The actor David Lynch called “one of the best storytellers I’ve ever met”
It’s rare for someone with such a unique and polarising style as David Lynch to earn significant success in a wildly cutthroat industry, yet the filmmaker has become one of cinema’s most recognisable names ever since he released his first film, Eraserhead. Known for his preoccupation with surrealism and his unconventional approach to narrative structure, doppelgangers, mysterious female characters and his deconstruction of the American Dream, Lynch’s movies occupy a specific, highly coveted place in film history.
With a dedicated cult following and simultaneous critical respect, Lynch has mastered the art of continuously earning success and praise to fund his weird and wonderful projects, which just get stranger with every release. His most recent feature film, Inland Empire, is Lynch at his most Lynchian, with Laura Dern giving an astounding performance as an actor descending into madness. It’s the kind of experimental film that could only come after achieving such acclaim with Mulholland Drive five years prior, giving him the space to put box office expectations completely out the window.
He followed Inland Empire with Twin Peaks: The Return, bringing back beloved characters from the original series, many of whom have worked with Lynch on numerous projects. For example, Kyle MacLachlan, best known for playing Agent Cooper in all of the Twin Peaks seasons and the prequel film, Fire Walk With Me, has also starred in Dune and Blue Velvet, while Harry Dean Stanton has starred in seven projects by Lynch, including Wild At Heart and Lost Highway,
Another actor who collaborated with Lynch seven times is Jack Nance, who stars as the main character, Henry, in Eraserhead, which helped to put Lynch on the map. Apart from The Elephant Man, Nance appeared in every project Lynch made until the actor died in 1996. He managed to strike up a strong rapport with the filmmaker, becoming a friend rather than an actor that the director was simply fond of. His last movie with Lynch was Lost Highway, although clips of his Twin Peaks character, Pete, appeared in The Return in 2017.
Lynch spoke highly of Nance, telling Film Threat, “The guy is incredible, he is one of the best storytellers I’ve ever met.” He added, “He’s got an unreal sense of humor, great timing. He’s interested in very strange things and holds in his head tremendous knowledge. He’s capable of great things.”
The filmmaker clearly found that his way of working meshed well with Nance’s approach to acting, believing him to be the perfect fit for his movies. He had an incredible ability to deliver lines with such comedic effect, as shown in Twin Peaks, where one of the pilot episode’s funniest moments comes when Pete declares, “There was a fish in the percolator!”
“He’s one of a kind, but everybody is one of a kind. But Jack, I would underline that,” Lynch added. Still, he had his criticisms, describing him as “not motivated, that really is one of his only flaws. He has no motivation.” However, he continued, “I always said, if you want Jack for something, you have to go over to his house and get him spruced up and take him to where you’re working, because he sometimes doesn’t get there on his own. But when you get him, he delivers the goods.”