by Lindsey Romain, Staff Writer

David Lynch, titan of the surreal and master of the beguiling macabre, passed away this January, a week shy of his 79th birthday. For those familiar with the legendary filmmaker, musician, and artist, the poeticism of his passing feels almost correct. He was a man of the cosmos, in a way—he spent much of his life proselytizing Transcendental Meditation, speaking to the divine window between our subconscious and whatever lay beyond the seams of reality. Watching Lynch films means stepping into this peculiar and particular place; it feels, at times, like sharing brain waves with someone from another dimension. And it’s glorious.

For the uninitiated but curious, getting into Lynch can feel overwhelming. Despite his relatively short feature filmography (he only made 10 movies), the depth and oddity of his oeuvre makes it a daunting project. If you’re already a fan, you’ve likely heard this sentiment plenty from other people—“where should I start?” or “how can I get into Lynch as a newcomer?” 

It’s a big question with no easy answer. Many of us in the club seemed to stumble into his work by chance, often through his television series Twin Peaks, or through random encounters with one of his films. So designing an entry-level watchlist for someone carries some risk. If you don’t lock into Lynch’s whole vibe straight away, you’re probably going to struggle getting through the more gristly stuff at the very beginning and very end of his career. And it can be a bit frustrating to make it through a whole film before realizing it’s just not your thing.

So how can you test if it is your thing before you make the big leap? If you’re Lynch-curious but feeling the aforementioned overwhelm—and aren’t sure if you want to watch his whole catalogue or just the “big ones”—I suggest using his short films as a testing ground. Lynch was prolific with his short films; he started making them in 1967 and continued right until his death. Many are only a few short minutes, most are barely decipherable, and all of them are a perfect window in the mind of the man. 

To make things a little easier, I’ve gone ahead and linked several David Lynch shorts (and a few commercials) to the feature films and TV projects of his that they best correspond with, in chronological order from the beginning of his moviemaking career. Whether they share thematic DNA, have aesthetic similarities, or simply star some of the same actors, these shorts are a little appetizer to the feast that is a full-length David Lynch movie. 

Film: Eraserhead (1977)
Short to watch first: Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times) (1966) or The Alphabet (1968) — watch here and here on the Criterion Channel

In truth, there are dozens of Lynch shorts that share major similarities with Eraserhead, his first film. That’s to be expected—Eraserhead was his first big statement piece as a director, linking the big ideas and visual designs that would become trademarks. The movie is Lynch’s most evidentally “arthouse” feature; a project funded by the AFI after he took classes there on a scholarship, it has the look and feel of a genius-level student film—it’s really unlike anything you’ve ever seen. Thematically, it grapples with Lynch’s own fear of fatherhood (his daughter Jennifer was a toddler during production), has elements of body horror, and exists within the murky-oil shadow of American industrialism. The plot, if there is one, follows a man who has to care for his alien-esque newborn who he only learns about post-birth. It’s uncomfortable, icky, and lasting—and utterly wonderful.

To test your Eraserhead tolerance, try two of Lynch’s earliest short films, including the first one released, Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times), which he made while attending the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Lynch originally had aspirations to be a painter, which is very evident here, as it includes his painting work and also a dripping-paint-as-vomit motif. The body horror of it all and gruesome paranoia is in tonal conversation with Eraserhead. The Alphabet is another Lynch short, this one about the “fear of learning,” that renders the standard English alphabet in nightmarish repetition. Something of note with both of these short films is that they’re fairly obnoxious both sonically and visually, which is not a detraction—it’s a thread through all of Lynch’s work that will either draw you in like a dog whistle or detract you almost immediately. Chances are high that if you vibe with these and Eraserhead, you’re on your way to being a Lynch-head. 

Film: The Elephant Man (1980)
Short to watch: The Amputee (1974) — watch here on The Criterion Channel

Lynch’s second film, and one of his most acclaimed, is this tender portrait of real-life artist Joseph Merrick, who was known in London society for both his talent and his significant body deformities. While The Elephant Man is only loosely based on Merrick’s life, it’s deeply empathetic toward the man and his legacy, and is one of the more well-known examples of disability representation in film. It’s not without its problems in that regard, but it’s clear through Lynch’s work that he has sensitivity toward and care for communities and bodies not often seen onscreen. 

Another one of his early shorts, The Amputee, shares this sentiment. The setup is simple: a woman (played by Catherine Coulson, best known as the Log Lady on Lynch’s TV series, Twin Peaks) with two amputated legs sits in a chair and writes a letter (that we hear in voiceover) while a nurse (played by Lynch) tends to her bandages and exposed bone. The short, filmed while Eraserhead was temporarily in funding limbo, is elegant in its depiction of the woman. It shows her amputated leg stumps not in a gratuitous or gory way, but as a normal slice of life. The black and white cinematography and gentleness of the woman’s monologue also feel of a piece with The Elephant Man. 

Film: Dune (1984)
Short to watch: Adidas: The Wall (1993) — watch here on YouTube

There’s not really much to prepare yourself for the experience of watching David Lynch’s Dune. The much-maligned film was a critical and commercial failure—and, mostly importantly, loathed by Lynch himself. He did not have final cut and has essentially disowned the movie in the years since its release. Still, there’s stuff to love in this quirky adaptation of Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi novel. A lot of the character and ship designs are more abstract and trippy than anything in the Denis Villenueve films, and therefore more aligned with Herbert’s text. But, notably, this was the first collaboration between Lynch and Kyle MacLachlan, a creative partnership that would continue through the next three decades. 

It’s a little difficult to find any true visual 1:1s between Lynch’s early shorts and Dune, given the big-studio origins of the film. But there is a very interesting link between a 1993 commercial Lynch directed for Adidas and the desert-power epic. The commercial, titled The Wall, features a man running through what appears to be a desolate city. He’s quickly approaching a big wall in the middle of the road and as he does, we zoom inside of his head where we see his organs and realize he’s basically hallucinating. There are lightning and fire motifs and also a scorpion shadow for some reason. The man’s mouth opens as smoke and glass explode out of it, and then he floats into the air and starts running through the clouds. Of all of Lynch’s shorts and commercial work, this one shares the most visual and experiential sinew with Dune. The fragrant yellows of the commercial are reminiscent of the desert sequences in the film. The interior imagery of the runner rendered outward conjures similar visual moments in Dune. The Adidas ad was filmed several years after the film, and is maybe not the ideal entrypoint for it, but the feelings and vibe it evokes can definitely serve as a Dune palette test.

Film: Blue Velvet (1986)
Short to watch: Absurd Encounter with Fear (1968) or Ant Head (2018) — watch here and here on YouTube

Blue Velvet is in many ways Lynch’s signature film. The image of red roses against a white picket fence and vibrant blue sky is in the pantheon of great movie iconography, as recognizable as the red curtains and striped flooring in Twin Peaks—a spiritual sequel of sorts to this film. Blue Velvet follows a college student played by MacLachlan who returns to the suburb where he grew up and finds a severed ear in a field, a fateful discovery that brings him into a conspiratorial world of jazz singers and Pabst Blue Ribbon. It’s an effectively disturbing movie about the grime beneath the shiny veneer of Americana, a theme that would become a Lynchian trademark. 

There are several Lynch shorts you could link to Blue Velvet, but two are especially notable. The first, Absurd Encounter with Fear, is one of the more terrifying entries in Lynch’s shorts filmography. It’s almost inexplicable the levels of dread it conjures in just two minutes. It shows a man walking through a field and stumbling on a strange woman. To say more is to spoil the feeling this strange piece of art evokes, but the visual language of it all—coupled with the dread—is very Blue Velvet, right down to the field. The next, Ant Head, is not technically a short film but rather a video visualizer meant to accompany a record called “Thought Gang” Lynch made with his longtime composer Angelo Badalamenti. The reason it works as a Blue Velvet entrypoint, however, is the visual in the center of the frame: some amorphous and unrecognizable severed body part (or… something) covered with ants, who crawl over it for 13 minutes. Bugs as a visual representation of societal rot is a motif famously expressed in Blue Velvet, so this short-form video is a fascinating thematic and visual mirror into that world. 

Film: Wild at Heart (1990)
Short to watch: Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted (1990) — watch here on YouTube

Between Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart, Lynch co-created Twin Peaks, which feels important to note here as the show permanently altered his legacy—its enormous initial success made him a household name and disrupted the TV landscape forevermore. Wild at Heart, then, was considered by some a disappointment. It was famously booed at Cannes (despite winning the Palme d'Or) and has a more polarizing legacy than some of his other works. Which is interesting, because in many ways it’s one of his more straightforward films. It follows Nic Cage as Sailor and Laura Dern as Lula, a young couple on the run from criminals Lula’s mother hires to kill Sailor. It’s packed full of references to one of Lynch’s favorite films, The Wizard of Oz, and also to the music and style of Elvis Presley—making it quintessentially and unnervingly American. 

A good starter for taking the Wild at Heart leap is Lynch’s Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted. It’s also not quite an official short film—it’s technically a concert performance featuring Badalamenti and Julee Cruise. The performance took place in 1990, the same year Wild at Heart was released, and features appearances from Cage and Dern. It also shares visual symmetry with the film in its stagecraft, like a woman making love to a car and Cruise floating through the air like Sheryl Lee’s Glinda.

Come back next week for Part 2!

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