In 1986 there were two films released. One was Top Gun which topped the box office. The other was David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. I was just a young woman then, barely out of high school when it landed in theaters. My boyfriend took me to see it. He was ten years old than me. He told me it was a movie that no one should miss because this director was doing things no other director had ever done before. It might seem strange to film fans now, considering experimental movies are mostly the status quo, where movies like Top Gun are rare. But you have to remember what the 1980s were like and why it was so thrilling to come across a director who made movies like that. We weren’t prepared for it.

When I saw Blue Velvet, the projector broke just before Dennis Hopper arrived on the scene. I had no idea where he was about to take the movie. How could I know? How could anyone know? We had a whole night of wondering before we came back the next day to watch it all the way through. My boyfriend was right. Nobody made movies like David Lynch did, and no one ever will.

Lynch had health problems, so his death is not exactly a surprise, and in a way, it makes me feel even sadder for the state of things now, the rigidity with which artists make art now, always trying to be GOOD, to send a message of GOODNESS, to right the wrongs of the past. Oh, but David Lynch did not want to do that. He wanted to peel back the layers, to dig underneath human behavior and find the bad stuff. Or at least to showcase how we wrestle with the bad stuff. But why would you do that when you have an entire country and a newly elected president to blame? It’s not in us. It’s in those bad people over there. We didn’t really live like that back then, but David Lynch was someone whose work would not exist if it weren’t for the well-behaved layer that blanketed our society in the 1980s, driven not by the Left but the Right.

Audiences today think Babygirl is subversive. But Babygirl, like The Substance, must also follow the strict code of the modern day Left. Lynch? Not a chance.

There is no way his movies would be made or appreciated now, that’s for sure. Can you imagine? So I guess I’ll say that I’m glad I got to grow up in the 1980s when there was room for subversion and a thriving counterculture.

Lynch maybe quite topped Blue Velvet, at least in my mind. My second favorite movie of his is Lost Highway. What a beauty that film is. Like Blue Velvet it meditates on darkness and light — or a brunette vs. a blonde. All of it reaching back to classic cinema. He was a master of the frame.

The Oscars didn’t really celebrate David Lynch much, at least not until Mulholland Drive came along. That was probably the film that brought him the most acclaim. And it, too, had the brunette vs. the blonde idea.

He did once camp out in Hollywood to help Laura Dern earn an Oscar nod for Inland Empire but no such nomination ever came to pass. He made it funny, of course, because he was funny.

https://www.tiktok.com/@kylemaclachlanlove_/video/7382739760890105130

His career is so monumental it’s hard to simplify it in one obit, that’s for sure. From Twin Peaks to Inland Empire, he never once gave up being an artist. One of the best things he ever did was play John Ford in Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans:

There probably isn’t a better send-off than that. There will never be another like him. Death is something not even our heroes can avoid. But few of us can leave this earth with the kind of legacy David Lynch has. Now that he’s gone, there won’t be any more negotiations about his work. All of it will be unearthed and re-affirmed as the work of a master.

They will unearth his funny videos and appearances, like that time he was on Louis CK’s show, just to illustrate how dramatically things have changed.

I met David Lynch once. I had gone to see Wild at Heart on opening night in Santa Monica. A limousine pulled up in front of the crowd and out came David Lynch, Laura Dern and Nicolas Cage. They were handing out postcards and candy necklaces. I was in such hysterics I could not compose myself. Lynch patted me on the shoulder and said, It’s okay. It will all be okay. For a long time I had his signature on my Wild at Heart postcard but it’s long since been lost in the wreckage of a life. I will never forget meeting him, just as I’ll never forget his great, great films.

Rest in peace, you genius you. You will be missed.