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Far Out Magazine, 2025
In an old interview with Laura Harring, she describes the unconventional direction she received from David Lynch on Mulholland Drive after he asked her to “walk like a broken doll”. In a world of unimaginative and reductive orders, in which directors bark at actors to cry on command or do the scene again “but better”, Lynch operated in an entirely different realm. He was somehow able to connect with deeper layers of the subconscious through an abundance of compassion, warmth and creativity. Where some directors might struggle to find the words, Lynch could almost feel the emotional states of his characters more viscerally, tuning into another world as he closed in on ethereal and exacting ways to articulate them.
His direction always came from a place of genuine care and enchantment, as though his ideas stemmed from a distant dream he had lived himself. He once shared an early memory from his childhood, recalling how he and his brother had been playing outside at night in their quiet, suburban neighbourhood, when all of a sudden, a woman appeared out of nowhere from the darkness, naked and covered in blood. He described his feelings of helplessness and wanting to reach out in some way, an ethos that has since crept into his work—being fascinated by darkness, but always motivated by the light.
In the many years since, it’s a memory that has found its way into many of his films, whether it be the image of a nude and injured Isabella Rossellini walking through her front garden at night or a woman emerging from the fog as she crosses a bridge, dazed and bruised.
But their pain isn’t exploited for the sake of creating an unsettling image, something that many other directors are guilty of. Instead, Lynch is right there with them, walking hand-in-hand with his actors as they journey through it together; always directing with overflowing compassion and acknowledging the darkness, but never letting it take over.
While some don’t truly connect to the heart of a story, Lynch almost seemed to live inside it alongside the actors, feeling his way through each scene with the players involved, almost as though it was impossible to detach himself from what they were going through. He aligned himself on an almost molecular level with the emotional state of his characters, something that can be seen when looking at his singularly unique directing style, forming almost symbiotic relationships with his actors that allowed him to draw out performances nobody else could.
Many have attributed the performances in his filmography to the close working relationships that he formed with his actors, with the likes of Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern and Naomi Watts describing their lifelong friendship with the director and the effect he had not just on their careers, but their personal lives.
But while the genuine love and admiration he held for them was integral to their rapport, this also worked in tandem with his subliminal direction style, almost as if he could see the world more clearly, capturing a hidden essence beneath the everyday façade. Through his infectious joy and empathy, Lynch tapped into a subconscious way of communicating that allowed him to access moods otherwise undiscovered, with a few behind-the-scenes stories from Twin Peaks capturing the magnitude of his genius.
After calling cut for a scene while filming the first season of Twin Peaks, the director knelt down next to two of his actors and held intense eye contact with them both before showing them his hand, and very slowly, opening and closing his fingers. After doing this, he silently nodded to them and then went back to the camera to call action.
Instead of verbally telling them what he needed, he invited them to slow down with him, focus on the silence, shut out the noise, and allow themselves to relax into the scene. Where some directors might just tell their actors to relax, Lynch created an emotional wavelength for them to tune into and put himself on their level, creating an approach based on feelings rather than words.
This moment beautifully encapsulates the attentiveness and care part of Lynch’s style, working with compassion and instilling in others the same sense of wonder in their approach to creativity. Something similar happened while shooting the pilot of Twin Peaks, with Sarah Palmer being described as letting out “the scream which was heard around the world” after discovering that her daughter had been murdered. It’s a cutting moment, capturing the depth of pain that suddenly washes everything around it as Sarah’s scream ripples through the otherwise peaceful town.
Lynch demonstrated how in-tune he was with the feelings of others with his decision to go for one take when shooting the scream, fearing it would be too emotionally difficult for the actor to perform it multiple times (especially given that she was a mother herself). He offered precise direction to ensure the condition, leading to one perfect take that ended up being the one we see in the first episode.
Lynch placed himself on the same level as his actors, and sometimes quite literally did so, with Dana Ashbrook telling Far Out in an exclusive interview that, “David would sit underneath the camera, right in the bottom, and you’d be doing the scene right there. But David was in there with us. It was like close contact. We were all just like that. It was amazing.”
Where some can’t find words, Lynch could work on an entirely different emotional wavelength, immersing his actors in states of being that most people cannot reach. While Twin Peaks explores a weighty subject matter relating to the very darkest aspects of the human experience, there is an undeniable sense of warmth that infuses itself within this fear, manifesting in Lynch’s endlessly curious and empathetic approach to collaboration.
There is a behind-the-scenes clip from a moment in the show where he says to an actor, “You’re like a doll. You’re kind of just like a doll in a dream”. While it might not make sense to us, it made sense to those who worked under his beautiful spell that guided and protected them as they traversed his dreamland with him.