David Keith Lynch emerged from the vast expanse of Montana to become one of cinema's most distinctive and influential voices, a filmmaker whose work defied categorization and challenged audiences to venture into the darker recesses of the American dream. Over a career spanning more than five decades, Lynch created a body of work that was simultaneously beautiful and disturbing, nostalgic and avant-garde, accessible and deeply mysterious.
Lynch's films and television series-from the industrial nightmare of "Eraserhead" to the gothic soap opera of "Twin Peaks," from the suburban gothic of "Blue Velvet" to the Hollywood fever dream of "Mulholland Drive"-established him as what critic Pauline Kael called "the first populist surrealist." His unique ability to find the extraordinary within the mundane, to reveal the red ants crawling beneath the surface of cherry tree Americana, made him both a critical darling and a cultural phenomenon.