David Lynch died today at age 78. He was one of the great auteurs, maybe one of the last. His films were wild at heart, to use one of his titles. Anything could happen in them. By accident, years ago, I wound watching one of his denser projects, “Inland Empire,” at Lincoln Center sitting next to Isabella Rossellini. It was mind blowing.
But everything Lynch did had that quality. In “Twin Peaks Season 3” I disliked most of it. But there’s that one episode, number 8, about the Trinity atomic bomb and creation and everything that followed — it’s called “Gotta Light?” and it’s extraordinary. I wrote at the time it might have been the best best hour of television ever. It’s the “Oppeneheimer” story told from inside out.
Lynch’s final appearance was as an actor in Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans.” He’s a surprise at the end, playing director John Ford. There should have been a special award for him somewhere, he was so precisely good.
Today there are many tributes to him. Kyle Maclachlan wrote a beautiful one. Kyle starred in the original “Dune,” in “Blue Velvet,” and “Twin Peaks.” He said:
“Forty-two years ago, for reasons beyond my comprehension, David Lynch plucked me out of obscurity to star in his first and last big budget movie. He clearly saw something in me that even I didn’t recognize. I owe my entire career, and life really, to his vision.
Â
What I saw in him was an enigmatic and intuitive man with a creative ocean bursting forth inside of him. He was in touch with something the rest of us wish we could get to.
Â
Our friendship blossomed on Blue Velvet and then Twin Peaks and I always found him to be the most authentically alive person I’d ever met.”
RIP David Lynch.
Â
