David Lynch
☼ Born on 20 December 1946, in Missoula, Montana, USA
Biography
Born in precisely the kind of small-town American setting so familiar from his films, David Lynch spent his childhood being shunted from one state to another as his research scientist father kept getting relocated. He attended various art schools, married Peggy Lynch and then fathered future director Jennifer Lynch shortly after he turned 21. That experience, plus attending art school in a particularly violent and run-down area of Philadelphia, inspired Eraserhead (1977), a film that he began in the early 1970s (after a couple of shorts) and which he would work on obsessively for five years. The final film was initially judged to be almost unreleasable weird, but thanks to the efforts of distributor Ben Barenholtz, it secured a cult following and enabled Lynch to make his first mainstream film (in an unlikely alliance with Mel Brooks), though The Elephant Man (1980) was shot through with his unique sensibility. Its enormous critical and commercial success led to Dune (1984), a hugely expensive commercial disaster, but Lynch redeemed himself with the now classic Blue Velvet (1986), his most personal and original work since his debut. He subsequently won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival with the dark, violent road movie Wild at Heart (1990), and achieved a huge cult following with his surreal TV series Twin Peaks (1990), which he adapted for the big screen, though his comedy series On the Air (1992) was less successful. He also draws comic strips and has devised multimedia
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stage events with regular composer Angelo Badalamenti. He had a much-publicized affair with Isabella Rossellini in the late 1980s.
In the role of actor
Lynch/Oz – Fantasia 2022 (27/07/2022)
The connection between the films of David Lynch and his obsession with The Wizard of Oz is explored in Lynch/Oz. The Wizard of Oz is considered the quintessential American fairytale and has been an obsession of David Lynch throughout his career. From direct homages, such as the appearance of Glynda in 1990’s Wild at Heart, […]
Moby Doc (27/05/2021)
The life and career of the electronic music pioneer are told in surrealist fashion in Moby Doc. Richard Melville Hall, better known by his stage name of Moby, was in 1965 in Harlem, New York. Suffering from an unhappy childhood and taking solace in the family pets, Moby learned from an early age that while […]
David Lynch: The Art Life (09/04/2017)
David Lynch tells the story of his early career as an artist in David Lynch: The Art Life. Best known for the films Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, and Mulholland Dr and the television series Twin Peaks, David Lynch considers himself first and foremost to be a painter. Following Lynch at his home, the filmmaker tells the story of his […]