David Lynch, world’s biggest fan of Bob’s Big Boy, has died

Lynch also directed such movies as "Mulholland Dr." and "Blue Velvet," co-creating "Twin Peaks."

Bob’s Big Boy, a burger chain in southern California, had a very famous customer: writer/director, musician, avid supporter of transcendental meditation, and parttime YouTube weatherman David Lynch. For most of the 1980s, Lynch religiously flocked to his preferred house of worship, lunching at precisely 2:30 p.m. each day. He even worked during his lunches; Laura Dern met with Lynch and Kyle MacLachlan as part of her casting in 1985’s Blue Velvet, describing it as a “chemistry lunch.” Eventually, Lynch made his way into the hallowed Bob’s Big Boy Hall of Fame. (MacLachlan and Dern, perhaps Lynch’s longest and most important on-screen collaborators, also feature.)

Per a Facebook statement by his family, David Lynch has died. Monday, Jan. 20, would have been Lynch’s 79^th birthday.

I watched Twin Peaks, probably Lynch’s most known work, during my freshman year of college in 2012. It was, and is, unlike anything else I’d ever seen before or since. I was immediately transfixed by its bizarre sense of humor, fascinated by its unique grasp of evil, and stunned by its naked emotionality. And I felt all this before the Man from Another Place danced in Dale Cooper’s dream with backwards speech and strobing lights. Over a decade later, I still have what’s essentially a trauma response to the sequence revealing Laura Palmer’s killer. I was confused yet deeply affected by the 1992 prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, at the time the closest the show came to finality.

When the show received an unexpected continuation in 2017 titled Twin Peaks: The Return, written and directed exclusively by Lynch and series co-creator Mark Frost, I watched it week by week, surrendering myself to its unorthodox rhythms and total disregard for what I or any other Twin Peaks fan might have wanted (such as, I dunno, resolution). The Return is this mythical, totemic piece of personal pop culture I can only really describe by saying its existence overlapping with mine feels like a gift. I’d love to find everyone involved, regardless of their role, and give them a great big hug.

Soon after I started this Substack, I wanted to write about David Lynch, inspired by diving all in to Twin Peaks rewatch, reading several books that built out the story. Revisiting the series in my 30s revealed new meaning and connection to the show. It was so much more empathetic and operatic, so much more about love, than I remembered. But maybe the show always was and I was just in stronger communion with it because I wasn’t a dumb 18-year old in a dorm streaming Twin Peaks on his roommate’s Wii.

Last year, I worked my way through Lynch’s filmography, partially inspired by my favorite podcast, Blank Check, doing the same. I even watched several of his shorts because I am both a completionist and a sicko. Lynch’s work is possibly most famous for its dreamlike surrealism, for otherworldly depictions of profound emotions and concepts that make little sense. Many of his projects tackle violence and darkness, plunging the audience directly into horrifying, frightening realms. And Lynch was truly singular. His style and approach combined with the way his work made viewers feel is so inherently his own resulted in “Lynchian” becoming a damn adjective. It describes, get this, work similar to that of David Lynch.

To me, though, that isn’t the essence of Lynch. I will, someday, write the planned posts I had about Lynch: The Straight Story being his skeleton key; Twin Peaks feeling as if it were ripped from fears and anxieties I didn’t know I had; something about Mulholland Dr.; how Eraserhead messed me up for a few days because I fear its specific vision of fatherhood; what Lynch thinks of Wicked; etc. There’s just so much to say, and I find trying to do so daunting. Yet I felt compelled by Lynch’s death to say something about what his work means to me, about how the world of artistry feels less alive knowing he’s no longer there fully and unapologetically doing his thing. (Remember how he played Gus in 23 episodes of The Cleveland Show and two episodes of Family Guy?)

Above all else, Lynch’s work feels like someone trying to grapple with how the world can contain something as wonderful as Bob’s Big Boy and as cruel as murder and incest. There is aching, painful sincerity, almost naivety, to many of Lynch’s films. For as depraved and debauched as the content of Blue Velvet is, featuring rape, torture, drugs, gangs, and the like, the entire film doesn’t work without Dern’s Sandy monologuing about her dream:

In the dream, there was our world, and the world was dark because there weren’t any robins and the robins represented love. And for the longest time, there was this darkness. And all of a sudden, thousands of robins were set free and they flew down and brought this blinding light of love. And it seemed that love would make any difference, and it did. So, I guess it means that there is trouble until the robins come.

Blue Velvet isn’t my favorite Lynch. Yet, love making a difference is as much Lynch’s ethos as anything else. What I most responded to about Lynch is his unencumbered, endless heart. His work shoved viewers into a cavern of emotion, exposing them, yes, to pain and suffering but always bringing it back to love of other people, community, and life.

It was clear from anything he did – David Lynch loved being alive, loved life and the ability to create art, in a way that was both infectious and aspirational. Witnessing that, sharing that space with him, has meant more to me than I can do justice to here. Though I assumed at the time The Return would be Lynch’s last major work, the finality of death, a topic he often tackled directly and fervently, feels different than I anticipated. I kind of always assumed he would just… be there. Only now he isn’t. I guess he’s in our dreams now.

I end with maybe my favorite scene of Lynch’s career from the second season premiere of Twin Peaks. Not a scene of impossible, surreal imagery, haunting industrial sounds, or wicked heartlessness, but a scene of two people talking. One character, Major Garland Briggs (Don S. Davis), explains a dream he recently had to his son, Bobby (Dana Ashbrook). I encourage you to watch the scene, as it’s better witnessed than described. It’s a tender, sensitive scene dripping in genuine heart, with Ashbrook in particular wearing what feels like all hope for future on his face. Like all of David Lynch’s work, it’s about love being enough.

Here is Major Briggs’s monologue in full:

Bobby, may I share something with you? . . . A vision I had in my sleep last night – as distinguished from a dream, which is a mere sorting and cataloguing of the day's events by the subconscious. This was a vision: fresh and clear as a mountain stream, the mind revealing itself to itself. In my vision I was on the veranda of a vast estate, a palazzo of some fantastic proportion. There seemed to emanate from it a light, from within this gleaming, radiant marble. I had known this place. I had, in fact, been born and raised there, and this was my first return – a reunion with the deepest wellsprings of my being. Wandering about, I noticed happily that the house had been immaculately maintained. There had been added a number of additional rooms, but in a way that blended so seamlessly with the original construction, one would never detect any difference. Returning to the house's grand foyer, there came a knock at the door. My son was standing there. He was happy and carefree, clearly living a life of deep harmony and joy. We embraced – a warm and loving embrace, nothing withheld. We were, in this moment, one. My vision ended. I awoke with a tremendous feeling of optimism and confidence in you and your future. That was my vision. It was you . . . I’m so glad to have had this opportunity to share it with you. I wish you nothing but the best in all things.