RIP David Lynch

David Lynch, who only last year announced that many years of smoking had left him with emphysema so serious he could no longer leave the house, has died.

As a lifelong movie fan, I have had something of a love-hate relationship with the work of David Lynch. When I was studying film in college, and had grandiose aspirations of becoming a film auteur myself, I was a big fan. In retrospect, that wasn't based on much: at that point, he had only two features to his name, Eraserhead and The Elephant Man. But for a teenaged film buff with an interest in the avant-garde, Eraserhead was a masterpiece, a singular vision like nothing else. And The Elephant Man was brilliantly atmospheric, adapting the grim and unsettling tone of the earlier film and packaging it into something that was almost, but not quite, mainstream.

My artistic friends and I were disappointed when we heard that Lynch had been offered, but had declined, the opportunity to direct Return of the Jedi. We thought (and I still believe today) it probably would have been a better film had he done it. Instead he directed Dune, and I remember going to a theater in Columbia, S.C. with my friend Raymond to see it when it opened. We had both read the book and were both fans of Lynch, so we expected greatness. I don't actually remember what I thought of the film at the time, but I probably defended it at least halfheartedly.

Later came Blue Velvet, which put Kyle MacLachlan to better use, and then Twin Peaks, which was a phenomenon you had to be there to understand. Nothing remotely like it had ever been on TV before. It was appointment TV for me; when our VCR died, I immediately went out and bought a new one -- despite being an impoverished grad student -- because I had to record Twin Peaks. After each episode I went online, reading endless discussions on alt.tv.twin-peaks that dissected every shot and every cryptic line of each episode looking for clues as to who killed Laura Palmer.

But Lynch disappointed me. He lost interest in Twin Peaks and stepped away, and the decline in the show's quality was immediately apparent. It was a show that lost its way and meandered, and in retrospect, I wished it had ended when the Laura Palmer mystery was solved. (Or, better yet, that it had ended without ever solving the mystery, which was Lynch's original plan.) Ultimately the show ended on a cruel cliffhanger, with a mess of unresolved plot threads and the show's hero possessed by a demonic being. The feature film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me didn't make things any better; instead of continuing and resolving the story, the film was a prequel that just compounded the frustration.

The disappointment of Twin Peaks stuck with me, and I was so annoyed with Lynch that I pretty much stopped following his work. To be honest, I'm not sure I've seen any of his later feature films, except one: The Straight Story, which is as un-Lynchlike a film as you could imagine. Rated G, it's a beautiful and heartwarming story, full of likable characters, kindness, and nobody being murdered. It made me wonder what else Lynch might be capable of if he had such range.

After many years, I was excited when I heard that David Lynch was going to return to Twin Peaks. Eighteen new episodes, all of them written and directed by Lynch himself. I was hopeful that we would finally get to see Agent Dale Cooper rescued from limbo, all of the questions answered, and everything wrapped up.

But of course that's not how Lynch operated. The new Twin Peaks series was maddening and brilliant in equal measure. Once again, it was a TV show the likes of which had never been seen before, particularly the legendary Episode 8, which opens with an extended sequence that is as experimental and bizarre as anything in Eraserhead, and maybe more so. As I had been in the '90s, I was riveted by every episode ... and once again, the last episode was like a slap in the face. This time it seemed quite deliberate: Lynch went out of his way to resolve nothing, to answer no unanswered questions, and to give nobody (especially the viewer) what they wanted.

And yet I rewatched the series a couple of years later. And I'm sure I'll watch it again someday. Like so much of Lynch's work, you might not like what you're seeing, but you can't look away.

Lynch made a memorable and delightful cameo appearance in Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans, playing director John Ford. I didn't realize when I saw it that it was the last I'd see of Lynch. Despite how much he sometimes frustrated me, I am sorry that we don't get to see what David Lynch might have done next. It might have been brilliant, it might have been confusing, or (like The Straight Story) it might have been surprisingly beautiful. No matter what, it certainly would have been interesting.