‘Heart is broken’: Hollywood’s outpouring of grief at death of David Lynch

Source: Instagram/Naomi Watts
Australia’s Naomi Watt has joined an outpouring of grief as some of the biggest names in Hollywood mourn the death of iconic director David Lynch.
Lynch, who earned best director Oscar nominations for Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man and Mulholl and Drive and co-created the groundbreaking TV series Twin Peaks died at age 78.
“It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch,” his family said in a statement on Lynch’s Facebook page early on Friday (Australian time).
“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 doughnut and not on the hole’.”
Lynch revealed last year that he had been diagnosed with emphysema and would likely not be able to leave his house to direct any more.
Watts, who rose to fame after starring Lynch’s 2001 noir thriller Mulholland Drive on Friday said her “heart is broken” and the world would “not be the same without him”.
In a lengthy Instagram post, she said the director’s creative mentorship was “truly powerful”.
“He put me on the map. The world I’d been trying to break into for 10-plus years, flunking auditions left and right. Finally, I sat in front of a curious man, beaming with light, speaking words from another era, making me laugh and feel at ease,” Watt said.
With his visually stunning, disturbing and inscrutable works filled with 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.
Steven Spielberg, who cast Lynch as legendary director Tom Ford in his 2022 semi-autobiographic film, The Fabelmans, described him as “one of his heroes”.
“I got to know David when he played John Ford in The Fabelmans,” Spielberg said.
“Here was one of my heroes – David Lynch playing one of my heroes.
“The world is going to miss such an original and unique voice.”
Nicolas Cage, who starred in Lynch’s Wild at Heart, told Deadline that he was “one of the greatest artists of this or any time”.
“He was brave, brilliant, and a maverick with a joyful sense of humour. I never had more fun on a film set than working with David Lynch. He will always be solid gold.”
Kyle MacLachlan, who starred in Blue Velvet, Dune and Twin Peaks, said he owed his “entire career” to Lynch.
“While the world has lost a remarkable artist, I’ve lost a dear friend who imagined a future for me and allowed me to travel in worlds I could never have conceived on my own,” he posted on Instagram.
Lynch’s style of filmmaking prompted the its own term, Lynchian, which Vanity Fair described as weird, creepy, and slow.
In his films, Lynch inserted the macabre and disturbing into the ordinary and mundane and heightened the impact with music.
Lynch said that he was not only interested in the story but also the mood of a film, set by the visual elements and sound working together.
“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.
-with AAP