Why David Lynch has the most passionate fans

David Lynch has revealed he is homebound after being diagnosed with emphysema and will no longer be able to direct in person.

Speaking with Sight and Sound magazine, the filmmaker said: "I've gotten emphysema from smoking for so long, and so I'm homebound whether I like it or not. I can't go out... because of COVID, it would be very bad for me to get sick."

While he has since assured his fans that this doesn't mean he will retire, cinephiles across the world mourned the possibility of him no longer making movies and shared their heartfelt well wishes. In the wake of his comments many shared how much they love his work and what it has meant to them to see his movies, a subject that many cinephiles feel passionately about.

What is it about David Lynch that inspires such devotion?

Since making his directorial feature debut with 1977's Eraserhead, Lynch has gathered a dedicated following of fans whose devotion to him could easily rival the fanbases of filmmakers like Christopher Nolan, Zack Snyder, and Martin Scorsese.

The Guardian once called Lynch "the most important filmmaker of the current era", and it is easy to see why from his work. The American filmmaker has a unique vision and style, adopting a dream-like quality in his work and highlighting surrealism to transport viewers to the dystopian worlds he creates.

This was true of his early movies Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man and Mulholland Drive, and is especially true of his iconic TV show Twin Peaks that he co-created with Mark Frost.

It began with Eraserhead, a staple of the midnight movie underground circuit where it, and Lynch himself, grew a cult following that included acclaimed director Stanley Kubrick. It's success all but assured the filmmaker's rise to fame, and he followed it up with the equally impressive The Elephant Man.

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Starring John Hurt and Anthony Hopkins, the film earned eight nominations at the Academy Awards and even led to the creation of an award for make-up artists. His first two feature films were so well received George Lucas approached Lynch to direct Return of the Jedi, and though he turned down the opportunity it showed belief in his work within the industry as well as outside it.

What makes David Lynch special?

David Lynch taps into something that few others are able to. He transports his audience into weird and wonderful worlds that are at turns spooky and revelatory.

They are controversial in a way that ensures they'll be debated for years to come, from Eraserhead's terrifying use of body horror to Blue Velvet's shocking use of violence. We're both frightened and delighted by his creations, and when it's said that nobody makes films like Lynch it doesn't feel like an over-exaggeration.

Lynch often taps into this darkness in his work, and the reason for it is simple he once told BBC Radio 3's Sound of Cinema: "Even in the so-called dark things, there's a beauty. It can be foreboding, but there is also something else in there that's bigger. It's truthful."

It's this sentiment that reveals why so many people resonate with Lynch's work in a nutshell. It is also his dedication to the craft and bringing his true vision to life that makes him so appealing in the same way that filmmakers like Nolan and Snyder invoke in their fans. Lynch will make the film he wants to make, and that's admirable in and of itself.

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Journalist Marcio Delgado tells Yahoo UK that is part of the director's appeal: "I find his films out of the Hollywood mould. You never truly know where the story is going, what the characters are doing next.

"Twin Peaks was suspenseful and emotional, for example, maybe the easier way to get to know his work for those starting now. David Lynch remained authentic when lot of filmmakers became very predictable over time, specifically with success, as it is easy to follow a tried and tested recipe.

"I also like Lynch’s way of making us feel uneasy while watching a film and, still you can stop it until you reach the end."

Another fan of Lynch's work, Van Sievert, told Yahoo UK: "The funny thing is I used to run hot and cold with Lynch. For every movie of his that I loved, like Wild at Heart and Blue Velvet, there some that just perplexed me like Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway.

"For the most part I wasn't very interested in that surrealist use of storytelling but as I got older I realised Lynch wasn't interested in it either. He really cared about his characters & didn't want to use them as just metaphors.

"He wanted to use dream-like logic to expand his story-telling as opposed to relying on it. & even though he tackled dark themes, you could tell from some of his movies, he was really a romantic at heart & has a great love of cinema."

There's a reason he was nominated for an Academy Award for movies like The Elephant Man, and earned a Palme d'Or for 1990 film Wild At Heart. Even his less critically-well received films like Dune have become cult hits in their own right, such is the power of his vision and his ability to tap into the collective subconscious with his work.

Lynch's work looks and feels like nothing else, certainly nothing that came before it in any case. In the years since his debut it's easy to see how much influence his work has had on the TV and movie industry from his storytelling to style. Directors like Kubrick, Quentin Tarantino, and the Coen Brothers have been influenced by Lynch's work, to name just a few.

A lot of modern projects owe a lot to Lynch, and it certainly goes a long way to explain why his work has endured for so long, and why the filmmaker has such devoted fans.