David Lynch was born January 20, 1946 in Missoula,Montana. This fact by itself is not surprising. The fact that this small Montana town is the birthplace of film's darkest imagination is. Films such as
Eraserhead,
Wild at Heart, and
Lost Highway have propelled Lynch into the stratosphere of directors. Many words have attempted to describe Lynch's work: repulsive,surreal, offbeat, unsettling, hallucinatory, quirky, nauseating, dark...the list could go on forever. You can look at these words but until you have seen one of Lynch's films, you will never understand the true meaning of them.
In 1963, Lynch entered the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. He spent a year there before moving to Boston and attending the Boston Musuem School for a year. His many talents include painting and drawing. In 1966, he entered the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Lynch made two student films while there. The first,
Six Men Getting Sick, is a one minute, animated feature in which six carved heads catch fire and vomit repeatedly. His second film,
The Alphabet, stars his first wife Peggy and is a four minute color/black and white/ animated short film. The film begins with a creature giving birth to letters of the alphabet. Like his first short, this film involves copious amounts of vomiting but this time involving letters of the alphabet. The sound track is of a child singing the alphabet song.
Lynch was awared a grant from the American Film Institue (AFI) for The Alphabet which allowed him to continue his film studies. While at the AFI, he made his next short The Grandmother. Quintessential, David Lynch, this 34 minute film is strange among the strange. The theme of giving birth is again seen in this film which opens with humans growing from the earth. A man and woman are seen planting a seed but it is a "bad" seed. A little boy pops up wearing a suit and tie. He looks to his new parents for some love and sympathy but instead, they get down on all fours and bark at him. And then the film gets really weird. Another birth scene is when the boy grows a grandmother in his bed. The last film made at AFI was a five minute short called The Amputee, made in 1974. The whole film is a woman with no legs seated on a chair. She is writing a letter as a nurse (Lynch) changes the bandages on her stumps. The point of the film? Who knows? Lynch will always leave you guessing.
