David Lynch

Ate lunch at Bobs Big Boy in Los Angeles, California, nearly every day for almost eight years in a row.

Is an Eagle Scout.

His father had Scottish, Irish, and English ancestry. His mother was of half Finnish and half German descent. His Irish ancestry can be traced to Galway and as far back as being descended from Rollo, a Viking King.

Currently runs his own personally authorized Web site, www.davidlynch.com and has been rumored to appear in the chat area of the site under a more than obvious name.

Personally approved DVD releases of his movies do not have any chapter stops. This is done because he believes that films are meant to be viewed from beginning to end.

He is also an artist working in paint and such dynamic elements as live ants and rotting flesh. He also frequently designs and builds the furniture in his films. These can be seen in the documentary about him, Pretty as a Picture: The Art of David Lynch .

Projects he has written but to date has not produced include "Ronnie Rocket," "Up at the Lake," and "One Saliva Bubble."

Producer Dino De Laurentiis offered him the chance to direct "Hand-Carved Coffins" based on a Truman Capote work, but Lynch turned it down; to date the project has not been produced.

Wrote the Gordon Cole character (from "Twin Peaks" ) with himself in mind.

After the financial disaster that was Dune , Lynch and Dino De Laurentiis were almost ready to part company but Lynch showed Dino the script for Blue Velvet , which he had been working on for some time, and the two combined talents to make the seminal 1986 classic.

After George Lucas saw Eraserhead , he offered Lynch the chance to direct Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi but Lynch turned him down. Lynch felt the film would be more Lucass vision than his own.

Daughter, Director Jennifer Lynch (b. 1968), with first wife actress Peggy Lynch. Son, Austin Jack Lynch (b. 1982), with second wife Mary Fisk. Son, Riley Lynch (b. 1992), with film editor Mary Sweeney .

While in college, roomed with Peter Wolf , former lead singer with the J. Geils Band. Lynch kicked him out, however, because he thought Wolf was "too weird."

His son, Austin Jack Lynch , appeared in an episode of "Twin Peaks" as Pierre Tremond, or the Creamed-Corn Kid. The role (billed as Pierre Tremond/Chalfont) went to Jonathan J. Leppell in the movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me . It is widely rumored that Jonathan is Lynchs nephew, but Jonathan and his mother had never heard of Lynch or the TV show when he was cast in Seattle. Julee Cruise , who appears in "Twin Peaks" , is his musical protge. Lynch wrote the lyrics on her first album, some of the lyrics of her second album, and occasionally plays an instrument on her recordings.

He attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) in Philadelphia

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985," pp. 621-626 (as David K. Lynch). New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

Insisted his name be struck from the 190-minute Extended Cut of Dune , which was prepared specially for television. That version credits the pseudonymous "Judas Booth" as writer/director. Yet in 2009 - the movies 25th anniversary - Lynch (by a fans request) actually signed Booths name to a vintage "Making of Dune paperback at West Hollywoods famous Book Soup.

Has cited Luis Buuel , Werner Herzog , Federico Fellini , Ingmar Bergman , Stanley Kubrick , and Roman Polanski as some of his influences.

In addition to excluding chapter breaks in his approved DVD releases of his movies, he hasnt recorded an audio commentary in any of his films. This is because he believes that films speak for themselves.

Announced at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival that he has been shooting a feature length project on digital video called Inland Empire for over a year. He also announced that he was so impressed with digital that he was giving up directing projects on film.

He drew and wrote the comic strip, "The Angriest Dog in the World" that ran in the Los Angeles Reader newspaper throughout the 1980s.

President of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 2002.

Is famous (or infamous) for not saying anything on Eraserhead . He lets the viewers decide what it means.

He was offered the chance to direct Fast Times at Ridgemont High , but he turned it down, saying that the script was funny, but it wasnt his thing.

Was very good friends with Jack Nance.

Is friends with Kyle MacLachlan.

He was introduced to Isabella Rossellini at a restaurant by a mutual friend when he was in the process of casting Blue Velvet . Struck by her serene European beauty, he told her, "You could be Ingrid Bergman s daughter." You idiot, my friend said to me," Lynch recalled, "she is Ingrid Bergmans daughter!"

His grandmother was German.

Though on the surface his alliance with Mel Brooks on The Elephant Man would seem unlikely to many, a number of Lynchs films are interpreted as being satirical of traditional Hollywood clichs ( Mulholland Dr. , Wild at Heart , Blue Velvet albeit in a much darker and artistic way than in the films that made Brooks a success ( Young Frankenstein , Blazing Saddles , etc.).

Was engaged to Italian actress Isabella Rossellini from 1986 to 1990.

Claims one of his favorite films to be The Wizard of Oz , and has many references to the classic in his films, the most obvious are in Wild at Heart . He has also cited Vertigo and Glen or Glenda as his other favorites.

Is friends with Mdchen Amick.

Is mentioned in German author Patrick Roths short story "Lynch for Lunch".

Being an avid coffee drinker, he has own line of special organic blends.

Has practiced Transcendental Meditation for at least 20 minutes each day since 1973. Now very actively leads his own worldwide organization, the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace, that is the midst of a campaign to raise $7 billion to further its goals. As a result, Lynch has not made a film since 2006s Inland Empire .

Although having planned to study with painter Oskar Kokoschka in Austria for three years, he returned to the US after only 15 days.

Served as an usher at the Presidential Inauguration of John F. Kennedy (20 January 1961).

Born to Donald Lynch, a research scientist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and his wife Sunny, an English language tutor.

Frequently works with Crispin Glover.

Some of his favorite films of all time are: 8 , La strada , Sunset Blvd. , The Apartment , Lolita , Persona , Vargtimmen , Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot , Mon oncle , Rear Window , Vertigo , Stroszek and The Wizard of Oz .

Sherilyn Fenn , who worked with him in "Twin Peaks" and Wild at Heart , later starred in his daughter Jennifer Lynch s directorial debut Boxing Helena .

He was so impressed by Sheryl Lee s performance as the dead Laura Palmer in "Twin Peaks" pilot episode that he wrote the role of Maddy Ferguson for her, in order to bring her back in the series.

The car accident scene in Wild at Heart came from his impression of actress Sherilyn Fenn as a china doll, and from the idea of seeing a porcelain doll breaking. He told her, "I envisioned this broken China doll, all bloody, and ranting and raving, and it was you".

Has worked with real-life father-son pair Jos Ferrer and Miguel Ferrer in Dune and "Twin Peaks" ; and real-life mother-daughter pair Diane Ladd and Laura Dern in Wild at Heart and Blue Velvet .

His ancestry is Finnish, German and Irish. His Irish Ancestry can be traced to Galway and as far back as being descended from Rollo, a Viking King.

Directed 3 actors in Oscar nominated performances: John Hurt , Diane Ladd , and Richard Farnsworth.

Has said that he is an admirer of Ronald Reagan, and supported the Natural Law Party in the 2000 Presidential Election. In both the 2008 and 2012 Presidential Elections, he supported Barack Obama.

Among the places he lived in his rootless childhood were Missoula, Montana (his birth place), Sandpoint, Idaho (where his family moved when he was only 2 months old), Spokane, Washington, Durham, North Carolina, Boise, Idaho and Alexandria, Virginia (where he attended high school).

Has three siblings, including brother John Lynch.

In 2002, Lynch paid $1 million to spend a month studying Transcendental Meditation along with a few other well-heeled adherents in a compound in the Netherlands with the movements founder, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The Maharishi was living in the house, but only communicated with the group via TV conferencing.

(May 2004) Lodz, Poland. Discussing his plans for building post production film studio in an old factory on Targowa street.

Sheryl Lee credits him as one of the most incredible teachers that shes ever had in terms of filmmaking.

Was asked to direct Manhunter .

Disowned Dune , considering it the only real failure of his career. To this day, he refuses to talk about the production in great detail, and has refused numerous offers to work on a special edition DVD. Lynch claims revisiting the film would be too painful an experience to endure.

In the late 1980s, he directed 4 TV commercials for Calvin Klein s Obsession perfume based on excerpts from novels by F. Scott Fitzgerald , Ernest Hemingway , D.H. Lawrence and Gustave Flaubert and featuring Benicio Del Toro , Heather Graham , Lara Flynn Boyle , James Marshall , Rodney Harvey and Ian Buchanan.

At the 1986 Montreal Film Festival, where Blue Velvet first premiered, he met Giulietta Masina, wife & frequent muse of Federico Fellini, one of his favorite film directors.

Was working as a cap driver when he joined The Platters.

Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (as a member of The Platters ) in 1990.

Inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame (as a member of The Platters ) in 1998.

I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion,and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it.

I just like going into strange worlds.

My mother refused to give me coloring books as a child. She probably,saved me, Because when you think about it, what a coloring book does is,completely kill creativity.

Cigarettes are pretty much my worst vice, and I even stopped smoking for,20 years. I spend most of my free time with my family and working on,art.

There was nothing much going on upstairs until the age of nineteen.

My father was a scientist for the Forest Service. He would drive me,through the woods in his green Forest Service truck, over dirt roads,through the most beautiful forests where the trees are very tall and,shafts of sunlight come down and in the mountain streams the rainbow,trout leap out and their little trout sides catch glimpses of light.

And there was no inspiration there at all for the kind of work I wanted,to do.

[on his 1965 sojourn to Europe to study art] I intended to stay three,years. Instead, I stayed 15 days! I remember lying in an Athens,basement with lizards crawling along the walls and contemplating that I,was 7,000 miles from McDonalds!,[on why his officially sanctioned DVDs contain no chapter stops] It is,my opinion that a film is not like a book--it should not be broken up.

It is a continuum and should be seen as such.

[on Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) ] I love that film. I say,now that The Straight Story (1999) is my most experimental,movie, but up until then, "Fire Walk With Me" was my most experimental,film, and some of the things, the combos, you know, like, sequences . .

[on The Straight Story (1999) ] I wanted the film to have a,floating feeling. I particularly wanted that quality to come through in,the aerial landscape shots, and it took a lot of explaining to get the,helicopter pilots to slow down enough to get the look I was after.

I loved smoking cigarettes as a child. I loved matches. I loved lighting,matches.

An inner anger is poison. A person who is angry is poisoning them self,and poisoning the environment.

I say Eraserhead (1977) is my,The Philadelphia Story (1940) . I like smoke and fire and the,sounds of the factories.

Be true to yourself. Find your own voice and be true to that voice.

Never take a bad idea, but never turn down a good idea. And, of course,have final cut.

Every idea that you fall in love with is a gift. How the ideas come is,the trick.

I look at the world and I see absurdity all around me. People do strange things constantly, to the point that, for the most part, we manage not to see it.

Intuition is seeing the solution. . . . . its emotion and intellect going together.

New mysteries. New day. Fresh doughnuts.

It’s maybe impossible to escape (your own head), but I guess the secret is the prison cell just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and prettier and prettier and prettier.

I quit smoking in December. I’m really depressed about it. I love smoking, I love fire, I miss lighting cigarettes. I like the whole thing about it, to me it turns into the artist’s life, and now people like Bloomberg have made animals out of smokers, and they think that if they stop smoking everyone will live forever.

Cinema is a language. It can say things—big, abstract things. And I love that about it. I’m not always good with words. Some people are poets and have a beautiful way of saying things with words. But cinema is its own language. And with it you can say so many things, because you’ve got time and sequences. You’ve got dialogue. You’ve got music. You’ve got sound effects. You have so many tools. And you can express a feeling and a thought that can’t be conveyed any other way. Its a magical medium. For me, it’s so beautiful to think about these pictures and sounds flowing together in time and in sequence, making something that can be done only through cinema. Its not just words or music-it’s a whole range of elements coming together and making something that didn’t exist before. It’s telling stories. It’s devising a world, an experience, that people cannot have unless they see that film. When I catch an idea for a film, I fall in love with the way cinema can express it. I like a story that holds abstractions, and that’s what cinema can do.

Intuition is the key to everything, in painting, filmmaking, business - everything. I think you could have an intellectual ability, but if you can sharpen your intuition, which they say is emotion and intellect joining together, then a knowingness occurs.

Stories hold conflict and contrast, highs and lows, life and death, and the human struggle and all kinds of things.

Meditation is to dive all the way within, beyond thought, to the source of thought and pure consciousness. It enlarges the container, every time you transcend. When you come out, you come out refreshed, filled with energy and enthusiasm for life.

Sex is a doorway to something so powerful and mystical, but movies usually depict it in a completely flat way.

A lot of artists think they want anger. But a real, strong, bitter anger occupies the mind, leaving no room for creativity.