Artist, musician, actor and filmmaker David Lynch died on 15 January, just five days short of his 79th birthday. His untimely death unleashed a torrent of love for the man, who was adored for his inimitable art, unique working relationships and an unfailingly cheery disposition. Arguably the most influential filmmaker of the past 50 years, Lynch was fascinated by the juxtaposition of light and dark, good and evil, the mundane and the macabre. While he tackled a number of genres (mystery, horror, science fiction and more), his work was infused with a style that was utterly unique, one that writer David Foster Wallace coined ‘Lynchian’.

David Lynch arrived on the scene fully formed. His 1977 debut feature, Eraserhead, was a nightmarish expression of his fear of fatherhood that had, appropriately enough, gestated over five tortuous years of filming. It was a huge cult hit and persuaded producer Mel Brooks to hire Lynch to direct The Elephant Man. That film went on to receive eight Oscar nominations, including one for Best Director. He would be nominated for that accolade twice more before eventually bagging an Honorary Award in 2019.

One of Lynch’s greatest strengths was his openness to possibility. He was refreshingly receptive to collaboration, and his work is filled with what he called ‘happy accidents’. When a set dresser on Twin Peaks was accidentally caught on film, Lynch immediately cast the man as the series’ Killer BOB, a character who became one of the most iconic screen villains of our time. In 1999, Lynch wrote and directed the pilot for a TV show that was then cancelled. Undeterred, he secured extra funding and then filmed a coda 18 months later. The result, Mulholland Drive, is often hailed as the greatest film of the 21st century.

Lynch’s most significant inspiration was a fittingly strange one: the trial of OJ Simpson. In his 2006 book Catching The Big Fish, he wrote ‘what struck me about OJ Simpson was that he was able to smile and laugh. He was able to go golfing later with seemingly very few problems about the whole thing. I wondered how, if a person did these deeds, he could go on living. And we found this great psychology term, psychogenic fugue, describing an event where the mind tricks itself to escape some horror.’ This condition, now known as dissociative fugue, informed most of Lynch’s later work: Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire, and Twin Peaks: The Return all feature characters and plots that mysteriously fracture into someone or something else. The only outlier during this period was 1999’s The Straight Story, an enchanting yarn financed by Disney.

Despite all his dark work, Lynch was an open-hearted optimist. His musical career includes numerous delightfully sweet albums made in collaboration with composer Angelo Badalamenti and chanteuse Julee Cruise (both of whom passed in 2022), and latterly with ethereal musician and kindred spirit Chrystabell. During the pandemic, he brought much joy by broadcasting brief, mischievous weather reports from his home in Los Angeles. His remarkable gift was the ability to forge deep connections with people, no matter the medium he chose. Kyle MacLachlan, Lynch’s long-time muse and surrogate, put it best: ‘I will miss my dear friend. He has made my world, all of our worlds, both wonderful and strange.’

Main picture: David Lynch.