A Lynchian Retrospective

Faced with the prospect of meeting the late David Lynch, even the most casual fan would likely have struggled to initiate small talk with the enigmatic director. But actress and Nashville resident Alicia Witt spent nearly four decades talking to the iconoclastic American filmmaker who died in January about the dogs in the neighborhood she lived in as a child. “I felt like he was an uncle,” Witt told an audience gathered at the Belcourt last Sunday while recalling her most cherished moments with the director who ignited her movie career with a pivotal role in his adaptation of Dune when she was seven. 

In the wake of Lynch’s death shortly after he evacuated from his L.A. home during January’s wildfires, The Belcourt rushed to pull together a tribute to a director who rose above 80s Hollywood’s tendency to cater to blockbuster filmmaking by committee. The result is “David Lynch: A Retrospective,” a series of screenings, seminars, and special events running through March 19th that includes showings of all Lynch’s films with the exception of 1980’s The Elephant Man. 

Before the Belcourt’s matinee screening of Dune, Witt and The Belcourt’s Programming and Education Coordinator, Zack Hall, tried to bring the reality of Lynch into focus–a difficult task given the filmmaker’s rather elusive relationship with the press and penchant for the singularly surreal approach to Americana that cemented his reputation as one of cinema’s most towering figures. Rather than buying into the mythos, Witt made sure to foreground Lynch the person, a guy who committed even the smallest details to memory. Years after their first meeting, Lynch made sure to keep up with those dogs. He also sent Witt rose bushes for her garden, a hobby she first mentioned to him during their time on Dune. 

Though Dennis Hopper’s nitrous-oxide-fueled rage in Blue Velvet and the most leftfield singalong to “The Locomotion” ever recorded that marks the climax of Inland Empire obscure this more private view of Lynch, Witt made clear she doesn’t think the director could have reached such artistic heights without without his genuine interest in the lives of those around him. “He had the ability to see a depth in an actor that perhaps they didn’t. He took all of the artifice away,” Witt said.

Lynch found Witt through a casting director after her show business debut reciting a scene from Romeo and Juliet on the 80s reality show That’s Incredible! Following her work on Dune in 1984, Witt opted to spend the next few years honing her craft as a pianist, a calling she embraced early in life. Then, Lynch called out of the blue when she was 14 to say he had written a part for her on his new television series Twin Peaks. Her role as Gersten Hayward allowed her to both extend her range as an actor and share her musical talents with a national audience. During her time on the show, Lynch would keep the camera rolling while she played, including the footage in the finished episodes much to Witt’s surprise. 

In the wake of Twin Peaks, Lynch cast Witt again in 1993’s Hotel Room, his short-lived HBO series set entirely in the titular space and spanning generations. Witt played a teenage mother who lost her child in a drowning accident opposite Crispin Glover. Despite the show’s brief life, it became the catalyst that allowed her to transition from child star to the next phase of her career. 

Witt and Lynch kept in touch in the intervening years before she received the sudden call to reprise her role of Hayward in his 2017 reboot of Twin Peaks for Showtime, which ended up as the director’s last major project. However, Lynch kept his vision for the series a secret, opting instead to let his actors feel their way through the fragments of the script they received. Recalling her reunion with Lynch on the set, Witt offered the extent of his direction. “You’re probably wondering what’s going on in these scenes. And I’m not going to tell you.”

Though working with Lynch was always demanding, Witt remained enthralled by his ability to to remain empathetic while always protected his vision, something she attributes to his lifelong practice of transcendental meditation after his discovery of it in the late 70s. “David communicated what he saw, and what he saw was another world,” Witt said. 

As a Belcourt member and–as evidenced by The Pamphleteer’s  interview with her last year–a vocal proponent of Nashville, Witt has long served as an example of how a mass medium like the movies can still foster intense local connections. Such is especially true when a city’s moviegoers celebrate a director with a cult as fervent as Lynch’s. 

Though she is still mourning her friend and collaborator, Witt sees this outpouring of love for the director and his oeuvre as the primary way to work through the loss. “What’s been so wonderful is discovering the impact David had on people all over the world.”