Twin Peaks creator and filmmaker David Lynch dies at 78

David Lynch, the American filmmaker, writer, and artist who scored best director Oscar nominations for "Blue Velvet," "The Elephant Man" and "Mulholland Drive" and co-created the groundbreaking TV series "Twin Peaks," has died at age 78, his family said on Thursday.

"It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch," a statement on Lynch's Facebook page said. "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.'"

No cause of death was released. Lynch disclosed in August 2024 that he had been diagnosed with emphysema, a lung disease caused by many years of smoking.

With his visually stunning, disturbing, and inscrutable works, which featured dream sequences and bizarre images, Lynch was considered a master of surrealism and one of the most innovative filmmakers of his generation.

He received an honorary Academy Award in 2019 for his lifetime achievements.

The enigmatic artist and devotee of transcendental meditation preferred not to explain his complex, bewildering films, which included "Wild at Heart", the 1990 Palme d'Or winner at the Cannes Film Festival, the 1977 horror film "Eraserhead," and the 1997 mystery "Lost Highway".

"A film or a painting, each thing is its language, and trying to say the same thing in words is not right. The words are not there," he told The Guardian newspaper in a 2018 interview.

His style of filmmaking prompted the term Lynchian, which Vanity Fair magazine described as weird, creepy, and slow. In his films, Lynch inserted the macabre and disturbing into the ordinary and mundane and heightened the impact of music.

Lynch said he was interested in the story and mood of a film, which is set by the visual elements and sound collaboration.

"His eye for the absurd detail that thrusts a scene into shocking relief and his taste in risky, often grotesque material has made him, perhaps, Hollywood's most revered eccentric, sort of a psychopathic Norman Rockwell," the New York Times said in 1990.

After his death on Thursday, several filmmakers said Lynch had inspired them. Actor and director Ron Howard, writing on X, called Lynch "a gracious man and fearless artist who followed his heart & soul and proved that radical experimentation could yield unforgettable cinema."

Counterculture Icon

Lynch, a former Eagle Scout once described by producer Mel Brooks as "Jimmy Stewart from Mars," grew up as a counterculture icon, but his roots were firmly planted in small-town, wholesome America.

David Keith Lynch was born on Jan. 20, 1946, in Missoula, Montana, the eldest of three children. His father worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the family moved frequently. Lynch once described his childhood as a "very beautiful, sort of perfect world."

However, as an art student at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in the 1960s, he encountered the seedier side of America while living in a crime-ridden, run-down area of Philadelphia with his wife and baby daughter. He described the city as the most significant influence in his life.

This experience inspired Lynch's unsettling, hallucinatory debut feature, "Eraserhead," which became a cult hit in midnight cinemas. After seeing the film, Brooks, the producer of "The Elephant Man," hired Lynch to direct it.

Lynch's "The Elephant Man," about a severely deformed man in Victorian London, was nominated for eight Academy Awards in 1981. Although it failed to win an Oscar, it launched Lynch into the mainstream. However, his next film, the 1984 science fiction epic "Dune" bombed at the box office.

Two years later, Lynch was back on top with "Blue Velvet," which delved into the mysterious underworld of a small North Carolina town. Some critics considered it his masterpiece and the best film of the decade.

"'Blue Velvet' represents something that has never been seen before and, in all likelihood, will never be seen again: an underground movie made with Hollywood means and Hollywood skill. It's midnight mainstream," Dave Kehr of The Chicago Tribune wrote in his 1986 review.

Lynch switched to the small screen in 1990 when he created the mystery crime series "Twin Peaks" with Mark Frost for ABC. The Emmy-winning series became a cultural phenomenon and was revived in 2017.

FILE PHOTO: 70th Cannes Film Festival - Director David Lynch poses during the event for the 70th Anniversary of the festival, in Cannes, France, May 23, 2017. REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier/File Photo

Lynch's 2001 Hollywood mystery "Mulholland Drive" began as a TV pilot but was dropped by the network before eventually making it to the big screen. A 2016 BBC poll of 177 critics worldwide named it the best film of the 21st century.

In his later years, Lynch, a true Renaissance man, made documentaries, short films, paintings, and a YouTube channel. He also released albums, music videos, soundtracks, and books, including his 2018 memoir Room to Dream.

The acclaimed director was married four times and fathered four children.

"I love what I do, and I get to work on stuff I want to work on. I wish everybody had that opportunity," he told Vulture.com in a 2018 interview.