David Lynch is 77 years old today.
A film and television director, visual artist, musician, actor and author, Lynch is known for his surrealist films and unique cinematic style. The surreal and, in many cases, violent elements contained within his films have been known to "disturb, offend or mystify" audiences.
Born to a middle-class family in Missoula, Montana, Lynch spent his childhood traveling around the United States, before going on to study painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. It was there he made the transition to producing short films.
Deciding to devote himself more fully to the film medium, he moved to Los Angeles, where he produced his first motion picture, the surrealist horror film, Eraserhead, in 1977. After Eraserhead became a cult classic on the midnight movie circuit, Lynch was employed to direct a biographical film about a deformed man, Joseph Merrick. It was The Elephant Man (1980). With this film, he gained mainstream success.
Then being employed by the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, he proceeded to make two films: the science-fiction epic, Dune (1984), which proved to be a critical and commercial failure, and then a neo-noir crime film, Blue Velvet (1986), which was critically acclaimed.
Next, Lynch created his own television series with Mark Frost, the popular murder mystery, Twin Peaks (1990–1991; 2016). He also created a cinematic prequel, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), a road movie, Wild at Heart (1990) and a family film, The Straight Story (1999), in the same period.
Turning further towards surrealist filmmaking, three of his subsequent films operated on "dream logic." Using non-linear narrative structures, he made the psychological thriller, Lost Highway (1997), the neo-noir mystery film, Mulholland Drive (2001) and the mystery film, Inland Empire (2006).
Meanwhile, Lynch embraced the Internet as a medium, producing several web-based shows, such as the animated short, Dumbland (2002), and the surreal sitcom, Rabbits (2002).
Over his career, Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director and a nomination for best screenplay. Lynch has won France's César Award for Best Foreign Film twice, as well as the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and a Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement at the Venice Film Festival.
The French government awarded him the Legion of Honor, the country's top civilian honor, as a Chevalier in 2002 and then an Officier in 2007, while that same year, The Guardian described Lynch as "the most important director of this era."
Allmovie called Lynch "the Renaissance man of modern American filmmaking," while the success of his films has led to him being labelled "the first popular Surrealist."