Pioneering filmmaker, writer, artist and musician Davis Lynch, who upended storytelling norms with Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, Mullholland Drive and Eraserhead and introduced thousands to the benefits of Transcendental Meditation through his David Lynch Foundation, had died at the age of 78, according to an announcement on his Facebook page.
“We would appreciate some privacy at this time,” the message reads. “There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.’ It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.”
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No cause of death was provided, although Lynch announced in August that he could no longer leave his Los Angeles home due to emphysema. He was a heavy smoker for many years.
Lynch was born in Missoula, Mt., on Jan. 20, 1946, but moved to Idaho and Washington state before his family settled in Virginia. He dropped out of New York’s Cooper Union and Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts before making his first short in 1966, the four-minute Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times). The experience led him to apply to and be accepted the American Film Institute.
His debut film, the surreal, black-and-white Eraserhead, was released in 1977 and quickly became a cult classic. One of its many unlikely champions was Mel Brooks, who hired him to direct the true story of the 19th century British sideshow performer Joseph Merrick, which was released as 1980’s The Elephant Man. It was nominated for eight Academy Awards and brought Lynch further into the corporate world of Hollywood, although his relationship with the more commercial side of the business was already tenuous when he agreed to oversee an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s supposedly unfilmable sci-fi classic Dune.
“I always knew [producer] Dino [DeLaurentis] had final cut on Dune, and because of that I started selling out before we even started shooting,” he wrote in his 2018 memoir Room To Dream. “It was pathetic is what it was, but it was the only way I could survive.” The film bombed upon its 1984 release, but Lynch forged an enduring working relationship during it with actor Kyle McLachlan, who starred in the auteur’s beloved 1986 movie Blue Velvet and later as Special Agent Dale Cooper in the Twin Peaks television and film universe.
Lynch received a Governors Award from the Motion Picture Academy in 2019. Of late, he devoted himself to creative projects at home, including painting, woodworking and a daily Los Angeles weather report he posted on social media.
This is a developing story.
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