The biggest decision of David Lynch’s career: “It was just a euphoria”
As one of the most distinctive voices in cinema, David Lynch becoming a studio hand-for-hire that would happily take on pre-existing properties was never going to be a match made in heaven, but his brief flirtation with the blockbuster arena may have served as the catalyst for his creative rejuvenation.
Famously, the mastermind behind Eraserhead was offered the opportunity to direct Return of the Jedi by Star Wars figurehead George Lucas, only for him to say he had “zero interest” in heading off to a galaxy far, far away. He also asked the question as to why Lucas didn’t just direct it himself, with David Cronenberg, another name contacted before Richard Marquand ultimately closed out the original trilogy.
It didn’t take long for another big-budget sci-fi to come his way, though, with Dino De Laurentiis signing Lynch to a three-picture contract as part of his deal to direct Dune. Things didn’t quite go to plan, with the filmmaker eventually distancing himself from it altogether after it ended up as a critical bust and commercial failure, leaving his prospects stuck between a rock and a hard place.
More than half a decade on from his last successful feature The Elephant Man, Lynch was at a crossroads. He still had two films left on his contract with De Laurentiis – one of which was intended to be a Dune sequel – and very few viable options on the table. Burned by painting on a bigger canvas, Lynch opted to craft a smaller and more personal project under the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group banner, which turned out to be Blue Velvet.
Striking an agreement with the producer, Lynch was afforded the final cut and complete creative and artistic freedom in exchange for sacrificing his usual salary and operating under budgetary restrictions that made it the least expensive production on the company’s slate. As he explained in his book Lynch on Lynch: “After Dune, I was down so far that anything was up! So it was just a euphoria. And when you work with that kind of feeling, you can take chances. You can experiment.”
That’s precisely what he did, with the psychosexual mystery thriller tending to split opinion amongst both critics and audiences but proving popular enough with the right people that it secured Lynch an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Director’ and turned a tidy profit at the box office relative to its inexpensive budget.
His next three projects were Wild at Heart, surrealist small-screen classic Twin Peaks, and its feature-length prequel Fire Walk with Me, which are about as Lynchian as it gets. In the end, rejecting one massive sci-fi in favour of reaching a new professional low point on another turned out to be a blessing in disguise for the reinvigorated and rejuvenated Lynch.
If he hadn’t knocked back Return of the Jedi, then it’s entirely likely that somebody else would have taken the reins on Dune, given that it released the following year, which means his contract with Di Laurentiis would serve as the gateway to Blue Velvet emerging as the unfiltered result of his creative vision might never have happened at all. Essentially, it may have been the best decision he ever made.
