We got the news last night: David Lynch has passed away at 78. Though he hadn’t directed a feature film since Inland Empire in 2006, and we knew he’d been battling emphysema after a lifetime of smoking, the announcement still came as a shock. Music—and sound in general—were always central to his work. His legendary collaboration with Angelo Badalamenti, who also left us a few years ago, stands as one of the all-time great director-composer partnerships, right up there with Hitchcock and Bernard Herrmann, Tim Burton and Danny Elfman, or Spielberg and John Williams.
Lynch was a total artist. While most know him as a filmmaker, he was also a painter, sculptor, carpenter, photographer, and eve, musician, releasing several albums over the years. Yet, he only played live once—on November 11, 2002, at the Olympia in Paris. Alongside John Neff and a handful of musicians, Lynch performed tracks from his then-new album ƎU⅃ᗺᗷOᗷ. The set lasted just 30 minutes, but it was unforgettable. The YouTube clips below are the only surviving glimpses of that night.
Of course, Lynch’s most enduring legacy lies in his films. Eraserhead remains one of the most stunning debut features ever made—an entrancing blend of surrealism and expressionism that’s as unsettling today as it was over 45 years ago. Shot in haunting black and white, it explores the fears of fatherhood with dreamlike intensity. The Elephant Man channeled Lynch’s unique style into a classical narrative, creating a timeless drama. With Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart, he peeled back the shiny veneer of Americana to expose a dreamlike, brutal, and illogical underworld where ideas felt as real as people. He became a household name with Twin Peaks, a series he revisited twice, but for me, his true masterpiece is 1997’s Lost Highway. It’s Lynch distilled—narratively, visually, and aurally.
Even his outliers are fascinating. The Straight Story (1999), often misunderstood as a bid for mainstream success, is quintessential Lynch: tender and naive on the surface, yet hiding dark undercurrents beneath its depiction of rural America. Even his misstep with Dune deserves a watch—it’s flawed (hell, it's downright bad) but undeniably Lynchian.
And now, David Lynch is gone. He’s entered the dreamworld he explored so vividly throughout his career. Rumors suggest being displaced by the L.A. fires hastened his passing. Despite not directing a film in nearly two decades, Lynch never stopped creating. His surreal, heartfelt weekly weather reports remained a delight, and one of his final standout appearances was as John Ford in Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans, mentoring a young Spielberg stand-in in a way only Lynch could.
There’s a common misconception about Lynch. Because his work was often abstract, dark, and experimental, some dismissed him as a pretentious auteur making films for an elitist audience. But everything he created came from a place of raw emotion. In the Twin Peaks revival, reprising his role as the hard-of-hearing FBI deputy director Gordon Cole, Lynch delivered a line that encapsulates his philosophy—and his greatest gift to us:
"Fix your hearts or die."
