North Texas Was Never Out of Mind in the World of David Lynch

The death of David Lynch at age 78, which was announced by his family on Thursday, marked the passing of a great filmmaker, but also the loss of an artist whose name was synonymous with a genre unto itself.

The term “Lynchian” has often been used to describe the unique blend of surrealism, visceral horror, dark comedy and touching humanism that defined the work of one of cinema’s most notable auteurs. While Lynch’s work has certainly inspired generations of storytellers, he was a maverick whose greatest achievements could never be replicated.

Lynch may have been born in Montana and educated in Pennsylvana, but the extent to which he influenced American culture crossed state lines. His films frequently showed the creeping evil that lurked beneath the surface of the idealized “nuclear family,” but he often showed a great affinity for the spirit of the American people. It should come as no surprise that his death hit particularly hard for Texas film fans, as he counted many of the state’s signature artists among his most prominent collaborators.

Lynch’s proclivity for art spanned across painting, sculpture, music and avant-garde theater, but he will always be most closely associated with his feature films. After a series of experimental shorts that earned him attention among industry insiders, Lynch made his directorial debut with the 1977 cult classic Eraserhead. Essentially a window into the mind of an anxious father-to-be, the black-and-white body horror film examined the baffling journey of a lowly factory worker who discovers that his wife has given birth to a grotesque, monstrous creature. Filling the shoes of the awkward protagonist was Jack Nance, a Boston-born actor who grew up in Oak Cliff and later received an education at the University of North Texas.

Nance had begun acting when he joined the Dallas Theater Center, and he missed out on a few key roles early on, including the part of Benjamin in The Graduate, which went to Dustin Hoffman. However, Nance proved to be the perfect fit for the peculiar style that Lynch introduced in Eraserhead. Nance served as an audience surrogate, as he had to react with disgust, horror and befuddlement at the various ghastly sights that Lynch brought to life. Although Eraserhead is a film that continues to spawn heavy analysis from cinephiles to this day, it is Nance’s naturalistic charisma that continues to make it so accessible.

Lynch was known for working with a select group of actors that seemed to “get” his style; Laura Dern, Kyle MacLachlan, Naomi Watts, Harry Dean Stanton and Freddie Jones appeared in several of his projects. However, Nance was the most loyal, as he appeared in the seductive neo-noir Blue Velvet, the baffling adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune, the brutal road trip thriller Wild at Heart and multiple installments within the Twin Peaks franchise. Had Nance not died in 1996, it is likely he would have retained his artistic collaboration with Lynch.

Blue Velvet shares another connection with a University of North Texas alum. The 1986 classic prominently features the use of Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” during a particularly shocking sequence. Orbison is renowned as a Texas legend, but the insertion of one of his most beautifully melodramatic tracks in the context of a subversive window into the American nightmare helped introduce his work to an entirely different generation.

Texas cinephiles have not been shy about their affinity for Lynch, as he was the subject of one of the state's most prominent classic film retrospectives. In 2023, The Texas Theatre launched a special event titled “David Lynch: A Complete Retrospective,” which took a deep dive into his body of work. In addition to screening all 10 of Lynch’s theatrically released films, the theater also showed several obscure short films, forgotten music videos, deleted scenes from Twin Peaks and appearances Lynch made on Jay Leno. Several Q&A sessions with Lynch’s collaborators and admirers prompted lively discussions from an audience that clearly drew out a sense of creativity from the Dallasites in attendance.

It wouldn't be the last time that Lynch’s films were reclaimed by Dallas audiences, as The Texas Theatre also held a unique event in March 2024 honoring the 40th anniversary of Lynch’s controversial adaptation of Dune. Although it was an infamous box office bomb that Lynch himself disowned after being locked out of the editing room by Universal Pictures, it eventually found a cult fandom that appreciated the hypnotic take on Herbert’s deep mythology. The screening included a conversation with author Max Every about his nonfiction account of the production, titled A Masterpiece in Disarray, and was hosted by former Observer columnist and renowned film critic Matt Zoller Seitz.

Many Dallas filmmakers have pronounced their passion for Lynch, including David Lowery, who spoke at length about his artistry in the documentary Lynch/Oz, which screened in Texas as part of Fantastic Fest in 2022. Essentially an extended video essay divided into six segments, Lynch/Oz examined the many allusions within the filmmaker’s work to The Wizard of Oz, which he openly proclaimed as being one of his favorite films of all time. Lowery was articulate in his analysis of how The Wizard of Oz developed surrealist, dark fantasy and dreamlike components that would go on to inspire many of Lynch’s works.

The Lynch film that is most closely associated with The Wizard of Oz is undoubtedly Wild at Heart, a 1990 film that starred Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern as star-crossed lovers who embark on their own Bonnie & Clyde-style adventure across the U.S. landscape. It’s a film that pays homage to many distinctly American subcultures, but prominently features a sequence set in Texas that marked the debut of Bobby Peru, a ruthless criminal played memorably by Willem Dafoe.

Texas also marked the conclusion of Lynch’s artistic journey, as it served as the setting for the final episode of Twin Peaks: The Return, the long-anticipated continuation of the original television series that featured the resurgence of nearly the entire returning cast. Hailed as one of the greatest achievements in television history, Twin Peaks: The Return concluded with a startling sequence in which Kyle MacLachlan’s Agent Cooper finds himself trapped in Odessa as he continues his mission to rescue Laura Palmer.

Lynch was more than just a director; he was a friend and muse to artists everywhere and someone whose upbeat personality often felt baffling to those who didn’t understand the deep empathy in his work. Although he may have been a Midwesterner at heart, Lynch’s personability, optimism and unwavering ability to innovate is certainly representative of the Texas spirit.