Listen to the full conversation between Andrew Dziengel and Dan Gannon on Headwaters above.
There are few names in film where if you name-dropped as an adjective to describe one, you would know exactly what kind of movie they’re talking about. Hitchcockian, Kubrickian and Lynchian make up those few. That’s impressive company.
I don’t know the first time I heard of David Lynch, but I remember the first film of his I watched.
That’s the thing about Lynch’s work. It stays with you.Andrew Dziengel
Back in the day Netflix didn’t stream movies—it sent them by mail. Subscribers would receive DVDs in red envelopes, watch them at their convenience, and send them back when they were done. I signed up for Netflix DVDs in 2008 when I was a sophomore in college and a budding cinephile. I thought I hit the jackpot with Netflix. “Wow! I can finally watch all the films I’ve only been able to read about.” One of the first films I requested was David Lynch’s Eraserhead.
I would love to say it was a lightning bolt moment for me where Eraserhead just clicked. I don’t even know if it is truly possible to click with Eraserhead. All I know is I haven’t seen the film in almost 20 years, but there’s still images from it seared in my brain. That’s the thing about Lynch’s work. It stays with you.
Eventually I watched his other big films like Blue Velvet and Mullholland Drive and I started to feel comfortable enough to say I was a fan.
I felt I finally understood what people meant when they said something was Lynchian.
I really became a superfan of David Lynch during the COVID-19 pandemic. Stuck at home, unable to see friends in person, you learn to find other ways to connect with people. My friend Tammy Bobrowsky and I decided to create a podcast together and our focus was going to be on our pop culture blind spot: Twin Peaks.
Doing a semi-regular podcast where we dove in and tried to understand the minds of David Lynch and Mark Frost gave me a whole new appreciation for Lynch. Here is a filmmaker who had an interest in the unexplainable as much as a Frank Capra picture. Watching Twins Peaks: Fire Walk with Me and Twin Peaks: The Return, I understood that Lynch was a true original voice in cinema, and one of the most important filmmakers in the artform.
But the thing is, describing something as Lynchian not only works in film, but music as well. “Oh, this song is so Lynchian.” You know someone is talking about something atmospheric, surreal and/or dreamy.
But why is that? I think it’s because Lynch is the closest to capturing what it feels like to dream on the big screen. When you’re dreaming, the most surreal things could be happening but for some reason the logic makes sense in the dream world. That’s what a David Lynch film feels like. You know there’s a logic to it, but you don’t quite understand it.
In the music world, the list of all the different musicians he’s collaborated with in his lifetime is nothing short of amazing. From Roy Orbison to Nine Inch Nails. From Julee Cruise to Duran Duran. From Donovan to Karen O.
He seemed to have an appreciation of new music as well until his death. Twin Peaks: The Return featured a lot of new artists he admired and really gave them a chance to shine. Artists like the Chromatics, Sharon Van Etten, and Minnesota’s own Cactus Blossoms.
Overall, it really did feel like his art was his way of grappling with the state of the world. How is a person capable of doing unspeakable horrible things? Why does it feel like on certain days I’m not the same person I was before? Why are we doomed to repeat the same mistakes?
There are no easy answers to these questions, and there may not be ANY answers to these questions. I don’t think Lynch was trying to answer them either. I think his art was his way to cope with such things.
Unfortunately, there will never be another David Lynch in the art world. But I think people can learn from him. Above all, it seemed the most important thing to him was to create. Whether it was films, music or paintings.
It’s up to us to keep creating. Who knows? Maybe they’ll start using our names to describe a genre.