David Lynch started making films because he wanted his paintings to move
David Lynch trained as a painter and wished his canvases could move. So he bought the cheapest 16mm camera he could find and spent $150 on a looping short he summed up as growth, fire and vomit. It shared first prize at his art school and set him on a path to Twin Peaks.
Lynch was born in Missoula, Montana, on 20 January 1946. His father was a research scientist for the US Department of Agriculture, and the family moved wherever he was posted, from Idaho and Washington to North Carolina and Virginia. Lynch remembered being left in tall forests by his father's Forest Service truck and finding it strangely comforting. He hated school, calling it a crime against the young, yet still reached Eagle Scout.
A painter named Bushnell Keeler, the father of a friend, handed him Robert Henri's book The Art Spirit, and Lynch resolved to live what he called the art life. Art school in Boston bored him; a planned three-year trip to study under Oskar Kokoschka collapsed after two weeks when the painter proved unavailable in Salzburg. He landed instead at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, admiring the work of Francis Bacon.
Philadelphia marked him more than anywhere. He married fellow student Peggy Reavey in 1967, their daughter Jennifer arrived the next year, and their neighbourhood was frightening: their house was burgled three days after they moved in, windows were shot out and a car stolen. Lynch called the city the biggest influence of his life. His short The Alphabet mixed animation with live action, and its sound used a broken tape recorder capturing Jennifer's crying. The American Film Institute then funded The Grandmother, in which an ignored child raises a grandmother from a seed to look after him.
His first feature, Eraserhead, took five years because of money problems and became a midnight-movie favourite. The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive each earned him a Best Director nomination, and Wild at Heart won the Palme d'Or, though he disowned Dune after studio meddling. Twin Peaks, co-created with Mark Frost, reshaped television. A devoted practitioner of Transcendental Meditation and a lifelong chain smoker, he died in January 2025 after being evacuated from his home during the Los Angeles wildfires.
Source: David Lynch
