David Keith Lynch January 20, β January 15, was an American filmmaker, visual artist, musician, and actor. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Lynch was often called a "visionary" and was acclaimed for films often distinguished by their surrealist and experimental qualities.
In a career spanning more than five decades, he received numerous accolades , including the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Film Festival in and an Honorary Academy Award in Lynch studied painting and made short films before making his first feature, the independent body horror film Eraserhead , which found success as a midnight movie.
He earned critical acclaim and nominations for the Academy Award for Best Director for the biographical drama The Elephant Man , the mystery thriller Blue Velvet and the psychological drama Mulholland Drive He also directed the space opera Dune , the neo-noir Lost Highway , the road movie The Straight Story and the experimental thriller Inland Empire Lynch co-wrote and directed its film prequel, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me and a third season in Lynch also worked as a musician, releasing solo albums and a variety of collaborations, a furniture designer, cartoonist, photographer and author.
A practitioner of Transcendental Meditation , he founded the David Lynch Foundation to fund meditation lessons for at-risk populations. A lifelong smoker, he died from complications of emphysema after being evacuated from his home due to the Southern California wildfires. His work inspired the adjective Lynchian , [ 2 ] defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "Characteristic, reminiscent, or imitative of the films or television work of David Lynch", adding that "Lynch is noted for juxtaposing surreal or sinister elements with mundane, everyday environments, and for using compelling visual images to emphasize a dreamlike quality of mystery or menace".
My childhood was elegant homes, tree-lined streets, the milkman, building backyard forts, droning airplanes, blue skies, picket fences, green grass, cherry trees. Middle America as it's supposed to be. But on the cherry tree there's this pitch oozing out β some black, some yellow, and millions of red ants crawling all over it. I discovered that if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world, there are always red ants underneath.
