David Lynch's time living in Philadelphia in the 1960s is remembered as a turning point in his life
Family and friends reflect on the city's influence on the late filmmaker, who attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
When art curator Rob Cozzolino set out to create a Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts show on former student David Lynch in 2014, he said the school was afraid the legendary filmmaker wouldn't respond. But Lynch sent a letter back, saying the only reason he answered was because it came from PAFA and that his time in Philadelphia represented a turning point in his life. Â
"The seriousness with which the faculty and the other students were doing their craft ... really made him realize that, 'Yeah, that's what I want to do,'" Cozzolino said. "It was an environment that was very open and free to experimentation."
MORE:Â David Lynch, the filmmaker who found inspiration in Philly while attending art school, dies at 78
Lynch, who died last week at the age of 78, only lived in Philadelphia for a few years in the late 1960s. But it was a period that impacted his work for the rest of his life, be it the constant presence of industrialism based on local factories or his ability to create an uncanny eeriness inspired by the rough nature of the neighborhoods he lived.Â
"I always say, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is my biggest influence," Lynch said at PAFA in 2014. "There is something about the mood here. The fear, insanity, corruption, filth, despair, violence in the air was so beautiful to me."
The city appears in his work in obvious ways â like the setting of "Eraserhead" or the hometown of one his characters in "Twin Peaks" â but his connections to the city also come up in more subtle references that are spawned from feelings he had while walking around Callowhill and Fairmount.Â
"A lot of it is in textures, it's in the soundscapes, especially when his characters are walking somewhere, and there's some kind of inexplicable, industrial noise ... they're really callbacks to his time in Philadelphia," Cozzolino said.Â
The early days
Lynch moved to Philly in 1965 and enrolled as a student at PAFA. He was only in the city for a short time before leaving in 1970 to study at the American Film Institute and begin making his surrealist horror film "Eraserhead," but those years were some of the most pivotal of his life. He met and married his first wife, Peggy Reavey, had his first child, Jennifer, and discovered a desire to make films.Â
Bruce Samuelson, an artist and professor at PAFA, said he first met Lynch while they were part of a group of students studying under Hobson Pittman, who encouraged personal vision and experimentation. Samuelson said most students were "hippie-oriented" and fashion often included paint splatters, but Lynch dressed like a gentleman in a starched white shirt, dark sport coat, khaki pants and tie.Â
He was "preppy before there was even the word preppy," said Samuelson, recalling a time when Lynch even wore two ties at once. Â
While at PAFA, Lynch famously was working on a painting and wondered what it would be like to make it move. He then bought a camera and produced his first short in 1967, "Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times)," a mix of his paintings and sculptures showed in stop-motion animation and siren sounds.Â
He screened the movie at the school to a warm response, Samuelson said, but he dropped out of PAFA later that year.Â
"We all, I guess, learned as much or more from each other that were in that group than we did anybody else," Samuelson said. "That might have influenced David leaving the school because he probably figured maybe he didn't need it."
In 1965, he met Reavey, a fellow PAFA student who grew up in Chestnut Hill. They got married, had their daughter in 1968 and bought at house at 2416 Poplar St. When they moved in, Reavey said the kitchen was completely empty, save for plastic flower curtains on the windows, a green stove laying on its side on the floor and a sink hanging on one wall. Their life had a "Robinson Crusoe" feeling of being on a deserted island as they fixed up the home, she said, set to the soundtrack of the Beatles "White Album," which they played on repeat.
Provided image/Peggy Reavey
A drawing of David Lynch by his first wife, Peggy Reavey, that was completed around 1970. The pair lived in Philadelphia when they were first married in the late 1960s.
After leaving PAFA, Lynch worked for fellow alumni Christine and Rodger LaPelle, making as many paintings as he could for $100 a week before doing prints of the LaPelle's work. The only reason so much is known about Lynch's work in the late 1960s is because of the LaPelles' efforts to preserve it, Cozzolino said. Â
Lynch's time in Fairmount inspired some of the horrors that would show up later in his films â their house was broken into several times and a man was shot at the foot of their steps, Reavey said. But the job with the LaPelles was important to teach Lynch to be disciplined and detail-oriented, skills he'd use later in life as a director, Reavey said.Â
"There were periods of time where we [thought] he was never going to sell a painting," she said. "He liked his job, but he didn't want it to be the only thing he ever did. I admit, that was really hard, and if that had been the way it was it would have been sad."
Philly in his work
Lynch has said "Eraserhead" was pulled from his time in the city, and it's not hard to spot the connections. Main character Henry Spencer said he works as a printer at LaPelle's factory, and the script explores the idea of parenthood soon after Lynch and Reavey had their first and only child together.Â
"Eraserhead" and other early short films such as "The Alphabet" (1968) and "The Grandmother" (1970) are really an extension of Lynch's paintings and art, Cozzolino said. He often made pieces for the sets of his movies, including the sculpture that was used as the baby in "Eraserhead," and might be why fellow director Steven Spielberg said Lynch's films felt "handmade."Â
"Making art â whether it's 2D stuff, printmaking or sculptures, lamps â that was his first love, and he never stopped doing it," Cozzolino said. "He never put it aside or picked the filmmaking path as opposed to the art path. It was a through line throughout his entire life, and I think you can't really understand the films fully, or you're missing facets of it, unless you understand his practice as a painter."Â
Those paintings have the same themes of darkness as his movies, with influences from disasters and war and references to Francis Bacon and Francisco Goya, Samuelson said.
"They're beautiful, but they're not pretty ... and he loved looking at deteriorating buildings and factories, pollution, that all seemed to inspire him," he said.Â
Two of Lynch's homes in Philadelphia, at 2429 Aspen St. and on Poplar, were used in his early works. Reavey said there was something "magical" about those days, scraping together a project and learning how to work the camera and move from painting to film.Â
While Lynch often spoke about being fearful of Philadelphia, Reavey said he also loved that period and spoke about it passionately. Â
"He really became very sentimental about Philadelphia â he loved it," Reavey said. "Yeah, there was imagery he used from some of the very industrial parts of Philadelphia. But he recognized he was tapping into the darkness in his work and in himself. He grew up, like people do. He wasn't saying it was Philadelphia's fault."Â
Lynch's legacy
After moving to California, Lynch later went on to make a number of well-known movies, including "The Elephant Man" (1980), "Blue Velvet" (1986), "Mulholland Dr." (2001), and early 1990s TV series "Twin Peaks."
"Yes, [Philadelphia is] horrible, but in a very interesting way," Lynch said in an interview with "The Face" in 1987. There were places there that had been allowed to decay, where there was so much fear and crime that just for a moment there was an opening to another world. It was fear, but it was so strong, and so magical, like a magnet."Â
Reavey and Lynch divorced in 1974, although they remained friends throughout their lives. As a filmmaker and artist, Lynch just "imagined things that other people didn't," Reavey said. She felt he combined a curiousness about the world with a total absence of phoniness.Â
"He was not trying to fit into something," Reavey said. "His goal was to make something, make what he was imagining."Â
For Cozzolino, Lynch's work is a lesson in slowing down and really being attentive and mindful to the details. Despite the strange and horrific things that take place in Lynch's movies, Cozzolino feels they also showcase how people interact to their ever-changing environment â perhaps something Lynch observed in Philadelphia in the 1960s.Â
"He has a great empathy toward the people or characters in his films, their backstories, their motives," Cozzolino said. "At heart, I think he's really somebody who cared about human nature, wanted to explore it and, in a way, show us the joyous and the terrible aspects of ourselves so we might learn something from them."
