SIFFBlog/Seattle Film Blog Founder Mike Whybark Remembers David Lynch

Mike Whybark, who set up this site in 2004 as a way to cover the Seattle International Film Festival in an approximation of real time, tagged me on Facebook in his remembrance of David Lynch (some time after I took over, I changed the site name from SIFFBlog to Seattle Film Blog, on the recommendation of Rotten Tomatoes, to avoid any confusion with SIFF). 

With his permission, I'm sharing Mike's remembrance here. I've posted a few obituaries over the years--Sidney Poitier, Norman Jewison, etc.--but they've been more formal in nature. Mike's is more personal and specific to his background, and that makes it unique. I would also recommend Irish filmmaker Paul Duane's remembrance, which is just as personal and yet more fair than some of the official ones, which have dismissed certain Lynch films (you may have to sign up to read Paul's piece; it's worth it). We all have our favorites, but I don't believe an official obit is the best place to list one's least favorites.

MIKE REMEMBERS DAVID (WHILE ON THE ROAD)

I've been busy with this trip to the wilds of the Eastern Coast, to one of the vanguard states of the end of American democracy, and have neglected to post concerning my sense of grief and loss at the passing of David Lynch, a film director whose work I adore. 

David's death uncannily overlaps the catastrophic wildfires in Los Angeles, a city I actively avoided until I met my wife Vivian and which I now know pretty well, although my Angeleno pals will surely dispute me. I love the town, as much as I love Mexico City, NYC, London, Tokyo, and Seattle. 

Right: David and daughter Jennifer Lynch

Some Bloomington people will know that David's daughter is a distaff townie due to her time at Interlochen in Michigan and her having developed friendships with some of our artsy crew that also spent time at the school, and I have been thinking of her and her loss quite a bit this week. 

I absolutely adore and am baffled by Lynch's filmography. The two films that had the greatest cultural impact upon release that I saw in theater at initial distribution are Lynch's Blue Velvet and Tarantino's Pulp Fiction. I vividly remember exiting the theater from each screening and standing amid a stunned, gabbling crowd. Blue Velvet preceded Pulp Fiction, and I have always harbored the suspicion that Tarantino also stood amid a gabbling crowd of Blue Velvet attendees and thought to himself, I am gonna top this. Ultimately, I think Lynch is a greater, more profound artist than Tarantino. 

Film is a demanding artistic discipline that inherently resists off-the-cuff creativity at scale and exerts profound pressures on the artists engaged in the work, from director and scriptwriter to grips and PAs, to maximize transparency, clarity, and narrative flow. Lynch's entire career shows us how to resist that and to privilege other objectives in the act of creation, in the act of consumption, in our day-to-day lives. 

If you have ever spent any time with me in person, you know that's what I love the most, the difficult, the obstreperous, the nonsensical. David, somehow, managed to build a life creating material that stems from a similar place. We are the richer for the experience of his work, and the poorer for his loss.

Similarly, we are all the poorer for the fiery catastrophe moving through parts of the vast urban landscape of Los Angeles, one of Lynch’s primary muses. Fire has indeed walked with us. It's still another beautiful day in LA. I mean I assert that as a theoretical proposition from the East Coast, but I feel I am on solid ground in my expression. See you at the Big Boy.

Images from Studio Idan (David Lynch in his beloved Los Angeles), HELLO! Magazine ("Jennifer Chambers Lynch and her father David attend the premiere of Surveillance in 2019"), and American Cinematheque (Kyle MacLachlan and Isabella Rossellini in Blue Velvet).