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David Lynch has died. The news was announced on the filmmaker and musician’s official Facebook page. “We would appreciate some privacy at this time,” Lynch’s family wrote. “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.’” A cause of death was not provided. David Lynch was 78 years old.
David Keith Lynch was born in Missoula, Montana, in 1946. He and his family moved around a lot during Lynch’s childhood, with stops in Idaho, North Carolina, Washington, and Virginia. In his youth, Lynch was a Boy Scout and he rose to become an Eagle Scout. Lynch eventually attended Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, in Washington, D.C., and Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts to study painting.
By the late 1960s, Lynch turned his attention to filmmaking, creating the short film Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times) while attending the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Lynch continued working on shorts before he began work on his feature debut, Eraserhead. The film, which was released in 1977, took five years to make, with most of the filming taking place at the Greystone Mansion, in Beverly Hills, which was the headquarters of the American Film Institute, where Lynch had been living. The surrealist, black-and-white film starred Jack Nance as the father of an alien-like baby and featured a score that Lynch composed with Alan R. Splet. The sound, as would become apparent with Lynch’s successive work, was dark, industrial, and harsh and essential to the film.
Having found success with Eraserhead, Lynch went even bigger with his second movie, 1983’s The Elephant Man, essentially a biopic about Joseph Merrick starring John Hurt in the title role. Anthony Hopkins co-starred in The Elephant Man, which was a hit and earned nominations for Best Picture, Best Director, and more at the 1981 Academy Awards.
A burgeoning cinema star, Lynch was then tapped to direct the 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s science-fiction classic Dune. The movie, featuring a score by Toto, was a flop, but it has since become a cult classic. Lynch regained his form with his next film, 1986’s Blue Velvet, starring Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper, and Laura Dern. Often considered Lynch’s masterpiece, Blue Velvet earned him his second Academy Award nomination for Best Director. It was also Lynch’s first time collaborating with composer and musician Angelo Badalamenti, with whom the director would continue a fruitful professional relationship.