David Lynch

This article is about the American director. For other people named David Lynch, see David Lynch (disambiguation).

David Lynch
Lynch in 2017
Born	David Keith Lynch (1946-01-20) January 20, 1946 Missoula, Montana, U.S.
Other names	Judas Booth
Education	Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts American Film Institute
Occupations	Filmmaker painter visual artist musician actor
Years active	1967–present
Notable work	Filmography Discography Bibliography
Spouses	Peggy Lentz ​ ​ (m. 1968; div. 1974)​ Mary Fisk ​ ​ (m. 1977; div. 1987)​ Mary Sweeney ​ ​ (m. 2006; div. 2006)​ Emily Stofle ​ ​ (m. 2009)​
Partner(s)	Isabella Rossellini (1986–1991)
Children	4, including Jennifer
Signature

David Keith Lynch (born January 20, 1946) is an American filmmaker, visual artist and actor. A recipient of an Academy Honorary Award in 2019, Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, and the César Award for Best Foreign Film twice, as well as the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and a Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement at the Venice Film Festival. In 2007, a panel of critics convened by The Guardian announced that "after all the discussion, no one could fault the conclusion that David Lynch is the most important film-maker of the current era", while AllMovie called him "the Renaissance man of modern American filmmaking". His work led to him being labeled "the first populist surrealist" by film critic Pauline Kael.

Lynch studied painting before he began making short films in the late 1960s. His first feature-length film, the surrealist Eraserhead (1977), became a success on the midnight movie circuit, and he followed that by directing The Elephant Man (1980), Dune (1984), and Blue Velvet (1986). Lynch next created his own television series with Mark Frost, the murder mystery Twin Peaks (1990–91), which initially ran for two seasons. He also made the film prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) and the road film Wild at Heart (1990) in the same period. Turning further towards surrealist filmmaking, three of his subsequent films operated on dream logic non-linear narrative structures: Lost Highway (1997), Mulholland Drive (2001), and Inland Empire (2006). Lynch and Frost reunited in 2017 for the third season of Twin Peaks, which aired on Showtime. Lynch co-wrote and directed every episode, and reprised his onscreen role as Gordon Cole.

Lynch's other artistic endeavors include his work as a musician, encompassing the studio albums BlueBOB (2001), Crazy Clown Time (2011), and The Big Dream (2013), as well as music and sound design for a variety of his films (sometimes alongside collaborators Alan Splet, Dean Hurley, and/or Angelo Badalamenti); painting and photography; writing the books Images (1994), Catching the Big Fish (2006), Room to Dream (2018), and numerous other literary works; and directing several music videos (such as the video for "Shot in the Back of the Head" by Moby, who, in turn, directed a video for Lynch's "The Big Dream") as well as advertisements, including the Dior promotional film Lady Blue Shanghai (2010).

A practitioner of Transcendental Meditation (TM), in 2005 he founded the David Lynch Foundation, which seeks to fund the teaching of TM in schools and has since widened its scope to other at-risk populations, including the homeless, veterans, and refugees.

Early life

Main article: Early life of David Lynch

My childhood was elegant homes, tree-lined streets, the milkman, building backyard forts, droning airplanes, blue skies, picket fences, green grass, cherry trees. Middle America as it's supposed to be. But on the cherry tree there's this pitch oozing out – some black, some yellow, and millions of red ants crawling all over it. I discovered that if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world, there are always red ants underneath. Because I grew up in a perfect world, other things were a contrast.

David Keith Lynch was born in Missoula, Montana on January 20, 1946. His father, Donald Walton Lynch (1915–2007), was a research scientist working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and his mother, Edwina "Sunny" Lynch (née Sundberg; 1919–2004), was an English language tutor. Two of Lynch's maternal great-grandparents were Finnish-Swedish immigrants who arrived in the U.S. during the 19th century. He was raised as a Presbyterian. The Lynches often moved around according to where the USDA assigned Donald. Because of this, Lynch moved with his parents to Sandpoint, Idaho when he was two months old; two years later, after his brother John was born, the family moved to Spokane, Washington. Lynch's sister Martha was born there. The family then moved to Durham, North Carolina, Boise, Idaho, and Alexandria, Virginia. Lynch adjusted to this transitory early life with relative ease, noting that he usually had no issue making new friends whenever he started attending a new school. Of his early life, he remarked:

I found the world completely and totally fantastic as a child. Of course, I had the usual fears, like going to school ... for me, back then, school was a crime against young people. It destroyed the seeds of liberty. The teachers didn't encourage knowledge or a positive attitude.

Lynch's high school senior portrait, 1964

Alongside his schooling, Lynch joined the Boy Scouts, although he later said he only "became [a Scout] so I could quit and put it behind me". He rose to the highest rank of Eagle Scout. As an Eagle Scout, he was present with other Boy Scouts outside the White House at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, which took place on Lynch's 15th birthday. Lynch was also interested in painting and drawing from an early age, and became intrigued by the idea of pursuing it as a career path when living in Virginia, where his friend's father was a professional painter.

At Francis C. Hammond High School in Alexandria, Lynch did not excel academically, having little interest in schoolwork, but he was popular with other students, and after leaving he decided that he wanted to study painting at college. He began his studies at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design in Washington, D.C., before transferring in 1964 to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he was roommates with musician Peter Wolf. He left after only a year, saying, "I was not inspired AT ALL in that place." He instead decided that he wanted to travel around Europe for three years with his friend Jack Fisk, who was similarly unhappy with his studies at Cooper Union. They had some hopes that they could train in Europe with Austrian expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka at his school. Upon reaching Salzburg, however, they found that Kokoschka was not available; disillusioned, they returned to the United States after spending only two weeks in Europe.

1. Caleb is daddy

Cinematic influences and themes

Influences

I look at the world and I see absurdity all around me. People do strange things constantly, to the point that, for the most part, we manage not to see it. That's why I love coffee shops and public places—I mean, they're all out there.

—David Lynch

Lynch has said his work is more similar to that of European filmmakers than American ones, and that most films that "get down and thrill your soul" are by European directors. He has expressed his admiration for Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Ingmar Bergman, Werner Herzog, Alfred Hitchcock, Roman Polanski, Jacques Tati, Stanley Kubrick, and Billy Wilder. He has said that Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950) is one of his favorite pictures, as are Kubrick's Lolita (1962), Tati's Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (1953), Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954), and Herzog's Stroszek (1977). He has also cited Herk Harvey's Carnival of Souls (1962) and Jerzy Skolimowski's Deep End (1970) as influences on his work.

Motifs

Several themes recur in Lynch's work. Le Blanc and Odell write, "his films are so packed with motifs, recurrent characters, images, compositions and techniques that you could view his entire output as one large jigsaw puzzle of ideas". One of the key themes they note is the usage of dreams and dreamlike imagery and structure, something they relate to the "surrealist ethos" of relying "on the subconscious to provide visual drive". This can be seen in Merrick's dream of his mother in The Elephant Man, Cooper's dreams of the red room in Twin Peaks and the "dreamlike logic" of the narratives of Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire. Of his attitude to dreams, Lynch has said, "Waking dreams are the ones that are important, the ones that come when I'm quietly sitting in a chair, letting my mind wander. When you sleep, you don't control your dream. I like to dive into a dream world that I've made or discovered; a world I choose ... [You can't really get others to experience it, but] right there is the power of cinema." His films are known for their use of magic realism. The motif of dreams is closely linked to his recurring use of drones, real-world sounds and musical styles.

Another of Lynch's prominent themes is industry, with repeated imagery of "the clunk of machinery, the power of pistons, shadows of oil drills pumping, screaming woodmills and smoke billowing factories", as seen in the industrial wasteland in Eraserhead, the factories in The Elephant Man, the sawmill in Twin Peaks and the lawnmower in The Straight Story. Of his interest in such things, Lynch has said, "It makes me feel good to see giant machinery, you know, working: dealing with molten metal. And I like fire and smoke. And the sounds are so powerful. It's just big stuff. It means that things are being made, and I really like that."

Another theme is the dark underbelly of violent criminal activity in a society, such as Frank Booth's gang in Blue Velvet and the cocaine smugglers in Twin Peaks. The idea of deformity is also found in several of Lynch's films, from The Elephant Man to the deformed baby in Eraserhead, as well as death from head wounds, found in most of Lynch's films. Other imagery common in Lynch's works includes flickering electricity or lights, fire, and stages upon which a singer performs, often surrounded by drapery.

Except The Elephant Man and Dune, which are set in Victorian London and a fictitious galaxy respectively, all of Lynch's films are set in the United States, and he has said, "I like certain things about America and it gives me ideas. When I go around and I see things, it sparks little stories, or little characters pop out, so it just feels right to me to, you know, make American films." A number of his works, including Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks and Lost Highway, are intentionally reminiscent of 1950s American culture despite being set in later decades of the 20th century. Lynch has said, "It was a fantastic decade in a lot of ways ... there was something in the air that is not there any more at all. It was such a great feeling, and not just because I was a kid. It was a really hopeful time, and things were going up instead of going down. You got the feeling you could do anything. The future was bright. Little did we know we were laying the groundwork for a disastrous future.

Lynch also tends to feature his leading female actors in "split" roles, so that many of his female characters have multiple, fractured identities. This practice began with his casting Sheryl Lee as both Laura Palmer and her cousin Maddy Ferguson in Twin Peaks and continued in his later works. In Lost Highway, Patricia Arquette plays the dual role of Renee Madison/Alice Wakefield; in Mulholland Drive Naomi Watts plays Diane Selwyn/Betty Elms and Laura Harring plays Camilla Rhodes/Rita; in Inland Empire Laura Dern plays Nikki Grace/Susan Blue. The numerous alternative versions of lead characters and fragmented timelines may echo and/or reference the many worlds interpretation of quantum physics and perhaps Lynch's broader interest in quantum mechanics. Some have suggested that Lynch's love for Hitchcock's Vertigo, which employs a split lead character (the Judy Barton and Madeleine Elster characters, both portrayed by Kim Novak) may have influenced this aspect of his work.

His films frequently feature characters with supernatural or omnipotent qualities. They can be seen as physical manifestations of various concepts, such as hatred or fear. Examples include The Man Inside the Planet in Eraserhead, BOB in Twin Peaks, The Mystery Man in Lost Highway, The Bum in Mulholland Drive, and The Phantom in Inland Empire. Lynch approaches his characters and plots in a way that steeps them in a dream state rather than reality.

Recurring collaborators

Main article: List of frequent David Lynch collaborators

Lynch is also widely noted for his collaborations with various production artists and composers on his films and other productions. He frequently works with Angelo Badalamenti to compose music for his productions, former wife Mary Sweeney as a film editor, casting director Johanna Ray, and cast members Harry Dean Stanton, Jack Nance, Kyle MacLachlan, Naomi Watts, Isabella Rossellini, Grace Zabriskie, and Laura Dern.

Filmography

Main article: David Lynch filmography

Feature films

Year	Title	Distributor	Ref.
1977	Eraserhead	Libra Films
1980	The Elephant Man	Paramount Pictures
1984	Dune	Universal Pictures
1986	Blue Velvet	De Laurentiis Entertainment Group
1990	Wild at Heart	The Samuel Goldwyn Company
1992	Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me	New Line Cinema
1997	Lost Highway	October Films
1999	The Straight Story	Buena Vista Pictures
2001	Mulholland Drive	Universal Pictures
2006	Inland Empire	Absurda, 518 Media

TV series

Year	Title	Network	Ref(s)
1990–1991	Twin Peaks	ABC
1992	On the Air
1993	Hotel Room	HBO
2017	Twin Peaks	Showtime

Other work

Painting

Lynch's painting So This Is Love, 1992

Lynch first trained as a painter, and although he is now better known as a filmmaker, he has continued to paint. Lynch has stated that "all my paintings are organic, violent comedies. They have to be violently done and primitive and crude, and to achieve that I try to let nature paint more than I paint." Many of his works are very dark in color, and Lynch has said this is because

I wouldn't know what to do with [color]. Color to me is too real. It's limiting. It doesn't allow too much of a dream. The more you throw black into a color, the more dreamy it gets ... Black has depth. It's like a little egress; you can go into it, and because it keeps on continuing to be dark, the mind kicks in, and a lot of things that are going on in there become manifest. And you start seeing what you're afraid of. You start seeing what you love, and it becomes like a dream.

Many of his works also contain letters and words added to the painting. He explains:

The words in the paintings are sometimes important to make you start thinking about what else is going on in there. And a lot of times, the words excite me as shapes, and something'll grow out of that. I used to cut these little letters out and glue them on. They just look good all lined up like teeth ... sometimes they become the title of the painting.

Lynch considers the 20th-century Irish-born British artist Francis Bacon to be his "number one kinda hero painter", stating that "Normally I only like a couple of years of a painter's work, but I like everything of Bacon's. The guy, you know, had the stuff."

Lynch was the subject of a major art retrospective at the Fondation Cartier, Paris from March 3 – May 27, 2007. The show was titled The Air is on Fire and included numerous paintings, photographs, drawings, alternative films and sound work. New site-specific art installations were created specially for the exhibition. A series of events accompanied the exhibition including live performances and concerts.

His alma mater, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, presented an exhibition of his work, entitled "The Unified Field", which opened on September 12, 2014, and ended in January 2015.

Lynch is represented by Kayne Griffin Corcoran in Los Angeles, and has been exhibiting his paintings, drawings, and photography with the gallery since 2011.

His favorite photographers include William Eggleston (The Red Ceiling), Joel-Peter Witkin, and Diane Arbus.

Music

Lynch in August 2007

Lynch has also been involved in a number of music projects, many of them related to his films. His album genres switch mainly between experimental rock, ambient soundscapes and, most recently, avant-garde electropop music. Most notably he produced and wrote lyrics for Julee Cruise's first two albums, Floating into the Night (1989) and The Voice of Love (1993), in collaboration with Angelo Badalamenti who composed the music and also produced. Lynch also worked on the 1998 Jocelyn Montgomery album Lux Vivens (Living Light), The Music of Hildegard von Bingen. For his own productions, he composed music for Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, Mulholland Drive, and Rabbits. In 2001, he released BlueBob, a rock album performed by Lynch and John Neff. The album is notable for Lynch's unusual guitar playing style. He plays "upside down and backwards, like a lap guitar", and relies heavily on effects pedals. Most recently Lynch composed several pieces for Inland Empire, including two songs, "Ghost of Love" and "Walkin' on the Sky", in which he makes his public debut as a singer. In 2009, his new book-CD set Dark Night of the Soul was released. In 2008, he started his own record label called David Lynch MC which first released Fox Bat Strategy: A Tribute to Dave Jaurequi in early 2009.

In November 2010, Lynch released two electropop music singles, "Good Day Today" and "I Know", through the independent British label Sunday Best Recordings. Describing why he created them, he stated that "I was just sitting and these notes came and then I went down and started working with Dean [Hurley, his engineer] and then these few notes, 'I want to have a good day, today' came and the song was built around that". The singles were followed by an album, Crazy Clown Time, which was released in November 2011 and described as an "electronic blues album". The songs were sung by Lynch, with guest vocals on one track by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and composed and performed by Lynch and Dean Hurley. All or most of the songs for Crazy Clown Time were put into art-music videos, Lynch directing the title song's video.

On September 29, 2011, Lynch released This Train with vocalist and long-time musical collaborator Chrysta Bell on the La Rose Noire label. The 11-song album was produced by Lynch and co-written primarily by Lynch and Chrysta Bell. It includes the song "Polish Poem" which is featured on the Inland Empire soundtrack. The musical partnership also yielded a 5- song EP entitled Somewhere in the Nowhere, released October 7, 2016, on Meta Hari Records.

Lynch's third studio album, The Big Dream, was released in 2013 and included the single "I'm Waiting Here", with Swedish singer-songwriter Lykke Li. The Big Dream's release was preceded by TBD716, an enigmatic 43-second video featured on Lynch's YouTube and Vine accounts.

For Record Store Day 2014, David Lynch released The Big Dream Remix EP which featured four songs from his album remixed by various artists. This included the track "Are You Sure" remixed by Bastille. The band Bastille have been known to take inspiration from David Lynch's work for their songs and music videos, the main one being their song "Laura Palmer" which is influenced by Lynch's television show Twin Peaks.

On November 2, 2018, a collaborative album by Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti, titled Thought Gang, was released on vinyl and on compact disc. The album was recorded around 1993 but was unreleased at the time. Two tracks from the album already appeared on the soundtrack from the 1992 movie 'Twin Peaks: Fire walk with me' and three other tracks were used for the 'Twin Peaks' TV series in 2017.

In May 2019, Lynch provided guest vocals on the track Fire is Coming by Flying Lotus. He also co-wrote the track that appears on Flying Lotus' album Flamagra. A video accompanying the song was released on April 17, 2019.

In May 2021, Lynch produced a new track by Scottish artist Donovan titled "I Am the Shaman". The song was released on 10 May, Donovan's 75th birthday. Lynch also directed the accompanying video.

Design

Lynch designed and constructed furniture for his 1997 film Lost Highway, notably the small table in the Madison house and the VCR case. In April 1997, he presented a furniture collection at the prestigious Milan Furniture Fair. "Design and music, art and architecture – they all belong together."

Working with designer Raphael Navot, architectural agency Enia and light designer Thierry Dreyfus, Lynch has conceived and designed a nightclub in Paris. "Silencio" opened in October 2011, and is a private members' club although is free to the public after midnight. Patrons have access to concerts, films and other performances by artists and guests. Inspired by the club of the same name in his 2001 film Mulholland Drive, the underground space consists of a series of rooms, each dedicated to a certain purpose or atmosphere. "Silencio is something dear to me. I wanted to create an intimate space where all the arts could come together. There won't be a Warhol-like guru, but it will be open to celebrated artists of all disciplines to come here to programme or create what they want."

Literature

In 2006, Lynch authored a short book describing his creative processes, stories from throughout his career, and the benefits he had realized through his practice of Transcendental Meditation called Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity. He describes the metaphor behind the title in the introduction:

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 fish are more powerful and more pure. They're huge and abstract. And they're very beautiful.

The book weaves a non-linear autobiography with descriptions of Lynch's cognitive experiences during Transcendental Meditation.

Working with Kristine McKenna, Lynch published a biography-memoir hybrid, Room to Dream, in June 2018.

Awards and nominations

Main article: List of accolades received by David Lynch

In 2017, Lynch was awarded The Edward MacDowell Medal by The MacDowell Colony for outstanding contributions to American culture.

Personal life

Relationships

Lynch has had several long-term relationships. In January 1968, he married Peggy Reavey, with whom he had one child, Jennifer Lynch, born in 1968, who is a film director. They filed for divorce in 1974. In June 1977, Lynch married Mary Fisk, and the couple had one child, Austin Jack Lynch, born in 1982. They divorced in 1987. Lynch later developed a relationship with Mary Sweeney, with whom he had one son, Riley Sweeney Lynch, born in 1992. Sweeney also worked as Lynch's longtime film editor/producer and co-wrote and produced The Straight Story. The two married in May 2006, but filed for divorce that June. In 2009, Lynch married actress Emily Stofle, who appeared in his 2006 film Inland Empire as well as the 2017 revival of Twin Peaks. The couple have one child, Lula Boginia Lynch, born in 2012.

Political views and public positions

Lynch has said that he is "not a political person" and that he knows little about politics. In the 1990s, he expressed admiration for former U.S. president Ronald Reagan, saying, "I mostly liked that he carried a wind of old Hollywood, of a cowboy." Describing his political philosophy in 2006, he stated, "at that time, I thought of myself as a libertarian. I believed in next to zero government. And I still would lean toward no government and not so many rules, except for traffic lights and things like this. I really believe in traffic regulations." Lynch continued to state that "I'm a Democrat now. And I've always been a Democrat, really. But I don't like the Democrats a lot, either, because I'm a smoker, and I think a lot of the Democrats have come up with these rules for non-smoking." He endorsed the center-left Natural Law Party in the 2000 presidential election and later stated that he would vote for Democratic incumbent Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election.

In 2009, Lynch signed a petition in support of director Roman Polanski after Polanski's arrest on his 1977 sexual abuse charges. Polanski had been detained while traveling to a film festival. The petition argued the arrest would undermine the tradition of film festivals as a place for works to be shown "freely and safely", and that arresting filmmakers traveling to neutral countries could open the door "for actions of which no-one can know the effects."

In the 2016 United States presidential election, he endorsed Bernie Sanders, whom he described as "for the people." He voted for Sanders in the 2016 Democratic Primary and for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson in the general election. In a June 2018 interview with The Guardian, he stated that Donald Trump could go down as "one of the greatest presidents in history because he has disrupted the [country] so much. No one is able to counter this guy in an intelligent way." He added: "Our so-called leaders can't take the country forward, can't get anything done. Like children, they are. Trump has shown all this." The interviewer clarified that "while Trump may not be doing a good job himself, Lynch thinks, he is opening up a space where other outsiders might." At a rally later that month Trump read out sections from the interview claiming Lynch as a supporter (though he misspoke, saying, "David Lynch could go down as one of the greatest presidents in history"). Lynch later clarified on Facebook that the quote was taken out of context, saying that Trump would "not have a chance to go down in history as a great president" if he continued on the course of "causing suffering and division", advising him to "treat all the people as you would like to be treated".

In one of his daily weather report videos, Lynch expressed support for Black Lives Matter protests. In another such video, Lynch condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and addressed Russian president Vladimir Putin directly, telling him there was "no room for this kind of absurdity anymore" and that Putin would reap what he had sown, lifetime after lifetime.

Transcendental Meditation

Lynch speaking on Transcendental Meditation and the creative process in 2007

Lynch advocates Transcendental Meditation as a spiritual practice. He was initiated into Transcendental Meditation in July 1973, and has practiced the technique consistently since then. Lynch says he met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of the TM movement, for the first time in 1975 at the Spiritual Regeneration Movement center in Los Angeles, California. He became close with the Maharishi during a month-long "Millionaire's Enlightenment Course" held in 2003, the fee for which was $1 million.

In July 2005, Lynch launched the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and Peace, established to help finance scholarships for students in middle and high schools who are interested in learning Transcendental Meditation and to fund research on the technique and its effects on learning. Together with John Hagelin and Fred Travis, a brain researcher from Maharishi University of Management (MUM), Lynch promoted his vision on college campuses with a tour that began in September 2005. Lynch is on MUM's board of trustees and has hosted an annual "David Lynch Weekend for World Peace and Meditation" there since 2005.

Lynch was working for the building and establishment of seven buildings in which 8,000 salaried people would practice advanced meditation techniques, "pumping peace for the world". He estimates the cost at US$7 billion. As of December 2005, he had spent $400,000 of his money and raised $1 million in donations. In December 2006, The New York Times reported that he continued to have that goal. Lynch's book Catching the Big Fish (Tarcher/Penguin 2006) discusses Transcendental Meditation's effect on his creative process. Lynch attended the funeral of the Maharishi in India in 2008. He told a reporter, "In life, he revolutionized the lives of millions of people. ... In 20, 50, 500 years there will be millions of people who will know and understand what the Maharishi has done." In 2009, Lynch went to India to film interviews with people who knew the Maharishi as part of a biographical documentary.

In 2009, Lynch organized a benefit concert at Radio City Music Hall for the David Lynch Foundation. On April 4, 2009, the "Change Begins Within" concert featured Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Donovan, Sheryl Crow, Eddie Vedder, Moby, Bettye LaVette, Ben Harper, and Mike Love of the Beach Boys. David Wants to Fly, released in May 2010, is a documentary by German filmmaker David Sieveking "that follows the path of his professional idol, David Lynch, into the world of Transcendental Meditation (TM)". At the end of the film, Sieveking becomes disillusioned with Lynch.

An independent project starring Lynch called Beyond The Noise: My Transcendental Meditation Journey, directed by film student Dana Farley, who has severe dyslexia and attention deficit disorder, was shown at film festivals in 2011, including the Marbella Film Festival. Filmmaker Kevin Sean Michaels is one of the producers. In 2013, Lynch wrote: "Transcendental Meditation leads to a beautiful, peaceful revolution. A change from suffering and negativity to happiness and a life more and more free of any problems."

In a 2019 interview of Lynch by British artist Alexander de Cadenet, Lynch said of TM, "Here's an experience that utilizes the full brain. That's what it's for. It's for enlightenment, for higher states of consciousness, culminating in the highest state of unity consciousness." In April 2022, Lynch announced a $500 million transcendental meditation world peace initiative to fund transcendental meditation for 30,000 college students.

Website

Lynch designed his personal website, a site exclusive to paying members, where he posts short videos and his absurdist series Dumbland, plus interviews and other items. The site also featured a daily weather report, where Lynch gives a brief description of the weather in Los Angeles, where he resides. He continues to broadcast this weather report (usually no longer than 30 seconds) on his personal YouTube channel, DAVID LYNCH THEATER, along with "TODAY'S NUMBER", where he draws a random number, between one and ten, out of a bingo cage. Lynch also created a short film, "Rabbits", for his website. Absurd ringtone ("I like to kill deer") from the website was a common sound bite on The Howard Stern Show in early 2006.

Lynch is a coffee drinker and has his own line of special organic blends available for purchase on his website and at Whole Foods. Called "David Lynch Signature Cup", the coffee has been advertised via flyers included with several recent Lynch-related DVD releases, including Inland Empire and the Gold Box edition of Twin Peaks. The brand's tagline is "It's all in the beans ... and I'm just full of beans." This is also a line said by Justin Theroux's character in Inland Empire.

Archive

The moving image collection of David Lynch is held at the Academy Film Archive, which has preserved two of his student films.

Solo exhibitions

• 1967: Vanderlip Gallery, Philadelphia
• 1983: Puerto Vallarta, Mexico
• 1987: James Corcoran Gallery, Los Angeles
• 1989: Leo Castelli Gallery, New York
• 1990: Tavelli Gallery, Aspen
• 1991: Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
• 1992: Sala Parpallo, Valencia
• 1993: James Corcoran Gallery, Los Angeles
• 1995: Painting Pavilion, Open Air Museum, Hakone
• 1996: Park Tower Hall, Tokyo
• 1997: Galerie Piltzer, Paris
• 2007: Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, Paris
• 2008: Epson Kunstbetrieb, Düsseldorf
• 2009: Max-Ernst-Museum, Brühl
• 2010: Mönchehaus Museum, Goslar
• 2010: GL Strand, Copenhagen
• 2012: Galerie Chelsea, Sylt
• 2012: Galerie Pfefferle, Munich
• 2013: Galerie Barbara von Stechow, Frankfurt
• 2014: The Photographers´ Gallery, London
• 2014: Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art
• 2014/15: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia
• 2015: Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane
• 2017: Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu, Toruń, Poland
• 2018: Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Los Angeles
• 2018/19: Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, The Netherlands
• 2019: Home, Manchester, United Kingdom
• 2019: Sperone Westwater Gallery, New York
• 2021/22: Nikolaj Contemporary Art Center, Copenhagen

Discography

Main article: David Lynch discography

Studio albums

• BlueBOB (2001)
• Crazy Clown Time (2011)
• The Big Dream (2013)

Collaborative albums

• Lux Vivens (with Jocelyn Montgomery) (1998)
• The Air Is On Fire (with Dean Hurley) (2007)
• Polish Night Music (with Marek Zebrowski) (2007)
• This Train (with Chrysta Bell) (2011)
• Somewhere in the Nowhere (with Chrysta Bell) (2016)
• Thought Gang (with Angelo Badalamenti) (recorded 1992/93) (2018)

See also

• David Lynch's unrealized projects

Bibliography

• Lynch, David and McKenna, Kristine (2018). Room to Dream. Random House. ISBN 9780399589195

Further reading

• David Lynch: The Art of the Real, the website of a 2012 Berlin conference on the artistic work of David Lynch with all lectures in text form.
• David Lynch: The Unified Field by Robert Cozzolino with Alethea Rockwell (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia and the University of California Press, 2014 ISBN 9780520283961).
• The Passion of David Lynch: Wild at Heart in Hollywood by Martha Nochimson (University of Texas Press, 1997, ISBN 0-292-75565-1).
• The Complete Lynch by David Hughes (Virgin Virgin, 2002, ISBN 0-7535-0598-3).
• Weirdsville U.S.A.: The Obsessive Universe of David Lynch by Paul A. Woods (Plexus Publishing. UK, Reprint edition, 2000, ISBN 0-85965-291-2).
• David Lynch (Twayne's Filmmakers Series) by Kenneth C. Kaleta (Twayne Publishers, 1992, ISBN 0-8057-9323-2).
• Pervert in the Pulpit: Morality in the Works of David Lynch by Jeff Johnson (McFarland & Company, 2004, ISBN 0-7864-1753-6).
• Snowmen by David Lynch (Foundation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, 2008, ISBN 978-3-86521-467-6).
• David Lynch: Beautiful Dark by Greg Olson (Scarecrow Press, 2008, ISBN 0-8108-5917-3).
• The Film Paintings of David Lynch: Challenging Film Theory by Allister Mactaggart (Intellect, 2010, ISBN 978-1-84150-332-5).
• Interpretazione tra mondi. Il pensiero figurale di David Lynch by Pierluigi Basso Fossali (Edizioni ETS, Pisa, 2008, ISBN 88-467-1671-X, 9788846716712).
• David Lynch ed. by Paolo Bertetto (Marsilio, Venezia, 2008, ISBN 88-317-9393-4, 9788831793933).
• David Lynch – Un cinéma du maléfique, by Enrique Seknadje, Editions Camion Noir, 2010. ISBN 978-2-35779-086-5.
• David Lynch in Theory Archived July 18, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, a collection of essays edited by Francois-Xavier Gleyzon (Charles University Press, 2010) ISBN 978-80-7308-317-5.
• David Lynch, 2nd Edition by Michel Chion (BFI Publishing, 2006, ISBN 978-1-84457-030-0).
• Mulholland Drive: An Intertextual Reading Archived June 2, 2018, at the Wayback Machine by Ebrahim Barzegar (CINEJ Cinema Journal, 2014)
• Labyrinths and Illusions in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire Archived June 3, 2018, at the Wayback Machine by Ebrahim Barzegar (CINEJ Cinema Journal, 2016)

External links

• Official website
• Official YouTube Channel
• David Lynch at IMDb
• David Lynch at AllMovie
• David Lynch at Moviefone
• David Lynch at Rotten Tomatoes
• Bibliography of books and articles about Lynch via UC Berkeley Media Resources Center