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David Lynch

David Lynch

Birthday: 1946-01-20 | Place of Birth: Missoula, Montana, USA

David Keith Lynch (born January 20, 1946) is an American filmmaker, painter, visual artist, musician, and writer. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound design. Indeed, the surreal and in many cases violent elements to his films have earned them the reputation that they "disturb, offend or mystify" their audiences. Moving around various parts of the United States as a child within his middle class family, Lynch went on to study painting in Philadelphia, where he first made the transition to producing short films. Deciding to devote himself more fully to this medium, he moved to Los Angeles, where he produced his first motion picture, the surrealist horror Eraserhead (1977). After Eraserhead became a cult classic on the midnight movie circuit, Lynch was employed to direct The Elephant Man (1980), from which he gained mainstream success. Then being employed by the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, he proceeded to make two films. First, the science-fiction epic Dune (1984), which proved to be a critical and commercial failure, and then a neo-noir crime film, Blue Velvet (1986), which was highly critically acclaimed. Proceeding to create his own television series with Mark Frost, the highly popular murder mystery Twin Peaks (1990–1992), he also created a cinematic prequel, Fire Walk With Me (1992), a road movie, Wild at Heart (1990), and a family film, The Straight Story (1999) in the same period. Turning further towards surrealist filmmaking, three of his following films worked on "dream logic" non-linear narrative structures, Lost Highway (1997), Mulholland Drive (2001) and Inland Empire (2006). Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, for his films The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, and also received a screenplay Academy Award nomination for The Elephant Man. Lynch has twice won France's César Award for Best Foreign Film, as well as the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and a Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement at the Venice Film Festival. The French government awarded him the Legion of Honor, the country's top civilian honor, as a Chevalier in 2002 and then an Officier in 2007, while that same year, The Guardian described Lynch as "the most important director of this era". Allmovie called him "the Renaissance man of modern American filmmaking", whilst the success of his films have led to him being labelled "the first popular Surrealist".

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Known For

Acting

Year
Title

Role

2021
Moby Doc

as    Self

2020
2017
Lucky

as    Howard

2017
Tell It Martin

as    Self

2017
Bad Binoculars

as    Self

2017
2017
A Pot of Boiling Oil

as    Self

2017
Behind the Red Curtain

as    Self

2017
Two Blue Balls

as    Self

2017
The Number of Completion

as    Self

2017
2017
David Lynch: The Art Life

as    Self

2016
Blue Velvet Revisited

as    Self

2016
Along for the Ride

as    Self

2015
Brand: A Second Coming

as    Self

2014
My Beautiful Broken Brain

as    Self

2014
It's a Beautiful World

as    Self

2013
Mel Brooks: Make a Noise

as    Self

2013
What Is Cinema?

as    Self

2012
Side by Side

as    Self

2009
Great Directors

as    Self