'Be Sure You Are Open to the Moose Head on the Table'

Actors and directors are paying tribute to David Lynch, the visionary filmmaker behind Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive, whose death at 78 was announced Thursday. "Like Kafka, like Bacon, he dedicated his life to opening a portal. He was the first to show me another world, a beautiful one of love and danger I sensed but had never seen outside sleep," director Jane Schoenbrun said in a post on X.

• Kyle MacLachlan. "Forty-two years ago, for reasons beyond my comprehension, David Lynch plucked me out of obscurity to star in his first and last big budget movie. He clearly saw something in me that even I didn't recognize. I owe my entire career, and life really, to his vision," MacLachlan, who stared in Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, wrote in an Instagram post. "While the world has lost a remarkable artist, I've lost a dear friend who imagined a future for me and allowed me to travel in worlds I could never have conceived on my own," he wrote.

• Steven Soderbergh. "He's one of those filmmakers who was influential but impossible to imitate. People would try but he had one kind of algorithm that worked for him and you attempted to recreate it at your peril. As non-linear and illogical as they often seemed, they were clearly highly organized in his mind," the director told the AP.
• Francis Ford Coppola. "I am astounded and heartbroken I can't express with any words the profound loss of the great David Lynch my friend," the director said on Instagram.
• Billy Corgan. "Truly saddened to hear of the passing of David Lynch. Working with him was like a dream out of one of his movies, and I treasure the times I got to speak with him and hear first-hand his vision for a film," said the Smashing Pumpkins member. The band contributed to the soundtrack for Lost Highway.

• Naomi Watts. Watts, whose breakthrough role was in Mulholland Drive, said on Instagram: "The world will not be the same without him. His creative mentorship was truly powerful. He put me on the map. The world I'd been trying to break into for ten plus years, flunking auditions left and right. Finally, I sat in front of a curious man, beaming with light, speaking words from another era, making me laugh and feel at ease. How did he even 'see me' when I was so well hidden, and I'd even lost sight of myself?!"
• Lesli Linka Glatter. In a statement, Glatter, president of the Directors Guild of America, praised Lynch as a visionary who inspired many young directors and took a chance on her when she was starting out as a director in the early '90s. "I can't help but think of a story that made me see the world differently. In one of David's early episodes of Twin Peaks, there's a scene in a bank vault with Kyle MacLachlan and Michael Ontkean and there's a moose head lying in the middle of the table. No one ever refers to it; it's just there and it makes the scene," she said, per Variety. "I asked David how he got the idea to put that moose head on the table. He looked at me quizzically and said, 'It was there.' The set dresser was going to hang it on the wall, but David saw it lying on the table and said, 'Leave the moose head.' Something cracked open for me, as much as you plan, be sure you are open to life, be sure you are open to the moose head on the table, don't miss what's right in front of you. His ability to see the magic that exists when others did not, made him one of the greatest storytellers of our time. "
• Nicolas Cage. Lynch "was a singular genius in cinema, one of the greatest artists of this or any time," the Wild at Heart star told Deadline. "He was brave, brilliant, and a maverick with a joyful sense of humor," Cage said. "I never had more fun on a film set than working with David Lynch. He will always be solid gold."

(More David Lynch stories.)