David Lynch's singular, strange and dream-like (and occasionally mock-nightmarish) filmography is one thing. His mythic David Lynchness, as the mad conjurer of what it means to be Lynch-ian, is another. Lynch, who died this week at 78, is the Montana-bred Eagle scout who would be king of American surrealism.
The artist himself is gone: the Lynch-ian legend lives on, in the realm of cinema, fine art, transcendental meditation, pop culture and beyond. He was always in the “beyond” of his own devising, anyway. But he retained certain thumb-holds on Americana, as with his obsession with hanging and creating at the Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank.
Lynch's remarkable cinematic work made him one of America's greatest renegades in plain sight, who worked from both outside and within the system to pursue his unique vision. What began with the unnervingly cool indie film masterpiece Eraserhead led him into the more marketable Elephant Man — like Eraserhead, a compassionate view of a literally alienated outsider protagonist. Then came the fiasco of his being hired/coaxed into directing a broadly lambasted version of Dune.