RIP DAVID LYNCH
Man, where do I start?
Strangely, I never watched much of Twin Peaks - somehow I just missed it even though I wanted to watch it. I never got around to taping it (though I did later watch and love Fire Walk With Me).
My introduction to Lynch was The Elephant Man, which I saw on VHS WAAAAAY too young, to me it was the saddest horror film ever. What a powerful poignant character study. But I didn't know who he was. It took Siskel & Ebert reviewing Blue Velvet for his name to stick and holy shit was that film a revelation. I felt so cool and artsy watching that film in our basement with the big screen projection TV of the 3 giant RGB bulbs.
Heading off to NYU film school right around the Twin Peaks era, I found myself (and several other of the male film students and maybe even a few of the women too) affecting Lynch's style - dress shirt, no tie or jacket, collar buttoned to the neck, khaki slacks or shorts - it was a look. Maybe I should do that again but my neck won't allow it. He was the cool artsy filmmaker the NYU tribe wanted to be.
One of the absolute dumbest mistakes in life I ever made was, shortly after my arrival in Los Angeles, I had an offer to work as an assistant to a producer named Tom Sternberg, who as it turned out produced Lost Highway the very next year (but if you look at his history, ALSO Apocalypse Now if you've heard of it). He really wanted me to work for him, but I dunno, for some reason I was scared to do something big at the time, and he was nice but made me nervous, and it seemed also like maybe he was out of the game - when I turned him down he actually argued with me and told me I'd regret it... yeah, I do to this day, Tom, so stupid, I still think about it sometimes. And I 100% would have gotten to meet and work with (for) Lynch. I was mortified when I watched the film in the theater and saw Sternberg’s name and some other (dumb, most likely) assistant in the credits. Please go back in time and tell me to take that job.
His book, Catching the Big Fish, has also proved to be instrumental in my own creative philosophy.
My last potential interaction with him came when my friend Brian Libby asked if I knew anyone who could get him an interview with Lynch for a magazine story he wanted to do. And actually, I did - a friend who had worked with him for a number of years. So we got Brian that interview, and I drove him to Lynch's house in the Hollywood Hills and dropped him off, and I think I even came back to pick him up... the house was pretty unassuming but I remember it was TALL. And the interview is great, you should read it (link here), but I never personally got to meet the maestro.
Oh well, there's always the next life!
The man will be missed.