David Lynch(I)
- Writer
- Director
- Producer
Born in precisely the kind of small-town American setting so familiar
from his films, David Lynch spent his childhood being shunted from one
state to another as his research scientist father kept getting
relocated. He attended various art schools, married Peggy Lynch and
then fathered future director
Jennifer Lynch shortly
after he turned 21. That experience, plus attending art school in a
particularly violent and run-down area of Philadelphia, inspired
Eraserhead (1977), a film that he
began in the early 1970s (after a couple of shorts) and which he would
work on obsessively for five years. The final film was initially judged
to be almost unreleasable weird, but thanks to the efforts of
distributor Ben Barenholtz, it secured a
cult following and enabled Lynch to make his first mainstream film (in
an unlikely alliance with
Mel Brooks), though
The Elephant Man (1980) was shot
through with his unique sensibility. Its enormous critical and
commercial success led to Dune (1984), a
hugely expensive commercial disaster, but Lynch redeemed himself with
the now classic Blue Velvet (1986),
his most personal and original work since his debut. He subsequently
won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival with the dark, violent
road movie Wild at Heart (1990),
and achieved a huge cult following with his surreal TV series
Twin Peaks (1990), which he
adapted for the big screen, though his comedy series
On the Air (1992) was less
successful. He also draws comic strips and has devised multimedia stage
events with regular composer
Angelo Badalamenti. He had a
much-publicized affair with
Isabella Rossellini in the late
1980s.
