king The Return or FWWM are probably my favourite works of his, which makes sense cos Twin Peaks is my favourite show of all time. but picking just from the "movie movies" it's a tie between Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive. Wild at Heart is a weird, gross mini-classic too
If I had to pick a favourite director it would probably be him. Mulholland Drive is probably my favourite film of his but FWWM and Lost Highway aren't far behind.
I would say nearly every film he's done is a masterpiece. I haven't seen dune or elephant man though. Inland Empire fucked me up I literally couldn't sleep thinking about "the face"
I went to my local video store at age 15 and asked the store clerk what movie he would recommend and he said Mulholland Dr. I watched it once and thought that was weird, it was like two weird movies mixed together and then I watched it again the next day and it clicked and I never left the Lynch rabbit hole. The next movie that clerk recommended was 2001: A Space Odyssey. He became a trusted friend at that point who I still keep in touch with. He lives in NYC now and is a film editor. He worked on Synecdoche, New York. I do wonder how many people he pissed off in my rural PA town recommending movies like that haha. Anyway Lynch might be my favorite filmmaker. Mulholland Dr, Blue Velvet, and Twin Peaks are my favorites. Lost Highway is fun as hell.
I wish I had had a video store experience like that. The clerk told me that Punch-Drunk Love was too weird and after I loved it she stopped giving me advice.
I think the Mystery Man in Lost Highway is scarier than anything else he put on film honestly. Still get full body chills thinking about his scenes
Elephant Man is an underrated and absolutely beautiful film. It will make you cry. I honestly can't think of what would be the scariest thing for me. Dude's able to convey such a melancholy kind of fear, the kind that is introduced to you as merely strange and surreal, but gradually buries itself in your psyche until you realize just how awfully dreadful it is.
Often thinking about this strange and timestopping moment in FWWM that doesn’t get much analysis. It’s a Lynch-ism that has crawled under my skin. You can pick up closer to the 2 minute mark if you don’t want to see the whole scene. “I already gone places... I just want to stay where I am.”
The baby from Eraserhead is probably the most frightening image. Decades of effects improvement and hundreds of millions of dollars in computer generated effects have not been able to make too many things that can rival it.
I think it was Naomi Watts who said that he basically always uses a megaphone on set, no matter the setting or how close he is to people. Just imagine Gordon Cole walking you through a sex scene
The Straight Story probably isn't his "best" but it's the one that had the most emotional impact on me, besides maybe the end of the Return. Also - his autobiography/biography book is awesome, 100% worth the read. He's hysterical.