Along with large portions of the Palisades and Altadena now we have lost another L.A. institution, the great David Lynch. What a singular artist.
He loved his cigarettes and died from emphysema—thanks, tobacco industry.
I was never a Lynch completist—some of the weird stuff I couldn’t follow—but was always blown away by the key works. Blue Velvet is a masterpiece. Twin Peaks changed television. The Elephant Man is amazing. Dune I always knew, being a sci-fi geek, and even though it’s a mess, his vision is unmistakeable.
He became a kind of pop culture institution in recent years:
I always adored him as an actor:
He could make things so weird, like a $50M student film, but with such technical mastery, and also a certain simplicity—and emotion, too.
How did he do it? Bless him, he would never explain it—and possibly he didn’t know himself.
He was just a wizard.
And perhaps his greatest trick was that while he never lost his integrity, his uniqueness as an artist—he never became an asshole. He turned into this benevolent, pop-culture uncle character and yet nobody would ever accuse him of selling out.
Bless him for a life well lived.
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