Martin Scorsese and John Carpenter remembered the late David Lynch on social media. The director’s death was reported on January 16th. The time and cause of death are not yet known. Lynch was 78 years old.
John Carpenter, never a man of big words, once again kept it short. Both directors had similar experiences as auteurs. The major studios struggled to accommodate both filmmakers’ grand visions. Whenever Lynch and Carpenter got a lot of money from them, they – unfortunately – made flops: “The Thing” and “Dune”, respectively.
John Carpenter, who is one year younger than him, speaks briefly but also touchingly. “I became friends with David Lynch when we were both at Universal years ago. He was a very nice man and a fan of Bob’s Big Boy. Me too. I will miss him. RIP David.” Bob’s Big Boy is a restaurant chain.
John Carpenter on X:
A slightly longer praise comes from Martin Scorsese. The 82-year-old writes: “I hear and read the word “visionary” a lot these days. It has become something of a catch-all term, another piece of advertising speak. But David Lynch was truly a visionary. In fact, the word may have been invented to describe the man and the films, the series, the images and the sounds he left behind.”
And further: “He created shapes that gave the impression that they would fall apart at any moment, but that never happened. He brought images to the screen that no one had ever seen before. He made everything strange, scary, revealing and new. And he was absolutely uncompromising, from start to finish. It’s a sad, sad day
for filmmakers, film lovers and for the art of film.”
And then he lists the works of David Lynch. And forget two. This could be a random error. Or deliberately formulated like this: “But “Eraserhead”, “The Elephant Man”, “Blue Velvet”, “Wild at Heart”, the two “Twin Peaks” series and the films “Fire Walk with Me”, “Lost Highway”, “The Straight Story”, “Mulholland Drive”, “Inland Empire”… will continue to grow and gain depth over the years and decades. We were lucky to have had David Lynch.”
Martin Scorsese left the third season of “Twin Peaks” unmentioned, Lynch’s last directorial work from 2017. Although in his mind he may have subsumed it under “Twin Peaks” in general.
But what about “Dune”? An unloved film, perhaps also disliked by Scorsese. At least David Lynch was able to find peace with Dune.