From 2020 to 2022, during the Covid pandemic, David Lynch broadcast well over 350 weather reports on his YouTube channel. Photo: YouTube
By Karl Puschmann*
The work of American filmmaker David Lynch follows a dreamlike logic that is often hard to explain or truly understand, yet still makes perfect sense within the moment.
And while the word 'dreamlike' has warm connotations, Lynch's film and television work is largely nightmarish and unsettling. His artistic vision, which merged elements of noir, horror, and the supernatural, was so singular and unique that the term 'Lynchian' had to be invented just to describe it.
Lynch died at the age of 78 this week. Here we celebrate five of the most Lynchian moments in a life lived creating them.
5. Cow, boy.
Lynch's eccentricities weren't restricted to the screen. His day-to-day life appeared every bit as surreal as his films. Only the macabre obsessions of his fiction were replaced with a good-natured, yet no less bizarre, humour.
One example includes his foray into becoming the internet's most beloved weatherman. From 2020 to 2022, during the Covid pandemic, he broadcast well over 350 weather reports on his YouTube channel. These quirky reports often saw Lynch going off-topic and quickly became a cult phenomenon, clocking up over 10 million views.
But, the most Lynchian of all David Lynch's real-world interactions was his campaign for long-term collaborator Laura Dern to be nominated for an Oscar for her performance in his 2006 psychological thriller Inland Empire. Rather than flooding newspapers, magazines and billboards with advertising, he instead went and sat on a beach chair on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard with a large canvas poster of Dern on one side of him and a cow named Georgia on the other.
Why a cow? No idea.
4. Music man
Lynch's music is every bit as avant-garde as his visual work. His debut solo album, 2011's Crazy Clown Time, is a twisting, twisted, stretching of musical norms that is as creepy and unnerving as anything he shot on film. He described it as 'modern blues,' but perhaps 'abstract blues' would have been more accurate. Lynch utilises drum machines, vocoders and spoken word to summon a dark mood, with "Noah's Ark" being a menacing highlight.
3. Kiwi Connections
Lynch wasn't just a fan of Kiwi music, he also actively promoted it. In 2013 he tweeted out a declaration of his fandom of indie-folk act Tiny Ruins.
Dear Twitter Friends, I heard a group I really like called Tiny Ruins. You should check this out.
— David Lynch (@DAVID_LYNCH) September 4, 2013
Three years later, on Lorde's insistence, he would team up to produce their single "Dream Wave" for the Hunger Games movie soundtrack.
Lynch was also a fan of the nocturnal indie act The Veils. Their songs sound like they've escaped from a Lynch project, and the director obviously agreed, not only using one of their songs in Twin Peaks: The Return but also casting the band in the scene.
2. The Scream
There are many great screams scattered throughout Lynch's work. But the most effective is in the final moments of Twin Peaks: The Return, 2017's long-awaited third and final season of his surreal mystery-horror series.
Rather than a tidy conclusion, it is only confusion that awaits our hero Special Agent Dale Cooper at the end of Lynch's cult hit. The scream that ends the series can symbolise many things - like all of Lynch's work there are many interpretations. But as Cooper slumps in despair, the sudden rush of traumatic horror that floods murder victim Laura Palmer's doppelganger is horrifyingly, hauntingly, primal and affecting.
1. The Mystery of the Mystery Man
In Lynch's hands, a simple conversation between two people can become a surreal exercise in unbearable tension and skin-crawling creepiness. While there are many examples to be found within his oeuvre, the most terrifyingly traumatic example is found early on in his 1997 neo-noir masterpiece Lost Highway.
It occurs at a swish house party that jazz musician Fred attends. As the cool sounds of Sade play in the background, Fred is approached by a creepy chap clad in black who insists they have met before, despite Fred's protestations that they have not.
From there, things quickly get menacingly strange in a scene that is as terrifying as it is iconic. Whoever the mystery man is, his gleefully disturbing smile has haunted our dreams for almost 30 years.
* Karl Puschmann is a freelance arts and culture writer who has long been inspired, terrified and confuzzled by the hauntingly surreal works of David Lynch.
