American filmmaker, author, and artist David Lynch, who co-created the ground-breaking television series “Twin Peaks” and had Oscar nominations for best director for Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man, and Mulholland Drive, passed away on Thursday at the age of 78, according to his family.
A statement posted on Lynch’s Facebook page read, “We, his family, regret to inform you of the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch.”
Now that he’s gone, there’s a huge void in the globe. However, he would advise, “Avoid focusing on the hole and instead keep your eyes on the doughnut.”
Lynch was regarded as one of the most avant-garde filmmakers of his generation and a master of surrealism for his visually gorgeous, unsettling, and unintelligible movies that were full of dream sequences and strange imagery.
In recognition of his lifetime accomplishments, he was given an honorary Academy Award in 2019.
The mysterious artist and follower of transcendental meditation did not want to explain his intricate, perplexing films, which featured the mystery Lost Highway in 1997, the horror film Eraserhead in 1977, and Wild at Heart, the 1990 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or winner.
“Everything has its own language, whether it is a painting or a movie, and it is improper to attempt to convey the same idea in words. In an interview with The Guardian newspaper in 2018, he stated, “The words are not there.”
His filming technique gave rise to the word Lynchian, which Vanity Fair magazine characterized as sluggish, eerie, and strange. Lynch blended the eerie and unsettling into the everyday in his films, and
Lynch claimed that in addition to the plot, he was also concerned in the ambiance of a movie, which is established by the combination of music and visuals.
In 1990, the New York Times described him as “perhaps Hollywood’s most revered eccentric, sort of a psychopathic Norman Rockwell,” because to his taste in hazardous, frequently horrific material and his eye for the ridiculous detail that brings a scene into stunning relief.
Icon of the counterculture
Despite growing up to become a counterculture star, Lynch, a former Eagle Scout who producer Mel Brooks famously referred to as “Jimmy Stewart from Mars,” had his roots firmly established in small-town, wholesome America.
David Keith Lynch, the oldest of three children, was born in Missoula, Montana, on January 20, 1946. The family moved around a lot while his father was employed at the US Department of Agriculture. Lynch previously said that his early years were spent in a “very beautiful, sort of perfect world.”
But in the 1960s, while studying art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, he lived with his wife and infant daughter in a dilapidated, crime-ridden part of Philadelphia and came into contact with the seedier side of America. According to him, the city had the greatest impact on his life.
Eraserhead, his eerie, hallucinogenic debut film that became a midnight movie theater cult favorite, was inspired by the event. The Elephant Man’s producer, Brooks, saw the movie and decided to recruit Lynch to helm it.
In 1981, The Elephant Man, which tells the story of a man who was terribly deformed in Victorian London, received eight Academy Award nominations. It brought Lynch into the public eye even though it didn’t win an Oscar. However, Dune, his subsequent science fiction epic, failed miserably at the box office in 1984.
With Blue Velvet, which explored the enigmatic underground of a small North Carolina town, Lynch returned to the top two years later. It was regarded by several critics as both his masterpiece and the decade’s best movie.
“Blue Velvet is an example of something that has never been seen before and probably won’t be seen again: an underground film produced with Hollywood resources and expertise. The mainstream time is midnight. The Chicago Tribune’s Dave Kehr wrote in his 1986
Lynch’s 2001 Hollywood mystery Mulholland Drive started off as a TV pilot before being canceled by the network and eventually making its big-screen debut. According to a 2016 BBC survey of 177 reviewers worldwide, it is the best movie of the twenty-first century to date.
Lynch, a real Renaissance guy, dedicated his later years to art, short films, documentaries, and a YouTube channel. In addition to his 2018 biography Room to Dream, he published books, music videos, soundtracks, and albums. The celebrated filmmaker fathered four children and was married four times.
“I get to work on things I want to work on, and I love what I do.” In a 2018 interview with Vulture.com, he stated, “I wish everyone had that opportunity.”
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