In Memoriam
A man who gave us an adjective; a man who was beyond the boundaries of the adjective.
My Gods we all loved him. Sure, as a director. Sure, as a visionary. But he just seemed so interesting as a person. If you know what you’re looking at, you can see bits of him in Agent Cooper. He spent his whole life utterly fascinated with the world, and he showed all of us the fascination he felt through his film. And TV—it would be impossible for me to overstate how much his TV influenced people’s lives. I literally have friends whose relationship is tangentially related to Twin Peaks who have been together since the show was on the air.
When I covered him for Celebrating the Living—and, yes, he’s joining the elite ranks of those who also gets an obituary despite not writing them being the point of that column—I said that where he excelled was “the strange currents under the veneer of the normal,” and I stand by that. There’s a perception that his work is completely bizarre, and that’s not true. There are moments, goodness knows, but the best moments in Lynch are also the ones that feel the most familiar. They aren’t real, but they are just on the other side of the mirror from real.
So okay, I do keep thinking of the moment on The Simpsons where Homer is watching Twin Peaks, or the show’s version of it, and says, “Brilliant. I have no idea what’s going on.” And okay, sometimes, I didn’t fully understand what was going on, either. But underneath the weirdness, David Lynch characters are human. They have human wants and needs and urges and impulses, and if the world around them is abnormal, they’re responding to that abnormality in a normal way.
Maybe I wasn’t always on his wavelength—I’m never going to be the right audience for Eraserhead—but from the moment I discovered he existed, when Twin Peaks was new, I’ve been fascinated by him. I still love his version of Dune better than the new one, because I think he got more into the various characters as people, which is important to getting the story right. He and Werner Herzog, another director known for being utterly bonkers, both demonstrated their madness by caring quite a lot about other humans. That’s why he was the right director for The Straight Story.
He was a painter, a musician, an author, and an actor. He was a filmwriter and a director. He was not a terribly prolific filmmaker, but there’s a certain delight to the fact that one of his last projects was appearing as John Ford in The Fabelmans. I don’t know if Lynch was as fascinated with John Ford movies as Spielberg, but it’s also true that some of the advice he gives as Ford is clearly advice that Lynch understood himself. There are two actors in that movie who are remembered despite barely being in it, and Lynch is one of them. We will always remember him; we will always love him.
About the writer
Gillian Nelson
Gillian Nelson is a forty-something bipolar woman living in the Pacific Northwest after growing up in Los Angeles County. She and her boyfriend have one son and one daughter, and she gave a child up for adoption. She fills her days by chasing around her kids, watching a lot of movies, and reading. She particularly enjoys pre-Code films, blaxploitation, and live-action Disney movies of the '60s and '70s. She has a Patreon account.
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I, on the other hand, am exactly the right audience for Eraserhead. R.I.P.
Hey, more Eraserhead for you!
I think it’s very much a dad story. I think stories about maternal anxiety are different.
Is the other Fabelmans actor Judd Hirsch?
It absolutely is.
A towering figure, yet seemed so approachable. Was looking forward to some years with him in elder statesman status. A full life and yet gone too soon. Took some time off this afternoon and rewatched Eraserhead – had just rewatched Mulholland Drive (again) recently and Wild at Heart is Difficult to Find, otherwise would have been one of those. RIP
Edit – Oh, was going to make the recommendation (another watch I would have done had I not seen it recently) that The Straight Story makes a perfect eulogy to the man.
Wild At Heart happens to be in my VHS collection, I think I will bust it out this weekend. Haven’t seen it in 20 years, haven’t forgotten Harry Dean Stanton’s face in it.
“Remember the number… ten.”
Never knew about this, it rules. That sound design! https://x.com/NYCSanitation/status/1879971896495927498
And what’s coming to mind right now is What Did Jack Do, which seems to be generally well-liked as a weird anti/comedy but for me was increasingly and unaccountably disturbing, I don’t know if I could’ve watched a feature of it. This — “But underneath the weirdness, David Lynch characters are human. They have human wants and needs and urges and impulses, and if the world around them is abnormal, they’re responding to that abnormality in a normal way” — is true, and maybe that’s why it seems horrible coming from a monkey that thinks it’s a human. It is Lynch finding a pressure point I didn’t know I had and pushing down, and he did that over and over.
Shoot, I’m going to go pick up litter right now.
He also famously did a pregnancy test commercial, but that sanitation commercial is incredible.
“Fix your heart or die.” What a man. What a loss.
Year of the Month update:
Coming in February, you can sign up to write about anything from 2016 along with these fine folks:
TBD: Bridgett Taylor: Rogue One
Tentative: Sam Scott: The Neon Demon
Feb 7th: Gillian Nelson: Queen of Katwe
Feb. 14th: Gillian Nelson: Milo Murphy’s Law
Feb. 21st: Gillian Nelson: Pete’s Dragon
And there’s still time to join this team for 1947:
TBD: John Anderson: T-Men
Tentative: John Anderson: Nightmare Alley
Jan 16th: Cori Domschot: The Farmer’s Daughter
Jan. 17th: Gillian Nelson: Sleepytime Donald
Jan. 23rd: Cori Domschot: Down to Earth
Jan. 27th: Cliffy73: Miracle on 34th Street
Jan. 31st: Pluto’s Blue Note