David Lynch Being a Madman for a Relentless 8 Minutes and 30 Seconds

Mad­man or vision­ary? A lit­tle of both? A genius? A brand? A men­sch? David Lynch was all these things and more, and this fan-made video above serves as a quick reminder of the career and the con­sis­ten­cy of the film director/artist/transcendental med­i­ta­tor who passed away last year.

Ear­ly in the video we see one of the director’s pub­lic­i­ty stunts, when he sat in a chair on the cor­ner of La Brea and Hol­ly­wood, next to a cow and a large poster of Lau­ra Dern. No, the cow had noth­ing to do with the film he was promoting—2006’s Inland Empire—but it did stop traf­fic and draw atten­tion. Lynch didn’t have an adver­tis­ing bud­get to pro­mote Lau­ra Dern’s lead role in the film, so the cow had to do.

Lau­ra Dern appeared in a major­i­ty of Lynch’s films begin­ning with 1986’s Blue Vel­vet, and the video hon­ors their friend­ship (he called her “Tid­bit”) as well as his col­lab­o­ra­tions with Kyle MacLach­lan (who Lynch called “Kale”) and Nao­mi Watts. All three obvi­ous­ly adored him.

There’s also a com­pi­la­tion of Lynch swear­ing like a champ. Prod­uct place­ment in film is “bull­shit,” prob­lems on set are “fuck­ing nuts,” and for those who sat through the “peanut sweep­ing” scene in Twin Peaks The Return, you’ll under­stand his out­burst on set: “Who gives a fuc&ing $hit how long a scene is?”

We’ve linked pre­vi­ous­ly to Lynch’s video where he makes quinoa, and this short edit sums up that video nice­ly. It’s also nice to see atten­tion giv­en to The Straight Sto­ry, which usu­al­ly gets passed over in his fil­mog­ra­phy, despite (or maybe because of) being his sweet­est movie.

There’s also a reminder that Lynch made videos from quar­an­tine in his Los Ange­les home. Not only did he deliv­er the dai­ly weath­er reports like he used to, but he also announced “Today’s Num­ber,” which caused quite a lot of anx­i­ety in the YouTube com­ments. (Why no sev­en? WHY NO NUMBER 7?)

The video ends with Lynch’s the­o­ry about catch­ing ideas like fish—we’ve also high­light­ed this before—and then a love­ly mon­tage of title cards, remind­ing us all that “Direct­ed by David Lynch” remains a guar­an­teed sign of qual­i­ty.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2020.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Wide-Rang­ing Cre­ative Genius of David Lynch (RIP): Dis­cov­er His Films, Music Videos, Car­toons, Com­mer­cials, Paint­ings, Pho­tog­ra­phy & More

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Strange, Sur­re­al­ist Video

Twin Peaks Actu­al­ly Explained: A 4‑Hour Video Essay Demys­ti­fies It All

David Lynch Explains Why Depres­sion Is the Ene­my of Cre­ativ­i­ty — and Why Med­i­ta­tion Is the Solu­tion

David Lynch Made a Dis­turb­ing Web Sit­com Called “Rab­bits”: It’s Now Used by Psy­chol­o­gists to Induce a Sense of Exis­ten­tial Cri­sis in Research Sub­jects

Pat­ti Smith and David Lynch Talk About the Source of Their Ideas & Cre­ative Inspi­ra­tion

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts.