Name	Eraserhead
Caption	Theatrical release poster
Director	David Lynch
Producer	David Lynch
Writer	David Lynch
Starring	Jack NanceCharlotte StewartJeanne Bates
Music	David Lynch
Cinematography	Herbert CardwellFrederick Elmes
Editing	David Lynch
Distributor	Libra Films
Released
Runtime	89 minutes
Country
Language	English
Budget	$10,000

Eraserhead is a 1977 American surrealist film written, directed, and produced by David Lynch. In 1971, Lynch moved to Los Angeles to attend the AFI Conservatory. At the Conservatory, Lynch began working on his first feature-length film, Eraserhead, using a $10,000 grant from the AFI. The grant was not sufficient to complete the film and, as a result, Lynch worked on Eraserhead intermittently until its release in 1977. Lynch used money from friends and family, including boyhood friend Jack Fisk, a production designer and the husband of actress Sissy Spacek, and from odd jobs to finish the film.

Eraserhead polarized and baffled many critics and movie-goers, but has become a cult classic. In 2004, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. Lynch has called it a "dream of dark and troubling things" and his "most spiritual movie."

Plot

Eraserhead is set in the heart of an industrial center rife with urban decay. Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) is a printer who is "on vacation" for the duration of the story. The film begins with the mysterious "Man in the Planet" (Jack Fisk) manipulating large mechanical levers while looking out of his window. As he does so, a ghostly flagellate-like creature emerges from the mouth of Henry, floating in space. The creature eventually flies away amidst images of rock formations, a circular opening, and bubbling fluid.

In the industrial center of the nameless city, Henry stumbles through the seemingly unpopulated wasteland to his apartment building with a bag of groceries. A neighbor he is not familiar with, the Beautiful Girl Across the Hall (Judith Anna Roberts), tells him that his estranged girlfriend Mary X (Charlotte Stewart) has invited him to dinner with her and her family. A sharp, distorted hissing noise (presumably the radiator) is continuously heard in Henry's one room apartment. Large clumps of cut grass lay on the floor, a dead tree sapling planted in a pile of dirt sits directly on his nightstand, and a framed picture of a nuclear explosion hangs on the wall above it. The only window in his apartment faces a brick wall of another building in the alley across the window from his tenement building.

That evening, Henry walks through the industrial wasteland and arrives at Mary's home. Henry is disturbed by the awkward conversation forced by Mary's mother as well as a strange fit Mary has; her mother reacts to it by furiously brushing her daughter's hair. At the dinner table, Henry is puzzled by an emotional outburst by Mary's mother (Jeanne Bates), the banal, disconnected conversation offered by her father (Allen Joseph), and miniature man-made roasted chickens he is given to carve, which kicks on his plate and gushes a dark liquid at the fork's touch. The dinner conversation at Mary's house is strained and awkward, after which Henry is cornered by Mary's mother, who attempts to kiss him before telling him that Mary has just given birth extremely prematurely. A tearful Mary insists that the hospital does not know whether it even is a baby she gave birth to; her mother insists that it is a baby and that Henry is then obliged to marry her.

Mary and the baby move into Henry's one-room apartment. The baby is hideously deformed and very inhuman-like: its face resembles a large snout with slit nostrils, a long, pencil-thin neck, eyes on the sides of its head, no ears, glossy skin and a limbless body covered in bandages. It bears a vague resemblance to the flagellate creature that came out of Henry's mouth at the beginning of the film. Henry and Mary constantly struggle with caring for the baby as it refuses to eat and continually whines throughout the night.

said the scene "...might go down in history as the single most disturbing movie scene ever."]]

A hysterical Mary temporarily leaves for home one night due to her inability to sleep with the whining baby in Henry's apartment. She demands that the vacationing Henry take good care of the baby. After the baby falls silent, Henry checks its temperature. Looking away briefly to read the thermometer, Henry looks back at the baby to find that it is covered with sores and gasping for breath. Left to care for the baby by himself, Henry becomes involved in a series of strange events (many of which have little to no explanation to how or why they happen). These include bizarre encounters with the Lady in the Radiator (Laurel Near); visions of the Man in the Planet, and a sexual liaison with the Beautiful Girl Across the Hall. The Lady in the Radiator is a miniature woman with grotesquely distended cheeks who appears in his radiator, first doing a dance routine on a stage in which she slowly shuffles back and forth and stomps on more of the flagellate creatures that fall from above, and then later singing "In Heaven".

In a dream sequence, Henry’s head pops off and his baby's head comes up from between his shoulders, replacing it. Henry's head sinks into a growing pool of blood on a tile floor, falls from the sky, and, finally, lands on an empty street in the industrial wasteland and cracks open. A young boy finds Henry's broken head and takes it to a pencil factory, where Paul (Darwin Joston), the desk clerk, summons his ill-tempered boss to the front desk by repeatedly pushing a buzzer. The boss, angered by the summons, yells at Paul, but regains his composure when he sees what the little boy has brought. The boss and the boy carry the head to a back room where the Pencil Machine Operator takes a core sample of Henry's brain, assays it, and determines that it is a serviceable material for pencil erasers. The boy is then paid for bringing in Henry's head. The Pencil Machine Operator then sweeps the eraser shavings off the desk and sends them billowing into the air.

After waking from this dream, Henry looks out his window and sees two men fighting in the street. He then seeks out the Beautiful Girl Across the Hall, but discovers that she is not home. The baby begins to cackle mockingly, and, shortly thereafter, Henry opens his door and sees the Beautiful Girl Across the Hall bringing another man back to her apartment. She looks at Henry, momentarily sees Henry's head transform into that of the baby, and appears frightened by her vision. Henry goes back into his apartment. Upon hearing the baby whine, he retrieves a pair of scissors. He hesitates, then cautiously cuts open the bandages wrapped around the baby's body, the baby hyperventilating and whining during the cutting. Henry finds that the bandages were the only thing containing the baby's internal organs; the body already split open and the baby's vital organs are exposed. As the baby gasps in pain, Henry stabs one of its organs with the scissors. Rather than dying, the baby continues to convulse in pain, causing Henry to turn away in disgust. Large amounts of liquid gush forth from the organs, followed by huge quantities of a foamy substance that completely covers the body. The apartment’s electricity overloads, and as the lights flicker on and off, the baby's neck extends to an extraordinary length, causing it to strongly resemble the flagellate creatures seen throughout the film. A giant apparition of its head materializes in the apartment. It then becomes a strange planet. Henry is then seen with eraser shavings billowing behind his head.

The planet explodes, and through the hole in it the Man in the Planet is seen struggling with a series of levers with sparks shooting from them when he pulls them, visibly burning his face. The last scene features Henry being embraced by the Lady in the Radiator. They are bathed in white light, and white noise builds to a crescendo, then stops as the screen goes black, and the credits begin to roll.

Cast of characters

Jack Nance as Henry Spencer, a vacationing printer who lives alone in a small apartment. His only forms of entertainment are a record player and a fetish for dirt, plants, and worms. Henry is taciturn, but uses short, emotional outbursts when he does speak.

Charlotte Stewart as Mary X, Henry's girlfriend, though he has not seen her for some time when the story begins. She lives with her parents and catatonic grandmother until she marries Henry and moves in with him for a short time.

Allen Joseph and Jeanne Bates as Mr. and Mrs. X, Mary's parents. Mr. X is a pipe-fitter who boasts loudly to Henry about his role in plumbing the neighborhood and is seemingly oblivious to the emotional situation surrounding Mary's strange pregnancy and childbirth. Mrs. X, however, experiences frequent outbursts while Henry is visiting their home and eventually demands accountability of Henry.

Judith Anna Roberts as the Beautiful Girl Across the Hall, who lives in the apartment across from Henry's and delivers the telephone message inviting Henry to dinner at Mary X's house at the beginning of the story. She serves as an object of desire for Henry.

Laurel Near as the Lady in the Radiator, appears to Henry in several visions. She has extremely bloated cheeks and performs song and dance routines on a checkered tile stage. In one such routine she stomps on strange flagellate creatures that fall onto her stage while she is dancing.

Jack Fisk as the Man in the Planet, seen manipulating mechanical levers while observing Henry through a window at the beginning of the film, appearing to introduce an amphibious being into the world. He is apparently responsible for the bizarre events that occur throughout the film, although it is unknown why. Later in the film, after Henry kills the baby, the Man in the Planet appears again, this time struggling with the levers.

Darwin Joston as Paul, the desk clerk at the pencil factory.

Production history

Eraserhead developed from Gardenback, a script about adultery that Lynch wrote during his first year at the Centre for Advanced Film Studies at the American Film Institute (AFI) in Los Angeles. The script for Eraserhead was only 21 pages long. Because of the film's unusual plot and Lynch's minimal directorial experience, no movie studio backed the project. Lynch eventually won a grant from AFI, and filmed most of it at Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills, which was at the time the headquarters of the American Film Institute.

Aside from the AFI grant, the movie was financed by friends and family, including actress Sissy Spacek, wife of Lynch's childhood friend Jack Fisk. Because of the lack of reliable funds, Eraserhead was filmed intermittently from 1971 to 1976, By that summer (1977), Lynch and his wife had arrived in New York and were staying at Barenholtz's apartment; Lynch then spent two months working with a lab to get a print of the film ready for its New York opening.

In a December 2007 review of a new 35mm print, Manohla Dargis of The New York Times called it an "amazing, still mysterious work" which "brings together many of the now-familiar Lynchian visual themes and narrative figures, including the naïve man, the slatternly woman, the shabby period furniture, the contorted flesh and forms, the yawning orifices and oozing, leaking fluids."

Entertainment Weekly ranked the film #14 on their list of "The Top 50 Cult Films".

The film currently holds a 90% "Certified Fresh" rating from review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 40 reviews.

Reactions from other directors

After seeing the film, Mel Brooks hired Lynch to direct The Elephant Man in 1980.

Eraserhead was one of director Stanley Kubrick's favorite films. Before beginning production on The Shining, Kubrick screened Eraserhead for the cast to put them into the atmosphere he wanted to convey.

George Lucas was a fan of the film and, after seeing it, wanted to hire Lynch to direct . Lynch declined, fearing it would be less his own vision than Lucas's. The directorial duties eventually went to Richard Marquand.

John Waters mentioned in the documentary Midnight Movies that he is a fan of the film and, while doing promotional interviews for his own film Female Trouble, he would mention Eraserhead and David Lynch to reporters.

Lynch's comments

Lynch has said its protagonist is "living under the influence of those things that existed for me in Philadelphia":

Lynch also wrote a short chapter about the film in his 2006 book Catching the Big Fish. In that book, he wrote "Eraserhead is my most spiritual movie. No one understands when I say that, but it is."

On October 20, 2008, the film was re-released in Region 2 in the UK, alongside a Region 2 release of The Short Films of David Lynch.

The film has been released on Region 4 in Australia on two separate occasions: firstly, in 2001, the film was released by Umbrella Entertainment however was discontinued approximately 3–4 years later. In 2009, it was re-released in a 'Special Edition' format and remastered by the same distribution company.

Legacy

Poet and author Charles Bukowski referenced the film when interviewed on the subject of cable television. Bukowski said, "We got cable TV here, and the first thing we switched on happened to be Eraserhead. I said, 'What’s this?' I didn’t know what it was. It was so great. I said, 'Oh, this cable TV has opened up a whole new world. We’re gonna be sitting in front of this thing for centuries. What next? So starting with Eraserhead we sit here, click, click, click — nothing."

A number of rock bands take their name from the film: the 1980s London punk rock group Erazerhead; the Northern California band Eraserhead, and The Eraserheads, a rock band from the Philippines. The band Henry Spencer take their name from the main character. Apartment 26 are named after Henry's address and they feature a sample from the Lady in the Radiator's In Heaven at the end of their song, Heaven. The 1980s London indie rock band Henry's Final Dream also owe their name to this movie. Bruce McCulloch, from Canadian sketch group The Kids in the Hall, has recorded a song titled (and about) Eraserhead on his album Shame Based Man.

In Heaven, the song sung by the Lady in the Radiator, has been covered by Bauhaus, Devo, Miranda Sex Garden, Tuxedomoon, Pankow, Pixies, Desolation Yes, Bang Gang, Zola Jesus, Helios, Annie Christian, Donny Who Loved Bowling, Forgotten Sunrise and Fantastic Coprophilia. Indie rockers Modest Mouse borrowed lines from In Heaven for Workin' on Leavin' the Livin, as did the anarcho-punk band Rubella Ballet for their song Slant and Slide. The Dead Kennedys reference the film in the song Too Drunk to Fuck in the line "You bawl like the baby in Eraserhead". An Eraserhead T-Shirt was available from the band's label Alternative Tentacles for some years.

Eraserhead, along with five other low-budget films from the 1960s and 1970s (The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Pink Flamingos, El Topo, The Harder They Come and Night of the Living Dead), was the subject of a 2005 documentary, . Lynch was interviewed for the documentary.

References

Notes

Bibliography

External links

Eraserhead Wiki at Wikia

Eraserhead interviews & article

Category:1977 films Category:American independent films Category:American horror films Category:Avant-garde and experimental films Category:Surrealist films Category:Films directed by David Lynch Category:Directorial debut films Category:United States National Film Registry films Category:Black-and-white films Category:English-language films

Name	David Lynch
Caption	Lynch in Washington D.C., January 23, 2007
Birth place	Missoula, Montana, U.S.
Birth name	David Keith Lynch January 20, 1946
Spouse	Peggy Lentz (1967–1974)Mary Fisk (1977–1987)Mary Sweeney (2006) Emily Stofle (2009–present)
Partner	Isabella Rossellini (1986–1991)
Citizenship	United States
Education	Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, AFI Conservatory
Occupation	Film director, screenwriter, producer, painter, musician
Years active	1966–present
Style	Nonlinear, Psychological, Neo-noir, Surrealistic, Horror
Influences	Franz Kafka, Stanley Kubrick, Federico Fellini, Alfred Hitchcock, Werner Herzog, Luis Buñuel, Billy Wilder, Jacques Tati, Ingmar Bergman, Roman Polanski, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Kenneth Anger, Maya Deren
Influenced	Coen brothers, Quentin Tarantino,

Lynch was born in Missoula, Montana on January 20, 1946. His father, Donald Walton Lynch, was a research scientist working for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and his mother, Edwina "Sunny" Lynch (née Sundholm), was an English language tutor Due to Donald's job, the Lynch family often moved around according to where the Department of Agriculture assigned him. It was because of this that when he was two months old, David Lynch moved with his parents to Sandpoint, Idaho, and only two years after that, following the birth of his brother John, the family again moved, this time to Spokane, Washington. It was here that his sister Martha was born, before they once more moved, this time to Durham, North Carolina, then to Boise, Idaho and then to Alexandria, Virginia. Commenting on much of his early life, Lynch has remarked that "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." Alongside this schooling, his father made him join the Boy Scouts, although he would later note that he only "became one so I could quit, and put it behind me." He rose to the highest rank of Eagle Scout. It was through being an Eagle Scout that he was present with other Boy Scouts outside of the White House at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, which took place on Lynch's birthday in 1961.

Lynch had become interested in painting and drawing from an early age, becoming 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, Virginia, he did poorly academically, having little interest in school work, but was popular with other students, and after leaving decided that he wanted to study painting at college, thereby beginning his studies at School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1964, where he was a roommate of Peter Wolf. Nonetheless, he left after only a year, stating that "I was not inspired AT ALL in that place", and instead deciding 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 in Europe they could train with the expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka at his school, however upon reaching Salzburg they found that he was not available, and disillusioned, they returned to the United States after spending only 15 days of their planned three years in Europe.

Philadelphia and short films: 1966–1970

Back in the United States, Lynch returned to Virginia, but since his parents had moved to Walnut Creek, California, he was forced to stay with his friend Tony Keeler for a while, before he decided to move to the city of Philadelphia, where, at the advice of Jack Fisk, who was already attending it, he decided to enroll at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, something he preferred far more than his previous art college in Boston, claiming that "In Philadelphia there were great and serious painters, and everybody was inspiring one another and it was a beautiful time there." It was here that he began a relationship with a fellow student, Peggy Reavey, and they were married in 1967. The following year, Peggy gave birth to their child, a girl whom they named Jennifer. Later describing this situation, Peggy stated that "[Lynch] definitely was a reluctant father, but a very loving one. Hey, I was pregnant when we got married. We were both reluctant." As a family, they moved to the Fairmount neighbourhood of Philadelphia, where they were able to purchase a large 12-room house for a relatively low $3,500 due to the high crime and poverty rates in the area. Later describing living there, Lynch stated that "We lived cheap, but the city was full of fear. A kid was shot to death down the street… We were robbed twice, had windows shot out and a car stolen. The house was first broken into only three days after we moved in… The feeling was so close to extreme danger, and the fear was so intense. There was violence and hate and filth. But the biggest influence in my whole life was that city." Meanwhile, in order to help financially support his family alongside his art studies, he took up a job printing engravings.

It was at the Philadelphia Academy that Lynch made his very first short film, which was entitled Six Men Getting Sick (1966). He had first come up with the idea when he developed a wish to see his paintings move, and he subsequently began discussing the idea of creating an animation with an artist named Bruce Samuelson. When this project never came about, Lynch decided to work on a film alone, and so purchased the cheapest 16mm camera that he could find in order to do so. Taking one of the abandoned upper rooms of the Academy as a working space, he spent $200 – which at the time he felt to be a lot of money – to produce Six Men Getting Sick. Describing the work as "57 seconds of growth and fire, and three seconds of vomit", Lynch played the film on a loop at the Academy's annual end-of-year exhibit, where it shared joint first prize with a painting by Noel Mahaffey. This led to a commission from one of his fellow students, the wealthy H. Barton Wasserman, who offered him $1000 to create a film installation in his home. Spending $450 of that on purchasing a second-hand Bolex camera, Lynch produced a new animated short, but upon getting the film developed, realized that the result was simply a blurred, frameless print. As he would later relate, "So I called up Bart [Wasserman] and said, 'Bart, the film is a disaster. The camera was broken and what I've done hasn't turned out.' And he said, 'Don't worry, David, take the rest of the money and make something else for me. Just give me a print.' End of story."

Using this leftover money, Lynch decided to experiment on making a work that was a mix of animation with live action, producing a four minute short entitled The Alphabet (1968). The film starred Lynch's wife Peggy as a character known as The Girl, who chants the alphabet to a series of images of horses before dying at the end by haemorrhaging blood all over her bed sheets. Adding a sound effect, Lynch used a broken Uher tape recorder to record the sound of his baby daughter Jennifer crying, creating a distorted sound that Lynch felt to be particularly effective. Later describing where he had got inspiration for this work from, Lynch stated that "Peggy's niece was having a bad dream one night and was saying the alphabet in her sleep in a tormented way. So that's sort of what started The Alphabet going. The rest of it was just subconscious."

Learning about the newly founded American Film Institute, which gave grants to film makers who could produce for them both a prior work and a script for a new project, Lynch decided to send them a copy of The Alphabet along with a script that he had written for a new short film, one that would be almost entirely live action, and which would be entitled The Grandmother. The Institute agreed to help finance the work, initially offering him $5000, out of his requested budget of $7,200, but later granting him the further $2,200 which he needed. Starring people he knew from both work and college and filmed in his own house, The Grandmother revolved around the story of a neglected boy who "grows" a grandmother from a seed to care for him. The film critics Michelle Le Blanc and Colin Odell later remarked that "this film is a true oddity but contains many of the themes and ideas that would filter into his later work, and shows a remarkable grasp of the medium".

Los Angeles and Eraserhead: 1971–1979

).]] In 1971, Lynch moved with his wife and daughter to the city of Los Angeles in California, where he began studying filmmaking at the AFI Conservatory, a place that he would later describe as being "completely chaotic and disorganized, which was great… you quickly learned that if you were going to get something done, you would have to do it yourself. They wanted to let people do their thing." He began writing a script for a proposed work entitled Gardenback, which had "unfolded from this painting I'd done." In this venture he was supported by a number of figures at the Conservatory, who encouraged him to lengthen the script and add in more dialogue, something that he reluctantly agreed to do. Nonetheless, with all the interference on his Gardenback project, he became fed up with the Conservatory, and announced that he was quitting. Attempting to prevent this, many of the teachers at the centre asked him to reconsider, believing that he was one of their best students, and he finally agreed, albeit on the condition that he could create his own project that would not be interfered with. Feeling that Gardenback was "wrecked", he instead set about on a new film, which he called Eraserhead.

Despite the fact that the film was planned to be about forty-two minutes long (it would end up being eighty-nine minutes long), the script for Eraserhead was only 21 pages long, and some of the teachers at the Conservatory were concerned that the film would not be a success with such little dialogue and action. Nonetheless, they agreed not to interfere as they had done with Gardenback, and as such Lynch was able to create the film free from interference. Filming, which began in 1972, took place at night in some abandoned stables, allowing the production team, which was largely Lynch and some of his friends, including Sissy Spacek, Jack Fisk, cinematographer Frederick Elmes and sound designer Alan Splet to set up a camera room, green room, editing room, sets as well as a food room and a bathroom. Initially, funding for the project came from the AFI, who gave Lynch a $10,000 grant, but it was not enough to complete the work, and under pressure from studios after the success of the relatively cheap feature film Easy Rider, they were unable to provide him with any more. Following this, Lynch was also supported by a loan given to him by his father, and by money that he was able to bring in from a paper round that he took up delivering the Wall Street Journal. Not long into the production of Eraserhead, Lynch and his wife Peggy amicably separated and divorced, and so he began living full-time on set. In 1977, Lynch would remarry, this time to a woman named Mary Fisk.

Filmed in black and white, Eraserhead tells the story of a quiet young man named Henry (Jack Nance) living in a dystopian industrial wasteland, whose girlfriend gives birth to a deformed baby whom she leaves in his care. The baby constantly cries, eventually leading to its accidental death, at which the world itself begins to fall apart. Lynch has consistently refused to either confirm or deny any interpretation of Eraserhead, or to "confess his own thinking behind the many abstractions in the film." Nonetheless, he admits that it was heavily influenced by the fearful mood of Philadelphia, and referred to the film as "my Philadelphia Story".

It was due to the financial problems with the production of Eraserhead that filming was haphazard, regularly stopping and starting again. It was in one such break in 1974 that Lynch created a short film entitled The Amputee, which revolved around a woman with two amputated legs (played by Jack Nance's wife, Catherine Coulson) reading aloud a letter and having her stumps washed by a doctor (played by Lynch himself).

Eraserhead was finally finished in 1976, after five years of production. Lynch subsequently tried to get the film entered into the Cannes Film Festival, but whilst some reviewers liked it, others felt that it was awful, and so it was not selected for screening. Similarly, reviewers from the New York Film Festival also rejected it, but it was indeed screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival, from where Ben Barenholtz, the distributor of the Elgin Theater, heard about it. He was very supportive of the movie, helping to distribute it around the United States in 1977, and Eraserhead subsequently became popular on the midnight movie underground circuit, The acclaimed film maker Stanley Kubrick said that it was one of his all-time favorite films.

The Elephant Man and mainstream success: 1980–1982

The cult success of Eraserhead on the underground circuit led to it being seen by Stuart Cornfeld, an executive producer to the producer Mel Brooks, who later remarked that "I was just 100 per cent blown away… I thought it was the greatest thing I'd ever seen. It was such a cleansing experience." Contacting Lynch, he agreed to help him with his next planned project, a film entitled Ronnie Rocket for which Lynch had already written a script. Nonetheless, Lynch soon realized that Ronnie Rocket, a film that he described as being about "electricity and a three-foot guy with red hair", was not going to be picked up by any financiers, and so he asked Cornfeld to find him a script written by someone else which he could direct. Cornfeld went away and found him four possible scripts, but upon hearing the title of the first, The Elephant Man, Lynch was already sure that that was the script for him, going on nothing but the title.

The Elephant Man script – written by Chris de Vore and Eric Bergren – was based upon a true story, that of Joseph Merrick, a heavily deformed man living in Victorian London, who was held in a sideshow but was later taken under the care of a London surgeon, Frederick Treves. Lynch wanted to film it, but at the same time also had to make some alterations that would alter the story from true events, but in his view make a better plot. However, in order to do so he would have to get the permission of Mel Brooks, whose company, BrookFilms, would be responsible for production; subsequently Brooks viewed Eraserhead, and after coming out of the screening theatre, embraced Lynch, declaring that "You're a madman, I love you! You're in."

The resulting film, The Elephant Man, starred John Hurt as John Merrick (his name was changed from Joseph), as well as Anthony Hopkins as Frederick Treves. Filming took place in London, and Lynch brought his own distinctively surrealist approach to the film, filming it in color stock black and white, but nonetheless it has been described as "one of the most conventional" of his films. The Elephant Man was a huge critical and commercial success, and earned eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay nods for Lynch.

The De Laurentiis films, Dune and Blue Velvet: 1983–1986

Following on from the success of The Elephant Man, the film maker George Lucas, himself a fan of Eraserhead, offered Lynch the opportunity to direct the third film in his Star Wars trilogy, . Lynch however refused, arguing that Lucas should direct the film himself as the movie should reflect his own vision, not Lynch's take on it. Soon after however, the opportunity to direct another big-budget science fiction epic arose when Dino de Laurentiis of the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group asked him to create a film adaptation of Frank Herbert's science fiction novel Dune (1965). Lynch also helped build some of the sets, attempting to create "a certain look" for the film, and he particularly enjoyed building the set for the oil planet of Giedi Prime, for which he "used steel, bolts, and porcelain to construct" it.

Dune is set in the far future, when humans live in an interstellar empire run along a feudal system. The main character, Paul Atreides (played by Kyle MacLachlan), is the son of a noble who takes control of the desert planet Arrakis which grows the rare spice melange, the most highly prized commodity in the empire. Lynch however was unhappy with the work, later remarking that "Dune was a kind of studio film. I didn’t have final cut. And, little by little, I was subconsciously making compromises" to his own vision. He produced much footage for the film that was eventually removed out from the final theatrical cut, dramatically condensing the plot. Although De Laurentiis hoped it would be as successful as Star Wars, Lynch's Dune (1984) was a critical and commercial dud; it had cost $45 million to make, and grossed a mere $27.4 million domestically. Later on, Universal Studios released an "extended cut" of the film for syndicated television, containing almost an hour of cutting-room-floor footage and new narration. Such was not representative of Lynch's intentions, but the studio considered it more comprehensible than the original two-hour version. Lynch objected to these changes and had his name struck from the extended cut, which has "Alan Smithee" credited as the director and "Judas Booth" (a pseudonym which Lynch himself invented, inspired by his own feelings of betrayal) as the screenwriter.

Meanwhile in 1983 he had begun the writing and drawing of a comic strip, The Angriest Dog in the World, which featured unchanging graphics of a tethered dog that was so angry that it could not move, alongside cryptic philosophical references. It ran from 1983 until 1992 in the Village Voice, Creative Loafing and other tabloid and alternative publications. It was around this period that Lynch also got increasingly interested in photography as an art form, and travelled to northern England to take photos of the degrading industrial landscape, something that he was particularly interested in.

Following on from Dune, Lynch was contractually still obliged to produce two other projects for De Laurentiis: the first of these was a planned sequel, which due to the film's lack of success never went beyond the script stage.

For the film, Lynch decided to include pop songs from the 1950s, including "In Dreams" by Roy Orbison and "Blue Velvet" by Bobby Vinton, the latter of which was largely inspirational for the film, with Lynch stating that "It was the song that sparked the movie… There was something mysterious about it. It made me think about things. And the first things I thought about were lawns – lawns and the neighbourhood." Other music for the film was also produced, this time composed by Angelo Badalamenti, who would go on to produce the music for most of Lynch’s subsequent cinematic works. Dino de Laurentiis loved the film, and it achieved support from some of the early specialist screenings, but the preview screenings to a mainstream audience were instead highly negative, with most of the audience hating the film. Although Lynch had found success previously with The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet's controversy with audiences and critics introduced him into the mainstream, and became a huge critical and moderate commercial success. The film earned Lynch his second Academy Award nomination for Best Director. Woody Allen, whose film Hannah and Her Sisters was nominated for Best Picture, said that Blue Velvet was his favorite film of the year.

Twin Peaks, Wild at Heart and Fire Walk With Me: 1987–1996

During the late 1980s, Lynch had begun to work in television as well as cinema, directing a short piece entitled The Cowboy and the Frenchman for French television in 1989. Around this time, he met the television producer Mark Frost, who had formerly worked on such projects as the television police series Hill Street Blues, and they decided to start working together on a biopic of singer and actress Marilyn Monroe based upon Anthony Summers's book, The Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe. Whilst this project never got off the ground, the duo went on to work on a comedy script entitled One Saliva Bubble, but that did not see completion either. It was whilst they were talking in a coffee shop that Lynch and Frost both had the idea of a corpse washing up on the shore of a lake, and using this image as a basis subsequently set about on their third project, which they initially named Northwest Passage but which would eventually come to fruition as the television series Twin Peaks (1990–1991). A drama series set in a small Washington town where popular high school student Laura Palmer has been raped and murdered, Twin Peaks featured FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) as the investigator trying to unearth the killer, and discovering not only the supernatural elements to the murder but also the secrets of many of the local townsfolk – as Lynch himself summed it up, "The project was to mix a police investigation with the ordinary lives of the characters." In plotting out the series, Lynch later related that "[Mark Frost and I] worked together, especially in the initial stages. Later on we started working more apart." They subsequently pitched the series to the ABC Network, who agreed to finance the pilot episode, and once this was completed they also commissioned the first season, which comprised seven episodes.

A second season went into production soon after, which would last for a further 22 episodes. In all, Lynch himself only directed six episodes out of the whole series due to other responsibilities, namely his work on the film Wild at Heart (see below), but carefully chose those other directors whom he entrusted with the job. Meanwhile, Lynch also appeared in several episodes of the series, acting in the role of deaf FBI agent Gordon Cole. The series was a success, with high viewing figures both in the United States and in many nations abroad, and soon spawned a cult following. Nonetheless, the executives at the ABC Network, believing that public interest in the show was decreasing, insisted that Lynch and Frost reveal who the killer of Laura Palmer was prematurely, something that they only begrudgingly agreed to do, and Lynch has always felt that agreeing to do so is one of his biggest professional regrets. Following the revealing of the murderer and the series' move from Thursday to Saturday night on the ABC Network, Twin Peaks'' continued on for several more episodes, but following a ratings drop was cancelled. Lynch, who disliked the direction that the writers and directors had taken in the previous few episodes, chose to direct the final episode, which he ended on a cliffhanger, later stating that "that's not the ending. That's the ending that people were stuck with."

While Twin Peaks was in production, the Brooklyn Academy of Music asked Lynch and the composer Angelo Badalamenti, who had been responsible for the music in Twin Peaks, to create a theatrical piece which would only be performed twice at their academy in New York City in 1989 as a part of the New Music America Festival. The result was Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted, which starred such frequent Lynch collaborators as Laura Dern, Nicolas Cage and Michael J. Anderson as well as containing five songs sung by Julee Cruise. David Lynch produced a fifty-minute video of the performance in 1990. Meanwhile, Lynch was also involved in the creation of various commercials for different companies, including perfume companies like Yves Saint Laurent, Calvin Klein and Giorgio Armani and for the Japanese coffee company Namoi, the latter of which involved a Japanese man searching the town of Twin Peaks for his missing wife.

Whilst still working on the first few episodes of Twin Peaks, Lynch's friend, Monty Montgomery "gave me a book that he wanted to direct as a movie. He asked if I would maybe be executive producer or something, and I said 'That's great, Monty, but what if I read it and fall in love with it and want to do it myself?' And he said, 'In that case, you can do it yourself'." The book was Barry Gifford's novel Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula, which told the tale of two lovers on a road trip, and Lynch felt that it was "just exactly the right thing at the right time. The book and the violence in America merged in my mind and many different things happened." With Gifford's support, Lynch set about to adapt the novel into a film, with the result being Wild at Heart, a crime and road movie starring Nicolas Cage as Sailor and Laura Dern as Lula. Describing his plot as a "strange blend" of "a road picture, a love story, a psychological drama and a violent comedy", he altered much from the original novel, changing the ending, and incorporating numerous references to the classic film The Wizard of Oz. Despite receiving a muted response from American critics and viewers, it won the prestigious Palme d'Or at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival.

Following on from the success of Wild at Heart, Lynch decided to return to the world of the now-cancelled Twin Peaks, this time without Mark Frost, to create a film that acted primarily as a prequel but also, in part, as a sequel, with Lynch stating that "I liked the idea of the story going back and forth in time." The result, (1992), primarily revolved around the last few days in the life of Laura Palmer, and was much "darker" in tone than the television series, having much of the humour removed, and dealing with such topics as incest and murder. Lynch himself stated that the film was about "the loneliness, shame, guilt, confusion and devestation of the victim of incest." Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me was financed by the company CIBY-2000, and most of the cast of the series agreed to reprise their roles for the film, although some refused, and many were not enthusiastic about the project. The film was, for the most part, a commercial and critical failure in the United States; however, it was a hit in Japan and British critic Mark Kermode (among others) has hailed it as Lynch's "masterpiece".

Meanwhile, Lynch continued working on a series of television shows with Mark Frost. After Twin Peaks, they produced a series of documentaries entitled American Chronicles (1990) which examined life across the United States, the comedy series On the Air (1992), which was cancelled after only three episodes had aired, and the three-episode HBO mini-series Hotel Room (1993) about events that happened in the same hotel room but at different dates in time.

Lost Highway, The Straight Story and Mulholland Drive: 1997–2001

Following his unsuccessful television ventures since Twin Peaks, Lynch returned to making feature films. In 1997 he released the non-linear, noiresque Lost Highway, co-written by Barry Gifford and starring Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette. The film failed commercially and received a mixed response from critics. However, thanks in part to a soundtrack featuring David Bowie, Marilyn Manson, Rammstein, Nine Inch Nails and The Smashing Pumpkins, it helped gain Lynch a new audience of Generation X viewers.

Following Lost Highway, Lynch went on to work on directing a film from a script written by Mary Sweeney and John E. Roach. The resulting motion picture, The Straight Story, was, like The Elephant Man before it, based upon a true story, that of Alvin Straight (played in the film by Richard Farnsworth), an elderly man from Laurens, Iowa, who goes on three hundred mile journey to visit his sick brother (played by Harry Dean Stanton) in Mount Zion, Wisconsin, riding the whole way there upon an electric lawnmower. Commenting on why he chose this script, Lynch would simply relate that "that's what I fell in love with next", and displayed his admiration for Straight, describing him as being "like James Dean, except he's old." Once more, Angelo Badalamenti produced the music for the film, although he created instrumentation that was "very different from the kind of score he's done for [Lynch] in the past." Having many differences with most of his work, particularly in that it did not contain any profanities, sexual content or violence, The Straight Story was rated G (general viewing) by the Motion Picture Association of America, and as such came as "shocking news" to many in the film industry, who were surprised that it "did not disturb, offend or mystify."

The same year, Lynch approached ABC once again with ideas for a television drama. The network gave Lynch the go-ahead to shoot a two-hour pilot for the series Mulholland Drive, but disputes over content and running time led to the project being shelved indefinitely. However, with seven million dollars from the French production company StudioCanal, Lynch completed the pilot as a film, Mulholland Drive. The film, a non-linear narrative surrealist tale of the dark side of Hollywood, stars Naomi Watts, Laura Harring and Justin Theroux. The film performed relatively well at the box office worldwide and was a critical success, earning Lynch a Best Director prize at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival (shared with Joel Coen for The Man Who Wasn't There) and a Best Director award from the New York Film Critics Association. In addition, Lynch also received his third Academy Award nomination for Best Director.

Internet work and Inland Empire: 2002–present

With the onset of popularity of the internet, Lynch decided to utlilize this new medium, releasing several new series that he had created exclusively on his website, davidlynch.com. In 2002, he created a series of online shorts entitled Dumbland. Intentionally crude both in content and execution, the eight-episode series was later released on DVD. The same year, Lynch released a surreal sitcom via his website – Rabbits, which revolved around a family of humanoid rabbits. Later, he showed his experiments with Digital Video in the form of the Japanese-style horror short Darkened Room.

In 2006, Lynch's latest feature film, Inland Empire was released. At almost three hours, it was the longest of Lynch's films. Like Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway before it, the film did not follow a traditional narrative structure. It starred Lynch regulars Laura Dern, Harry Dean Stanton, and Justin Theroux, with cameos by Naomi Watts and Laura Harring (voices of Suzie and Jane Rabbit), and a performance by Jeremy Irons. Lynch described the piece as "a mystery about a woman in trouble". In an effort to promote the film, Lynch made appearances with a cow and a placard bearing the slogan "Without cheese there would be no Inland Empire".

In 2009, Lynch produced a documentary web series directed by his son, Austin Lynch and friend Jason S. called Interview Project.

Lynch currently has two films in production, both of which differ in content from his previous work. One of these is an animation entitled Snootworld, and the other is a documentary on Maharishi Mahesh Yogi consisting of interviews with people who knew him.

In 2010, Lynch began making guest appearances on the Family Guy spin-off, The Cleveland Show as Gus the Bartender. He had been convinced to appear in the show by its lead actor, Mike Henry, who is a fan of Lynch's and who felt that his whole life had changed after seeing Wild at Heart.

Lady Blue Shanghai, written, directed and edited by Lynch, is a 16-minute promotional film made for Dior and released on the Internet in May 2010.

Lynch directed a concert by English New Wave band Duran Duran on March 23, 2011. The concert was streamed live on YouTube from the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles as the kickoff to the second season of “Unstaged: An Original Series from American Express." The idea is to try and create on the fly, layers of images permeating Duran Duran on the stage," Lynch said. "A world of experimentation and hopefully some happy accidents.”

Cinematic influences and themes

Influences

Lynch admits that his work is more similar in many respects to those of European film makers than American ones, believing that most films that "get down and thrill your soul" were by European directors. Lynch has commented on his admiration for such film makers as Stanley Kubrick, as is Kubrick's Lolita (1962).

Recurring motifs

There are several recurring themes within Lynch's work, leading film critics Le Blanc and Odell to state that "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 that they noted was the usage of dreams and dreamlike imagery within his works, something they related to the "surrealist ethos" of relying "on the subconscious to provide visual drive". This can be seen in John Merrick's dream of his mother in The Elephant Man, Agent Cooper's dreams of the red room in Twin Peaks and the "dreamlike logic" of the narrative found in Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire. Discussing his attitude to dreams, Lynch has stated that "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."

Another of Lynch's prominent themes include 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 can be seen with the industrial wasteland in Eraserhead, the factories in The Elephant Man, the sawmill in Twin Peaks and the lawn mower in The Straight Story. Describing his interest in such things, Lynch stated that "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 idea of a "dark underbelly" of violent criminal activity within a society, such as with Frank'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 protagonist in The Elephant Man, to the deformed baby in Eraserhead, as is the idea of death from a head wound, found in most of Lynch's films. Other imagery commonly used within Lynch's works are flickering electrictity or lights, as well as fire and the idea of a stage upon which a singer performs, often surrounded by drapery. A number of his works, including Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks and Lost Highway are intentionally reminiscent of the 1950s American culture even though they were set in the later decades of the 20th century. Lynch later commented on his feelings for this decade, which was that in which he grew up as a child, by stating that "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 then for a disastrous future."

Lynch also tends to feature his leading female actors in multiple or "split" roles, so that many of his female characters have multiple, fractured identities. This practice began with his choice to cast 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, while in Mulholland Drive, Naomi Watts plays Diane Selwyn/Betty Elms and Laura Harring plays Camilla Rhodes/Rita and in Inland Empire, Laura Dern plays Nikki Grace/Susan Blue. By contrast, Lynch rarely creates multi-character roles for his male actors.

Recurring collaborators

Lynch is also widely noted for his collaborations with various production artists and composers on his films and multiple different 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.

Other art

Painting

Lynch first trained as a painter, and although he is now better known as a filmmaker, he has also produced much painting work. 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 colour, and Lynch has described this as being because "I wouldn't know what to do with [colour]. Colour to me is too real. It's limiting. It doesn't allow too much of a dream. The more you throw black into a colour, 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, something which 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 was the subject of a major art retrospective at the Fondation Cartier, Paris from March May 3–27, 2007. The show was entitled 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. Some of Lynch's art include photographs of dissected chickens and other animals as a "Build your own Chicken" toy ad.

Between 1983 and 1992, Lynch wrote and drew a weekly comic strip called The Angriest Dog in the World for the L.A. Reader. The drawings in the panels never change, just the captions.

Music

Lynch has also been involved in a number of music projects, many of them related to his films. 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 has also worked on the 1998 Jocelyn Montgomery album Lux Vivens. He has also composed bits of 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 has 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 was released. In 2008, he started his own record label called David Lynch MC on which its first release Fox Bat Strategy: A Tribute to Dave Jaurequi was released in early 2009. In August 2009, it was announced that he was releasing Afghani/American singer Ariana Delawari's Lion of Panjshir album in conjunction with Manimal Vinyl Records in October 2009.

In November 2010, Lynch released two electro pop 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".

Personal life

Lynch has had several long-term relationships. In 1967, he married Peggy Lentz in Chicago, Illinois. They had one child, Jennifer Chambers Lynch, born in 1968, who is a film director. They filed for divorce in 1974. On June 21, 1977, Lynch married Mary Fisk, and the couple had one child, Austin Jack Lynch, born in 1982. They divorced in 1987, and Lynch began dating Isabella Rossellini after filming Blue Velvet. Lynch and Rossellini broke up in 1991, and Lynch developed a relationship with Mary Sweeney, with whom he had one son, Riley Lynch, 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 divorced that July. Lynch married actress Emily Stofle, who appeared in his 2006 film Inland Empire, in February, 2009.

Politically, Lynch has stated that he admired former president Ronald Reagan. He was drawn to Reagan for his "cowboy" image and belief in personal freedom. However, Lynch endorsed the Natural Law Party in the 2000 presidential election and has said that he's "not a political person".

Transcendental Meditation

.]] Lynch advocates the use of meditation techniques in bringing peace to the world. He was first 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 reportedly became close with Maharishi during a month-long "Millionaire's Enlightenment Course" held in 2003, the fee for which was 1 million.

In July 2005, he 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 the Transcendental Meditation technique and to fund research on the technique and its effects on learning. He promotes his vision on college campuses with tours that began in September 2005.

Lynch is working for the building and establishment of seven buildings, in which 8,000 salaried people will practice advanced meditation techniques, "pumping peace for the world". He estimates the cost at $7 billion. As of December 2005, he had spent $400,000 of personal money, and raised $1 million in donations. In 2009, he 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)."

An independent project starring Lynch is called Beyond The Noise: My Transcendental Meditation Journey. It is directed by young film student Dana Farley, who has severe Dyslexia and Attention deficit disorder. Farley started Transcendental Meditation when she was 16 and it enabled her to overcome the stresses of getting through her last years of high school and into college. Filmmaker Kevin Sean Michaels is one of the producers and the film will be at film festivals in 2011.

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. Until June 2010, this weather report (usually no longer than 30 seconds) was also being broadcast, on his personal YouTube-channel David Lynch – Daily Weather Report. An 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 an avid coffee drinker and even has his own line of special organic blends available for purchase on his website. 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 possibly self-mocking tag-line for the brand is "It's all in the beans ... and I'm just full of beans." This is also a quote of a line said by Justin Theroux's character in Inland Empire.

Discography

Eraserhead (Original Soundtrack)

Twin Peaks: Season Two Music And More

The Air is on Fire (Exhibition Soundscape) (2007)

Polish Night Music (2007)

Ghost of Love - Single (2007)

Good Day Today / I Know - Single (2010)

TBA Album (2011)

Filmography

Features

Short films

Television series

{| class="wikitable sortable" |- !Year !Series !Episodes |- |1990–1991 |Twin Peaks |30 |- |1992 |On the Air |7 |- |1993 |Hotel Room |3 |}

ceremony.]]

Online series

{| class="wikitable sortable" |- !Year !Series !Episodes !Available on DVD |- |2002 |Rabbits |8 |The Lime Green Set DVD |- |2002 |Dumbland |8 |The Lime Green Set DVD |- | |Out Yonder | |The Lime Green Set DVD |- |2009 |Interview Project | | |}

Music videos

{| class="wikitable sortable" |- !Year !Song !Musician |- |1982 |I Predict |Sparks |- |1990 |Wicked Game (film version) |Chris Isaak |- |1992 |Dangerous |Michael Jackson |- |1995 |Longing |Yoshiki |- |1996 |Rammstein |Rammstein |- |2009 |Shot in the Back of the Head |Moby |}

Other

In October, 2008, at the OMMA Video Conference, Jen Gregono, chief content officer at On Networks, announced that her company signed Lynch to a webisode series based on his book, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness and Creativity.

In June 2009, Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse released an album called (named after a Slate.com article of the same name, "Dark Night of the Soul; David Lynch's Inland Empire"), with a 100+ page booklet with visuals by Lynch. The album contained complete packaging and a blank CD because of a dispute with the record label. The artists involved implied that consumers can get the music online and just burn the blank CD provided.

Awards and nominations

'''Academy Awards:

1980: Best Director (The Elephant Man, nominated)

1981: Best Adapted Screenplay (The Elephant Man, nominated)

1987: Best Director (Blue Velvet, nominated)

2002: Best Director (Mulholland Dr., nominated)

'''BAFTA Awards:

1981: Best Direction (The Elephant Man, nominated)

1981: Best Screenplay (The Elephant Man, nominated)

'''Cannes Film Festival:

1990: Golden Palm (Wild at Heart, won)

1992: Golden Palm (Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, nominated)

1999: Golden Palm (The Straight Story, nominated)

2001: Best Director (Mulholland Dr., won Tied with Joel Coen for ''The Man Who Wasn't There)

2001: Golden Palm (Mulholland Dr., nominated)

'''DGA Award:

1981: Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures (The Elephant Man, nominated)

'''Emmy Awards:

1990: Outstanding Achievement in Main Title Theme Music (Twin Peaks, nominated)

1990: Outstanding Achievement in Music and Lyrics (Twin Peaks for the song "Into the Night", nominated)

1990: Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series (Twin Peaks for the pilot episode, nominated)

1990: Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series (Twin Peaks for the pilot episode, nominated)

1990: Outstanding Drama Series (Twin Peaks)

'''Golden Globes:

1980: Best Director (The Elephant Man, nominated)

1987: Best Screenplay (Blue Velvet, nominated)

2002: Best Director (Mulholland Dr., nominated)

2002: Best Screenplay (Mulholland Dr., nominated)

'''Independent Spirit Awards:

1987: Best Director (Blue Velvet, nominated)

1987: Best Screenplay (Blue Velvet, nominated)

2000: Best Director (The Straight Story, nominated)

2007: Special Distinction Award (Shared with Laura Dern for their collaborative work, won)

'''Saturn Awards:

1993: Best Writing (Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, nominated)

1993: Life Career Award (won)

2002: Best Director (Mulholland Dr., nominated)

'''Venice Film Festival:

2006: Future Film Festival Digital Award (Inland Empire won)

2006: Career Golden Lion (won)

'''WGA Award:

1981: Best Drama Adapted from Another Medium (The Elephant Man, nominated)

1987: Best Original Screenplay (Blue Velvet, nominated)

References

;Notes

;Footnotes

;Bibliography }}

David Lynch: Interviews, a collection of interviews with Lynch from 1977 to 2008, edited by Richard A. Barney for the series Conversations with Filmmakers (University Press of Mississippi, 2009, ISBN 978-1-60473-237-5 [paperback], ISBN 978–1604732369 [hardback]). This volume covers topics that include Lynch's filmmaking, furniture design, painting, and music career.

Lynch on Lynch, a book of interviews with Lynch, conducted, edited, and introduced by filmmaker Chris Rodley (Faber & Faber Ltd., 1997, ISBN 0–571–19548–2; revised edition published by Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2005, ISBN 0–571–22018–5).

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).

Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity by David Lynch (Jeremy P. Tarcher, 2006, ISBN 978-1-58542-540-2 / 978–1585425402).

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).

David Lynch – Un cinéma du maléfique, by Enrique Seknadje, Editions Camion Noir, 2010. ISBN 978–2–35779–086–5

David Lynch in Theory, a collection of essays edited by Francois-Xavier Gleyzon (Charles University Press, 2010) ISBN 978–80–7308–317–5.

External links

David Lynch Foundation : Education : Transcendental Meditation

World of David Lynch

David Lynch at Allmovie

David Lynch at Moviefone

David Lynch at Rotten Tomatoes

Site about the Artwork of Lynch

Bibliography of books and articles about Lynch via UC Berkeley Media Resources Center

Interviews

* Film Threat interview

* Wired interview

* Guardian interview

* Interviews for Cinefantastique

Category:1946 births Category:American artists Category:American animators Category:American comic strip cartoonists Category:American composers Category:American experimental filmmakers Category:American film directors Category:American Film Institute Conservatory alumni Category:American musicians Category:American painters Category:American Presbyterians Category:César Award winners Category:Eagle Scouts Category:Surrealist filmmakers Category:American people of Finnish descent Category:Living people Category:People from Missoula, Montana Category:Transcendental Meditation practitioners Category:Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts alumni Category:People from Los Angeles, California Category:Officiers of the Légion d'honneur