“You Gotta Have a Set-up”
This is a phrase that Lynch is fond of. “For him, a set-up means a multifaceted one,” says Hurley. “The recording studio is the same as his wood shop: somewhere that he can walk into, turn on the saw and get to work.” The dynamic extends to people, too, so tasks that interfere with creativity can be taken care of by someone else. PAs deal with emails and schedules; the runner gets groceries; Alfredo will take Lynch’s hand-drawn napkin designs of furniture to secure materials.
“It’s like an organised tornado,” says Hurley. “Some days he may just come into the studio and be like, ‘I had this idea last night: I was thinking about Van Morrison and the horns from ‘Into the Mystic’. I love those horns; we need to do something that has that feeling.’ Then he goes off to do something else and returns a couple of hours later.” Sometimes, though, these visions can feel a little too big to pull off. “He sends runners on wild-goose chases,” Hurley adds with a chuckle. “He gets these real pie-in-the-sky ideas like, ‘What would it take for me to drill for oil in my backyard?’ Then somebody has to look all that up and make a report.”
Lynch doesn’t like to leave his complex unless it’s work-related, in which case he’s simply substituting one work environment for another. He doesn’t take vacations and weekends are an obstacle because it means his routine is on pause. “He gets super pained when nobody is in the office,” says Hurley. Lynch’s set-up is all about self-sufficiency – an insular world he never has to leave unless necessary; a place where he can indulge any creative whim: be it painting, building furniture, editing a film, making a record, taking meetings or drinking coffee. “The goal was to create a home where he could do anything,” Hurley says. “Film is a really cumbersome beast that involves doing your work at a variety of multi-million dollar facilities and David has managed to build this for himself. It’s all about creating and maintaining his freedom.”
Adding to the Tool Belt
Although Lynch prioritises creative autonomy, he remains a prolific collaborator who stays loyal to those he enjoys working with, from actors (such as Laura Dern, Kyle MacLachlan and Naomi Watts) to crew and production people (like cinematographer Peter Deming, casting director Johanna Ray and composer Angelo Badalamenti).
“David has always struck me as being single-minded in what he wants,” says actor Charlotte Stewart who, between appearing in Eraserhead and 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return is Lynch’s longest-living collaborator. “I see myself as a colour on a palette that he chooses from. I don’t choose the colour and I don’t know what the painting is going to be. He puts me on the brush and paints me into the story.”
Another example of Lynch’s creative paradox is that, despite the tenacious approach and exactitude of vision, he’s surprisingly open to input from those he brings into his world. “He’s somebody for whom there should almost be another word for ‘collaboration,’” says Hurley. “It’s super important to him. Film is very collaborative by nature. There’s this concept of the auteur where they collaborate with numerous people. Yet their voice is so distinctive and loud that their work with all these different people can come out in a singular way. So when you get somebody like David who is secure, confident and open – not just open but on a quest to discover – people around him can find new tools for their own voice. He wants to see something more exciting than what’s already going on in his mind.”
“He will suss out a person quickly,” Hurley adds. “He’s like a turkey baster sucking water out of a sponge. He wants to know what you can do. If he sees you do something, he immediately puts that into his tool belt.”
Lynch has a way of building up shorthand languages for individual collaborators, tapping into their essence and forging unique relationships in order to realise something unique. “I have a very unusual way of working with David as a director,” says Angelo Badalamenti, who has worked with Lynch consistently since 1986’s Blue Velvet. “So much of Twin Peaks, for example, was composed without video; only David’s descriptions of various characters and moods. I just follow him and translate his words to music.”
