David Lynch, the groundbreaking director who gained a cult following for his unsettling portraits of American life died January this year. He was 78 years old. From his beginnings as an art student making experimental short films, to the cult success of his surreal first feature Eraserhead (1977), Lynch acquired a devoted after with a string of award-winning films, including Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and Mulholland Drive, as well as the landmark TV show Twin Peaks, a surrealistic murder drama with all the signature elements of Lynch’s directorial style: eccentric characters, supernatural elements, campy melodrama mixed with offbeat humor. In an era that rewards movies that are obvious, Lynch’s movies are anything but. Worse, he persisted in making films that are works of art in an industry that disdains not just art — unless it hangs pretty on walls — but also artists who don’t conform to its norms. Not surprisingly, his relationship with Hollywood was difficult, and that’s because Lynch never seemed part of it artistically even when he made more establishment-consecrated films.
Slowly, Lynch got a bit more respect from film critics, receiving three best director Oscar nominations (for Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man and Mulholland Drive) though he never won any. In 2019, the academy bestowed him with an honorary Oscar for his “creative contributions to cinema.” The audience gave him a standing ovation.
Quotes from David Lynch
On making pictures
“It was a quiet process, going from inside me to the screen. I’d get something on film, get it paced a certain way, add the right sounds, and then I’d be able to say if it worked or not. Now, just to get to that point, there’s a million times more talking. And in Hollywood, if you can’t write your ideas down, or if you can pitch them, or if they’re so abstract they can’t be pitched properly, then they don’t have a chance of surviving. Abstract things are important to a film, but very few people get the chance to really go all out with cinema. Creations are an extension of yourself, and you go out on a limb whenever you create anything. It’s a risk.”
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“People get used to films that pretty much explains itself one-hundred percent, and they kind of turn off that beautiful thing of intuition when they’re looking at a film that has some abstractions. Some people on the other hand, love these abstractions, and it gives them room to dream. An abstraction is a thing that cinema can say. And it’s so beautiful, these pictures and sounds flowing along together in time, in a sequence, making a thing that can only really be said in cinema.”
Musings about life
“Just slow things down and it becomes more beautiful.”
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“I learned that just beneath the surface, there’s another world and still different worlds as you dig deeper.”
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“Inside, we are ageless … and when we talk to ourselves, it’s the same age of the person we were talking to when we were little. It’s the body that is changing around that ageless center.”
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“We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experience is a narrowing of the imagination.”
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“The day you catch an idea you fall in love with, even a small one, is a beautiful day.”
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“Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fishes are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.”
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“If you can expand the container you’re fishing in – your consciousness – you can get bigger fish.”
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“Don’t fight the darkness. Don’t even worry about the darkness. Turn on the light and the darkness goes. Turn up that light of pure consciousness and negativity goes.”
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“The world is, sort of, as it is. The way you go through it changes.”
