Ideas were everything to David Lynch

This fea­ture first appeared in print in Huck 68: The Fly­ing Lotus Issue.

The world of David Lynch is pow­ered by ideas. It’s a con­stant stream of images, acci­dents and gut deci­sions that all require trust and team­work to pull off. Here, his clos­est col­lab­o­ra­tors – as well as the direc­tor him­self – open up about an imag­i­na­tion unlike any other.

As the morn­ing sun ris­es over Los Ange­les, David Lynch gets ready for his day. He slips on a white-col­lar shirt, along with bat­tered beige chi­nos and scuffed black shoes, then but­tons it flush-tight against his neck. He med­i­tates, drinks cof­fees – plur­al – and sits at his mul­ti-com­plex home stu­dio wait­ing for his staff. Per­son­al assis­tants arrive, as does a pic­ture assis­tant, a run­ner, Alfre­do the main­te­nance guy, as well as Dean Hur­ley, who runs his music stu­dio. Then work can begin.

David Lynch’s dai­ly life is as para­dox­i­cal as his art. In his work, he plucks the abstract from the ordi­nary and cre­ates chaos from order; he zooms in on the mun­dane yet illu­mi­nates the under­bel­ly. This approach came ear­ly for him. Lynch remem­bers his child­hood as one of pick­et fences, blue skies, red flow­ers and cher­ry trees – yet he’d find him­self focus­ing on the mil­lions of lit­tle ants swarm­ing beneath that sur­face. From the twist­ed explo­ration of domes­tic­i­ty depict­ed in his cult 1977 film Eraser­head to the genre-bust­ing TV show Twin Peaks, the director’s work has con­found­ed expec­ta­tion and flipped worlds upside down, inside-out, back-to-front and back again. 

Once Lynch’s day is under way, it remains ground­ed in rou­tine. He med­i­tates twice a day. He wears the same clothes. He eats the same lunch: one piece of bread with may­on­naise and chick­en. He eats the same din­ner: the same as lunch, plus veg­etable soup. For sev­en years, he went to Bob’s Big Boy Burg­ers every day to drink the same milk­shake until he decid­ed to climb into the dump­ster out back to dis­cov­er what ingre­di­ents they contained. 

“David’s work eth­ic comes from some­one who spent their for­ma­tive years in the 1950s,” says Dean Hur­ley, who’s worked as Lynch’s in-house engi­neer since 2005. ​“He has that kind of but­ton-down pro­fes­sion­al men­tal­i­ty. He’s very punc­tu­al, so you real­ly have to make a point to be there and ready to work by 9am.” 

In 1997, Lynch admit­ted that he had ques­tioned the rigid­i­ty of his own rou­tine: ​“I con­sid­ered psy­cho­analy­sis to talk about these cycles of things like [repet­i­tive] lunch­es. I asked [the ther­a­pist], ​‘Could meet­ing with you affect my cre­ativ­i­ty?’ And he said, ​‘I have to be hon­est, it could.’ And I said, ​‘Thank you very much, good­bye.’” Today this bor­der­ing-on-obses­sive approach to the rhythm of dai­ly life is to ensure an unin­ter­rupt­ed flow of ideas. By now Lynch knows that keep­ing things sim­ple, pre­dictable and con­trol­lable is the 73-year-old’s best chance to tap into an end­less well of creativity.

“You Got­ta Have a Set-up” 

This is a phrase that Lynch is fond of. ​“For him, a set-up means a mul­ti­fac­eted one,” says Hur­ley. ​“The record­ing stu­dio is the same as his wood shop: some­where that he can walk into, turn on the saw and get to work.” The dynam­ic extends to peo­ple, too, so tasks that inter­fere with cre­ativ­i­ty can be tak­en care of by some­one else. PAs deal with emails and sched­ules; the run­ner gets gro­ceries; Alfre­do will take Lynch’s hand-drawn nap­kin designs of fur­ni­ture to secure materials. 

“It’s like an organ­ised tor­na­do,” says Hur­ley. ​“Some days he may just come into the stu­dio and be like, ​‘I had this idea last night: I was think­ing about Van Mor­ri­son and the horns from ​‘Into the Mys­tic’. I love those horns; we need to do some­thing that has that feel­ing.’ Then he goes off to do some­thing else and returns a cou­ple of hours lat­er.” Some­times, though, these visions can feel a lit­tle too big to pull off. ​“He sends run­ners on wild-goose chas­es,” Hur­ley adds with a chuck­le. ​“He gets these real pie-in-the-sky ideas like, ​‘What would it take for me to drill for oil in my back­yard?’ Then some­body has to look all that up and make a report.” 

Lynch doesn’t like to leave his com­plex unless it’s work-relat­ed, in which case he’s sim­ply sub­sti­tut­ing one work envi­ron­ment for anoth­er. He doesn’t take vaca­tions and week­ends are an obsta­cle because it means his rou­tine is on pause. ​“He gets super pained when nobody is in the office,” says Hur­ley. Lynch’s set-up is all about self-suf­fi­cien­cy – an insu­lar world he nev­er has to leave unless nec­es­sary; a place where he can indulge any cre­ative whim: be it paint­ing, build­ing fur­ni­ture, edit­ing a film, mak­ing a record, tak­ing meet­ings or drink­ing cof­fee. ​“The goal was to cre­ate a home where he could do any­thing,” Hur­ley says. ​“Film is a real­ly cum­ber­some beast that involves doing your work at a vari­ety of mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar facil­i­ties and David has man­aged to build this for him­self. It’s all about cre­at­ing and main­tain­ing his freedom.” 

Adding to the Tool Belt 

Although Lynch pri­ori­tis­es cre­ative auton­o­my, he remains a pro­lif­ic col­lab­o­ra­tor who stays loy­al to those he enjoys work­ing with, from actors (such as Lau­ra Dern, Kyle MacLach­lan and Nao­mi Watts) to crew and pro­duc­tion peo­ple (like cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Peter Dem­ing, cast­ing direc­tor Johan­na Ray and com­pos­er Ange­lo Badalamenti). 

“David has always struck me as being sin­gle-mind­ed in what he wants,” says actor Char­lotte Stew­art who, between appear­ing in Eraser­head and 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return is Lynch’s longest-liv­ing col­lab­o­ra­tor. ​“I see myself as a colour on a palette that he choos­es from. I don’t choose the colour and I don’t know what the paint­ing is going to be. He puts me on the brush and paints me into the story.” 

Anoth­er exam­ple of Lynch’s cre­ative para­dox is that, despite the tena­cious approach and exac­ti­tude of vision, he’s sur­pris­ing­ly open to input from those he brings into his world. ​“He’s some­body for whom there should almost be anoth­er word for ​‘col­lab­o­ra­tion,’” says Hur­ley. ​“It’s super impor­tant to him. Film is very col­lab­o­ra­tive by nature. There’s this con­cept of the auteur where they col­lab­o­rate with numer­ous peo­ple. Yet their voice is so dis­tinc­tive and loud that their work with all these dif­fer­ent peo­ple can come out in a sin­gu­lar way. So when you get some­body like David who is secure, con­fi­dent and open – not just open but on a quest to dis­cov­er – peo­ple around him can find new tools for their own voice. He wants to see some­thing more excit­ing than what’s already going on in his mind.” 

“He will suss out a per­son quick­ly,” Hur­ley adds. ​“He’s like a turkey baster suck­ing water out of a sponge. He wants to know what you can do. If he sees you do some­thing, he imme­di­ate­ly puts that into his tool belt.” 

Lynch has a way of build­ing up short­hand lan­guages for indi­vid­ual col­lab­o­ra­tors, tap­ping into their essence and forg­ing unique rela­tion­ships in order to realise some­thing unique. ​“I have a very unusu­al way of work­ing with David as a direc­tor,” says Ange­lo Badala­men­ti, who has worked with Lynch con­sis­tent­ly since 1986’s Blue Vel­vet. ​“So much of Twin Peaks, for exam­ple, was com­posed with­out video; only David’s descrip­tions of var­i­ous char­ac­ters and moods. I just fol­low him and trans­late his words to music.” 

Yet when Trent Reznor worked with Lynch on the music for 1997’s Lost High­way, he says he didn’t even receive a vocal instruc­tion like Badala­men­ti. ​“He wrote shit down on a piece of paper,” he remem­bers. ​“He scrib­bled a star-like pat­tern with an ink pen and said, ​‘I would real­ly like it to sound like that.’”

Lynch’s vision can, on occa­sion, make for mys­ti­fy­ing work. ​“There are no secrets giv­en,” says Peter Dem­ing, who has han­dled cin­e­matog­ra­phy for Lynch since the ear­ly 1990s. ​“No mat­ter how long you’ve worked with David, he nev­er gives any­thing up. You find your­self ask­ing, ​‘What does this mean?’ or ​‘If I knew what that meant, could I do my job bet­ter?’ You have to inter­pret things the best you can because you’re not going to get any kind of explanation.”

But this, in turn, only leads to a greater sense of cre­ative free­dom. ​“We don’t go into a lot of detail about pho­tog­ra­phy and light­ing,” Dem­ing explains. ​“It’s most­ly about mood and emo­tion. For me, cre­ative­ly, that is a dream. Because you know what the shots are and then the rest is up to you to cre­ate a mood. I don’t know if there’s a bet­ter way to work.”

For Lynch him­self, it’s about strik­ing the bal­ance of hav­ing a sol­id thought but mak­ing sure it’s mal­leable. ​“I always say that you have to be true to the idea,” he says, speak­ing on the phone from his work­shop, his nasal voice res­onat­ing with char­ac­ter­is­tic mat­ter-of-fact­ness. ​“The ideas in a film are most­ly organ­ised in a script and you fol­low that because those words are based on being true to the idea. It’s about trans­lat­ing the idea and remain­ing true to it all along. How­ev­er, along the way, new ideas can come in and you start to think, ​‘How could I think this was done with­out that?’ Ideas can come in at any stage and to me they are like gifts and blessings.” 

Hap­py Accidents

On 24 Feb­ru­ary 1990, Lynch was picked up from his home by a car ser­vice to attend a Roy Orbi­son memo­r­i­al con­cert. As he was being dri­ven towards LA’s Amphithe­atre, he struck up a con­ver­sa­tion with the 29-year-old dri­ver, Har­ry Goaz. By the end of that dri­ve, Lynch was so enam­oured with the young man’s per­son­al­i­ty, demeanour and soft Tex­an lilt that he cast him in Twin Peaks as the goof­ball Deputy Andy Bren­nan. ​“I was real­ly wor­ried about Har­ry,” says Johan­na Ray, Lynch’s cast­ing direc­tor since 1986. ​“I thought, ​‘What is he think­ing?’ Mark Frost [Twin Peaks co-cre­ator and writer] and I were look­ing at each oth­er and just think­ing, ​‘Oh my God.’ But of course it turned out bril­liant­ly. I nev­er ques­tioned any­thing after that.” 

“Work­ing with David is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent to work­ing with any­one else,” Ray goes on. ​“When I began work­ing with him, he didn’t even want to meet a lot of actors; he would just look at head­shots. When he likes a per­son, even just from a pho­to, he says, ​‘That’s it.’” 

Over the years, Ray began to take more nat­ur­al images of actors that she thought were a good fit for Lynch. These pho­tos now stretch to over 25 albums’ worth. ​“When he starts a new film, he says: ​‘Johan­na, bring up your pho­to album.’ That’s how he found Nao­mi Watts and Lau­ra Har­ring for Mul­hol­land Dri­ve. Pret­ty much every­one from that film came from this pho­to album.” 

For most direc­tors, it would seem unfath­omable – detri­men­tal, even – to cast a film full of peo­ple with­out see­ing them act. But Ray believes that Lynch can ​“get the per­for­mance he wants out of any­one”. Even one of the most indeli­ble char­ac­ters asso­ci­at­ed with his career, she says, stemmed from chance. ​“Lau­ra Palmer was a com­plete fluke,” says Ray. “[Sheryl Lee] was cast as an extra. It just hap­pened that she was the only one who had no prob­lem being naked and wrapped in plas­tic in the cold.” 

One day, years lat­er, the singer Rebekah Del Rio came to Lynch’s home for cof­fee and offered to per­form for him in the stu­dio. He was so knocked out by the per­for­mance – a Span­ish lan­guage ver­sion of Roy Orbison’s ​‘Cry­ing’ – that he craft­ed a whole new scene around it in Mul­hol­land Dri­ve, lead­ing to one of the most potent moments in the film.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the char­ac­ter of Killer Bob came from mis­tak­ing­ly catch­ing prop man Frank Sil­va on cam­era; he’d been try­ing to hide out of frame but his reflec­tion in a near­by mir­ror showed him look­ing scary. The image proved so strik­ing that Lynch cre­at­ed the key role and cast him on the spot. ​“He uses these acci­dents and lit­tle mis­takes,” says Ray. ​“When most direc­tors would freak out about some­thing going wrong, he utilis­es it.” 

Con­duct­ing the Orchestra

Once Lynch’s ideas have passed through this process of being shaped by oth­ers, spurred by impromp­tu deci­sions and rerout­ed by serendip­i­ty, all that’s left is to steer the results towards com­ple­tion. That might sound like a poten­tial­ly chaot­ic sce­nario, but it’s some­thing the direc­tor thrives on.

“David’s biggest asset is his abil­i­ty to lead a huge group of peo­ple,” says Hur­ley. ​“Not just telling peo­ple what to do but impart­ing his vision and excite­ment and have them catch the same wave of excite­ment. I’ve been in a room with peo­ple and seen them floun­der – then he’ll walk in and have a seem­ing­ly innocu­ous con­ver­sa­tion. Sud­den­ly light bulbs start fir­ing off in people’s minds and every­body starts work­ing in tandem.”

Ray, too, says that peo­ple have a ten­den­cy to come back changed after a Lynch shoot. ​“They always say, ​‘That was the best expe­ri­ence I’ve ever had work­ing with any­one.’ They’ll say that David has ruined it for them when it comes to work­ing with any oth­er direc­tor. I’ve heard that a mil­lion times.”

Even Hur­ley, who has been work­ing with Lynch on a dai­ly basis for well over a decade, still strug­gles to grasp the mag­ic that Lynch man­ages to con­jure on set. ​“I can’t quite fig­ure out every­thing – he’s still an enig­ma,” he says. ​“Although I know for sure he can con­duct an orches­tra like nobody’s business.”

“It’s all about mag­i­cal com­bos of peo­ple and these com­bos con­jure things,” says Lynch, final­ly, as if it were the sim­plest idea in the world. ​“So if some­body comes in a cer­tain way, and I’m a cer­tain way, then the result is unlike what you would get with any oth­er person.”

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