David Lynch

Background

David Keith Lynch, born January 20, 1946, lived in Missoula, Montana with his father, Donald Walton Lynch, and mother, Edwina ‘Sunny’ Lynch. His father worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and his mother was an English Language tutor. He grew up as a presbyterian. His family moved a lot when he was young depending on where the U.S. Department of Agriculture would post his father but this did not affect Lynch as he had no trouble making new friends. While still in school, he joined the Boys Scouts and rose to the highest rank, ‘Eagle Scout.’ This allowed him to be among the boys that went to the White House for the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy when he was 15 years old.

He was intrigued by painting and drawing at a young age and wanted to follow that path as a career. After high school, he joined Corcoran School of the Arts and Design in Washington D.C. but in 1964, he transferred to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He later quit, to travel around Europe with a friend, Jack Fisk, in the hopes of training with Oskar Kokoschka, an Austrian Expressionist painter. When that didn’t happen they returned to the United States. He began creating films in the late 1960s and his first feature-length film “Eraserhead” became popular in the Midnight Movie circuit. He went on to create “The Elephant Man” in 1980, “Dune” in 1984, and “Blue Velvet” in 1986 consecutively. In 1990, Lynch created his own television series, “Twin Peaks” with Mark Frost which ran for two seasons. Going deeper into surrealist filmmaking, his next films, “Lost Highway,” “Mulholland Drive” and “Inland Empire” all employed the dream logic of nonlinear narrative structures. In 2017, Lynch collaborated with Mark Frost again to create season three of “Twin Peaks” which aired on Showtime this time around. He restated his role as Gordon Cole while co-writing and directing every episode.

He also shone as a musician, releasing three studio albums, “BlueBOB” in 2001, “Crazy Clown Time” in 2011, and “The Big Dream” in 2013. He also produced music for a variety of his films. He has also done photography, painting, and literary work including advertisements such as the promotional film for Dior “Lady Blue Shangai” in 2010. Being a fervent facilitator of Transcendental Meditation, he founded David Lynch Foundation in 2005, which seeks to grant the teaching of Transcendental Meditation in schools and to widen its reach to other at-risk demographic.