David Lynch, who directed off-kilter classics, dies at 78

Director David Lynch has died. His sinister, surreal vision of America made him a leading counterculture auteur in the 1980s and 1990s, with movies such as Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and Mulholland Drive, as well as the groundbreaking television series he co-created with Mark Frost, Twin Peaks.

Lynch's family shared the news of his death on Thursday in a Facebook post. He announced in 2024 he would no longer leave his home after a diagnosis of emphysema from a lifetime of smoking, and concerns about catching COVID-19.

Born in Missoula, Mont., in 1946, Lynch spent much of his childhood in Boise, Idaho. For the rest of his life, Lynch looked as if he had stepped out of the 1950s, with a messy pompadour of silver hair and simple outfits of slacks and white dress shirts, buttoned all the way to the top.

In his 2018 memoir, Room to Dream, Lynch said he grew up in "a super happy household" with tremendous freedom. But he recalled a haunting memory about riding bikes at night with his brother on a small, quiet street, when a naked woman emerged out of nowhere with a bloodied mouth. She walked towards the boys in a daze, and sat down on the curb.

That image could come straight from one of Lynch's movies. Over the course of his life, he created dozens of works ranging from full-length films to television series to short animation to commercials for luxury perfumes.

His first feature, from 1977, was a black-and-white surreal horror movie. Eraserhead centers on a stressed-out man who finds himself thrust into fatherhood, with a sickly newborn who barely resembles a human child.

Lynch started making it while in his mid-20s, as a student at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. The film initially got mixed reviews but became a stealth hit in late-night movie houses.

"When I get an idea, I see it, hear it, feel it, it's like it's just there in your brain," Lynch told NPR in 2007. "There's an idea and it comes to life. You fall in love with some of these ideas."

Lynch's mainstream breakthrough was another black-and-white film, The Elephant Man, starring Anthony Hopkins and John Hurt. Based on the real life experiences of a British man with severe deformities, the 1980 movie was nominated for eight Academy Awards.

But even with those accolades, Lynch did not get final cut for his film version of Dune, based on Frank Herbert's science fiction novel. He hated the end result that was released in 1984, and told NPR he learned the hard way to always have creative control.

His Blue Velvet, from 1986, is a full expression of the director's imagination. A severed ear in a field leads to a twisted mystery filled with sexual violence and driven by a criminal underworld. Cultural critic Melanie McFarland told NPR before the director's death that he was obsessed with images of American innocence and what hid beneath idealized façades of normality.

"The girl with the saddle shoes, the homecoming queen, the clean-cut FBI agent," she said, pointing to Twin Peaks as an example.

Twin Peaks originally ran on ABC for only two seasons, in 1990 and 1991. The drama focused on the murder of a high school student, Laura Palmer, and the investigation by a quirky FBI agent played by Kyle MacLachlan. Lynch co-created the series with Mark Frost, who previously wrote for the series Hill Street Blues.

Lynch later made film versions of Twin Peaks, and in 2017, he revived the franchise with a limited series for Showtime.

Twin Peaks' mashup of supernatural drama, mystery, and soap opera was innovative at the time, McFarland said, transforming television in its cinematic complexity, and influencing later shows such as Mad Men, The Sopranos, and Six Feet Under.

One of Lynch's most celebrated films came out in 2001. "Mulholland Drive is a fairly characteristic David Lynch picture, which is to say it's moody, atmospheric and gorgeous to look at," Bob Mondello noted in his NPR review, observing that "it also takes a flying leap through the looking glass towards the end."

"I must say I've been thinking about this movie a lot more than I've thought about anything else that's come out of Hollywood in a while," he said. "Lynch really does know how to wrap you up in a fantasy. And when he sends this one spiraling through more curves than you'll find on the real Mulholland Drive, the journey is pretty intriguing, even if it leaves you with no idea where you've been."

Over the years, Lynch often spoke about his devotion to transcendental meditation, which he said he practiced twice a day for more than five decades. He built furniture, and exhibited his paintings in galleries around the world. In 2005, he started the David Lynch Foundation to teach transcendental meditation to adults and children.

But more than anything, the director will be remembered for his unconventional style that's now known as "Lynchian."