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David Lynch died in January having never won an Academy Award. Don’t ask me to explain or rationalize it, because I can’t. The legendary director, writer and artist was nominated four times and won a grand total of zero competitive Oscars. The Academy Awards are not the final arbiters of taste, artistry or even cultural impact. They are merely a window into what a very particular group of people deems worth remembering. The true power of the Oscars is as a televised time capsule — of the fashion of the time, the social mores and the evolution of an artist’s personal style. For David Lynch, the Academy Awards were never nights for triumph, but they gave us a chance to see one of cinema’s greatest personas reinvent and refine himself through multiple decades.
Lynch was given an honorary Oscar in 2019, presumably due to the massive guilt the Academy felt at its decades-long oversight. But he didn’t make movies for awards, for recognition or for a fleeting moment in the spotlight. I honestly don’t know why he made films other than he was compelled to do so. Which is the best possible reason.
His mastery of the art form of cinema — the dark suburban fantasies of “Blue Velvet” and “Twin Peaks,” the Hollywood nightmares of “Mulholland Drive,” “Lost Highway” and “Inland Empire” — meant that even if he rarely courted awards praise, Lynch would occasionally find himself a critical darling at Oscar season. And Oscar season demands a tuxedo. Lynch might have always looked great in a tuxedo, his massive swoop of hair and halo of cigarette smoke framing his visage like an old-timey leading man, but it was not an outfit he seemed at home in.
Sartorially, Lynch was a simple man. A black blazer, a white shirt buttoned to the top, and some manner of ill-fitting pants. These pants were usually khakis speckled with paint and cigarette ash. In a New York Times piece published shortly after his death, it was asserted that Lynch wore the same pants every single day. And the same shirt. And the same blazer. Perhaps it was because he was constantly in search of pants that fit, and he’d finally found them. In 2021, Lynch told GQ, “I like comfortable pants and clothes I can work in, that I feel comfortable in. I don’t really like to get dressed up. I like to wear the same thing every day and feel comfortable. It’s a fit. It’s a certain kind of feeling, and if they’re not right, which they never are, it’s a sadness. You know, it interrupts the flow of happiness. I’m working on it, believe me.”
Lynch was always working — on paintings, sculptures, films, YouTube videos, etc. — so his daily uniform had to stand up to that level of occupational rigor. A tuxedo does not. It’s for the moment, usually a fleeting one where you may or may not consume enough substances to eventually forget said moment. A tux is party armor. The only work you will do in a tux is pretending to laugh at a fellow partygoer’s bad jokes. I have faked more smiles in a tuxedo than Daniel Craig’s entire run as James Bond. So, what does a real-deal capital-A artist wear to an event like the Oscars that is only sporadically about art (and more frequently about commerce)?
In 1980, Lynch was nominated for directing and co-writing “The Elephant Man,” a black-and-white period drama about the life and struggles of Joseph “John” Merrick, a deformed man who struggles to be accepted in 19th century London. Lynch’s tuxedo is understated, his bow tie nothing to remember. The tux is black, which isn’t far from the standard Lynch uniform. What he wears that is noticeable is the heavy frown on his face. This night was his first taste of worldwide acclaim, but it was also only his second feature film. It’s as if he’s chewing the inside of his cheek to stop himself from running for the fire exit. After the Oscar broadcast cuts away from Lynch during the reading of the nominees, it switches its focus to Robert Redford. Redford, the consummate movie star and director of “Ordinary People,” looks positively placid in comparison. Redford either knew he was going to win (he did) or, after having lost seven years earlier for his performance in “The Sting,” he simply didn’t care.
Lynch seemed to have found some measure of his trademark transcendental calmness by 1987, when he attended his second Oscars for “Blue Velvet.” This time, he arrived as a fully formed persona, or what we modern folk annoyingly call a “brand” (which I am sure he would have hated). He’d been dating Isabella Rossellini, who starred in “Blue Velvet” (and is nominated for her first Oscar this year for her performance in “Conclave”). The model, actress and daughter of Golden Age star Ingrid Bergman wore a blue velvet dress as a nod to the film, and Lynch wore a significantly more modern tuxedo with the oddest, most minimalist bolo tie I’ve ever seen. It’s a look that’s postmodern and off-kilter in a distinctly subtle way. The bolo makes Lynch look a bit like “Blue Velvet’s” demented antagonist, Frank Booth, a rockabilly nightmare played by Dennis Hopper. There’s a sleekness to it that even the most understated high-fashion menswear looks on the red carpet fail to achieve. Maybe that’s due to the over-reliance on jewelry and other accouterments during awards season.
“Mulholland Drive” would mark Lynch’s final visit to the main Academy Awards broadcast, in 2002. Lynch’s double-breasted jacket and necktie almost don’t look like formalwear. Ditching the bow tie in favor of something more casual is fitting for an artist who was no longer at the highest levels of pop culture validation. This was not “Blue Velvet” Lynch, who was dating Hollywood royalty and standing at the cutting edge of cool. “Twin Peaks” conquered the world, and then was violently rejected by that same world for a variety of sins both real and imagined. “Mulholland Drive” might be Lynch’s finest feature film, but it is arguably his most sour meditation on the effects of the mainstream entertainment industry on the human psyche.
As we posthumously canonize David Lynch, it might be tempting to assume he came out of the womb the supremely confident, eccentric auteur the world became enthralled by in the 1980s and ’90s. But no one can brag that they figured out their sense of self right away. If they do, they’re lying. We all, from day one to the final one, yearn to be accepted somehow, some way. The Oscars are the grandest stage of that unbridled yearning. That’s why the most memorable acceptance speech in Oscars history is Sally Field screaming, “You like me, you really like me!” That’s the artist’s true burden, the feeling that we cannot shake: “What if no one cares?” An Oscar means they do. Even if for just a moment.
Through the years, David Lynch stopped caring quite so much about all that. Famously, he’s the man who asked his crew, “Who cares how long a scene is?” To let go of that need — for the love of strangers, the adoration of the industry and the little trophies that represent it all — is to be truly free.
