On High in Blue Tomorrows

This post was originally published on my Substack (I'm no longer active on Substack) on January 30th, 2025.

"No more blue tomorrows. You're now on high, love."

On January 15 [2025], David Lynch passed away, aged 78.

He was an extraordinary filmmaker, a trailblazer of sorts. The TV series Twin Peaks (1989-1991, created together with writer Mark Frost) had an outsized influence on future TV shows like Wild Palms, The X Files, Northern Exposure, Brand New Cherry Flavour and Wayward Pines. Countless TV shows have referenced or parodied elements from Twin Peaks, from The Simpsons to Saturday Night Live. Lynch’s idiosyncratic style of filmmaking has been an inspiration for directors like Quentin Tarantino, Nicholas Windig Refn, even the ever off-beat Damon Packard. When you look at the man’s output, it clearly shows a mind working intuitively, placing certain themes and elements together and building from there.

It’s like picking up something on the street because you feel it looks interesting. It looks like something you’ve seen in your dream last night, it has a story. You start to get the picture, something that might look good on your bedroom wall. A key to another mystery and then another. Some kind of mood, an atmosphere you like to be in, to revisit. It becomes a visual story to mull over, to pick apart, to experience the surreal nature of life. Like a severed ear in a grass field.

Childlike wonder, combined with more adult themes, collected from soaps, real life, true crime and straight up mysteries, make his work relatable, mirroring our fears and desires. Lynch clearly had a vision, and he took the time to create it exactly as he wanted it, including ‘happy accidents’ as he called it, turning unexpected situations and coincidences to his advantage.

Long shots, dreamlike vistas, scenes to be taken in, often with with no satisfactory explanation. There’s a distinct artistic approach to all of his works, a conviction that this is how it has to be, how it has to look.

Lynch took his view of the world and made his own (sur)reality. He connected hopes and dreams with the inescapability of an unwelcoming world, often twisted and mangled. Despair and darkness never looked so attractive as they do in Lynch’s movies. Violence and overall nightmarishness are alternated with humor and strange dialogue. A David Lynch movie can be a jarring experience. The psychological and physical horror of Blue Velvet (1986), Wild at Heart (1990), Twin Peaks, Fire Walk With Me (1992), and Inland Empire (2006) are raw and relentless.

Growing Up

In the documentary “David Lynch, the Art Life” (Rick Barnes, Olivia Neergaard-Holm, Jon Nguyen, 2016), he talks about his upbringing. His youth, spent in Missoula, Montana and Spokane, Washington seems to have been joyful and stable, inasmuch life can be that way in the 1940s and 50s, a time which had its own difficulties in regard to quality of life and geopolitical events. In this documentary, Lynch shares something that happened when he was a kid; one evening, when he was playing outside, a stark naked woman came stumbling down the street. This must have been shocking in a time when moral codes in public were much stricter than they are now. Even so, a stumbling woman naked in the street would be shocking if were happening nowadays. Back then it must have roiled a community.

It left a deep impact on Lynch, who went on integrating it into his film Blue Velvet, where Isabella Rosselini as Dorothy Vallens turns up in a quiet middle class neighborhood, naked and desoriented.

The event described above marks that watershed moment we have as children, when something adult and scary enters our world. Reality is forever changed and you have to come to grips with it.

Influences on Lynch

Filmmakers and artists are inspired by Lynch’s oeuvre, but David Lynch in turn was inspired by moviemakers and stories. Films of Kenneth Anger, William Eggleston’s photography, René Magritte’s and Edward Hopper’s paintings can be traced through Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks, Lost Highway and Inland Empire. Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950), is a classic film noir, telling the tragic story of an aging Hollywood actress, clinging to her fading star. It was one of Lynch’s favorite films. The projected glamor and the rot below that sleek surface would become one of his hallmarks. Meshes of the Afternoon (Maya Deren, 1947) very clearly shows its influence in the surreal manner in which Lynch would come to tell his stories. Deren plays a woman, caught in a dreamlike loop of time. The film Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944), is about a missing woman named Laura and a detective who’s looking into her dissappearance. The actor Hank Worden, who played the old man serving warm milk to Special Agent Dale Cooper’s hotel room in Twin Peaks, played a similarly goofy character called Mose Harper in the western The Searchers (John Ford, 1956). The name of Agent Gordon Cole, played by Lynch himself in Twin Peaks, is lifted from a character in Sunset Boulevard.

Symbolism: Objects and elements

“What is going on in this house?!”

Lynch tells his stories about loss, failed love and corrosion of the self through elements that keep reiterating and echoing throughout. Artists tend to develop their visual style through personal fascinations. Visual cues and elements keep appearing, taking on symbolic meaning as they come to represent a certain mood or event. Lynch used everyday objects in a decidedly artistic way, such as coffee cups, ashtrays, cigarettes and keys. They signal danger, intrigue and can be used to unlock unknowns. Communication equipment like old timey telephones and intercoms act as conduits for mysterious messages, forcing protagonists to act and investigate. Electricity posesses otherworldly qualities, as witnessed by characters encountering whooping telephone poles and power lines, spinning ceiling fans and flickering table lamps. There are ominous scratching sounds coming from record players. The sinister nature of everyday objects reveal a home that is hostile and threatening. The call is coming from inside the house.

Fire also plays a meaningful role in Lynch’s work, notably in Twin Peaks, Wild at Heart and Lost Highway (1997). The lighting of cigarettes, a circle of lit candles and burning houses or shacks signal something wicked buried in the past or looming in the future. Sometimes both at the same time. One of Lynch’s most famous shots is the pairing of red curtains with a black and white chevron floor pattern. This locale, called the Red Room/White Lodge/Black Lodge, is a space in the Twin Peaks universe, a plane existing between dreams and reality. This floor pattern is already present in Eraserhead (1977). Perhaps Lynch took to it, and it percolated in his mind until it fit in with the abstract weirdness of the Lodge(s). The creepy and nightmare-like quality that make up some shots in several movies, to me, feel very close to nightmares of my own. Scenes depicting daily life get turned on their head; all of a sudden there’s strange mystery man talking about being in your house, or a creepy person bursting from behind a wall. It’s too (un)real.

Women in trouble

“And the angels wouldn’t help you, because they’ve all gone away”

You can’t talk about Lynch’s oeuvre without talking about the Black Dahlia case, the unsolved murder of aspiring actress Elizabeth Short in 19471. Her severed body was found in an empty lot in Leimert Park, Los Angeles, and this case fascinated Lynch to no end.* Elizabeth Short’s last days, as recounted in several stories and her dissappearance and death, would inform almost all of his works.** The ‘women in trouble’ trope is strong in Lynch’s films.

From Wild at Heart*** to Inland Empire, the stories center around a woman in some sort of nasty predicament. This is often a situation both in and out of her control. In a moral landscape of only greys, she has to find a way out, by wich she is both helped and stymied by men. Dorothy Vallens projects a seductive front on stage of the nightclub she sings at, but the abuse done to her by Frank, who holds her child hostage, makes her inflict the same violence on young Jeffrey Beaumont. Laura Palmer alternates between being controlled and taking the reigns herself. When Pete Dayton makes love to Alice Wakefiles in Lost Highway, he whispers, “I want you”. She hisses back: “You’ll never have me”.

There’s both a thread of objectification of women and them having the upper hand of sorts. Through his films, there’s a feeling of David Lynch himself, elaborating on stories and salacious articles in magazines he may have read as a boy. Affairs, secretive sex, a forbiddenness underlined by satin, seductive lingerie, fishnet stockings and high heels. The male characters are voyeurs, buttoned down men of the law and/or lost boys. The women are sexual tropes, but they also evoke a corroded Dorothy, having strayed from the yellow brick road.

To be fair, a character like Dorothy Vallens of Blue Velvet (1986) and Nikki Grace/Sue Blue of Inland Empire (2006) feel like an evolution, the latter seems like she’s more in control than the former. Nikki/Sue also feels like a more rounded character. The 1950s mores of Lynch are felt.

There’s a certain patriarchal sense in his view on relations between women and men and I think it has to do with his background and cultural framework. I don’t want to diminish his work calling it misogynistic, nor do I want to be the blind stan defending all his choices. After all, David Lynch voted for Reagan and supported the Natural Law Party, he was reportedly a 9/11 truther**** and he espoused Transcendental Meditation, which has cultish tendencies.

While writing this, I was thinking about how to broach this subject. I didn’t necessarily want to bring Lynch’s personal life and choices into this. Now I see I cannot get around it, because the personal is the political, certainly in trying times like these. When a filmmaker whose interests and fascinations are so clearly to look beyond the white picket fence and nuclear family, it’s impossible to not think about these things.

It also shows that people are complicated. They are talented and revered, but they can make certain choices that are not in line with what we expected. I have learnt a long time ago that it’s useless, even dangerous, to put people on a pedestal. We’re better off seeing those who we admire for who they are in al their ambivalency.

In relation to the female characters, mirroring of personalities happens often in Lynch’s movies. Repetition and rhyme occurs in the interaction between characters, but also in their appearance. In Twin Peaks, Laura Palmer and her niece Madeleine Ferguson, both played by actress Sheryl Lee, mirror each other. This is most likely inspired by the female characters in the psychological thriller Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1959). In Vertigo, the actress Kim Novak plays two characters, Madeleine and Judy*****. Lost Highway uses the same trope, where characters Renee and Alice are impersonated by Patricia Arquette. The same can be said of Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, where blondes are offset by their brunette counterparts. The film Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966) is also echoed throughout Mulholland Drive (2000) in theme and even uses similar shots.

Music and sounds

“And there’s always music in the air”

From the eerie sounds of Eraserhead to the majestic swells of violins in Mulholland Drive; music and sound are a big component in Lynch’s films. Musician Angelo Badalamenti was instrumental in the shaping of the soundtracks of Twin Peaks and a big part of Lynch’s filmography. The dramatic use of synthesizers, brooding and dark, paired with jazz, are a perfect match with what we see happen on screen. At times cheesy and clichéd, it nevertheless heightens the suspense and underscores the surreal nature we have come to appreciate6. In time, David Lynch began working together with artists like Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and Dean Hurley, whose drones and sound design in Twin Peaks season three are apt and unsettling. This season of Twin Peaks features a wide range of artists, performing in the Road House, a music venue and bar in Twin Peaks. In an interview, where Lynch talks about his collaboration with sound designer and -editor Alan Splet, he mentions sound being “fifty percent of the picture”. Splet worked on Lynch’s first short film The Grandmother (1970) onward, his last collaboration with Lynch was on Blue Velvet7.

Performance on stage

“No Hay Banda!”

The stage occupies a special place. Musical performances exist to reflect on scenes, or juxtapose motivations and mood of the characters. Lynch uses lip syncing to emphasize the nature of the artificial, make believe and dreams. Frank gets riled up when Ben lip syncs “In Dreams” by Roy Orbison. It fuels him to do more violence. When Laura Palmer, in turmoil, enters the Roadhouse in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Julie Cruise is on stage, singing “Questions in a world of Blue”. Eraserhead’s Henry sees a lady in the radiator, singing “In Heaven”, it signals hope for escape from the hellish conditions he’s in. The reverse is true for Betty/Diane, who’s being drawn to a certain theatre at night, where she relives trauma and can no longer hold up the fantasy she dreamed up. Rebekah Del Rio who lip synchs “Llorando” (Crying), collapses mid-song, while her disembodied voice sings on. This underlines the false reality that masks Diane’s despair.

The stage performance reaches a new level in Inland Empire. Scenes we take as ‘reality’ turn out to be takes for a movie the protagonist Nikki Grace stars in. There’s a set in the studio where the cast rehearses and at some point, Nikki literally dissappears in it. She then becomes another persona, Sue Blue. Blue’s path leads through a a strip club where a show is taking place. The scene where Sue dies also turns out to be a scene on stage. Having transformed again, Nikki walks off the sound stage. Here the performances seem to highlight the alternating narratives Nikki/Sue finds herself in. Is it real or is it a cruel fantasy? Is it both? Nasty folklore, dreams and trauma blend into a frenzied tale about survival, in both physical and psychological sense.

On camera

“Captain, this is some spooky shit we got here”

After Nikki Grace leaves the soundstage, she finds herself in a film theater. She sees herself talking to a bespectacled man, called Mr. K. It’s a conversation she’s had earlier, in a dark office. She fled after Mr K. took a telephone call. He too appears in the theater and seems to acknowledge her.

This kind of strange playback, albeit on a less abstract level, also happens in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Agent Dale Cooper keeps walking the route from the FBI office elevator, where a camera is positioned, to the camera surveillance system. Then Philip Jeffries, an agent who’s been missing up to that point, walks out of the elevator, past Cooper. Jeffries enters the office and after sharing some cryptic messages with Cooper, Regional Bureau Chief Gordon Cole and Agent Albert Rosenfield, he dissappears mysteriously. Cooper and Cole check the cameras and conclude that Jeffries was indeed there, because the camera system registered him.

Fred Madison, the protagonist in Lost Highway, says at the beginning of the film he likes things to be as he remembers, not necessarily how they happened. This is after some very unsettling VHS tapes turn up on the doorstep of Fred and and his wife Renee’s house. The Mystery Man, follows the events as they unfold, filming them. He does this because Fred is, to diminishing effect, mentally evading the horrible reality of having murdered his wife.

In a world so entrenched in dreams and delusion, the camera suggests objectivity. In the descriptions above, that seems indeed to be the case. Watching herself in the movie theatre, Nikki is informed by the sound on screen that the Phantom, a threatening force, is nearby. Following Mr. K ascending a staircase, she finds the gun she uses to kill the Phantom. Agent Cooper and his colleagues see Jeffries with their own eyes, but they check the office camera system to make sure that he was really there in the same room with them. The Mystery Man in Lost Highway, wields a camcorder, confronting Fred with his actions. He wants Fred to see what he’s done and take responsibility.

Conclusion

“This world is wild at heart and weird on top!”

Lynch has layered so many themes and symbolism in his movies, it’s no wonder the internet is stuffed with countless theories about what it all means. Which is part of the fun of uncovering and (re)discovering his movies. There’s no way around it: David Lynch has left a great legacy in film, even the odd ones out. The Elephant Man, Dune and The Straight Story are worth checking out, because Lynch always brought a different kind of sensibility to the table. He kept that wonder and the dreaminess alive in a business that has become increasingly corporate.

That said, Hollywood has never been welcoming to folks with their own plans and vision, only a few have been really lucky to reach that level. Personally, I’m just really happy that we, as an audience, in 2017, got to enjoy yet another season of Twin Peaks. For me, that’s the icing on the cake, I hink we couldn’t have wished for more.

We’ll always have David Lynch’s movies to see him reflected in, good, bad and, as is his wont, everything in between.

Notes

*Although unsolved, there are theories and a list of suspects. The Hollywood & Crime podcast about The Black Dahlia case is an interesting listen. The makers theorize it could be a serial killer, who made more victims. They put the murder of The Back Dahlia in context, highlighting several other murders of women during that period of time.

**He even had an option on making this a movie. A production company optioned the film rights to John Gilmore’s book Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia Murder. David Lynch was sent a copy in 1997 and had been involved to direct a film of this story. He did not like the script though. So sadly, this movie never came to be. Well, it did, kind of. In 2006 Brian de Palma directed The Black Dahlia, based on the novel of the same name by James Ellroy. But is was not received well, and we can only imagine what Lynch could have done with the material, be it Gilmore’s or Ellroy’s book.

***Wild at Heart was a film adaptation of a book with the same title by writer Barry Gifford. In this movie ‘modern’ rock music was added to the soundtrack, in contrast to the 1950s focused music of Blue Velvet. Reception was mixed, film critics noted that the rock music felt kind of forced. The soundtrack also features signature pieces like Badalamenti’s Cool Cat Walk. Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game, also part of the soundtrack, became an American top 10 hit in 1991.

**** David Lynch has been interviewed by Alex Jones on his show Infowars. In this interview, they talk about Lynch’s movies and 9/11. It’s not so much as an exchange of ideas, as it is two men talking and completely missing each other's point. Jones, who starts out saying he’s a big fan, desperately tries to get Lynch to confirm Jones’ own theories about Lynch’s films. But of course David Lynch refuses to confirm anything. It’s sad and surreal. David Lynch probably didn’t know what Infowars was and went on, thinking it’s a regular radio show. For a comprehensive summary of this interview, you can listen to episode 131 of the podcast Knowledge Fight, where hosts Dan Friesen en Jordan Holmes try to shed light on the matter. https://knowledgefight.libsyn.com/knowledge-fight-david-lynch-interview

***** The name Judy has a big significance in season three of Twin Peaks (2017) and in the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.

****** Badalamenti has a cameo in Mulholland Drive, where he plays an impossible to please mafia don, who spits out the coffee served to him, as a gesture of ultimate disgust. The scene is both hilarious and terrifying.

******* I can’t find the article about Alan Splet and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me online anymore, but I have read about sound trouble during the production of said film. According to this article, the sound was not up to scratch, because it would have been the first Lynch film Splet was not involved with. There is, of course, Wild at Heart, filmed after Blue Velvet. Splet didn’t work on that film either. Nevertheless, the sound quality in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is off. I can’t watch it without subtitles, especially the scene in the Pink Room, where the music in the venue drowns out the conversation between Laura Palmer, Donna Hayward and Jack Renault.