Kyle MacLachlan, Naomi Watts, Martin Scorsese, and More Pay Tribute to David Lynch: ‘He Made Everything Strange, Uncanny, Revelatory, and New’
David Lynch revolutionized cinema — and now, Hollywood is paying tribute to the legendary auteur, who died Thursday at the age of 78.
Lynch made his feature debut in 1977 with “Eraserhead,” and his expansive career included features “Mulholland Drive,” “Dune,” and “Blue Velvet,” as well as iconic series “Twin Peaks.” Lynch’s family confirmed on social media that he died at age 78.
More from IndieWire
“It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch. We would appreciate some privacy at this time,” the statement reads. “There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.’ It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.”
Lynch announced in August 2024 that he was diagnosed with emphysema. However, he told Sight & Sound magazine that while he could not leave his house due to his weakened immune system, he still hoped to direct remotely.
Lynch’s final film was “Inland Empire,” which was released in 2006. He also directed 2017 series “Twin Peaks: The Return,” and recently debuted a partially animated music video for “Sublime Eternal Love,” which he directed as part of new collaborative album “Cellophane Memories.” Lynch was set to shoot Netflix series “Unrecorded Night” in 2020 before the show was scrapped due to the pandemic; Netflix later passed on his long-gestating animated film “Snootworld,” which he co-wrote with “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “The Addams Family” scribe Caroline Thompson.
“I loved David’s films. ‘Blue Velvet,’ ‘Mulholland Drive’ and ‘Elephant Man’ defined him as a singular, visionary dreamer who directed films that felt handmade,” Steven Spielberg, who directed Lynch in his last film role in “The Fabelmans,” said in a statement provided to IndieWire. “I got to know David when he played John Ford in ‘The Fabelmans.’ Here was one of my heroes — David Lynch playing one of my heroes. It was surreal and seemed like a scene out of one of David’s own movies. The world is going to miss such an original and unique voice. His films have already stood the test of time and they always will.”
Harmony Korine also remembered Lynch, telling IndieWire “David Lynch was one of our great artists, a Mount Rushmore-level director, truly a GOAT. He changed a lot of people’s lives. There will never be another one like him, because he made films at a point in history where nothing like that had ever been experienced before. We live in a time where everything has been seen. Lynch invented a new language. He was a once in a generation talent who absorbed the embers of America’s wildness. He embraced his own inner logic and filtered it through a subconscious magic. He created worlds and unmatched vibrations. He hit on things that were inexplicable and sacred and beyond articulation. He is a treasure. His work will live forever.”
Nicolas Cage, who starred in Lynch’s “Wild At Heart,” told Deadline that the director was a “singular genius in cinema, one of the greatest artists of this or any time.”
Cage said, “He was brave, brilliant, and a maverick with a joyful sense of humor. I never had more fun on a film set than working with David Lynch. He will always be solid gold.”
Frequent Lynch collaborator Kyle MacLachlan wrote in part, “I always found him to be the most authentically alive person I’d ever met. […] His love for me and mine for him came out of the cosmic fate of two people who saw the best things about themselves in each other. I will miss him more than the limits of my language can tell and my heart can bear. My world is that much fuller because I knew him and that much emptier now that he’s gone.”
The American Film Institute, where Lynch was an alum of the AFI Class of 1970, remembered the filmmaker.
“Twin Peaks” star Lara Flynn Boyle also told Deadline that Lynch was the “Willy Wonka of filmmaking.”
“I feel like I got the golden ticket getting a chance to work with him,” Boyle said. “He will be greatly missed.”
“David Lynch was an American original. And the stories are true – as a foundational Fellow at the American Film Institute, he lived in the stables of Greystone while filming his AFI Thesis Film, ‘Eraserhead’,” the AFI statement reads. “Across the decades, David’s impact on cinema proved indelible in his films and his art – and he always gave back to AFI – supportive of the storytellers who wrote their own rules and reached for something different.”
The AFI statement continues, “During a seminar on campus, he shared this timeless advice with Fellows: “Tell the stories that are inside you. Each person has these stories that come along. Just stay true to those ideas and enjoy the doing of it. He will live on in our dreams.”
Lynch was also honored by the Directors Guild of America, with president Lesli Linka Glatter honoring his contributions to the medium in a statement.
“There is simply no one like David,” Glatter wrote. “He was a visionary at his core – elevating visual storytelling in film and television to a whole new level, inspiring so many directors to take risks and see new possibilities. He took a chance on me as a young director just starting out when I joined him on Twin Peaks in the early 1990s, transforming my life, and I will be forever grateful for having known him. In every interaction, David was so in the moment of life, and I can’t help but think of a story that made me see the world differently. In one of David’s early episodes of Twin Peaks, there’s a scene in a bank vault with Kyle MacLachlan and Michael Ontkean and there’s a moose head lying in the middle of the table. No one ever refers to it; it’s just there and it makes the scene. I asked David how he got the idea to put that moose head on the table. He looked at me quizzically and said, ‘It was there.’ The set dresser was going to hang it on the wall, but David saw it lying on the table and said, ‘Leave the moose head.’ Something cracked open for me, as much as you plan, be sure you are open to life, be sure you are open to the moose head on the table, don’t miss what’s right in front of you. His ability to see the magic that exists when others did not, made him one of the greatest storytellers of our time. I join so many directors who have been profoundly impacted by David’s life and work in mourning his loss today.”
Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive” star, Naomi Watts, who also reunited with the filmmaker for “Twin Peaks: The Return,” paid tribute on Instagram, writing, “My heart is broken. My Buddy Dave… The world will not be the same without him. His creative mentorship was truly powerful. He put me on the map. The world I’d been trying to break into for ten plus years, flunking auditions left and right. Finally, I sat in front of a curious man, beaming with light, speaking words from another era, making me laugh and feel at ease. How did he even ‘see me’ when I was so well hidden, and I’d even lost sight of myself?!”
“I hear and read the word ‘visionary’ a lot these days—it’s become a kind of catch-all description, another piece of promotional language. But David Lynch really was a visionary—in fact, the word could have been invented to describe the man and the films, the series, the images and the sounds he left behind,” said Martin Scorsese in a statement shared with IndieWire. “He created forms that seemed like they were right on the edge of falling apart but somehow never did. He put images on the screen unlike anything that I or anybody else had ever seen—he made everything strange, uncanny, revelatory and new. And he was absolutely uncompromising, from start to finish. It’s a sad, sad day for moviemakers, movie lovers, and for the art of cinema. But ‘Eraserhead,’ ‘The Elephant Man,’ ‘Blue Velvet,’ ‘Wild at Heart,’ the two ‘Twin Peaks’ series and the film ‘Fire Walk with Me,’ ‘Lost Highway,’ ‘The Straight Story,’ ‘Mulholland Drive,’ ‘Inland Empire’… as the years and the decades go by, they will just keep growing and deepening. We were lucky to have had David Lynch.”
Below are more tributes to the late, iconic Lynch.
Best of IndieWire
Sign up for Indiewire's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Solve the daily Crossword
