David Lynch, the creator of the films Florida and Unnerving, has died at the age of 78

David Lynch, an avant-garde painter-turned-filmmaker whose fame, influence and unique worldview has extended far beyond the movie screen to encompass television, records, books , the nightclub, organic coffee and the Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace. , is dead. He is 78.

His family announced his death on social media on Thursday, but did not provide details. In 2024, Mr. Lynch reveals that he has emphysema after years of smoking, and as a result, his next film will have to be postponed.

Mr. Lynch is a visionary. The bleak and terrifying approach was fully incorporated in his first appearance, the movie “Eraserhead”, released at midnight in 1977. His style remained constant through blockbusters. failed “Dune” (1984); the small-town erotic thriller “Blue Velvet” (1986) and the spiritual spin on the network television series, “Twin Peaks,” which aired on ABC in 1991 and 1992; his acclaimed masterpiece “Mulholland Drive” (2001), a toxic valentine to Hollywood; and the last dark feature, “Inland Empire” (2006), which shot itself video.

Like Frank Capra and Franz Kafka, two very different 20th-century artists whose work Mr. Lynch admired so much and could be said to have combined, his name has become an adjective.

The Lynchian is “easy to identify and hard to define,” says Dennis Lim in his monograph “David Lynch: The Man From Another Place.” Created by a man with a long-standing commitment to the technique of “transcendental meditation,” Mr. Lynch characterized their dreamlike visuals and intense sound design, as well as Manichaean narratives that set an exaggerated, even saccharine innocence in a dirty evil.

Mr. Lynch’s style is often called surreal, and indeed, with its disturbing contrasts, strange indifference, and distortion of the ordinary, Lynchian is clearly related to mainstream surrealism. Mr. Lynch’s surrealism, however, is more intuitive than programmatic. While the mainstream surrealists celebrated the absurd and sought to liberate the uncanny from the everyday, Mr. Lynch used the ordinary as a shield to avoid the absurd.

Good maturity was evident in Mr. Lynch’s personal presentation. Dress shirts without ties and button ups are his signature style. Over the years, he regularly dined at and admired Los Angeles fast-food restaurant Bob’s Big Boy. He doesn’t trust language, considering it as a limitation or obstacle to his art, he often speaks in meaningless words. Like Andy Warhol, Mr. Lynch, with his laconic and gee-whiz, kept a secret.

This disturbing effect led to Mel Brooks and his partner, Stuart Cornfeld, who both facilitated the first Hollywood performance of Mr. Lynch, “The Elephant Man” (1981), to name him “Jimmy Stewart from Mars.” Perhaps in response, Mr. Lynch chose to refer to himself as an “Eagle Scout, Missoula, Montana.”

His full prediction will be released soon.

Ash Wu contributed to the report.