Overview (3)

Mini Bio (2)

Born in precisely the kind of small-town American setting so familiar from his films, David Lynch spent his childhood being shunted from one state to another as his research scientist father kept getting relocated. He attended various art schools, married Peggy Lynch and then fathered future director Jennifer Lynch shortly after he turned 21. That experience, plus attending art school in a particularly violent and run-down area of Philadelphia, inspired Eraserhead (1977), a film that he began in the early 1970s (after a couple of shorts) and which he would work on obsessively for five years. The final film was initially judged to be almost unreleasable weird, but thanks to the efforts of distributor Ben Barenholtz, it secured a cult following and enabled Lynch to make his first mainstream film (in an unlikely alliance with Mel Brooks), though The Elephant Man (1980) was shot through with his unique sensibility. Its enormous critical and commercial success led to Dune (1984), a hugely expensive commercial disaster, but Lynch redeemed himself with the now classic Blue Velvet (1986), his most personal and original work since his debut. He subsequently won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival with the dark, violent road movie Wild at Heart (1990), and achieved a huge cult following with his surreal TV series Twin Peaks (1990), which he adapted for the big screen, though his comedy series On the Air (1992) was less successful. He also draws comic strips and has devised multimedia stage events with regular composer Angelo Badalamenti. He had a much-publicized affair with Isabella Rossellini in the late 1980s.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Michael Brooke <michael@everyman.demon.co.uk>

Born in 1946 in Missoula, Montana, David Lynch was raised in small-town America. After high school, he went to Boston to attend the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Shortly after that, he planned a three-year trip to Europe to work on his art, but didn't take to it and left after 15 days. In 1977, he released his first film Eraserhead (1977), which, although not critically acclaimed, was noticed by many people, including Francis Ford Coppola, who was rumored to have screenings of it for his cast and crew on the Apocalypse Now (1979) set. After a stream of visually striking films such as Blue Velvet (1986), Lost Highway (1997) and Mulholland Dr. (2001). These films and others, beginning with Blue Velvet (1986), and including his Twin Peaks (1990) T.V. series, feature what has now been added to signature Lynch features, such as vibrant colors, the use of dreams and montage to connect character thought and multiple emotions into one sequence. In addition to that, since Blue Velvet (1986), Lynch has gained the reputation of one of the foremost auteurs in the film industry, and one of the few living auteurs who continually defies cinematic convention. His films continually represent his ideal that films, representing life, should be complex, and in some cases, inexplicable. Due to his decisive innovation and the beautiful confusion of his films, he will always be recognized as if not one of the greatest film-makers, one of the most original. Lynch is an innovative director, and even if his films aren't necessarily realistic, they are real in their representation of what life is: a confusing, irrational series of events that have little purpose, and one makes one's own interpretation of each event, giving life one's own purpose. Lynch wants his films to resonate emotionally and instinctively, and for every person to relate and find its own understanding. As he said, "Life is very, very confusing, and so films should be allowed to be, too". David Lynch is original. He has done things in film-making that D.W. Griffith did in his day. David Lynch will never stop making beauty on the screen.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous

Spouse (4)

Trade Mark (20)

Finds small-town USA fascinating



Has a taste for low/middle frequency noise, dark and rotting environments, distorted characters, a polarized world (angels vs demons, Madonnas vs whores), and debilitating damage to the skull or brain.



Use of slow-motion during key scenes of violence



Red curtains, strobe lights, and extreme surrealism



Uses many references to France, the French language, culture, people, and names.



Constant references to dreams as a way of connecting the plot and twists in his films.





Uses Roy Orbison songs in his films

Close up shots of eyes



Quirky, nasal voice



Films are often sexually charged and graphically violent



Many of his films examine the dark side of American suburbia.



Never explains the meaning of his movies



Very heavy use of black and dark lighting in order to augment colorful objects in scenes.



Gesticulates heavily while he is talking



Characters often express extreme pleasure or disgust when drinking coffee (and sometimes tea) including Mulholland Drive and Inland empire. Coffee drinking is also a running theme in Twin Peaks, particularly in relation to Agent Cooper.



Psychogenic fugue is a common theme in which many characters have multiple 'split' roles



Rockabilly Hairstyle



Since Blue Velvet, he incorporates blue as a recurring motif



Trivia (62)

Ate lunch at Bob's Big Boy in Los Angeles, California, nearly every day for almost eight years in a row.



His father had Scottish, Irish, and English ancestry. His mother was of half Finnish and half German descent. His Irish ancestry can be traced to Galway and as far back as being descended from Rollo, a Viking King.



Currently (2002) runs his own personally authorized Web site, www.davidlynch.com and has been rumored to appear in the chat area of the site under a more than obvious name.



Personally approved DVD releases of his movies do not have any chapter stops. This is done because he believes that films are meant to be viewed from beginning to end.





He is also an artist working in paint and such dynamic elements as live ants and rotting flesh. He also frequently designs and builds the furniture in his films. These can be seen in the documentary about him, Pretty as a Picture: The Art of David Lynch (1997).

Projects he has written but to date has not produced include "Ronnie Rocket," "Up at the Lake," and "One Saliva Bubble."





Producer Dino De Laurentiis offered him the chance to direct "Hand-Carved Coffins" based on a Truman Capote work, but Lynch turned it down; to date the project has not been produced.



Wrote the Gordon Cole character (from Twin Peaks (1990)) with himself in mind.



After the financial disaster that was Dune (1984), Lynch and Dino De Laurentiis were almost ready to part company but Lynch showed Dino the script for Blue Velvet (1986), which he had been working on for some time, and the two combined talents to make the seminal 1986 classic.



While in college, roomed with Peter Wolf , former lead singer with the J. Geils Band. Lynch kicked him out, however, because he thought Wolf was "too weird."

He attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in Philadelphia



Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985," pp. 621-626 (as David K. Lynch). New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.





Insisted his name be struck from the 190-minute Extended Cut of Dune (1984), which was prepared specially for television. That version credits the pseudonymous "Judas Booth" as writer/director. Yet in 2009 - the movie's 25th anniversary - Lynch (by a fan's request) actually signed Booth's name to a vintage "Making of Dune (1984) paperback at West Hollywood's famous Book Soup.

In addition to excluding chapter breaks in his approved DVD releases of his movies, he hasn't recorded an audio commentary in any of his films. This is because he believes that films speak for themselves.





Announced at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival that he has been shooting a feature length project on digital video called Inland Empire (2006) for over a year. He also announced that he was so impressed with digital that he was giving up directing projects on film.

He drew and wrote the comic strip, "The Angriest Dog in the World" that ran in the Los Angeles Reader newspaper throughout the 1980s.



President of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002.





Is famous (or infamous) for not saying anything on Eraserhead (1977). He lets the viewers decide what it means.



He was offered the chance to direct Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), but he turned it down, saying that the script was funny, but it wasn't his thing.



Was very good friends with Jack Nance



Is friends with Kyle MacLachlan



He was introduced to Isabella Rossellini at a restaurant by a mutual friend when he was in the process of casting Blue Velvet (1986). Struck by her serene European beauty, he told her, "You could be Ingrid Bergman 's daughter." 'You idiot,' my friend said to me," Lynch recalled, "'she is Ingrid Bergman's daughter!'"



Was engaged to Italian actress Isabella Rossellini from 1986 to 1990.



Is friends with Mädchen Amick

Is mentioned in German author Patrick Roth's short story "Lynch for Lunch" (2008).



Being an avid coffee drinker, he has own line of special organic blends.





Has practiced Transcendental Meditation for at least 20 minutes each day since 1973. Now very actively leads his own worldwide organization, the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace, that is the midst of a campaign to raise $7 billion to further its goals. As a result, Lynch has not made a film since 2006's Inland Empire (2006).



Although having planned to study with painter Oskar Kokoschka in Austria for three years, he returned to the US after only 15 days.



Served as an usher at the Presidential Inauguration of John F. Kennedy (20 January 1961).

Born to Donald Lynch, a research scientist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and his wife Sunny, an English language tutor.





Frequently works with Crispin Glover



He was so impressed by Sheryl Lee 's performance as the dead Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks (1990)' pilot episode that he wrote the role of Maddy Ferguson for her, in order to bring her back in the series.



The car accident scene in Wild at Heart (1990) came from his impression of actress Sherilyn Fenn as a china doll, and from the idea of seeing a porcelain doll breaking. He told her, "I envisioned this broken China doll, all bloody, and ranting and raving, and it was you".

His ancestry is Finnish, German and Irish. His Irish Ancestry can be traced to Galway and as far back as being descended from Rollo, a Viking King.



Has said that he is an admirer of Ronald Reagan, and supported the Natural Law Party in the 2000 Presidential Election. In both the 2008 and 2012 Presidential Elections, he supported Barack Obama.



Among the places he lived in his rootless childhood were Missoula, Montana (his birth place), Sandpoint, Idaho (where his family moved when he was only 2 months old), Spokane, Washington, Durham, North Carolina, Boise, Idaho and Alexandria, Virginia (where he attended high school).





Has three siblings, including brother John Lynch



In 2002, Lynch paid $1 million to spend a month studying Transcendental Meditation along with a few other well-heeled adherents in a compound in the Netherlands with the movement's founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi . The Maharishi was living in the house, but only communicated with the group via TV conferencing.

Lodz, Poland. Discussing his plans for building post production film studio in an old factory on Targowa street. [May 2004]





Sheryl Lee credits him as one of the most incredible teachers that she's ever had in terms of filmmaking.



Was asked to direct Manhunter (1986).



Disowned Dune (1984), considering it the only real failure of his career. To this day, he refuses to talk about the production in great detail, and has refused numerous offers to work on a special edition DVD. Lynch claims revisiting the film would be too painful an experience to endure.

At the 1986 Montreal Film Festival, where Blue Velvet first premiered, he met Giulietta Masina, wife & frequent muse of Federico Fellini, one of his favorite film directors.





In 2018, Oxford English Dictionary added term "Lynchian" into its collection and defined it as "characteristic, reminiscent, or imitative of the works of David Lynch ," adding: "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".

Lynch is one of the few directors who has directed films that have received all five modern MPAA ratings: G (The Straight Story), PG (The Elephant Man), PG-13 (Dune), R (Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive, and Inland Empire) and NC-17 (Wild at Heart). In the last case, the film was edited down to an R rating following its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Furthermore, Lynch's debut feature Eraserhead was released without any rating whatsoever.



President of the jury at the Venice Film Festival in 1994.





He has directed one film that has been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Eraserhead (1977).

Graduated from the American Film Institute.



Personal Quotes (61)

It's better not to know so much about what things mean or how they might be interpreted or you'll be too afraid to let things keep happening. Psychology destroys the mystery, this kind of magic quality. It can be reduced to certain neuroses or certain things, and since it is now named and defined, it's lost its mystery and the potential for a vast, infinite experience.



I sort of go by a duck when I work on a film because if you study a duck, you'll see certain things. You'll see a bill, and the bill is a certain texture and a certain length. Then you'll see a head, and the features on the head are a certain texture and it's a certain shape and it goes into the neck. The texture of the bill for instance is very smooth and it has quite precise detail in it and it reminds you somewhat of the legs. The legs are a little bit bigger and a little more rubbery but it's enough so that your eye goes back and forth. Now, the body being so big, it can be softer and the texture is not so detailed, it's just kind of a cloud. And the key to the whole duck is the eye and where the eye is placed. And it has to be placed in the head and it's the most detailed, and it's like a little jewel. And if it was fixed, sitting on the bill, it would be two things that were too busy, battling, they would not do so well. And if it was sitting in the middle of the body, it would get lost. But it's so perfectly placed to show off a jewel right in the middle of the head like that, next to this S-curve with the bill sitting out in front, but with enough distance so that the eye is very very very well secluded and set out. So when you're working on a film, a lot of times you can get the bill and the legs and the body and everything, but this eye of the duck is a certain scene, this jewel, that if it's there, it's absolutely beautiful. It's just fantastic." "Film exists because we can go and have experiences that would be pretty dangerous or strange for us in real life. We can go into a room and walk into a dream. If we didn't want to upset anyone, we would make films about sewing, but even that could be dangerous. But I think finally, in a film, it is how the balance is and the feelings are. But I think there has to be those contrasts and strong things withing a film for the total experience.



I'm not a real film buff. Unfortunately, I don't have time. I just don't go. And I become very nervous when I go to a film because I worry so much about the director and it is hard for me to digest my popcorn.



It makes me uncomfortable to talk about meanings and things. It's better not to know so much about what things mean. Because the meaning, it's a very personal thing, and the meaning for me is different than the meaning for somebody else.



To give a sense of place, to me, is a thrilling thing. And a sense of place is made up of details. And so the details are incredibly important. If they're wrong, then it throws you out of the mood. And so the sound and music and color and shape and texture, if all those things are correct and a woman looks a certain way with a certain kind of light and says the right word, you're gone, you're in heaven. But it's all the little details.



In Hollywood, more often than not, they're making more kind of traditional films, stories that are understood by people. And the entire story is understood. And they become worried if even for one small moment something happens that is not understood by everyone. But what's so fantastic is to get down into areas where things are abstract and where things are felt, or understood in an intuitive way that, you can't, you know, put a microphone to somebody at the theatre and say 'Did you understand that?' but they come out with a strange, fantastic feeling and they can carry that, and it opens some little door or something that's magical and that's the power that film has.



I think that ideas exist outside of ourselves. I think somewhere, we're all connected off in some very abstract land. But somewhere between there and here ideas exist. And I think the mind isn't conscious enough to go all the way to where we're connected, but it's conscious of a certain amount of that territory. And when these ideas fly into the conscious part, then you can capture them. But if they're outside of the conscious part, you don't even know about them. So you just hope that you can make the conscious part of your mind bigger or that these ideas will fly into your airspace, so you can shoot them down and grab them and take them home. So that's all you try to do. Sometimes an idea will strike you when you're sitting in a quiet chair. But sometimes an idea will strike you when you're standing. Sometimes music will also help you. If I thought I could just sit still in a quiet place and get ideas, I would do that all the time, but sometimes nothing happens. There's no rhyme or reason to it. But you've got to write them down right away. I forget so many things. Then if I forget it and try to remember it, my whole day is ruined because I can't remember and I feel horrible. And I imagine that it was one of the all time great ideas. And it probably isn't.



I've said many, many, many unkind things about Philadelphia, and I meant every one.



[His films] mean different things to different people. Some mean more or less the same things to a large number of people. It's okay. Just as long as there's not one message, spoon-fed. That's what films by committee end up being, and it's a real bummer to me . . . Life is very, very complicated, and so films should be allowed to be, too.



I don't think that people accept the fact that life doesn't make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it.



[on plans to build 100 transcendental meditation centers to bring an end to crime and war]: "Peace could be on this Earth this year. It would be a whole new world."



I like to make films because I like to go into another world. I like to get lost in another world. And film to me is a magical medium that makes you dream...allows you to dream in the dark. It's just a fantastic thing, to get lost inside the world of film.



I would rather not make a film than make one where I don't have final cut.



All my movies are about strange worlds that you can't go into unless you build them and film them. That's what's so important about film to me. I just like going into strange worlds.



I'm not sure what these people are saying. Is it that if you depicted no graphic violence, the world would calm down and there would be less violence? Or is it that if you sense certain things about violence and then portray those things in a film, does that make the violence go to another level? Or is the violence in films a way to experience something without having to do it in real life?



Sex is a doorway to something so powerful and mystical, but movies usually depict it in a completely flat way. Being explicit doesn't tap into the mystical aspect of it either in fact, that usually kills it because people don't want to see sex so much as they want to experience the emotions that go along with it. These things are hard to convey in film because sex is such a mystery.



I'm convinced we all are voyeurs. It's part of the detective thing. We want to know secrets and we want to know what goes on behind those windows. And not in a way that we would use to hurt anyone. There's an entertainment value to it, but at the same time we want to know: What do humans do? Do they do the same things as I do? It's a gaining of some sort of knowledge, I think.



My mother refused to give me coloring books as a child. She probably saved me, Because when you think about it, what a coloring book does is completely kill creativity.



There's something deeply satisfying about directing the flow of water.



Cigarettes are pretty much my worst vice, and I even stopped smoking for 20 years. I spend most of my free time with my family and working on art.



Sex was like a world so mysterious to me, I really couldn't believe there was this fantastic texture to life that I was getting to do...it has all these different levels, from lust and fearful, violent sex to the real spiritual thing at the other end. It's the key to some fantastic mystery of life.



I like things to be orderly. For seven years I ate at Bob's Big Boy. I would go at 2:30, after the lunch rush. I ate a chocolate shake and four, five, six, seven cups of coffee--with lots of sugar. And there's lots of sugar in that chocolate shake. It's a thick shake. In a silver goblet. I would get a rush from all this sugar, and I would get so many ideas! I would write them on these napkins. It was like I had a desk with paper. All I had to do was remember to bring my pen, but a waitress would give me one if I remembered to return it at the end of my stay. I got a lot of ideas at Bob's.





[on actor Kyle MacLachlan ]: "What do we do together? I have a pretty good cappuccino machine, and anytime he gets the urge, he comes on over. We talk about the problems associated with getting a good cup of coffee."

In a large city I realized there was a large amount of fear. Coming from the Northwest, it kind of hits you like a train.



There was nothing much going on upstairs until the age of nineteen.



As a teenager, I was really trying to have fun 24 hours a day. I didn't start thinking until I was 20 or 21. I was doing regular goof-ball stuff.



My father was a scientist for the Forest Service. He would drive me through the woods in his green Forest Service truck, over dirt roads, through the most beautiful forests where the trees are very tall and shafts of sunlight come down and in the mountain streams the rainbow trout leap out and their little trout sides catch glimpses of light. Then my father would drop me in the woods and go off. It was a weird, comforting feeling being in the woods. There were odd, mysterious things. That's the kind of world I grew up in.



[on his 1965 sojourn to Europe to study art] I didn't take to Europe. I was all the time thinking, "This is where I'm going to be painting". And there was no inspiration there at all for the kind of work I wanted to do.



[on his 1965 sojourn to Europe to study art] I intended to stay three years. Instead, I stayed 15 days! I remember lying in an Athens basement with lizards crawling along the walls and contemplating that I was 7,000 miles from McDonalds!



[on why his officially sanctioned DVDs contain no chapter stops] It is my opinion that a film is not like a book--it should not be broken up. It is a continuum and should be seen as such.



Absurdity is what I like most in life, and there's humor in struggling in ignorance. If you saw a man repeatedly running into a wall until he was a bloody pulp, after a while it would make you laugh because it becomes absurd.



I let the actors work out their ideas before shooting, then tell them what attitudes I want. If a scene isn't honest, it stands out like a sore thumb.





[on Sheryl Lee and her performance in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)] It turns out, at least in my opinion, she's an unbelievable actress and there are things that she's done in this movie that are truly incredible. I haven't seen too many people get into a role and give it as much. So, the big news for me was this person was hired to be a dead girl and turns out to be a great actress and a perfect Laura Palmer.



[on Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)] I love that film. I say now that The Straight Story (1999) is my most experimental movie, but up until then, "Fire Walk With Me" was my most experimental film, and some of the things, the combos, you know, like, sequences . . . It was a dark film, but like Peggy Lipton said in an interview, it was just too much in people's faces, and it didn't have the humor of Twin Peaks (1990). So it was what it was supposed to be, but it wasn't what people wanted. It was supposed to be stand-alone, but it was also supposed to be the last week of Laura Palmer's life. And all those things that had been established, they could be pleasant on one level to experience, but unpleasant on another level.



[remarking about Elvis Presley 's reported comment to one of his backup singers that he thought no one would remember him] That's incredible. Elvis swims in our minds, and in the emotions all through time.



[on Eyes Wide Shut (1999)] I really love Eyes Wide Shut. I just wonder if Stanley Kubrick really did finish it the way he wanted to before he died.



[on actress Joan Chen ] She's the best thing from China since pasta - and much more beautiful. (People, May 04, 1992)



[on actress Sherilyn Fenn ] She's a mysterious girl and I think that actresses like her who have a mystery - where there's something hiding beneath the surface - are the really interesting ones. (Premiere UK, July 1993)



I was driving through Central Park with Kyle MacLachlan and on the radio came Crying by Roy Orbison . I started listening to this song and I'm thinking only of Blue Velvet (1986) and I'm thinking this song could appear in the film. Once we were filming in Virginia, I ask for Roy Orbison's Greatest Hits and I hear In Dreams and boom! An explosion goes off in my head. And I think, "This is it." Dennis [Hopper] was supposed to sing that and Dean Stockwell was supposed to listen but Dennis couldn't remember the lines. And I thought, "Wait a minute, Dean will sing and Dennis will listen." It was a magical thing.

People say my films are dark. But like lightness, darkness stems from a reflection of the world. The thing is, I get these ideas that I truly fall in love with. And a good movie idea is often like a girl you're in love with, but you know she's not the kind of girl you bring home to your parents, because they sometimes hold some dark and troubling things.





[on The Straight Story (1999)] I wanted the film to have a floating feeling. I particularly wanted that quality to come through in the aerial landscape shots, and it took a lot of explaining to get the helicopter pilots to slow down enough to get the look I was after.



[on The Straight Story (1999)] Some people still wait for something very bad to happen in the movie. Also, somebody was standing in line for a preview screening and a lady behind them said, 'Isn't it odd that there are two directors named David Lynch.'



[on Richard Farnsworth in The Straight Story (1999)] A lot of times people say someone was born to play a certain role. If there was ever a case for that, this is it. The film hangs on his performance. There's nobody who could have done it like he did. He has a quality, which is in all the films he's been in, that just makes you want to instantly love this guy. He fits the definition of an actor - a person who makes something real.

Sometimes when you pass a house and you see that the door's closed, the window blinds are closed, you wonder what's going on in there. We all get feelings from places. Some feelings are happy feelings, and some don't put out such happy feelings. There seems to be something more.



I loved smoking cigarettes as a child. I loved matches. I loved lighting matches.



It's thrilling for me to play an electric guitar. I like to think of it as a gasoline-powered engine. Running rough, with a loud muffler.



Desiring an idea is like bait on a hook. You can pull them in. If you catch an idea that you love, that's a beautiful day, and you write it down. That idea might just be a fragment of the whole, but now you have even more bait. Thinking about that small fragment, that little fish will bring in more. Pretty soon you may have a script.



There's a comfort when you realize your ideas are realized. You've worked so that all the elements are working together and it feels complete and correct and you say it's done. Then it goes out into the world, but it doesn't need any more explanation. It is what it is. Cinema is such a beautiful language [but] as soon as people finish a film, people want you to turn it into words. It's kind of a sadness for me: the words are limiting.



An inner anger is poison. A person who is angry is poisoning them self and poisoning the environment.



[2008 interview] Now if you're playing a movie on a telephone, you will never in a trillion years experience the film. You'll think you have experienced it, but you'll be cheated. It's such a sadness that you think you've seen a film on your fucking telephone. Get real.





[on Eraserhead (1977)] Then we showed it to a guy who was a friend of Terrence Malick - his financial backer, I think. Terry was trying to help me get some money and he said, 'I want to show some scenes to this man, maybe he'll help you.' But Terry had not seen anything. So we organized several scenes, and this man came in and sat down and I was, you know, trembling. I was at the console with Al [sound designer Alan Splet ] And in the middle of this thing the man stood up and screamed: 'PEOPLE DON'T ACT LIKE THAT! PEOPLE DON'T TALK LIKE THAT! THIS IS BULLSHIT!' And out he went. But, like, really upset. And Ron, the projectionist upstairs, heard this and everybody was just looking at each other. so I thought, 'Man!', you know, 'This is gonna be really difficult!' [from "Lynch on Lynch": revised edition, page 82]



I started selling out on Dune (1984). Looking back, it's no one's fault but my own. I probably shouldn't have done that picture, but I saw tons and tons of possibilities for things I loved, and this was the structure to do them in. There was so much room to create a world. But I got strong indications from Raffaella and Dino De Laurentiis of what kind of film they expected, and I knew I didn't have final cut.



I didn't have final cut on Dune (1984). It's the only film I've made where I didn't have. I didn't technically have final cut on The Elephant Man (1980), but Mel Brooks gave it to me, and on Dune (1984), I started selling out even in the script phase knowing I didn't have final cut, and I sold out, so it was a slow dying-the-death and a terrible, terrible experience. I don't know how it happened, I trusted that it would work out but it was very naive and, the wrong move. In those days the maximum length they figured I could have is two hours and seventeen minutes, and that's what the film is, so they wouldn't lose a screening a day, so once again it's money talking and not for the film at all and so it was like compacted and it hurt it, it hurt it. There is no other version. There's more stuff, but even that is putrefied.



I say Eraserhead (1977) is my The Philadelphia Story (1940). I like smoke and fire and the sounds of the factories.



I always give credit to Angelo Badalamenti for bringing me into the world of music.

I'm in a transition. I am painting, and I am painting over and then painting, and then painting over, and destroying, and painting, and destroying, and painting over.



Be true to yourself. Find your own voice and be true to that voice. Never take a bad idea, but never turn down a good idea. And, of course, have final cut.



Every idea that you fall in love with is a gift. How the ideas come is the trick.



[on being asked if he takes drugs] Yes, I eat a tremendous amount of sugar!



Ideas are so beautiful, and they're so abstract, and they do exist someplace - I don't know if there's a name for it - and I think they exist like fish, and I believe that if you sit quietly like you're fishing, you will catch ideas. The real beautiful big ones swim kinda deep down there.



I like the idea that everything has a surface which hides much more underneath. Someone can look very well and have a whole bunch of diseases cooking: there are all sorts of dark, twisted things lurking down there. I go down in that darkness and see what's there. Coffee shops are nice safe places to think. I like sitting in brightly lit places where I can drink coffee and have some sugar. Then, before I know it, I'm down under the surface gliding along; if it becomes too heavy, I can always pop back into the coffee shop.



Salary (1)