Goodbye, David Lynch.

1.
David Lynch, one of my heroes, has died, and I am crestfallen. But here’s my obituary for him. 

2.
We lost one of the titans of American cinema this week with the passing of David Lynch, too weird to be mainstream, too talented to remain underground. Born in 1946 in Montana, he was an artist, an illustrator and painter, who worked on his first film, Eraserhead, for a few years in the mid-1970s, alongside short movies and little animated pieces. Eschewing narrative, he instead focused on dark and unsettling scenes, industrial noises, dilapidated urban settings. The story follows a young couple grappling with unsettling visions of their newborn baby, which resembles a tadpole with a terror face. The film is stark, beautiful, slow, terrifying, a real mindbender, with moments of slapstick humor. The movie was special, a midnight movie that found a large audience. Other directors, in particular, loved it; it was Kubrick’s favorite movie for years.

3.
On its strengths, Lynch directed two works for hire in a row, The Elephant Manand Dune. The former is a superbly made drama, the latter a misfire beloved by weirdos like me. His science fictional world is twisted and perverse, depraved really—things don’t follow one after another and half of the movie’s tactile surfaces seem to be vaginal—but the production was so enormous and the pressures for a hit so intense he realized he had made a wrong move. Better to direct his own scripts. 

4.
So that’s what he did, turning down the directorial duties on Return of the Jedito focus on his own work. (Imagine Lynch’s take on Star Wars!)

read more here . . .