David Lynch Was L.A.’s Dark Poet Laureate (Guest Column)

I learned about David Lynch’s passing in the most David Lynch possible way: doing jury duty. A fellow potential juror told me the news as we waited in the stark, Kafka-esque halls of L.A.’s Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice building. Instantly, the stone-faced bailiffs and unblinking prosecutors took on a subtle air of menace, as if I’d been sucked right into a cut scene from Twin Peaks or Lost Highway. When the Judge asked how I’d weigh eyewitness testimony, I couldn’t refrain from citing the power of framing in presenting evidence, or the inescapably unreliable nature of memory. The judge lectured me: “You do realize this is real-life, and not a television show?” I was quickly dismissed from jury duty.

Reading the odes to Lynch, his art, and the supremely unique notion of the “Lynchian” he left the world, many have lovingly called him a surrealist master. A sui generis sovereign of the avant garde. “Jimmy Stewart on acid,” as David Foster Wallace called him. It’s hard to dispute. However, because David Lynch was a true artistic hero to so many of us in the filmmaking trenches — one whose uncompromising vision almost threatened to redeem Hollywood from its basest commercial instinct — I hope we don’t forget one, essential dimension of his art. 

He was also a master realist.

Yes, his cannon features a couple more accessible gems, The Elephant Man and The Straight Story. But that’s not quite what I mean. In fact, Lynch once slyly referred to The Straight Story as his “most experimental film.” Like all his jokes, it was funny because he meant it. Even his most enigmatic, most elliptical opuses bear an undeniable taste of truth to them. And the dream-like spell of his most celebrated masterpiece Mulholland Drive dazzles precisely because it captures the emotional truth of life in Los Angeles with palpable clarity.

Any longtime Angeleno will tell you, Lynchian is the feeling you get as you hug the curves of a foggy Mulholland Drive at one in the morning. Or sip black coffee with a delicious cherry pie in a Googie era diner after a great movie. Or just wander the post-Industrial arches of the Arts District while the Santa Ana winds whirl forgotten newspapers across concrete canyons. Certainly, as we recover from the brutal infernos that consumed whole neighborhoods without pity, David Lynch felt like a prophet who was telling us this day would inevitably come. It’s as if once the prophecy was fulfilled, the prophet was ready to transcend.

But now my hyperbole again threatens to eclipse Lynch’s keen eye for the reality of Los Angeles. He was the poet laureate this city never knew it had. We just never realized it because his iconic drawl so seamlessly blended into the background here: whether it was hearing him give the weather report on KCRW during Covid, sitting out on Hollywood Blvd. with a cow to stump for Laura Dern’s stunning performance in Inland Empire (somehow the most honest Oscar campaign ever run) or just popping into the New Beverly for an impromptu Q&A. 

David Lynch loved this city. He didn’t grow up here, but like only an immigrant can, he saw it simply for what it was — and you can feel that truth in every frame he shot here. He captured the reality of its beauty, an honest-to-god slice of the sublime that threatens to consume you at any given moment. Yes, sometimes that means dread and fear, loss and pain, and the overwhelming dizziness of an incomprehensible universe that only barely tolerates your existence, and will remind you of its supreme contingency with unforgiving flames. 

But then, there is the light: when you rewatch Lynch’s films and television shows, you’ll notice a “flash to white” always comes at key moments in their dream-like journeys. It’s a flash to white all us Angelenos know well: when you emerge from the pitch black confines of the theater, a smoky bar, a windowless courthouse, anywhere you’ve endured that dark dread, only to find once again the light of blue skies and a new day. It’s the Southern California light that drew the film industry here in the first place, that eternally reminds us how beautiful this city can be and how grateful we are to live here.

That’s the feeling of Los Angeles that the cinema of David Lynch captured with such bracing realism. It’s a feeling Los Angeles needs now more than ever. 

***

An L.A. native, John Lopez has written for Strange Angel, Seven Seconds, The Man Who Fell to Earth and The Terminal List. He was also an associate producer on The Two Faces of January and spent years assisting Tom Sternberg, producer of Lost Highway.