.

Television Appearances; Miniseries:

Spice worker, Dune (extended version of the film), syndicated, c. 1984.

Television Appearances; Specials:

Himself, The Making of "Dune," 1984.

Presenter, "Ruth roses and revolver," Arena, BBC-2, 1987.

Himself, No Frank in Lumberton, 1988.

Himself, Don't Look at Me (also known as Cineaste de notre temps: David Lynch—Don't Look at Me), 1989.

Hollywood Mavericks, 1990.

Jonathan Ross Presents for One Week Only: David Lynch, Channel 4 (England), 1990.

Siskel & Ebert Special, CBS, 1990.

Twin Peaks and Cop Rock: Behind the Scenes, ABC, 1990.

Don Van Vliet: Some YoYo Stuff, BBC, 1994.

Der Klang der Bilder, 1995.

Himself, Pretty as a Picture: The Art of David Lynch, 1998.

In Dreams: The Roy Orbison Story, 1999.

Little Jimmy Scott, Bravo, 1999.

Dino de Laurentiis: The Last Movie Mogul, BBC, 2001.

Art of Dennis Hopper, 2002.

Celluloid Dreams, Independent Film Channel, 2002.

Himself, Dennis Hopper: The Decisive Moments, AVRO Television (the Netherlands), 2004.

Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream, Starz! and Encore, 2005.

Television Appearances; Awards Presentations:

Presenter, The 1987 IFP/West Independent Spirit Awards, Independent Film Channel, 1987.

Presenter, The 44th Annual Golden Globe Awards, syndicated, 1987.

(In archive footage) Himself, The 74th Annual Academy Awards, ABC, 2002.

Television Appearances; Episodic:

Bobby Bunn, "Reason for Leaving," Juliet Bravo, BBC, 1985.

Himself, "Dennis Hopper," Crazy about the Movies (also known as Crazy about the Movies: Dennis Hopper), Cinemax, 1991.

Himself, Independent Focus, Independent Film Channel, 1998.

Himself, Intimate Portrait: Laura Dern, Lifetime, 1999.

Himself, "Ann Miller: I'm Still Here," Biography (also known as A&E Biography: Ann Miller), Arts and Entertainment, 2000.

Guest, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, NBC, 2001.

Himself, The Screensavers, TechTV (later known as G4techTV), 2002.

(In archive footage) Himself, Cinema mil, Television de Catalunya (TV3, Spain), multiple episodes in 2005.

Appeared in "The Films of David Lynch," The Directors, Encore.

Stage Work:

(With Angelo Badalamenti) Director and producer, Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted (performance piece), New Music America Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, New York City, 1989.

Stage Appearances:

Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted (performance piece), New Music America Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, New York City, 1989.

Internet Director; Series Featured on Davidlynch.com:

Axxon N., 2002.

Bees, 2002.

Coyote, 2002.

Dumbland, 2002.

Rabbits, 2002.

Lamp, 2003.

Water Circus, 2003.

Agave, 2003–2004.

Internet Director; Short Films Featured on Davidlynch.com:

Head with Hammer, 2001.

Out Yonder, 2001.

Pierre and Sonny Jim, 2001.

Sunset, 2001.

Cannes Diary (also known as The Davidlynch.com Cannes Diary), 2002.

Darkened Room, 2002.

The Disc of Sorrow Is Installed, 2002.

Industrial Soundscapes #1, 2002.

The Pig Walks, 2002.

Where Are the Bananas?, 2002.

Dead Mouse with Ants, c. 2002.

Boat, 2003.

Invalometer #3: Dining Room, 2003.

Steps, 2003.

The Bug Crawls, 2004.

Invalometer #4, 2004.

Wow Wow, 2004.

The Green Room in Lodz, c. 2006.

Worked on other short films broadcast on the Internet, including Invalometer #1, Invalometer #2: Kitchen Window, Painted Lady, and Sunset #2.

Internet Work; Short Films Featured on Davidlynch.com:

Producer and cinematographer, Darkened Room, 2002. Segment animator, Does That Hurt You?, 2002.

Internet Appearances:

Himself, Rabbits (series), Davidlynch.com, 2002.

I Don't Know Jack (documentary), Davidlynch.com, 2002.

RECORDINGS

Video Appearances:

Himself, Mysteries of Love, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/United Artists Home Entertainment, 2002.

Narrator, The Short Films of David Lynch, Davidlynch.com, 2002.

Himself, "Mulholland Drive!': Making of, Studio Canal, 2004.

Himself, Le son de Lynch, Nomad Films International, 2005.

Music Videos; with Blue Bob:

"9∗1∗1," c. 2002.

"Thank You Judge," 2003.

Video Director:

Director of "Rammstein," Rammstein: Lichtspielhaus, Universal Records, 2004.

Music Video Director:

Chris Isaak, "Wicked Game" (first version), 1990.

Massive (later known as Massive Attack), "Unfinished Sympathy," 1991.

Yoshiki, "Longing," 1995.

Rammstein, "Rammstein," 1996.

(With Blue Bob) "9∗1∗1,' c. 2002.

(With Blue Bob) "Thank You Judge," 2003.

Albums; with Others; Performer:

Jocelyn Montgomery and others, Lux Vivens: The Music of Hildegard von Bingen, Mammoth/PGD, 1998.

(With Blue Bob) Blue Bob, Solitude/MRI, c. 2002.

Appeared in the Blue Bob compilation Box Set.

Albums; with Others; Producer:

Eraserhead (soundtrack), A & M, 1989.

Blue Velvet (soundtrack), Varese Records, 1990.

Twin Peaks (soundtrack to television series), Warner Bros./Wea, 1990.

Wild at Heart (soundtrack), Polydor/PGD, 1990.

Until the End of the World (soundtrack), Warner Bros./Wea, 1991.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (soundtrack), Warner Bros./Wea, 1992.

Julee Cruise, The Voice of Love, Warner Bros./Wea, 1993.

Executive producer, Lost Highway (soundtrack), Inter-scope Records, 1997.

(And mixer and sound effects designer) Jocelyn Montgomery and others, Lux Vivens: The Music of Hildegard von Bingen, Mammoth/PGD, 1998.

(And mixer) Blue Bob, Blue Bob, Solitude/MRI, c. 2002.

Singles; Performer and Producer; with Blue Bob:

"9∗1∗1," c. 2002.

"Thank You Judge," 2003.

Producer of "Cannes Memory," the theme for the 2002 Cannes International Film Festival.

WRITINGS

Screenplays:

The Alphabet (short film), c. 1968.

The Grandmother (live action and animated short film), 1970.

The Amputee (short film), 1974.

Eraserhead, Almi Cinema 5/Libra Films/Miramax, 1978.

(With Christopher DeVore and Eric Bergren) The Elephant Man (based on The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences by Frederick Treves and The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity by Ashley Montagu), Paramount, 1980.

Dune (based on the novel by Frank Herbert), Universal, 1984.

Blue Velvet, De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, 1986.

Wild at Heart (based on a novel by Barry Gifford; also known as David Lynch's "Wild at Heart"), Samuel Goldwyn Company, 1990.

(With Robert Engels) Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (also known as Teresa Banks and the Last Seven Days of Laura Palmer and Twin Peaks), New Line Cinema, 1992.

"Premonitions following an Evil Deed," Lumiere and Company (also known as Lumiere et compagnie and Lumiere y compania), Pierre Grise Distribution, 1995.

Lost Highway, October Films, 1997, with Barry Gifford, author of screenplay published by Faber & Faber, 1997.

Mulholland Dr. (also known as Mulholland Drive), Universal Focus, 2000.

Woodcutters from Fiery Ships, 2000.

INLAND EMPIRE, Studio Canal, 2006.

Wrote Amnesia Moon, Gardenback, Goddess, Metamorphosis, Ronnie Rocket, Saliva Bubble, and Up at the Lake. Worked on You Play the Black, and the Red Comes Up, a script based on a story by Eric Knight. Some sources cite Lynch as the coauthor (with Mark Frost and Lee Reynolds) of Storyville, a film based on a novel by Frank Galbally and Robert Macklin and released by Twentieth Century-Fox, 1991.

Film Music:

Score composer and lyrics, Eraserhead, Almi Cinema 5/Libra Films/Miramax, 1978.

Composer of additional music and lyricist, Blue Velvet, De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, 1986.

Song "Mysteries of Love," Weeds, De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, 1987.

Composer of additional music and lyricist, Wild at Heart (based on a novel by Barry Gifford; also known as David Lynch's "Wild at Heart"), Samuel Goldwyn Company, 1990.

Composer of additional music and lyricist, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (also known as Teresa Banks and the Last Seven Days of Laura Palmer and Twin Peaks), New Line Cinema, 1992.

Composer of additional music, Lost Highway, October Films, 1997.

Composer of additional music and lyricist, Mulholland Dr. (also known as Mulholland Drive), Universal Focus, 2000.

Lyricist for the song "The World Spins," The Company (also known as The Company—Das Ensemble), Sony Pictures Classics, 2003.

Teleplays; Miniseries:

(As Judas Booth) Dune (extended version of the film; based on the novel by Frank Herbert), syndicated, c. 1984.

"The Cowboy and the Frenchman," Les francais vus par (also known as The Cowboy and the Frenchman and The French as Seen by …), Antenne 2 (now France 2), 1988.

Teleplays; Episodic:

"Ruth roses and revolver," Arena, BBC-2, 1987.

Teleplays; Pilots:

(With Mark Frost) Twin Peaks (also known as Northwest Passage), ABC, 1990.

On the Air, ABC, 1992.

Author of Mulholland Dr. (also known as Mulholland Drive), ABC, a pilot which later became the film of the same name.

Television Music; Series:

Composer of additional music, songs, and lyricist, Twin Peaks (also known as Northwest Passage), ABC, 1990–91.

Television Composer; Specials:

No Frank in Lumberton, 1988.

Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted (performance piece), 1990.

Stage Music:

(With Angelo Badalamenti) Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted (performance piece), New Music America Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, New York City, 1989.

Internet Scripts; Series Featured on Davidlynch.com:

Axxon N., Davidlynch.com, 2002.

Bees, 2002.

Coyote, 2002.

Dumbland, 2002.

Rabbits, 2002.

Lamp, 2003.

Water Circus, 2003.

Agave, 2003–2004.

Internet Scripts; Short Films Featured on Davidlynch.com:

Head with Hammer, 2001.

Out Yonder, 2001.

Pierre and Sonny Jim, 2001.

Sunset, 2001.

Cannes Diary (also known as The Davidlynch.com Cannes Diary), 2002.

Darkened Room, 2002.

The Disc of Sorrow Is Installed, 2002.

Does That Hurt You?, 2002.

Industrial Soundscapes #1, 2002.

The Pig Walks, 2002.

Where Are the Bananas?, 2002.

Dead Mouse with Ants, c. 2002.

Boat, 2003.

Invalometer #3: Dining Room, 2003.

Steps, 2003.

The Bug Crawls, 2004.

Invalometer #4, 2004.

Wow Wow, 2004.

The Green Room in Lodz, c. 2006.

Worked on other short films broadcast on the Internet, including Invalometer #1, Invalometer #2: Kitchen Window, Painted Lady, and Sunset #2.

Video Scripts:

The Short Films of David Lynch, Davidlynch.com, 2002.

(With others) "Mulholland Drive": Making of, Studio Canal, 2004.

(With others) Le son de Lynch, Nomad Films International, 2005.

Albums; with Others:

Eraserhead (soundtrack), A & M, 1989.

(Lyrics; music by Angelo Badalamenti) Julee Cruise, Floating into the Night, Warner Bros./Wea, 1989.

Blue Velvet (soundtrack), Varese Records, 1990.

Twin Peaks (soundtrack to television series), Warner Bros./Wea, 1990.

Until the End of the World (soundtrack), Warner Bros./Wea, 1991.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (soundtrack), Warner Bros./Wea, 1992.

Julee Cruise, The Voice of Love, Warner Bros./Wea, 1993.

Lost Highway (soundtrack), Interscope Records, 1997.

(With Hildegard von Bingen, Jocelyn Montgomery, and others) Lux Vivens: The Music of Hildegard von Bingen, Mammoth/PGD, 1998.

Mulholland Dr. (soundtrack), Milan Records, 2001.

(With Blue Bob) Blue Bob, Solitude/MRI, c. 2002.

Wrote material which appeared in the Blue Bob compilation Box Set.

Singles; with Blue Bob:

"9∗1∗1," c. 2002.

"Thank You Judge," 2003.

Nonfiction:

Art of Dune, Cliffs Notes, 1985.

Images, Hyperion, 1994.

(With Chris Rodley) Lynch on Lynch (autobiography), Faber & Faber, 1997, revised edition published as Lynch on Lynch: Revised Edition, Faber & Faber, c. 2005.

Humor:

(With Mark Frost and Richard Saul Wurman) Twin Peaks: An Access Guide to the Town, Pocket Books, 1991.

Author of the weekly cartoon strip "The Angriest Dog in the World," Los Angeles Reader and syndicated, 1983–92.

OTHER SOURCES

Books:

Alexander, John, The Films of David Lynch, Charles Letts and Co., 1993.

Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Volume 55, Gale, 2004.

Chion, Michel, and Robert Julian, David Lynch, British Film Institute, 1995.

International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, Volume 2: Directors, fourth edition, St. James Press, 2000.

Kaleta, Kenneth C., David Lynch, Twayne Publishers, 1993.

Naha, Ed, The Making of Dune, Berkley Publishing, 1984.

Newsmakers 1990, issue 4, Gale, 1990.

Nochimson, Martha P., The Passion of David Lynch: Wild at Heart in Hollywood, University of Texas Press, 1997.

Sparks, Christine, The Elephant Man: The Book of the Film, Ballantine, 1980.

Woods, Paul A., Weirdsville, USA: The Obsessive Universe of David Lynch, Plexus, 1997.

Periodicals:

America, November 20, 1999, p. 59.

American Cinematographer, March, 1997.

American Film, December, 1984; March, 1987.

Business Week, October 16, 2001.

Cineaste, Volume 15, number 3, 1987.

Cinefantastique, April, 1997.

Cinema Papers, March, 1987; August, 1992.

Empire, November, 2001.

Entertainment Weekly, April 17, 1998, p. 75; May 15, 2000; November 2, 2001, pp. 34-39; February 22, 2002, pp. 90-91.

Film Comment, February, 1985; September/October, 1986; October, 1986, pp. 32-35; December, 1986; January/February, 1991, p. 18; May, 1993; September/October, 2001, pp. 51-54.

Filmmaker, winter, 1997.

Films and Filming, April, 1979.

Forbes ASAP, October 7, 2002, p. 12.

Guardian (London), May 11, 2001.

Heavy Metal, October, 1982.

International Herald Tribune, May 19, 2001, p. 6.

Interview, March, 1987, p. 78; January, 1990.

LA Weekly, October 19, 2001.

Maclean's, September 3, 1990, p. 50.

Madison, October, 1999, pp. 62-69.

Marie Claire, February, 1997.

Monthly Film Bulletin, April, 1987.

Movieline, August, 1999, pp. 68-71.

Ms., November/December, 1990, p. 58.

National Review, February 21, 2000, p. 59.

New Architect, August, 2002, pp. 12-14.

New Leader, September 22, 1980; November 1, 1999, p. 18.

New Republic, October 18, 1980; November 15, 1999, p. 28; October 29, 2001, p. 28.

New Statesman, October 12, 1990, pp. 32-33.

New Yorker, August 30, 1999, p. 56.

New York Times, October 11, 1986.

New York Times Magazine, January 14, 1990, pp. 19-21, 42-43, 52.

People Weekly, September 3, 1990, pp. 79-84.

Premiere, September, 1996; November, 1999, pp. 71-74.

Psychology Today, March, 1997, pp. 28-30, 33, 74.

Radio Times, October 20, 1990, pp. 37-38.

Rolling Stone, March 22, 1990, p. 51; September 6, 1990; March 6, 1997.

Time, October 1, 1990, p. 84.

Time Out, November 18, 1992; August 13, 1997.

USA Today, March 3, 1997.

Village Voice, February 25, 1997.

Vogue, February, 1990; September, 1992.

Electronic:

David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace, http://www.davidlynchfoundation.org, March 11, 2006.

LynchNet: The David Lynch Resource, http://www.davidlynch.topcities.com, August 30, 2001.

LYNCH, David

Nationality: American. Born: Missoula, Montana, 20 January 1946. Education: High school in Alexandria, Virginia; Corcoran School of Art, c. 1964; Boston Museum School, 1965; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, 1965–69; American Film Institute Centre for Advanced Studies, studying under Frank Daniel, 1970. Family: Married 1) Peggy Reavey, 1967 (divorced, 1974), one daughter, writer/director Jennifer Lynch; 2) Mary Fisk, 1977 (divorced, 1987), one son, Austin. Career: Spent five years making Eraserhead, Los Angeles, 1971–76; worked as paperboy and shed-builder, late 1970s; invited by Mel Brooks to direct The Elephant Man, 1980; with Mark Frost, made Twin Peaks for video (two-hour version) and as TV series, 1989. Executive producer and writer of the CD-rom video game Woodcutters from Fiery Ships, 2000. Awards: National Society of Film Critics Awards for Best Film and Best Director, for Blue Velvet, 1986; Palme d'Or, Cannes Festival, for Wild at Heart, 1990.

Films as Director:

1968

The Alphabet (short) (sc)

1970

The Grandmother (short) (sc)

1978

Eraserhead (sc)

1980

The Elephant Man (co-sc)

1984

Dune (sc)

1986

Blue Velvet (sc)

1988

episode in Les Français vus par ...

1990

Wild at Heart (sc)

1992

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (co-sc + co-pr, role as Gordon Cole)

1995

episode in Lumiere et compagnie

1997

Lost Highway (sc)

1999

The Straight Story (+ mus)

2001

Mulholland Drive (co-sc, exec pr)

Other Films:

1988

Zelly and Me (role as Willie)

1991

The Cabinet of Dr. Ramirez (exec pr)

1994

Nadja (exec pr, role as Morgue Attendant)

1997

Pretty as a Picture: The Art of David Lynch (for TV) (as himself)

Publications

By LYNCH: books—

Welcome to Twin Peaks: An Access Guide to the Town, with Richard Saul Wurman and Mark Frost, London, 1991.

Images, New York, 1994.

Lost Highways, New York, 1997.

Lynch on Lynch, with Chris Rodley, London, 1999.

By LYNCH: articles—

Interview with Serge Daney and Charles Tesson, in Cahiers duCinéma (Paris), April 1981.

Interview with D. Chute, in Film Comment (New York), September/October 1986.

Interview with K. Jaehne and L. Bouzereau, in Cineaste (New York), vol. 15, no. 3, 1987.

Interview with A. Caron and M. Girard, in Séquences (Montreal), February 1987.

Interview with D. Marsh and A. Missler, in Cinema Papers (Melbourne), March 1987.

Interview with Jane Root, in Monthly Film Bulletin (London), April 1987.

Interview with D. Breskin, in Rolling Stone, September 6, 1990.

Interview with M. Ciment and H. Niogret, in Positif, October 1990.

"Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me: The Press Conference," with Scott Murray, in Cinema Papers (Fitzroy), August 1992.

"Naked Lynch," an interview with Geoff Andrew, in Time Out (London), 18 November 1992.

Interview with Bill Krohn and Vincent Ostria, in Cahiers du Cinéma (Paris), July-August 1994.

"A Passage from India," an interview with G. Solman, in Variety'sOn Production (Los Angeles), no. 2, 1997.

"David Lynch," an interview with Philippe Rouyer and Michael Henry, in Positif (Paris), January 1997.

"Lynch Law," an interview with D. Yaffe, in Village Voice (New York), 25 February 1997.

"Highway to Hell," an interview with Stephen Pizzello, in AmericanCinematographer (Hollywood), March 1997.

"The Road to Hell," an interview with Dominic Wells, in Time Out (London), 13 August 1997.

On LYNCH: books—

Kaleta, Kenneth C., David Lynch, New York, 1993.

Chion, Michel, and Julian, Robert, David Lynch, London, 1995.

Nochimson, Martha P., The Passion of David Lynch: Wild at Heart inHollywood, Austin, 1997.

On LYNCH: articles—

Hinson, H., "Dreamscapes," in American Film (Washington, D.C.), December 1984.

David Lynch section of Revue du Cinéma (Paris), February 1987.

Combs, Richard, "Crude Thoughts and Fierce Forces," in MonthlyFilm Bulletin (London), April 1987.

French, Sean, "The Heart of the Cavern," in Sight and Sound (London), Spring 1987.

"David Lynch," in Film Dope (London), June 1987.

McDonagh, M., "The Enigma of David Lynch," in Persistence ofVision (Maspeth, New York), Summer 1988.

Gehr, R., "The Angriest Painter in the World," in American Film (Washington, D.C.), April 1989.

Saada, N., "David Lynch," in Cahiers du Cinéma, June 1990.

Zimmer, J., "David Lynch," in Revue du Cinéma, July/August 1990.

Woodward, Robert B., "Wild at Heart . . . Weird on Top," in Empire (London), September 1990.

Hoberman, J., and Jonathan Rosenbaum, "Curse of the Cult People," in Film Comment, January/February 1991.

Sante, Luc, "The Rise of the Baroque Directors," in Vogue, September 1992.

Jankiewicz, P., "Lynch's Hall of Freaks," in Film Threat, October 1992.

Hampton, Howard, "David Lynch's Secret History of the United States," in Film Comment, May/June 1993.

Rastelli, D., "Non toccate la mia giacca," in Cineforum (Bergamo), July-August 1996.

Wyatt, J., "David Lynch Keeps His Head," in Premiere (Boulder), September 1996.

"Das Universum David Lynch," a dossier, in Zoom (Zürich), no. 3, March 1997.

Dossier, in Filmihullu (Helsinki), no. 4–5, 1997.

Biodrowski, S., "David Lynch," in Cinefantastique (Forest Park), no. 10, 1997.

Szebin, F.C. and Biodrowski, S., "David Lynch," in Cinefantastique (Forest Park), no. 12, 1997.

Leitch, Thomas M., "The Hitchcock Moment," in Hitchcock Annual (Gambier), 1997–98.

The undoubted perversity that runs throughout the works of David Lynch extends to his repeated and unexpected career turns: coming off the semi-underground Eraserhead to make the semi-respectable The Elephant Man with a distinguished British cast; then bouncing into a Dino de Laurentiis mega-budget science-fiction fiasco, Dune; creeping back with the seductive and elusive small-town mystery of Blue Velvet; capping that by transferring his uncompromising vision of lurking sexual violence to American network television in Twin Peaks; and alienating the viewers of that bizarre soap with the rambling, intermittently stupefying, road movie Wild at Heart. Although there are recognisable Lynchian elements, with both Eraserhead and Blue Velvet—his two most commercially and critically successful movies—leaking images and ideas into the pairs of movies that followed them up, Lynch has proved surprisingly difficult to pin down. Given one Lynch movie, it has been—until the slightly too self-plagiaristic Wild at Heart—almost impossible to predict the next step. A painter and animator—his first films are Svankmajer-style shorts The Grandmother and Alphabet—Lynch came into the film industry through the back door, converting his thesis movie into Eraserhead on a shooting schedule that stretched over some years and required the eternal soliciting of money from friends, like Sissy Spacek, who had gone on to do well.

Eraserhead is one of the rare cult movies that deserves its cult reputation, although it is a hard movie to sit still through for a second time around. Set in a monochrome fantasy world that suggests the slums of Oz, it follows a pompadoured drudge, Henry (John Nance), through his awful life in a decaying apartment building, with occasional bursts of light relief from the fungus-cheeked songstress behind the radiator, and winds up with two extraordinarily bizarre and horrid fantasy sequences, one in which Henry's head falls off and is mined for indiarubber to be used in pencil erasers, and the other in which he cuts apart his skinned fetus of a mutant child and is deluged with a literal tide of excrement. Without really being profound, the film manages to worm its way into the hearts of the college crowd, cannily appealing—in one of Lynch's trademarks—to intellectuals who relish the multiple allusions and evasive "meanings" of the film, and to horror movie fans who just like to go along with the extreme imagery. It was this combination, perhaps, that caught the eye of Mel Brooks' Brooksfilms, which was looking to branch into more serious work and tapped Lynch to bring its first foray, The Elephant Man, to the screen. This true story had been the basis of a successful Broadway play. But Lunch was given free reign to mine the historical record for inspiration instead as the film was not drawn from the play. With The Elephant Man, also in black and white and laden with the steamy industrial imagery of Eraserhead, Lynch, cued perhaps by the poignance of John Hurt's under-the-rubber performance and the presence of the sort of cast (Anthony Hopkins, John Gielgud, Freddie Jones, Michael Elphick) one would expect from some BBC-TV Masterpiece Theatre serial, opts for a more humanist approach, mellowing the sheer nastiness of the first film. In the finale, as the mutant John Merrck attends a lovingly recreated Victorian magic show, Lynch even pays homage to the gentle magician whose TheMan with the Indiarubber Head might be cited as a precursor to Eraserhead, Georges Méliès.

Dune is a folly by anyone's standards, and the re-cut television version—which Lynch opted to sign with the Director's Guild pseudonym Allan Smithee—is no help in sorting out the multiple plot confusions of Frank Herbert's pretentious and unfilmable science-fiction epic. Hoping for a fusion of Star Wars and Lawrence of Arabia, De Laurentiis—who stuck by Lynch throughout the troubled $40 million production—wound up with a turgid mess, overloaded with talented performers in nothing roles, that only spottily seems to have engaged Lynch's interest, mostly when there are monsters on screen or when Kenneth McMillan is campily overdoing his perverse and evil emperor act. Dune landed Lynch in the doldrums, and his comeback movie, also for the forgiving De Laurentiis, was very carefully crafted to evoke the virtues and cult commercial appeal of Eraserhead without seeming a throwback. Drawing on Shadow of a Doubt, Lynch made a small-town mystery that deigns to work on a plot level, and then shot it through with his own cruel insights into the teeming, insectoid nightmare that exists beneath the red, white, and blue prettiness of the setting, coaxing sinister meaning out of resonant pop songs like "Blue Velvet" and "In Dreams," and establishing the core of a repertory company—Kyle MacLachlan of Dune, Isabella Rossellini, Laura Dern—who would recur in his next projects. Blue Velvet, far more than the muddy Dune, established Lynch as a master of colour in addition to his black and white skills, and also, through his handling of human monster Dennis Hopper's abuse of Rossellini, as a chronicler of extreme emotions, often combining sex and violence in one disturbing, yet undeniably appealing package.

Twin Peaks, a television series Lynch devised and for which he directed the pilot film, is a strange offshoot of Blue Velvet, set in a similar town and with MacLachlan again the odd investigator of a crime the nature of which is hard to define. Although it lacks the explicit tone of the earlier film, in which Dennis Hopper is given to basic outbursts like "baby wants to fuck!," Twin Peaks is also insidiously fascinating, using the labyrinthine plot convolutions of the typical soap opera—among other things, the show is a lineal descendant of Peyton Place—in addition to the puzzle-solving twists of the murder mystery to probe under the surface of a folksy America of junk food and picket fences. As a reaction to the eerie restraint of Twin Peaks, Wild at Heart is an undisciplined road film which evokes Elvis in Nicolas Cage's subtly overwrought performance and straggles along towards its Wizard of Oz finale, passing by the high points of Lynch's career (featuring players and jokes from all his earlier movies) as it plays out its couple-on-the-run storyline in a surprisingly straightforward and above-board manner. With Willem Dafoe's dirty-teeth monster replacing Dennis Hopper's gas-sniffing gangster, Wild at Heart echoes the violent and sexual excesses of Blue Velvet, including one exploding head stunt out of The Evil Dead and many heavy-metal-scored, heavy-duty sex scenes, but suffers from its superficiality, predictability, and a cast of characters so unlikable that we don't give a damn about the fates of any of them. Notes critic Hen Hanke: "Wild at Heart is nothing but a con game—a filmic Emperor's New Clothes. At least that's what we hope it is, because of this is truly how Lynch views the world, he must be one of the most unhappy people on the planet."

Both a genuine artist (say his supporters) and a cunning commercial survivor, Lynch appeared—in the minds of many critics—to be one of the best hopes for cinema in the 1990s. As of 1995, however, his promise as a savior had yet to be fulfilled. Unable to get the illfated Twin Peaks out of his system after it went unceremoniously off the air without a resolution, Lynch launched a theatrical version of his TV show, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. Ironically, it turned out to be a prequel to the events portrayed in the series rather than a sequel, so to date we are still left without a resolution to the labyrinthine mysteries surrounding the puzzle of "who killed Laura Palmer?" Overlong and oddly underheated, it was a commercial bomb, even with hardcore Peaks fans.

Not just inclined to listen to the supporters who extol him as an artist but heed them as well, Lynch made his next film, Lost Highway, expressly for this rabid group, it seems. Based on a dream of Lynch's, the film unfolds with the logic of a dream — which to say, no logic at all. It's about a man who may or may not be an escapee from prison, who may or may not have killed his wife, and who may or may not be being pursued by the authorities, gangsters, and a host of bizarro Lynchian characters. As self-indulgent as many of Lynch's previous works, it's artsy-fartsy pretentiousness is a whole lot more difficult to defend, however.

By contrast, Lynch's next film, The Straight Story, seems almost like a rejection of everything his most rabid supporters hold dear about him. Superficially at least, it is the most un-Lynch-like film in the director's body of work: A gentle, life-affirming, straight-fromthe-heart, family-oriented tribute to the honesty, ideals, and tenacity of Middle America with a G rating and not a baroque or pretentious bone in its warm and fuzzy body.

—Kim Newman, updated by John McCarty