Lynch, David (Keith), 1946–, American film and television writer, producer, and director, b. Missoula, Mont. Trained as a painter, he studied at the Corcoran School of Art, Washington, D.C. (1963–64), the Boston Museum School (1964–65), and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia (1965–67). His first feature film, Eraserhead (1977), became a cult favorite and was followed by The Elephant Man (1980), about the deformed Englishman John Merrick; the science fiction film Dune (1984); Blue Velvet (1986), a noir mystery; the road movie Wild at Heart (1990); Lost Highway (1997); The Straight Story (1999), about a man who drives hundreds of miles on a riding lawn mower to see his estranged brother; Mulholland Drive (2001); and Inland Empire (2006). He is perhaps best known for his surrealistic television mystery series, Twin Peaks (1990–91, 2017). He also directed the prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) and a documentary about the rock group Duran Duran (2014), has exhibited his artwork widely, and collaborated on numerous music projects.
See interviews in Lynch on Lynch (ed. by C. Rodley, rev. ed. 2005) and David Lynch: Interviews (ed. by R. A. Barney, 2009); studies by K. Kaleta (1992), E. Sheen and A. Davidson (2004), T. McGowan (2007), E. G. Wilson (2007), G. Olson (2008), T. Jousse (2010), M. P. Nochimson (2014), and D. Lim (2015).
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