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Legendary filmmaker and artist David Lynch died Thursday at the age of 78. “There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us,” the director’s family wrote online. “But, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole. It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.’”
The iconic director behind classics like Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Mullholland Drive, and Twin Peaks — one of the best TV shows of all time — Lynch also directed music videos for the likes of Nine Inch Nails and Moby, wrote his own music, and published several books throughout his life, including the memoir-biography Room to Dream.
“What you’re reading here is basically a person having a conversation with his own biography,” as the book’s introduction explains it. Released in 2018, Room to Dream was written as both a biography and a memoir, co-authored by Kristine McKenna alongside Lynch. The book includes snippets compiled from over 100 interviews with everyone from family to collaborators throughout the visionary’s life.
‘Room to Dream’ by David Lynch and Kristine McKenna
Room to Dream is available in paperback, hardcover, and on Kindle on Amazon. Lynch and McKenna also narrate the Room to Dream audiobook, which fans of the director can listen to on Audible. Plans start at $0.99/three months.
According to the book’s synopsis, Room to Dream “offers a onetime all-access pass into the life and mind of one of our most enigmatic and utterly original living artists,” diving deeper into both Lynch’s movies and pivotal moments throughout his life, like hearing rock music during his childhood.
“I remember discovering rock ’n’ roll when I was a kid, too,” Lynch wrote in Room to Dream. “Rock ’n’ roll makes you dream and gives you a feeling, and it was so powerful when I first heard it. Music has changed since the birth of rock ’n’ roll, but the difference isn’t anywhere near as great as it was when rock ’n’ roll came in, because what had preceded it was so different. It’s like it came out of nowhere. They were doing rhythm and blues but we weren’t hearing it, and we weren’t hearing jazz really either, except Brubeck. In 1959 the Dave Brubeck Quartet released “Blue Rondo à la Turk” and I just went crazy. Mr. Smith had the album and I listened to it as the Smiths’ house and fell in love with it.”
Elsewhere in the chapter, Lynch also recalled watching movies growing up during the Fifties in Room to Dream. “I remember seeing Gone With the Wind at an outdoor theater in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, on a giant screen, outside, on a summer evening — that was nice. I don’t remember telling my brother about movies, and I don’t remember when I first saw The Wizard of Oz, but it stuck with me, whenever it was. But I’m not alone. It stuck with a lot of people.”
In addition to the book, fans of Lynch’s work can also buy several of the director’s films and TV shows on DVD and Blu-ray online, including the complete Twin Peaks collection.
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‘Twin Peaks’ Blu-Ray Box Set
‘The Television Collection’
One of Rolling Stone‘s best TV shows of all time, Lynch’s Twin Peaks is now available on DVD and Blu-ray. “The original run of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s mashup of gothic murder mystery, soap-opera melodrama, and supernatural horror was the weirdest goddamn thing most viewers had ever seen in the formulaic old days of everyone having only three or four TV channels,” Rolling Stone wrote of the show.
Pick up a copy of Room to Dream in paperback or hardcover, now available on Amazon.