Jennifer Lynch on David Lynch’s Art and Life: “He Loved Being Alive”

The Blue Rose is the second notable fanzine dedicated to documenting and celebrating the world of David Lynch. The first, Wrapped in Plastic, ran from 1992 to 2005. And now, capping off an 18-issue run that began in 2017, The Blue Rose is publishing its final issue. Here, in an exclusive excerpt, Scott Ryan, the magazine’s managing editor and the author of Always Music in the Air: The Sounds of Twin Peaks and Moonlighting: An Oral History, has a heartfelt and revealing chat about the delayed Twin Peaks cocreator with his eldest child, Jennifer Lynch.

Most Twin Peaks fans have known of Jennifer Lynch as long as they have known about her father. Some believe that David Lynch’s first film, Eraserhead, was inspired by his fear of becoming a parent when Jennifer was conceived and born. After Twin Peaks dominated pop culture in the spring of 1990, The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, written by Jennifer, became a New York Times bestseller. She was one of three people who knew who killed Laura Palmer, putting her in a very exclusive trio with Mark Frost and her father. She was the first writer who brought Laura Palmer to life. The character she created was expanded by Bob Engels and David Lynch in 1992’s Fire Walk With Me.

Jennifer, who occasionally was credited with “Chambers” in her name, directed Sherilyn Fenn in 1993’s Boxing Helena, a film that caused a whirlwind of a legal battle about what actually constitutes a deal in Hollywood. It was one of those behind-the-camera dramas that sank her directorial debut before anyone had even seen a single frame of her film. After that, she directed Surveillance, Chained, and several shorts. Eventually, she became a television director, working on shows such as Psych, The Walking Dead, American Horror Story, and many others. But all these things are just facts. To me, she is a pretty, kind, spiritual, positive human being who was created by two painters and raised in an environment where dreams, color, positivity, laughter, family, and love were her oxygen. Despite being engulfed in grief, overwhelmed with work, and busy tackling the immediate issues of protecting her dad’s lifelong pursuit of creating works of art, she made time to speak with me one early morning in February, before spending the rest of the day in an editing bay.

Scott Ryan: I was thinking about how when someone loses a parent, they think the world should stop. But you’re going through losing a parent, and the world actually did stop. Were you surprised with the outpouring of love from every corner of the world?

Jennifer Lynch: I wouldn’t say surprised as much as just thrilled and grateful. I hope wherever he is he knows there was more about world peace, meditation, art, creativity, and catching ideas on Monday, January 20, than there was about [Donald] Trump’s inauguration. [David Lynch died on January 16, and January 20 would have been his 79th birthday.]

Which was glorious for all of us.

It was glorious. I was like, You did it, Dad. You turned what could’ve been a really dim day into something where people were talking about how much they loved art and your work. It was also Martin Luther King Day, and I credit him with making that day about something good. Isabella Rossellini and I were talking recently, and she said, “It may come up for you sometime, Jennifer, that you have to say, ‘I know you all loved him, but he was my dad.’” She had to deal with that when her father [the Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini] died. There was such an outpouring of love for him. She found herself a little ways down the road having to say, “I know that everybody else is missing him and his work, but I have to mourn my father.” I haven’t reached that point yet. I am amazed how this process of realizing he’s gone is taking a while because I’ve been so busy. I still wake up in the morning and can’t believe he’s not here. All I’ve ever known of the world is my father in it.

Of course. That is such a demanding thing for a child to face.

Everybody that I know keeps dreaming about him. My mother just texted me this morning, saying she dreamt about him. I haven’t dreamt about him yet, but I feel him when I’m at work, doing good stuff. And I think he may have taken a great deal of my depression away when he left.

That’s pretty. What’s it like to follow in a parent’s occupational footsteps? Especially someone who will make the list of the greatest directors of all time?