David Lynch has left the planet. Yet it still seems so surreal much like the body of work he leaves in his wake. After David’s passing, I got in touch with Matthew Kalil who has been a student of Lynch’s since the age of 13. Having taught screenwriting at the David Lynch Film School in Iowa for four years, the filmmaker and author of The Three Wells of Screenwriting gave me some beautiful insights into the legend that is and was David Lynch. Here’s what happened in Part 1 of our conversation.

Matthew, it’s such a pleasure to be speaking with you in what is quite a sad time for two really big fans of David Lynch.

Yeah, it’s good to be here. Thanks so much. It’s been an interesting 24 hours.

Yeah, I have been speaking to you on an ongoing basis about having this retrospective with David Lynch in mind because we are such big fans of his, and then the crushing news to hear that he had passed yesterday. I just didn’t expect it because he’s one of those legendary figures that just seems as though he’s going to go on and on indefinitely, you just don’t think there’s a chance that he could leave this earth that he so loved. You have a very special connection to that because you actually are an Associate Professor at the David Lynch Film School in Fairfield, Iowa. So can you tell us a little bit about how you’re connected in that respect?

So I’ve been lucky enough to work for the film school the past four and a half years and that meant some sort of Zoom sessions, quite a few with David on the line. I’m going to call him David not because I know him like on a first name basis, but because that’s what he told us to call him.

I don’t mean it to sound like arrogant or anything, but I was lucky enough to be on many Zoom calls with him and get to know him almost as a person, not just a kind of famous film director. And you always have to be careful when you meet your heroes because they might disappoint you. And meeting him was the opposite… even though I never met him in person because he was a famous recluse.

I went outside his house in LA, but I never got to meet him. I met his assistant, Michael, who I’ve known through the years and he was surprisingly amazing… I call him like the Dalai Lama of filmmaking because he just wants everybody to be creative, to express themselves and to be amazing. And so he encourages in that way and it comes across very clearly in his Zoom meetings.

I must say I was very envious when I heard that you had the opportunity to interact with him and meet him and being a hero of mine as well, and just loving what he did as an artist and as a filmmaker… it really is a massive gap that he’s leaving behind. And it feels interesting that there’s a plane that’s sort of taking its journey across the skies now. I know that David was very much fascinated by the world and electricity and the way things work and getting to the nitty gritty and that alienating feeling of going just beyond… not actually fully understanding how things really do work. That fascination and curiosity comes through in his films. So what was your initial reaction?

Well, we knew it was coming. Over the four and a half years since I’ve seen him on Zoom, we saw a visible decline in his health. And there was a health scare about two years ago, which no one really knew about, but you know… those who were in the sort of circles of his world knew about. And then he had emphysema, which he did make public, I think in 2024 sometime.

And we knew his health was in decline. Interestingly enough, the last time he appeared on Zoom, he actually had a whole lot of energy. It was amazing. It was almost like this little rise before the final decline, I guess. And our students Zoom in with him every residency and they’re having a residency coming up in February and he actually agreed to speak to them. So he was all ready to just keep going and be David.

But we always, every time we spoke to him, it felt like a little treasure because we knew that the end was coming. But, you know, like you said, it seemed impossible that it would happen. I mean, he’s been in my life since I was 13, basically. I’ve known of his work since then, seeing Dune in the cinema. And so he’s been such a strong influence in my life. I’m actually only feeling the connection now that he’s passed on. It’s quite weird. I’m feeling very connected to him today. Not just him as a person, but him as an artist and how he’s affected my life.

So, when I heard it was shocking, not surprising, very sad, very like, “oh no, why has this happened now?”. But, you know, David has spoken about death before and how it’s just sort of a transition to another phase and his belief system is based on the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s beliefs and Hinduism, sort of Hinduism light in some ways, and he believes in incarnation.

And so I was speaking to a friend of mine, and he just said, David went from one room to another room, which just summed up for me. He’s fascinated by rooms and transitions from one room to another. And in his movies, you often have dark corridors and people walking into dark corridors from one room to another. It just feels like he’s moved from one room to another, but his presence is still very much here.

Yeah, there’s no one like him. And I think filmmakers have so much respect for him. He’s a true artist. He’s not someone that was born to make commercial properties. He was always an artist. And even in the sort of discussion about Dune where there was a bigger project that he went with, Dineo De Laurentiis… and how his creative vision for that was so true to himself that it actually caused rifts with the producers.

That it’s – it really was David being David and making sure that he could continue to be David. And that’s what I really love about him because he wasn’t under anyone’s thumb. He was, some might say self indulgent, maybe to the point of alienating the audience. And maybe the mood and the thing that he was going for was always more of a priority. And that’s why he’s an artist. He’s not making films for a specific target audience… it’s something to behold.

He started off being a painter and he was at school and he did okay at school, but when he discovered painting, he realised that he could actually be a painter. He thought painting was like painting houses. He didn’t even realise that painting was like doing artwork. He went to his friend’s house and his dad was a painter. And he saw these paintings and was inspired. And that’s immediately what he started doing. So he went on a trip to Europe and studied art for a year somewhere. And he’s basically always a painter and was still painting until the day he died, because he’s always working in the studio and constantly making art.

He wanted to make the paintings move. He always says that. And he talks about how a wind came through the window and brushed up against his collarbone or something. His first moving painting was an artwork… he’s always a painter, first and foremost. And I think you see that in his work. Like you say, it’s the atmosphere that’s more important to him than anything else. And creating a feeling of something… a mood, like painting.

And I think with Dune, it’s funny because he hated Dune. The fact that we’re talking about Dune is like making him crazy, but it’s okay. He always used to say, “insist on final cut”. That’s always what he used to say, just “final cut” all the time. “Gotta have final cut.” And he would repeat that again and again.

And that was his lesson on Dune. So he actually did surrender eventually, but he didn’t surrender. The project was taken from him and he was very scarred from that moment on in terms of being true to your personal vision. And he kind of stuck to that with everything he’s done so far since then.

I am trying to remember my first David Lynch experience and it sort of eludes me a little bit like a dream actually, which is quite ironic. But Mulholland Drive really sticks out in my mind and many other film critics’ minds because it makes so many top 10 lists for film critics. And it’s open to interpretation. It was meant to be a series, which was converted into a film. And that movie is so mesmerizingly beautiful, bizarre and intoxicating. And I just can’t say enough good stuff about it, even though I don’t completely understand it. I think that is one of the things that’s also very much a part of what Lynch was all about. Not trying to reveal the magician’s trick at all. Trying to keep the allure, the mystery, the dreamlike, surreal quality of all his work suspended and not trying to interrogate it either himself, but allowing it to just exist.

Absolutely. And in a way, it’s very pure cinema. Yes. And it’s just, as we said, he’s an artist. He makes the art. He’s not there to tell you what it is. You’re there to experience it and to walk away with your own meaning and interpretation.

And that’s what I really appreciated about it, because every audience member that leaves the cinema is going to have a different version of what they’ve just seen, not only from their frame of reference, but also just from that experiential quality that he brings to the cinema screen.

The engagement with Lynch’s work is always like… you bring so much to it as a viewer and it changes through time. So you’ll end up watching Mulholland Drive again and again and you watch it and you’re like, “wow, this feels totally different to when I first saw it”. And of course you’ve moved on. And so the things you bring to his work have moved on.

And I think that’s really interesting that you spoke about your first engagement with his work, because I can remember all of the movies that I saw, where I was when I saw Straight Story, where I was when I saw Lost Highway, where I was when I saw Mulholland Drive, where I was when I saw Dune and all these movies. My life integrates into his work very clearly. And I’m not the only one, like all my students, because I’ve taught this course called ‘Inspired by Lynch’, where we look at his work and we actually don’t analyse it.

We talk about our emotional responses to the work more so. Everyone who is in that class always talks about how they’ve changed or how their perspective has shifted. I mean, I get angry with some of his films. I walked out of Mulholland Drive when I saw it, which I’m embarrassed to say, because it is a great film. And I realised in retrospect, it was a great film.

Well, I mean, I stayed till the end, of course, but I stormed out very angry. I was thinking “David, what the hell have you done?”. And in retrospect, I kind of think I know what he was trying to do a little bit more with that film.

But there are a lot of bizarre coincidences with me and David’s work. Seeing The Straight Story in London in Leicester Square in 1999. And I was watching three movies in one day and just crying, seeing these shots of Iowa cornfields, not knowing why I was crying, but then many, many years later, living in Iowa, understanding, oh wait a minute, there’s a connection here. And then visiting the town where it was filmed in and just bizarre.

So, elevated filmmaking in a level that’s difficult to really use your rational mind to explain. But maybe it was also just a case of finding a way to that thing. It’s like a premonition.

That’s what I love about his films is there’s this magical quality to it, because it’s elusive. It’s not there to just be understood. It’s there to be pondered about. And that’s why I think his legacy is going to be so long lasting because we’re going to be talking about David Lynch’s films for decades to come. And I am almost envious of all the people that are listening to this and haven’t actually experienced a David Lynch film before, because he really is a director who’s captured a vision and a dream and turned it into a film.

And that quality is just so astounding and just so breathtaking and unusual in this day and age where we are more preoccupied with getting tickets sold rather than saying something and having some… even though David Lynch’s films aren’t statement films specifically, they open up your mind, your creativity, your imagination and your sense of wonder. And I think that is just something that is just sorely missing in today’s world of cinema. And that’s what makes him so singular.

I think it’s funny because people have asked me, so I haven’t watched a David Lynch film. What should I start with? And I just laugh because it’s tricky. The journey into Lynch and through Lynch and with Lynch is, it’s complicated because some of his work is very confronting and he uses a lot of trauma in his movies.

There’s some abuse in his movies. There’s definitely racial inequality problems in his movies. There’s gender issues in his movies. So it’s difficult to tell someone where to begin. And it’s almost like just to let it wash over you if you’re going to watch it and just experience whatever it is you want to watch. I mean, you could watch him chronologically.

When I teach his courses, I do start with his paintings and move chronologically through his work. But that’s also going to… you’re going to start with Six Men Getting Sick Six Times, which is the short film that he made. And then you’re just going to think, what the heck? You’re just going to immediately be alienated.

A lot of people came into Lynch through Twin Peaks, the TV series, the original one, season one and two. And that’s when he exploded onto the international scene and everyone kind of knew who he was. And those movies definitely have some of the dreamlike qualities of what that series does.

But it’s quite funny when Twin Peaks season three came out 25 years later. But there was this meme about a David Lynch fan, no, it was Twin Peaks fans who meet David Lynch fans. And David Lynch fans are those who have watched season three and it’s confrontation.

There’s a lot. I mean, I just want to say if anyone hasn’t watched a Lynch movie and you know, like excited to go and watch one, because we’ve said go watch one. There’s also just… it’s a process. I don’t know how else to say it.

I love the idea of watching them in chronological order, because I think there is a self discovery happening as he’s transitioning from being a visual artist to a visual director. And obviously he’s a director of many avenues and talents. But what I mean to say is that it does seem as though he’s spreading his wings more and more as he realises he has the power to do whatever he wants, because there were people out there that were just so in love with what he was doing on the silver screen that they would just be happy for him to continue doing that and not worry too much about it being commercially viable or fun or whatever you want to call it.

And none of his films are like that because they are self expression masterclasses in their own way that have stood the test of time because like poetry, they are not there to be easily deconstructed or practically understood. It’s just not like every other film out there. There’s just so much layers. And much like the dreamlike quality, you can’t actually… like you said, when you watch it again, there are pockets of things that come back to you and they mean different things depending on where you are in your life. And that is so rare that you can have a an artwork, a film, whatever you want to call it, that can keep morphing, can keep evolving with its audience.

And obviously, David went with The Straight Story to prove to people that he can do a narrative film that’s in chronological order, but that he didn’t have to rely on all the sort of wizardry in the way he puts things together… and that discordant feel that sometimes comes through with not having that golden thread all the time.

A lot of his films are linear. Blue Velvet is linear to an extent and Wild at Heart. But he does definitely play with things… as soon as he gets into the world of Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, things get very weird. And then with Twin Peaks season three, it’s just like, there is no way you can follow that series.
It’s great. I love that. I remember surrendering to the process and I just had to surrender to David’s vision and just say, I’m going to let this wash over me and just experience it. And that was an interesting surrender that had to take place.

It’s a good word.

I would say one has to do that to watch his films to a certain extent. I have my students react to his films by doing artwork and doodling in response, either while watching the movie or after watching the movie. I think they would prefer to do it after the movie, not while you’re watching. I was very into some of those immersive theatre experiences.

But, you know, they would create amazing artworks. Like, I think you mentioned… creativity, artworks inspire other artworks and inspire other creators. And even I took a weird photograph when I heard that he died and turned it black and white and put a vignette over it and did something, because I just felt I had to create something in response to his passing.

Because I think he is, when I said he’s the Dalai Lama of filmmaking. I mean he inspires people to create themselves. And every time you’d meet with the students, he would just say, “create”, or he would say “meditate and create”, because he was a Transcendental Meditator his whole life. So he was into meditation and he would say meditate and create. That’s where he’s like, in a way, his watchwords.