Golden sunshine all along the way: David Lynch, weather man
In the late 2000s and again during the pandemic era, David Lynch posted daily weather reports from his home in Los Angeles, offering blue skies, golden sunshine, and a glimpse of the light behind his famously dark imagination.
“David Lynch Passes Away: Famous For Films and Weather Reports”
So read the headline for David Lynch’s obituary on Accuweather.com. It seems an absurd way to sum up the life of one of the most influential, distinctive artists of the last half century. Yet if you were among the many who watched them every day, you knew those weather reports deserved the prominence.
They began in 2005, in the form of a daily phone call to a Los Angeles based radio show. Soon after, Lynch made them a recurring feature on his website. In those daily videos, posted early in the morning, he would sit in his LA studio and describe the weather outside his window (a window viewers couldn’t see). Though the LA weather is famously warm and sunny for most of the year, it’s not always. Charmingly, he tended to seem a little blue whenever the skies were not.
The first iteration of Lynch’s weather reports was characteristically absurdist. An upside down bucket with a question mark would sit next to him on the desk, and go unmentioned for days (eventually, it’d be the basis of a competition for website members). In one report, Laura Dern sat next to him, again unmentioned. Another was just a close up of an egg. Each clip was a strange, tiny work of art.
They faded out in 2010, but Lynch bought them back as YouTube videos on 11 May 2020, early in the Covid pandemic. Though the world had transformed in terrifying ways, little had changed in the weather reports from when he had sat at that same desk all those years earlier. Initially, they would still come in under a minute. He’d state the date, spin round in his chair and announce what he could see from the window, (“Very still right now…” “Looks to be another beautiful day…”). In later editions, he’d come to mention a song that he’d been “thinking about”. He’d recount the weather expected later on, usually anticipating “blue skies and golden sunshine all along the way”. Finally, he’d sign off with a salute, and “everyone, have a great day!”
As those frightening, boring months progressed, the reports would trend longer. “Today, I just feel like sitting here with you for a while, if that’s okay?” he said, after delivering the weather on 18 October. He spent the next minute staring at the camera from behind his sunglasses. On 7 November, he changed to a position where you could actually see a slip of the sky behind him. He’d stay there for the next two years.
The Covid-era weather reports were diametrically opposed to the typical view of Lynch’s work. They were gentle. They followed a routine. Though they were, by their very nature, absurd, they weren’t unsettling. During a time of great turmoil, they offered warmth and comfort.
But there’d always been that brighter side to Lynch. It wasn’t the darkness that made Twin Peaks (1990 to 1991) so beloved, but the way it co-existed with the light. He made arguably the bleakest, most horrifying movie of his career with Lost Highway (1997), and followed it straight up with The Straight Story (1999), the uplifting tale of an old man who crossed America on his ride-on lawnmower to make amends with his ailing, estranged brother. The sunshine had always been there, peeking right between the storms.
As he’d come to do at the end of every week, Lynch opened the report on 16 December 2022, with “If youuuu can believe it, it’s Friday once again”, shaking the camera wildly and elongating the “you” to a comic eternity. His close friend Angelo Badalamenti had died that Monday, and the song he was thinking of was one they’d composed together, ‘The World Spins’. This time, it was going to be “partly cloudy, all along the way”. As usual, he signed off by wishing us all a great day.
And that was it. Just as the reports had started without warning, they suddenly stopped (in an April 2023 interview, Lynch’s understandable desire to sleep in longer was revealed as the main reason). In August 2024, he revealed he had such severe emphysema, he was no longer able to leave the house. His health worsened further when he was evacuated during the LA wildfires the following January. On the 16th, he died.
The film world mourned a game-changing titan. And those who’d watched his reports over the years mourned a damn fine weatherman.
David Lynch: The Dreamer plays at BFI Southbank in January.