OKC cinema community mourns surrealist auteur David Lynch


The filmmaking world has lost one of its greatest minds, fiercest champions, and most uniquely creative voices in the passing of surrealist moviemaking master David Lynch earlier this month.

As the singular, inimitable creative force behind legendarily strange and dreamy productions like “Twin Peaks,” “Mullholland Dr.,” “Eraserhead,” “Blue Velvet,” “Lost Highway,” “Wild at Heart,” and more, Lynch carved out a space for himself in the pantheon of American cinema that few others have reached.

His name itself became so synonymous with his style of surreal, unsettlingly patient filmmaking that it resulted in a new word – “Lynchian” – entering the pop cultural lexicon, which honestly might be the greatest achievement that an artist of any kind can enjoy.

But as of January 15th, Lynch is gone, the end of a long battle with emphysema and an extended period of home confinement during which he continued to regale fans with semi-regular video updates in his trademark high-toned, cartoonishly Midwestern accent.

David Lynch
David Lynch

I’ve made my deep, lifelong love of Lynch’s work well known in this column plenty of times, and his death rocked me like one of the nightmarish smash cuts in his films.

But I’m not the only person in Oklahoma City that’s feeling that loss so deeply.

Across the full breadth of the filmmaking world, tributes and memorials to the master of mind-shattering cinema have been blowing like wind through the trees, and our city’s local community of filmmakers and film fans has been no different.

Local directors have voiced their sadness over the loss and the Oklahoma City Museum of Art – often the city’s home theater for Lynch’s works – is preparing for a tribute screening of his first masterpiece, “Eraserhead,” Thursday. 

“We thought it might be a good idea to go back to the beginning of Lynch’s filmography,” OKCMOA film programming director Lisa Broad, Ph.D told me. “In his debut feature, you can already see the importance of his singular approach to sound design and the beginning of an American surrealist film language that would develop throughout his career and influence countless of films and filmmakers.”

That cinematic language found a home-away-from-home here in OKC throughout the years at OKCMOA, where countless of Lynch’s works have been screened, including a recent retrospective of his unofficial “Los Angeles Trilogy,” including “Lost Highway,” “Mulholland Dr.,” and what would come to be his final film, “Inland Empire.”

David Lynch
David Lynch and Laura Dern in Twin Peaks (2017)

When it was first released throughout 2006 and 2007, the massive, three-hour “Inland Empire” toured the country’s arthouses and indie theaters in a roadshow presentation, including OKCMOA.

I saw it twice in one week in the museum’s theater during that run, my first-ever time experiencing Lynch’s mind on the big screen.

But that’s not the only notable history OKCMOA has with the director’s final offering.

“I know we did rent David Lynch’s personal 35mm print of Inland Empire for our screening in 2017,” Broad said, “which was pretty incredible.”

Screenings and arthouse appreciations aren’t the only ways that Lynch’s influence has dug itself into OKC’s creative culture, though.

David Lynch
David Lynch in David Lynch — The Art Life (2016)

Some of our scene’s own filmmaking talents have internalized his unique sensibilities and filmic philosophies in ways all their own, and often in ways that are nearly impossible to express with words.

“To try to talk about Lynch is to try to dance about architecture,” OKC-based writer/director Nick Sanford told me, borrowing a common phrase about the impossibility of appropriately analyzing art.

Sanford recently did a deep-dive into Lynch’s works, revisiting many of them last year with fresh eyes after his own experiences with absurdist, description-defying filmmaking for his Bigfoot-hunting, OKC-filmed mockumentary “Elusive.”

“Lynch’s great achievement was his ability to construct a work that transcended any banal explanation or description,” he told me. “Ask a hundred different film scholars to try to sum up David Lynch and you’ll get a hundred different perspectives, and I have a feeling that’s exactly what he would’ve wanted.”

That same sentiment was echoed by OKC writer/director Katie Hightower.

“Lynch gave us all the space to embrace our creativity, however far, wide, weird, and unruly,” she told me.

Hightower is the mind behind deadCenter award-winner “Hailey’s Game,” itself a film that openly resists providing easy answers or explanations for its mysteries and paranormalities, a decidedly “Lynchian” element if there ever was one.

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Katie Hightower directing cast and crew on the set of “Hailey’s Game”

“David Lynch was a visionary,” Hightower said, “one who inspired me and countless others to just be weird.”

OKCMOA screens “Eraserhead” in tribute to David Lynch Thursday, January 30th.

For showtimes, tickets, and more information, visit okcmoa.com.


Catch Brett Fieldcamp’s film column weekly for information and insights into the world of film in the Oklahoma City metro and Oklahoma. | Brought to you by the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.


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Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.