David Lynch Dies: ‘Twin Peaks’, ‘Blue Velvet’, ‘Elephant Man’ & ‘Eraserhead’ Visionary Was 78

One of Hollywood’s worst weeks in just got worse. David Lynch, the four-time Oscar-nominated filmmaker behind Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, Eraserhead, Wild at Heart, The Elephant Man and others who also created the Showtime drama Twin Peaks, has died at 78. His family posted the news on social media.

An eccentric, visionary outsider, he earned Oscar noms for writing and directing 1980’s The Elephant Man and for directing Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet. In 2000, he received an Honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement. He also took the Palme d’Or at Cannes for Wild at Heart in 1990 and was nominated for the prize three other times. He won Best Director at the fest for Mulholland Drive in 2001.

Born on January 20, 1946, in Missoula, Montana, Lynch began his career making short films in the late 1960s. His first feature film was the influential and ever-quirky Eraserhead (1977), which he wrote and directed and went on to be a midnight-movie cult classic. That led to his breakout success with The Elephant Man, starring John Hurt as the friendly and smart but disfigured title character in Victorian England and Anthony Hopkins as the doctor who tries to treat him. When chased down by a gang of street toughs, Hurt’s John Merrick memorably cries: “I’m not an animal! I’m a human being — a man!”

Lynch’s career took off during the 1980s. He followed up the success of Elephant Man with Dune, the 1984 take of Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novel that failed to light up the box office, and the 1986 noir psychological thriller Blue Velvet, starring Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper, and Laura Dern.

Perhaps his masterstroke arrived in 1989.

He created, directed co-wrote Twin Peaks, a bizarre sort of detective series/soap opera/sci-fi mystery-adventure and occasional outright Twilight Zone-like horror. Set in the fiction Pacific Northwest town that gives the series its title, Twin Peaks began with one of the most disturbing and oddly mesmerizing opening scenes in TV history: the beachside discovery of the plastic-wrapped corpse. The town’s popular young high schooler Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) had been murdered, her bluish corpse still oddly beautiful.

The discovery would bring the quirky FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), a brilliant oddball sleuth given to praising coffee, pie and, eventually, the off-putting town he adopted as his own. Along the way, Cooper uncovered many mysteries in Twin Peaks, a good number of them involving the supernatural. Along the way, “Who killed Laura Palmer?” became a national obsession.

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The series lasted for two seasons and ended when Cooper finally discovered Laura’s otherworldly killer. A 2017 revival series called Twin Peaks: The Return reunited many of the original cast and characters, and under Lynch’s care became even more bizarre than the original series: The Return‘s final scene remains a standout among TV’s all-time most chilling moments. The so-called third season received widespread critical acclaim.

Lynch’s feature writing and/or directing credits also includes Lost Highway (1997), The Straight Story (1999) and Inland Empire (2006).

MORE TO COME…

Anthony D’Alessandro, Andreas Wiseman and Greg Evans contributed to this report.