David Lynch (born January 20, 1946, Missoula, Montana, U.S.) is an American filmmaker and screenwriter who is known for his uniquely disturbing and mind-bending visual work. His films juxtapose the cheerfully mundane with the shockingly macabre and often defy explanation.
Lynch’s father was a research scientist with the U.S. Forest Service, and the family moved frequently during Lynch’s childhood. His early ambition was to become a painter, and, after graduating from high school (1964) in Alexandria, Virginia, he enrolled at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He later (1965–69) studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. There he created his first film, a 60-second animation entitled Six Men Getting Sick (1967), for an experimental painting and sculpture contest. In 1970 Lynch became a student at the American Film Institute’s Center for Advanced Film Studies (later the AFI Conservatory), where he began working on his first feature film, Eraserhead (1977). Shot over a period of a few years, the hallucinatory film baffled and repelled critics and many viewers, but it eventually became a cult favourite on the midnight movie circuit.
The film’s undeniable artistry, however, led to Lynch’s being hired to direct the critically acclaimed The Elephant Man (1980), based on the real-life Joseph Merrick, who suffered from a condition that caused massive disfigurement. The film won several awards, and Lynch was nominated for Academy Awards for best director and for adapted screenplay. Dino De Laurentiis then hired Lynch to adapt and direct the science-fiction epic Dune (1984), a film adaptation of the classic novel by Frank Herbert that was a critical and box-office failure. Lynch conceived, wrote, and directed Blue Velvet (1986), an unsettling and surreal mystery that was widely regarded as a masterpiece and earned him another Oscar nomination for best director. He came to wide popular notice, however, with the deeply strange television mystery/soap opera Twin Peaks (1990–91), which he created with Mark Frost. The show earned a devoted following and became a cultural touchstone.
Wild at Heart (1990), Lynch’s adaptation of Barry Gifford’s novel about a young couple who take to the road, pursued by various hit men, won the Palm d’Or at the Cannes film festival. However, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), a prequel to the events of the TV show, was less well received. His later films included Lost Highway (1997) and The Straight Story (1999), an unexpectedly simple film based on a true story about an elderly man who rides a lawn mower several hundred miles to visit his brother. In 2001 Lynch wrote and directed Mulholland Drive, a surrealist thriller set in Hollywood that was originally intended to be a TV series. He was named best director at Cannes and later nominated for an Oscar. He also wrote and directed Inland Empire (2006) as well as numerous short films, and in 2017 he revived the TV series Twin Peaks.
In addition to writing and directing, Lynch often served as sound designer and wrote music for his films. Beginning in 2009, he produced an Internet documentary series, Interview Project. He also continued to express himself as a painter, photographer, and installation artist, and his works were exhibited in a retrospective in Paris in 2007. Room to Dream, a memoir/biography that he wrote with Kristine McKenna, was published in 2018. He received an honorary Academy Award for lifetime achievement in 2019.