Director-writer David Lynch, who radicalised American film with with a dark, surrealistic artistic vision in films like Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive and network television with Twin Peaks, has died. He was 78.

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Lynch revealed in 2024 that he had been diagnosed with emphysema after a lifetime of smoking, and would likely not be able to leave his house to direct any longer.

 

His family announced his death in a Facebook post, writing, “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.’”

The Twin Peaks TV show and films such as Blue Velvet, Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive melded elements of horror, film noir, the whodunit and classical European surrealism. Lynch wove tales, not unlike those of his Spanish predecessor Luis Bunuel, which proceeded with their own impenetrable logic.

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In 1990, he revolutionised American episodic TV with Twin Peaks, a series he created with writer Mark Frost. With action springing from the investigation of a high school girl’s mysterious murder in a Washington lumber mill town, the weekly ABC show plumbed disquieting, theretofore taboo subject matter and made the inexplicable a fixture of modern narrative television.

A major hit in its first season, Twin Peaks lost its momentum and ultimately its audience in year two. However, it spawned a feature-length prequel, 1992’s over-the-top Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me; 25 years later, the ongoing affection of a loyal cult of viewers sparked a limited-run third season for Showtime that picked up where the second season left off.