My relationship with David Lynch began as a ten-year-old boy wandering the aisles of a video store. While browsing the shelves for monster movies, a DVD box caught my eye and reeled me in: a cloaked figure with a stitched bag on his head. The title read "The Elephant Man." Never have I been so captivated by a singular title. Years later I learned the title alone was enough for Lynch to agree to direct the film, for he too was engrossed by its mystery.
My love for Universal monsters probably steered me to it, and the PG rating helped me actually get it. Upon watching the film on a sunny afternoon, it was the first time I truly felt such a strong and painful connection to a piece of art. To this day I can remember my eyes welling up and feeling extreme empathy for its central character, Joseph Merrick. The industrial black and white backdrops were burned into my mind, frame by frame, forever. I fully started to grasp what cinema could be, and nothing felt like it could be the same again.
It wasn't until five years later, at 16, that I began to hear the same film referenced repeatedly by the punk rock and industrial musicians I looked up to: "Eraserhead." Eventually, I obtained a copy and was surprised to find it was directed by the same man. Again, I was shown a world and a work of art that altered my life forever.
If "The Elephant Man" had made me feel such impactful empathy, "Eraserhead" made me feel at home in a way that I still chase today. It felt beamed down from another dimension or bubbled up from a primordial subconsciousness. Its existence proudly defied all logical sense. I watched the film daily, trying to recapture that feeling of being home. I could not believe that a vision so bold, so spiritual, and so human could weave into my soul such complicated emotions–somehow making me feel warm despite its cold visions of the human condition. So singular and handmade, the film itself was on a quest to find beauty and wonder between the spaces of our nightmares. A quest Lynch lived every moment in art and life.
An obsession grew to capture the wonder that had washed over me since my first viewing of "Eraserhead," and although I explored every corner of cinema I could find, nothing came close. I knew then the only way to recapture that high was to make my own films. Reading about the film, I was enamored with the filmmaking process. As a student at the American Film Institute, Lynch and his friends made the film while living in abandoned horse stables on campus.
Lynch taught me that art should be a labor of love so true to self that when you emerge, you gain a deeper understanding of not only yourself but others.
Lynch's work and process taught radical empathy. He worked with a continuous team of friends and collaborators throughout his career (Jack Nance, Kyle MacLachlan, Angelo Badalamenti, Catherine E. Coulson), demonstrating his curiosity to understand not only himself but the people around him. Lynch never left anybody behind because he knew reaching this elevated world was a team effort.
Though his family and friends doubted his vision, he had a sense of purpose known to him before anyone else could see it. This was why Lynch became so beloved. He became the prophet for dreamers. He did the impossible and brought the images and sounds in his head to life with utmost love and care. What Lynch did was develop a blueprint for every dreamer filmmaker paying attention to follow, building them a forever home.
Through Lynch's cinema, I finally understood how to express myself in a medium that celebrated my thoughts and visions. He lent me a voice in a field where I felt heard. His championing of musicians influences my casting choices. His escapist fantasies remain the central inspiration for all my work.
The morning of Lynch's death, I understood that without this man's creative expression, my life would be completely different. Every major relationship in my life traces back to the path Lynch carved when making his first feature. Almost every moment of love, joy, filmmaking, and artistic achievement I've shared with myself and others exists because David Lynch made "Eraserhead" and opened my eyes to another path, a unique method. My favorite film of all time.
To the world, Lynch is many things: master of the surreal, television auteur, painter, craftsman, father, possibly the greatest American artist who ever lived. To me, Lynch remains forever the strange outsider in the horse stables with his friends, far from other filmmakers, beating his own drum and crafting a world so vibrantly imaginative it shows young artists, now and forever, how to do the same.
A trillion thank yous can never be enough.
Case Esparros is a Los Angeles-based film director and artist. His films include "King Baby" (2019) and "The Absence of Milk in the Mouths of the Lost" (2023). His third feature, "To Euthanize a Still Fluttering Spirit," is currently in pre-production.