Who would have known one of the greatest directors to ever own the silver screen and create his own genre of cinema would be from Missoula, Montana? I thought maybe someone of his creative prowess would be from the bowels of Hollywood or the gritty avenues of NYC. But if you watch the classic Blue Velvet of Fire Walk with Me or indulge in binge-watching Twin Peaks, it all makes sense. An artistic beam of light through the commercial corridors of Hollywood, David Lynch has established himself as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. Hands down, end of discussion. To argue that fact on any level is like trying to prove water is not wet. Which is just an argument within an argument.

David’s films push the very boundaries between the real and the surreal. In my opinion, he is the master of the surreal filmmaking category, but wait! Hold up. Let’s not put the horse before the carriage or the Elephant before the man. Elephant Man was the film that actually got him into the limelight. A biopic championed by who else but Mel Brooks? Let’s go to the beginning. This article is already warping the typical timeline much like our dear director, but I think that’s what dear David would have wanted.

I Googled Missoula and came up with this: A: Missoula Montana is famous for its outdoor recreational activities including hiking, fishing, skiing, and rafting. It’s also home to the University of Montana, which is known for its exceptional academic programs and sports teams.

The clip states nothing about film or the movies, so it is probably as far from the tentacles of Hollywood as one could be. But it did say it was the birthplace of David Lynch, a personal hero to myself and others when it comes to the art of Filmmaking, keeping one’s imagination in a cerebral chokehold.

David Lynch was born on January 20, 1940. He died five days before his seventy-ninth birthday, diagnosed with emphysema due to being a lifelong smoker. I often wondered why a genius like himself was not in the lab creating a masterpiece to save us from the Marvel Superhero era. It turns out he could not leave his home to direct any longer.

The last attempt was a reboot of the Twin Peaks series. That was a creative kick to the gut for all his avid Lynchians, which I proudly claim myself to be. He’s more of a mentor, allowing one the creative freedom to think outside the traditional filmmaker’s box, even though he had masted that as well, being nominated for Oscars three times.

The painter-turned-director had crafted his creative skills at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art. My father, also an artist, had attended the same school. Maybe at the same time. My dear pops never really went long into his journey with paint and paper. It was a lost dream that left him bitter. Sacrificed for the woman he loved, my mother.

Lynch left paint for the film. I read his autobiography a few years ago, which explained his transition. He shot a short called The Alphabet, which started the deep dive into his unique storytelling style loved by the masses, thirsting for someone other than Spielberg or Lucas. At the time, most moviegoers loved the blockbuster, but there was a whole segment of popcorn-eating people who craved something else. That very moment came for me during Christmas break from college in the 90’s.

I witnessed the movie Lost Highway, captivated from the beginning until the end. It was a visual drug with inseminated my twenty-something mind, breaking all the rules when it came to moviemaking but creating new neuropathways at the very same time. From that moment in time, I wanted to be a filmmaker to create magic, spectating like a UFO landing in a cornfield in well, Missoula, Montana.

The visions of that movie I watched in my parents’ den on a large-screen TV and stayed tattooed on my brain forever. I would also go on to watch the movie several times, caught in its hypnotic spells. I later found out that; it was actually inspired by the OJ Simpson debacle, taking place during the nineties. I guess it’s fair to say that David Lynch owned a piece of the 90s and ushered in the independent movie class of directors, who unanimously referenced David Lynch as an inspiration.

Lost Highway was the rabbit hole into his film universe. I had slept on one of the greatest men to ever step behind a camera. He worked with some of the greatest actors who embodied the characters created in his magnificent mind.

From the defunct TV show Mulholland Drive, which turned out to be his best and most talked about movies ever, to Blue Velvet, a disturbing romp into the backwoods of North Carolina, to Fire Walk with Me, the prequel (before prequels), to Twin Peaks, which I believe brought his vision to the modern audience.

His last movie was Inland Empire, which was not well received at the box office but made digital filmmaking cool, whereas before Kodak films ruled. Yet technology was ahead of the curve, and Lynch embraced it like a true master of story mediums.

He once said in an interview he would never use film again and had fallen in love with digital. That was the head nod modern filmmakers needed. Before that, it was a film-driven art form painted on 35 mm. If great David could shoot video, we all had hope, and hope is something his films always brought to me. Hope for something new. Hope for something different. He challenged all of us to open up our minds and not be trapped in what Hollywood thinks is cool. Hollywood cool just means you’re making Hollywood producers rich. There is nothing wrong with that, but it just means the audience is shortchanged.

One regret is I never met him, but I feel like I have while watching a movie, a short film, or cracking open a book he had written. Mr. David Lynch is from Missoula, Montana. You will be missed. I hope God lets you bring your camera—a digital one.