David Lynch announces album with 'Twin Peaks' actress: here’s a look back on some of his wildest non-directing projects (2024)

David Lynch has unveiled his next project —and it’s not what you expect.

On Wednesday, the filmmaker behind Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet announced a joint album, Cellophane Memories, with musician Chrystabell, with whom he collaborated on Twin Peaks: The Return. The duo released their first single, “Sublime Eternal Love,” on the same day, complete with a music video helmed by the Eraserhead director. It’s far from the first musical project from the director, however — and he’s actually nearly as prolific in numerous other mediums in addition to his film and television career. Here’s a look back at some of David Lynch’s wildest and most memorable non-directing projects.

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Music

Lynch has forayed into music numerous times prior to his album with Chrystabell. In the early 1990s, he wrote all of the lyrics for the first two albums by Julee Cruise (the music was composed by his frequent collaborator Angelo Badalamenti). He released the album BlueBOB alongside audio engineer John Neff in 2001, co-writing all the songs and contributing guitar, drums, and percussion to the recordings. Lynch was later featured on Danger Mouse’s 2010 album Dark Night of the Soul, and released the solo blues album Crazy Clown Time in 2011, as well as another blues album, The Big Dream, in 2013. He produced and wrote lyrics for Chrystaball’s 2011 album This Train, and his most recent album was Thought Gang, a collaborative project with Badalamenti that was recorded in the early ‘90s.

Painting

Filmmaking actually wasn’t Lynch’s first creative pasttime — he began painting in his youth and pursued it as a career prior to finding his footing in filmmaking. Lynch continued painting as he made films, and his painted works have been the subject of several museum and gallery exhibitions over the years, sometimes combined with his short film and photography work. He’s cited Francis Bacon as one of his artistic heroes.

Furniture and design

After designing select pieces of furniture for the Lost Highway set in 1997, Lynch presented a furniture at the Milan Furniture Fair. "I day-dream of furniture,” the filmmaker once said in an interview contained in Justus Nieland’s book on the director. “I would just get an idea and build something. In art school I started building things based on my own designs. And then things kind of went from there." Lynch also helped design Silencio, a Parisian nightclub inspired by a space in Mulholland Dr. that opened in 2011.

FYC marketing

Lynch launched a one-man campaign for awards season consideration for Laura Dern’s performance in Inland Empire in 2006. The filmmaker was photographed in a much-memed stint where he sat on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and La Brea in Los Angeles next to a giant banner that said “For your consideration Laura Dern” (and, for some reason, a cow).

Weather reports

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Lynch posted a daily weather report on his YouTube channel where he briefly discussed the climate near his home in Los Angeles. The weather reports ran from May 2020 to December 2022, and were later accompanied by a number of the day video in which the director picked a ball with a number between one and 10 out of a jar.

The Cleveland Show

Lynch has only acted in a handful of projects over the course of his career. His most significant turn came in his series Twin Peaks, in which he played Gordon Cole, the eccentric but charming superior of Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) at the FBI. Bizarrely, the filmmaker’s next most notable TV role is on The Cleveland Show, where he’s voiced Gus the Bartender in 20 episodes of the Family Guy spinoff.

Family Guy

Speaking of Seth MacFarlane cartoons, Lynch also voiced himself in an extremely brief cutaway cameo in an episode of Family Guy in a 2016 Christmas episode. In a clip from the fictional “How David Lynch Stole Christmas,” the filmmaker slides down the chimney like Santa Clause and greets a child. “Hello! I got you a present,” he says. “It's a thumb. Don't look away, let the fear wash over you!” He also asks the kid to leave a plate of black coffee for him in the future — and the past.

The Fabelmans

In the final scene of Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical drama The Fabelmans, the protagonist Sammy Fabelman (Gabriel Labelle) meets John Ford, the legendary director behind Stagecoach and The Searchers. To capture the magnitude and surreality of young Spielberg’s real-life encounter with the director, he cast Lynch as Ford. One of Lynch’s main requests for his time on set: a big bag of Cheetos. “Any chance I can, I get them,” he said of the snack. “But I know that they’re not exactly health food. So when I do leave the house and I get a chance to… But I don’t get them that often, honestly.”

Transcendental Meditation

The filmmaker is a vocal advocate of Transcendental Meditation, the spiritual practice founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Lynch’s commitment to the practice, which had previously been explored by the Beatles and other celebrities, led him to found the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace, a charity that funds the teaching of Transcendental Meditation in schools around the world. He discussed Transcendental Meditation’s effects on his life and creativity in his 2006 book Catching the Big Fish.