David Lynch movies , talks and works

David Lynch is both a master director and one of the worlds active participants in the move towards Human Enlightenment. He is also a Painter, Photographer, Sculptor, and Musician.

Fetish - Louboutin and Lynch

Picture by David Lynch; shoes by Christian Louboutin. Copyright of David Lynch

He also had a comic strip called the angry dog. The comic strip featured an angry dog chained in a yard filled with bones.

Watch talk - David Lynch: Consciousness, Creativity and the Brain

Transcendental meditation

In December 2, 2005, Lynch told the Washington Post that he had been practicing the Transcendental Meditation technique twice a day, for 20 minutes each time, for 32 years. He was initiated into the Transcendental Meditation technique in 1973 in Los Angeles by a teacher he thought "looked like Doris Day". Lynch advocates the use of this meditation technique in bringing peace to the world. 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 ongoing tours that began in September 2005.

This is what David Lynch says about his personal experience with Transcendental Meditation;
I have been ?diving within? through the Transcendental Meditation technique for over 30 years. It has changed my life, my world. I am not alone. Millions of other people of all ages, religions, and walks of life practice the technique and enjoy incredible benefits.

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 December 2006, the New York Times reported that he continued to have that goal. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr formed half a Beatles reunion on April 4, 2009 at ?Change Begins Within,? a benefit concert at Radio City Music Hall for the David Lynch Foundation. The concert?s lineup included Donovan, Sheryl Crow, Eddie Vedder, Moby, Bettye LaVette, Ben Harper, and Mike Love of the Beach Boys. Lynch's book, Catching the Big Fish (Tarcher/Penguin 2006), discusses the impact of the Transcendental Meditation technique on his creative process. He is donating all author's royalties to the David Lynch Foundation.

Of his most succesful Movies are Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, Elephant man, and Twin Peaks

One of my favourite David Lynch films is The Elephant Man (based on a true story)
Watch "The Elephant Man" Directed by David Lynch. With Anthony Hopkins, John Hurt, Anne Bancroft
I am not an animal! I am a human being! I...am...a man!

Based on the true story of Joseph Merrick, a 19th-century Englishman afflicted with a disfiguring congenital disease. With the help of kindly Dr. Frederick Treves, Merrick attempts to regain the dignity he lost after years spent as a side-show freak. Written by Scott Renshaw {as.idc@forsythe.stanford.edu}

Watch Full Movie - The Elephant Man

Length: 118:05 File size: 638 MB

In 19th Century Victorian England, Dr. Frederick Treves (Anthony Hopkins) wanders through an urban carnival in search of freak shows. He happens on a hideously deformed creature called The Elephant Man (John Hurt), and pays the owner Mr. Bytes (Freddie Jones) to examine it. Treves purpose is to present a paper to the Pathological Society and enhance his medical reputation.

The Elephant Man returns from the seminar to Bytes and is beaten severely for wondering off. The man's injuries, as well as an attack from bronchitis, leads Treves to admit him to the hospital. In an attempt to convince the authorities to allow the man to stay, Treves endeavors to communicate with the person. During a meeting, Treves discovers that the man can talk and is educated. The Elephant Man's name is John Merrick and he reveals that he has had this strange disease since he was 14 which benign tumors grow all over his body, face and hands, in which he must sleep sitting up or he will die from suffocation. Merrick is given a room to live in and gradually becomes accepted by most members of the hospital staff. But one hospital night porter (Michael Elphick) sees a money spinner and each evening gathers a drunken crowd of people who will pay any price to see the freak.


Treves attempts to introduce Merrick to London society and brings him over to meet with his wife (Hannah Gordon), who hides her shock at Merricks appearance. Soon the local newspapers run articles on Merrick. One is read by actress Mrs. Kendal (Ann Bancroft) who visits Merrick, tells him about her life in the theater and gives him a copy of Shakespeares plays.



However the night porter is still in business in displaying Merrick. One evening, Bytes joins the throng and after a particularly humiliating brawl, kidnaps Merrick and takes him to France. Severely neglected and very ill, Merrick is once more put on display as the Elephant Man for the local crowds. Bytes' son (Dexter Fletcher) tells his father that he cannot take no more of seeing him humiliate a human being, but Bytes tells his son to mind his own business. That night, Bytes' son, with the help of other carnival freaks, releases Merrick and assists his escape back to England. Reunited with Treves, it appears that Merrick does not have long to live. Merrick visits the theater with Treves and his wife where Mrs. Kendal has her performance dedicated to him. Back at the hospital, Merrick thanks Treves for a splendid evening and afterwards discards all pillows from his bed, determined to lie down like everyone else. Merrick lies down and sleeps one final time before quietly passing away, where his late mother welcomes him to the bright glory of Heaven.

David Keith Lynch (born January 20, 1946) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, painter, cartoonist, composer, video, performance artist, and weatherman. Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, for The Elephant Man (1980), Blue Velvet (1986), and Mulholland Drive (2001).He also received a screenplay Academy Award nomination for The Elephant Man. Lynch has won awards at the Cannes Film Festival and Venice Film Festival.

Watch Movie - Blue Velvet

Over a lengthy career, Lynch has employed a distinctive and unorthodox approach to narrative filmmaking (dubbed Lynchian), which has become instantly recognizable to many audiences and critics worldwide. Lynch's films are known for surreal, nightmarish and dreamlike images and meticulously crafted sound design. Lynch's work often explores the seedy underside of "Small Town U.S." (particularly Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks), or sprawling California metropolises (Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and his latest release, Inland Empire).

Beginning with his experimental film school feature Eraserhead (1977), he has maintained a strong cult following despite inconsistent commercial success.

In 1971, Lynch moved to Los Angeles to study for an MFA (Masters of Fine Arts) degree at 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 did not provide enough money to complete the film and, due to lack of a sufficient budget, Eraserhead was filmed intermittently until 1977. Lynch used money from friends and family, including boyhood friend Jack Fisk, a production designer and the husband of actress Sissy Spacek, and even took a paper route to finish it.

Watch "Eraserhead" full movie

A stark and enigmatic film, Eraserhead tells the story of a quiet young man (Jack Nance) living in an industrial wasteland, whose girlfriend gives birth to a constantly crying mutant baby. Lynch has referred to Eraserhead as "my Philadelphia story", meaning it reflects all of the dangerous and fearful elements he encountered while studying and living in Philadelphia. He said "this feeling left its traces deep down inside me. And when it came out again, it became Eraserhead".

The final film was initially judged to be almost unreleasable, but thanks to the efforts of the Elgin Theater distributor Ben Barenholtz, it became an instant cult classic and was a staple of midnight movie showings for the next decade. It was also a critical success, launching Lynch to the forefront of avant-garde filmmaking. Stanley Kubrick said that it was one of his all-time favorite films. It cemented the team of actors and technicians who would continue to define the texture of his work for years to come, including cinematographer Frederick Elmes, sound designer Alan Splet, and actor Jack Nance.


Eraserhead brought Lynch to the attention of producer Mel Brooks, who hired him to direct 1980's The Elephant Man, a biopic of deformed Victorian era figure John Merrick. The film was a huge commercial success, and earned eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay nods for Lynch. It also established his place as a commercially viable, if somewhat dark and unconventional, Hollywood director. George Lucas, a fan of Eraserhead, offered Lynch the opportunity to direct Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, which he refused, feeling that it would be more Lucas's vision than his own.



Afterwards, Lynch agreed to direct a big-budget adaptation of Frank Herbert's science fiction novel Dune for Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis's De Laurentiis Entertainment Group...on the condition that DEG release a second Lynch project, over which the director would have complete creative control. Although De Laurentiis hoped it would be the next Star Wars, Lynch's Dune (1984) was a critical and commercial dud; it cost $45 million to make, and grossed a mere $27.4 million domestically. Co-star Brad Dourif, who portrayed a sociopathic villain in the film, referred to it as "science fiction's answer to Heaven's Gate" (which Dourif also starred in). Universal Studios released an "extended cut" of the film for syndicated television; this contained almost an hour of cutting-room-floor footage and new narration (this time by a male actor; Virginia Madsen had narrated the theatrical version). Such was not representative of Lynch's intentions, but the studio considered it more comprehensible than the 2-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. The 3-hour version has since been released on video worldwide.

Lynch has never made another film under the pseudonym of "Judas Booth"; however, in 2009 - the movie's 25th anniversary - he was asked by a fan to sign "Booth's" autograph to a vintage paperback about the making of Dune, at West Hollywood's famous Book Soup. Lynch obliged.
Lynch at the 1990 Emmy Awards ceremony.

Lynch's second De Laurentiis-financed project was 1986's Blue Velvet, the story of a college student (Kyle MacLachlan) who discovers his small, idealistic hometown hides a dark side after investigating a severed ear he found in a field. The film featured memorable performances from Isabella Rossellini as a tormented lounge singer, and Dennis Hopper as a crude, psychopathic criminal, and the leader of a small gang of backwater hoodlums.



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. Thus, the film earned Lynch his second Academy Award nomination for Best Director. The content of the film and its artistic merit drew much controversy from audiences and critics alike in 1986 and onwards. Blue Velvet introduced several common elements of his work, including abused women, the dark underbelly of small towns, and unconventional uses of vintage songs. Bobby Vinton's "Blue Velvet" and Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" are both featured in unconventional ways. It was also the first time Lynch worked with composer Angelo Badalamenti, who would contribute to all of his future full-length films except Inland Empire.

Woody Allen, whose film Hannah and Her Sisters was nominated for Best Picture, said that Blue Velvet was his favourite film of the year.


After failing to secure funding for several completed scripts in the late 1980s, Lynch collaborated with television producer Mark Frost on the show Twin Peaks, which was about a small Washington town that is the location of several bizarre occurrences. The show centered around the investigation by FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) into the death of popular high school student Laura Palmer, an investigation that unearthed the secrets of many town residents, something that stemmed from Blue Velvet. Lynch directed six episodes of the series, including the feature-length pilot, wrote or co-wrote several more and even acted in some episodes.

The show debuted on the ABC Network on April 8, 1990 and gradually rose from cult hit to cultural phenomenon, and because of its originality and success remains one of the most well-known television series of the decade. Catch phrases from the show entered the culture and parodies of it were seen on Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons. Lynch appeared on the cover of Time magazine largely because of the success of the series. Lynch, who has seldom acted in his career, also appeared on the show as the partially-deaf FBI Regional Bureau Chief Gordon Cole, who shouted his every word.

Watch Pilot Episode for Twin peaks

Watch Twin Peaks (First Official Episode) "Traces to Nowhere"

However, Lynch clashed with the ABC Network on several matters, particularly whether or not to reveal Laura Palmer's killer. The network insisted that the revelation be made during the second season but Lynch wanted the mystery to last as long as the series. Lynch soon became disenchanted with the series, and, as a result, many cast members complained of feeling abandoned. Later, in a roundtable discussion with cast members included in the 2007 DVD release of the series, he stated that he and Frost never intended to ever reveal the identity of Laura's killer, that ABC forced him to reveal the culprit prematurely, and that agreeing to do so is one of his biggest professional regrets.

Episode 2 "Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer"

It was at this time that Lynch began to work with editor/producer/domestic partner Mary Sweeney who had been one of his assistant editors on Blue Velvet. This was a collaboration that would last some eleven projects. During this period, Sweeney also gave birth to their son.

Adapted from the novel by Barry Gifford, Wild at Heart was an almost hallucinatory crime/road movie starring Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern. It won the Palme d'Or at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival but was met with a muted response from American critics and viewers. Reportedly, several people walked out of test screenings.

The missing link between Twin Peaks and Wild at Heart, however, is Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted. It was originally presented on-stage at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City on November 10, 1989 as a part of the New Music America Festival. Industrial Symphony No. 1 is another collaboration between composer Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch. It features five songs by Julee Cruise and stars several members of the Twin Peaks cast as well as Nic Cage, Laura Dern and Julee Cruise. Lynch described this musical spectacle as the "sound effects and music and ... happening on the stage. And, it has something to do with, uh, a relationship ending." David Lynch produced a 50 minute video of the performance in 1990.

Twin Peaks suffered a severe ratings drop and was canceled in 1991. Still, Lynch scripted a prequel to the series about the last seven days in the life of Laura Palmer. The resulting film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), flopped at the box office.

As a quick blip during this time period, he and Mark Frost wrote and directed several episodes of the short lived comedy series On the Air for ABC, which followed the zany antics at a 1950s TV studio. In the US, only three episodes were aired, although seven were filmed. In the Netherlands, all seven were aired by VPRO. BBC2 in the UK also aired all seven episodes. Lynch also produced (with Frost) and directed the documentary television series American Chronicles.

His next project was much more low-key: he directed two episodes of a three-episode HBO mini-series called Hotel Room about events that happened in the same hotel room in a span of decades.

n 1997, Lynch returned with the non-linear, noir-like film 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.

In 1999, Lynch surprised fans and critics with the G-rated, Disney-produced The Straight Story, written and edited by Mary Sweeney, which was, on the surface, a simple and humble movie telling the true story of Iowan Alvin Straight, played by Richard Farnsworth, who rides a lawnmower to Wisconsin to make peace with his ailing brother, played by Harry Dean Stanton. The film garnered positive reviews and reached a new audience for its director.

The same year, Lynch approached ABC once again with an idea 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.

With seven million dollars from the French production company StudioCanal, Lynch completed the pilot as a film. Mulholland Drive is an enigmatic tale of the dark side of Hollywood and 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.

Film critic Roger Ebert was notoriously unfavorable towards Lynch, accusing him of misogyny in his reviews of Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart. Yet, Ebert reacted positively to The Straight Story and Mulholland Drive writing positive 4/4 star reviews for both. As of 2009, in responses to comments on his blogs, Ebert admits that, while he does not embrace some of Lynch's earlier hit films, it may just be something in him personally that resists. Ebert often mentions he can recognize in all Lynch films that 'something is there'.

In 2002, Lynch 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 treated his fans to his own version of a sitcom via his website - Rabbits, eight episodes of surrealism in a rabbit suit. Later, he showed his experiments with Digital Video (DV) in the form of the Japanese style horror short Darkened Room.

At the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, Lynch announced that he had spent over a year shooting his new project digitally in Poland. The feature, titled Inland Empire, included Lynch regulars such as Laura Dern, Harry Dean Stanton, and Mulholland Drive star 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". It was released in December 2006. 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".

Despite his almost exclusive focus on America, Lynch has found a large audience in France; Inland Empire, Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway and Fire Walk With Me were all funded through French production companies.

The most recent work that Lynch has directed is a fragrance short film/commercial for Gucci. It features 3 prominent models, dancing in what appear to be their own luxurious homes, to the soundtrack of Blondie. A video of the commercial plus a behind-the-scenes video of the making of the commercial is available online at the Gucci website.

In May 2008, Lynch announced that he was working on a road documentary "about his dialogues with regular folk on the meaning of life, with the likes of 60?s troubadour Donovan and John Hagelin, the physicist, as traveling companions".

In October, 2008, 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 "Dark Night of the Soul", with a 100+ page booklet with visuals by Lynch. The album contained a complete packaging and a blank CD because of some dispute with the record label. The artists involved implied that consumers can get the music online and just burn the blank CD provided.

Year Film
1977 Eraserhead
1980 The Elephant Man
1984 Dune
1986 Blue Velvet
1990 Wild at Heart
1992 Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
1997 Lost Highway
1999 The Straight Story
2001 Mulholland Drive
2006 Inland Empire

Short films

Six Men Getting Sick (1966) - available on The Short Films of David Lynch DVD
Absurd Encounter with Fear (1967) - available on The Lime Green Set DVD
Fictitious Anacin Commercial (1967) - available on The Lime Green Set DVD
The Alphabet (1968) - available on The Short Films of David Lynch DVD
The Grandmother (1970) - available on The Short Films of David Lynch DVD
The Amputee (1974) - available on The Short Films of David Lynch DVD
The Cowboy and the Frenchman (1988) - available on The Short Films of David Lynch DVD
Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted (1990) - available on The Lime Green Set DVD
Premonitions Following an Evil Deed (1995) - available on The Short Films of David Lynch DVD
Darkened Room (2002) - available on the Dynamic 1 DVD
Ballerina (2006) - available on the Inland Empire DVD
Boat (2007) - available on the Dynamic 1 DVD
Bug Crawls (2007) - available on the Dynamic 1 DVD
Scissors (2008) - available on The Lime Green Set DVD

TV and digital

Twin Peaks (TV series, 30 episodes) (1990-91)
On the Air (TV series, 7 episodes) (1992)
Hotel Room (TV series, 3 episodes) (1993)
Rabbits (Online series) (2002) - most of the episodes available on The Lime Green Set DVD
Dumbland (Online series, 8 episodes) (2002) - available on The Lime Green Set DVD
Out Yonder (Online series) (200?) - one episode available on the Dynamic 1 DVD and two episodes on The Lime Green Set DVD
Shot in the Back of the Head (2009) - music video for the song from Moby's summer 2009 album Wait for Me.
Interview Project (Online series) (2009)

Links:-
David Lynch official website | Wikipedia | David Lynch Foundation |