{"id":243582,"date":"2026-01-21T02:18:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T02:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/243582\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T02:18:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T02:18:08","slug":"david-lynch-would-struggle-to-make-films-in-social-media-landscape-say-collaborators-david-lynch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/243582\/","title":{"rendered":"David Lynch would struggle to make films in social media landscape, say collaborators | David Lynch"},"content":{"rendered":"

A film-maker as unique as David Lynch<\/a> would struggle to emerge in present-day Hollywood because of audiences\u2019 shorter attention spans and the influence of social media on their ability to concentrate, according to collaborators of the director.<\/p>\n

Lynch, who died in January 2025<\/a> and would have been 80 on Tuesday, was celebrated for his complex, funny and unnerving films and TV work, including Twin Peaks, Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive, all made in his distinctive \u201cLynchian\u201d style<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mary Sweeney, who worked with Lynch as an editor, was briefly married to the director and has a son with him, said he would struggle if starting out now.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had his own logic and his own way of telling stories: it was very funny, very scary and deeply connective in terms of psychology and emotion with the audiences,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that the dissipation of our concentration and the way the digital world has permeated people\u2019s lives whether educationally, emotionally, socially, or sexually \u2013 that is really functionally different in terms of our cognition and I don\u2019t know if David, who was so firmly planted in his own imagination, would succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sweeney said that for people to embrace film-makers such as Lynch, it was important for them to be more in touch with their \u201canalogue life and their sensory life\u201d, rather than digital.<\/p>\n

Lynch started out with his surreal first feature Eraserhead<\/a>, and then created more award-winning and otherworldly films including Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart, the latter winning the Palme d\u2019Or at the Cannes film festival in 1990.<\/p>\n

He received three best director Oscar nominations (for Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man and Mulholland Drive), and was given an honorary lifetime achievement Oscar in 2019.<\/p>\n

Not everyone liked his work; the critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave 1997\u2019s Lost Highway their disastrous two thumbs down rating, which Lynch then used on promotional posters around Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Arguably, his most popular work was the landmark TV show Twin Peaks, which first aired in 1990 before Lynch brought the show back for Twin Peaks: The Return<\/a> in 2017.<\/p>\n

He was an advocate of transcendental meditation, setting up the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace in 2005.<\/p>\n

Often the meaning of Lynch\u2019s work was opaque, which led many fans to obsess over \u201csolving<\/a>\u201d his puzzles. Sabrina Sutherland, who worked with Lynch on Twin Peaks and Inland Empire, said the mysteries at the heart of the films were meant to be open to interpretation.<\/p>\n

\u201cDavid left it open to the viewer to come up and formulate their own ideas, and whatever it means to you is the meaning of the piece,\u201d she said. \u201cNobody has the answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

David Lynch with Sabrina Sutherland. Photograph: BFI<\/p>\n

Lynch, a lifelong smoker, died after being diagnosed with emphysema<\/a>. Sweeney, who wrote The Straight Story<\/a> and is a professor at the University of Southern California, said she and their son, Riley, tried many times to encourage him to stop smoking.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust a couple weeks before he died and we were Zooming with David and he out of the blue said: \u2018You know, you tried to make me stop and I wouldn\u2019t listen to you.\u2019 It was heartbreaking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lynch\u2019s films are being celebrated in a new season at the British Film Institute<\/a>, which is called David Lynch: The Dreamer and includes screenings of Lost Highway, Inland Empire and Eraserhead.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week, Clare Binns, the creative director of Picturehouse Cinemas, encouraged directors to make shorter films<\/a> in order to create better experiences for audiences.<\/p>\n

Recent critically acclaimed films have gone of the three-hour mark, such as Martin Scorsese\u2019s Killers of the Flower Moon<\/a> (206 minutes) and Brady Corbet\u2019s The Brutalist (215 minutes).<\/p>\n

\u201cI talk to producers about this and say: \u2018Tell the director you\u2019re making the film for an audience, not the directors,\u2019\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A film-maker as unique as David Lynch would struggle to emerge in present-day Hollywood because of audiences\u2019 shorter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-243582","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}