David Lynch

The Birth of the Golden Age of Television

Attended Fine Arts school in Philadelphia

The Grandmother (1970)

AFI Supported family with

odd jobs Worked on the script for

Eraserhead (1977) Mel Brooks called him

“Jimmy Stewart from Mars”

Early Films

Surrealism originated in the late 1910s and early '20s

as a literary movement that experimented with a new mode of expression called automatic writing, or automatism, which sought to release the unbridled imagination of the subconscious.

All sorts of techniques and phenomena were employed to achieve this subconscious creativity, including dreams, hallucinations, automatic or random image generation - basically anything that circumvented the usual "rational" thought processes involved in creating works of art.

Surrealism

Was known to

include elements from dreams in his work

Lynch

Took 3 years Delivered newspapers Lived on the set

Production of Eraserhead

Desolate industrial city Characters Henry and Mary

X give birth to a monstrous baby

Henry dreams of escaping with a woman who serenades him from behind the radiator

“illogic and rhythm of a bad dream”

Theme of “sexual repression”

Eraserhead

Alan Spelt (sound editor) won an Academy Award for his audio work on The Black Stallion (1979)

Cinematographer Fred Elmes went on to shoot more idiosyncratic films

Jack Nance never broke into Hollywood, but had parts in other Lynch films as well as a favorite character on Twin Peaks

Cast and Crew

Lynch was given the Writing and Directing Assignment

Mel Brooks (a producer of the film) suggested him

Nominated for 8 Academy Awards

Lynch was nominated for director and screenplay

His films have always remained odd and divisive

The Elephant Man 1980

The Golden Age of TV, Twin Peaks (1990)

Flash Forwards Dream Sequences Extra-dimensional

spirits Other-worldly villains Sense of place Special code

Mythology of the show

Television mythologies allow viewers to feel like they are part of a special code. Shows with idiosyncratic mythologies tend to develop cult followings. Ex. Twin Peaks, Star Trek, X-Files, Lost

The X Files Lost Mad Men Breaking Bad The Killing True Detective

Likely influenced the following shows

Also generated a rabid cult following

Expanded the

vocabulary of the small screen

Cinematography Editing Set design

Cinematic Style

Nightmarish imagesMelodramaAbsurdismKitcsh

Laura PalmerDevelopment of character (of a dead girl) like Otto Primenger’s Laura One of the most intriguing characters ever on television Anti-heroEvil is represented as a an entity (rather than specific characters)

Mark Frost David Lynch The Lynch style brought something to TV never seen

before

Showrunners and creative control

Flubbed lines Faulty Fluorescent Frank Silva

accidentally caught in a mirror (and becoming the main villain)

Mistakes that were kept

“Twin Peaks,” despite all its innovations, died an ignoble death, hemorrhaging viewers. Not even Lynch’s sort-of prequel film, “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me,” could salvage the show.