Early Life

• Lynch was born on January 20, 1946, in Missoula, Montana.• His father was a U.S. Department of Agriculture research scientist

and his mother was an English language tutor.• Raised as a Presbyterian, Lynch spent his childhood throughout the

Pacific Northwest and Durham, North Carolina. • Originally planning to be an artist, Lynch attended Corcoran School

of Art in Washington, DC. He also attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Virginia, for a year.

• After the year of going to school in Boston he went to Europe to study with the Austrian painter Oskar Kokoschka. Even though he planned to stay for three years Lynch came back to the US after 15 days

Early Career• 1966- Lynch moved to the

Fairmount neighbourhood of Philadelphia. He attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA).

• While attending PAFA he created his first short film called Six Men Getting Sick. He described it as “57 seconds of growth and fire, and 3 seconds of vomit”. At an art exhibit in it was played on a loop and ended up winning the Academy's annual film contest.

• After winning the film award H. Barton Wasserman gave Lynch $1000 to make a film in his house. The attempt, however, was a failure. Using the rest of the money, Lynch created his next short film called The Alphabet in 1968.

• 1970- Lynch won a grant of $5,000 (later extended to $7,500) from the American Film Institute to produce a short film called The Grandmother. This film is about a lonely boy with abusive parents that looks for someone to comfort him so he “grows” a grandmother from a seed.

First Two Short Films

The Alphabet:

• Stars his then wife Peggy Lynch as a little girl chanting the alphabet to disturbing animations. In the end the little girl dies.

Six Men Getting Sick:

• Features several heads and arms that slowly grow stomachs and catch fire. At the end the transformed figures are shown vomiting.

First Film to Get Lynch Noticed:Eraserhead

• 1971- Lynch moved to LA, California.• Studied for a Master of Fine Arts degree at the AFI Conservatory.• At the conservatory he received a $10,000 grant which he used to begin

working on his first feature-length film Eraserhead.• However, $10,000 was not enough money to complete the film. • With many intermissions, money

from friends and family, and a

paper route, Eraserhead was

finally finished in 1979.• At first the film was considered

to be unreleasable but with the

efforts of the Elgin Theatre

distributor it became an instant

cult classic. It also launched Lynch into to the front of avant-garde filmmaking.

• This film is about a quiet young man (Jack Nance) living in an industrial wasteland. His girlfriend gives birth to a baby that is mutated and constantly cries. When the young man falls asleep one night he has a dream unlike any other.

• Lynch refers to Eraserhead as his “Philadelphia story”. It reflects the dangerous and fearful elements encountered while he lived and studied in Philadelphia. He said that “this feeling left its traces deep down inside of me and when it came out again, it became Eraserhead”.

• This film cemented the actors and technicians that would continue to work with Lynch on his future features.

Lynch’s 3 Most Famous Films

1. The Elephant Man ; 2. Blue Velvet ; 3. Mulholland Drive

The television series Twin Peaks also gave fame to Lynch.

The Elephant Man

• The success of Eraserhead brought Lynch to the attention of Mel Brooks who hired him to direct the film The Elephant Man in 1980.

• This film is based on Joseph Merrick, a severely deformed man in 19th century London.

• Screenplay was adapted by Lynch from the two books The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences by Sir Fredrick Treves and The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity by Ashley Montagu.

• Lynch also provided the musical direction and sound design for this film.

• This film won BAFTA Awards for Best Film, Best Actor (John Hurt), and Best Production Design.

• It’s the story of a London surgeon who discovers a deformed man in a Victorian freak show who has to wear a hood and cape in public. The surgeon takes pity on the man, lets him live in the hospital, and befriends him. Eventually, though, a staff member from the hospital exposes the man to the public

• Most famous line from this film:“ I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I AM A HUMAN BEING! I... AM... A MAN!”

• In 2006 an Australian television countdown show called 20 to 1 celebrated “Great Movie One-Liners” which included the movie line above.

Blue Velvet• Lynch developed the screenplay for Blue Velvet in the early

70s he had a hard time finding a studio to finance it because it was thought that the violence and sexual content were too strong.

• Finally the independent studio De Laurentiis Entertainment Group agreed to finance and produce the film.

• The film came out in 1986 and achieved cult success.

• Considered Lynch’s finest work alongside Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive.

• This is a story about a college student who happens to stumble upon an ear. He decides to investigate and ends up uncovering disturbing secrets underneath his hometowns perfectness.

• This is Lynch’s most personal film in which he uses his own life experiences to influence scenes and elements. For example the main character dresses the same as Lynch when he was younger and the scene where a lady is naked outside her home is similar to a sight he saw when he was a child.

• Blue Velvet has been compared to the film Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock due to its stark treatment of psychotic evil.

• Originally planned to be a television series in 2001, this film is about an actress who moves to LA, California, and befriends a woman who is amnesiac. It includes many subplots that seem unrelated but eventually connect in various ways.

• Lynch refuses to make any comments on the meaning of this film. He just gives it the tagline “A love story in the city of dreams”.

Mulholland Drive

• Lynch won Best Director for this film at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.

• Named Best Picture by The New York Films Critics Circle and Online Film Society and named Best Film of the decade by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.

• Grossed $20,112,339 worldwide.

Twin Peaks

• In the late 1980s Lynch met the producer Mark Frost and they created a television show together called Twin Peaks.

• This show was a drama series set in a small Washington town where a popular high school student is raped and murdered. An FBI agent is called in to investigate the murder and eventually

uncovers the many

secrets of the towns

residents.

• Lynch himself only directed six episodes and starred in several episodes as an FBI agent named Gordon Cole.

• Twin Peaks rose from cult hit to a cultural phenomenon. Its originality and success makes it one of the most well-known television series of the decade.

• During the second season the ABC network clashed with Lynch about revealing the killer. Lynch wanted it to remain a mystery until the end of the series or else the show would be pointless. However, the network went ahead with revealing the identity of the killer which made Lynch lose interest in the show.

• Due to a severe drop in the show’s ratings, Twin peaks was cancelled in 1991.

• In 1992 Lynch created a prequel film called Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Its about the high school students last seven days alive. The movie was unsuccessful in the US but a huge hit in Japan and Britain. A British critic even titled it as Lynch’s “masterpiece”.

Influences

• Some people Lynch has expressed admiration towards are filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, writer Franz Kafka, and artist Francis Bacon.

• Lynch has stated that most of Kubrick’s films are in his top ten favorites, that he really loves Kafka, and that Bacon paints images that are both visually stunning and emotionally touching.

Side Projects• Lynch is also a painter, sculptor, furniture

designer, music composer and comic strip creator.

• Some of his projects include:

Rock With Seven Eyes; Red Headed Party Doll; Dr. Howl’s Philosophy; Box of Bees

Eat My Fear;

(Cow sculpture made in 2000 for

NYC cow parade).

Floating Beam Table

(Described as the magic of wood and

steel.)

The Angriest Dog in the World• A comic strip created by Lynch that was published in papers such

as the LA Reader, Creative Loafing, New York Press, and Westworld from 1983 until 1992.

• It was conceived in 1973 when Lynch was going through a period of great anger.

• Every strip has the same 4 frames. The only difference is captions coming from the dog’s owners inside the house.

Random Facts

• When he was 15 he served as an usher at John F. Kennedy’s presidential inauguration.

• Has his own website. www.davidlynch.com

• Is famous (or infamous) for not saying anything about Eraserhead. He lets the viewers decide what it means.

• Has 3 kids. Jennifer Chambers Lynch (1968), Austin Jack Lynch (1982) and Riley Sweeney Lynch (1992).

Bibliography

• www.lynchnet.com

• www.wikipedia.com

• www.thecityofabsurdity.com