David Lynch, diagnosed with emphysema, which he said left him homebound, was reportedly forced to evacuate from his home when the Sunset fire, one of the blazes burning in Los Angeles since last week, erupted on Jan. 8 and triggered mandatory evacuations in Hollywood and the Hollywood hills.
Sources told Deadline that the 78-year-old director’s health “took a turn for the worse” after he left his home, which one report said was located on iconic Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood hills.
As Deadline reported, “one of Hollywood’s worst weeks in years just got worse” with news that Lynch had died. The Oscar-nominated director created such haunting, disturbing and visually stunning film and TV works as “Eraserhead,” “Blue Velvet,” “Twin Peaks” and his widely regarded masterpiece “Mulholland Drive.” His family posted news of the filmmaker’s passing on social media but did not provide a date or cause of death.
In a 2024 interview with Sight and Sound magazine, Lynch talked about his health struggles since being diagnosed in 2020 with emphysema, a chronic lung disease which causes shortness of breath and makes everyday activities increasingly difficult.
For Lynch, this meant he didn’t like to leave his home due to concerns about COVID-19 and other infections. Despite his struggles, the painter-turned avant-garde filmmaker said he would never retire.
“I’ve gotten emphysema from smoking for so long, and so I’m homebound whether I like it or not,” Lynch told Sight and Sound. “I can’t go out. And I can only walk a short distance before I’m out of oxygen.”
“Because of COVID, it would be very bad for me to get sick, even with a cold. So I would probably be directing from my home,” he continued.
As recently as November, Lynch told People magazine that he had to rely on supplemental oxygen for anything more strenuous than a walk across the room. He wanted to warn other smokers that the same could happen to them.
Lynch told People he started smoking at age 8, and it was a “big important part of my life.” After years of trying to give up cigarettes, he finally managed to quit after receiving his emphysema diagnosis.
“I saw the writing on the wall,” Lynch told People, explaining how his long-time practice of transcendental meditation helped him quit and to stay optimistic. Still, he admitted: “It’s tough living with emphysema. I can hardly walk across a room. It’s like you’re walking around with a plastic bag around your head.”
The Sunset fire erupted in the Hollywood Hills on the evening of Jan. 8, the day after the outbreaks of the deadly and destructive Palisades and Eaton fires on either side of the city.
For embattled Los Angeles, the Sunset fire seemed to be especially terrifying, as it threatened to burn down into Hollywood and forced the evacuation of such iconic locations as the TCL Chinese Theatre, the Hollywood Pantages Theatre, the Dolby Theatre and Ovation Hollywood, the shopping center in the heart of the neighborhood, the Los Angeles Times reported. Fortunately, firefighters were able to make significant progress overnight and keep the fire to 50 acres. Evacuation orders were lifted by the following morning.
In the family members’ announcement of Lynch’s passing, they said, “We would appreciate some privacy at this time. There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.’ It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.”
That “golden sunshine and blue skies” sounds inspired by an idealized vision of Lynch’s adopted hometown of Los Angeles. In her tribute to Lynch, Manohla Dargis, the film critic for the New York Times, wrote it was sadly “fitting” that the news of Lynch’s death came while “my city was burning.”
“Few filmmakers grasped the complexities of Los Angeles better than Lynch did and fewer still seemed so at home with its distinct, otherworldly mix of beauty and disaster, sunshine and noir,” Dargis said.
While born in Montana, the Idaho-, Washington- and Virginia-reared Lynch was really “birthed” in Los Angeles, where he attended film school and began making movies, starting with the cult classic “Eraserhead,” Dargis said. Although he was never accepted as a mainstream Hollywood filmmaker, he still had “his own sense of Hollywood,” said his New York Times obituary. He was revered by critics and other acclaimed filmmakers, and “the great outsider” received an honorary Academy Award in 2019, as Dargis said.
“Mulholland Drive” (2001) was his “poisonous valentine” to L.A., the New York Times said, telling a surrealist tale about the misadventures of two would-be female stars who become embroiled in murder, mobsters and the dark side of the the Hollywood dream factory.
Nonetheless, Lynch’s affection for his adopted hometown was apparent in his beloved local weather reports, which he released on YouTube. In one report from May 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdown, Lynch faced the camera to let his followers know that “here in L.A.” some morning fog “should burn off pretty soon and we’ll have sunshine and 70 degrees. Have a great day.”