I was listening to the radio, looking out at the clouds and remembering the weather reports that David Lynch used to do each morning on NPR from his house on Mulholland Drive here in Los Angeles. It was at about that moment that I heard the announcement that he had passed away.

I’d been flipping through photos on my phone the day before when I found a shot of a crumpled piece of notepad paper. On it was a small sketch in black ink and pencil with some cryptic notes.

Years ago when I was working on a show on the Paramount Studios lot, I was walking through the mill when I saw a friend who waved me over to his work bench. He pulled a piece of paper from his tool bag and smoothed it out on the table.

I looked at it and squinted. “What is it?”, I asked him.

“It’s a sketch from David Lynch, he wants me to build it for a scene.” He described the conversation that had happened just a few minutes before. Lynch had come down from his office and searched him out, and conspiratorially explained to him what he needed for the scene the next day.

The sketch was of a small wooden storage unit that would fit between the front bucket seats of a van. He had explained to him in careful detail exactly what the unit had to do and the practical parts that were required to work in the scene.

“Where’s the construction drawing?”, I asked him, looking around at the plan bench. “This is it”, he said. When the Transportation Department delivered the van to the lot, he would measure the interior to see what size the box needed to be. Lynch trusted that he understood what it was he wanted and would follow through.

Suddenly everything I had heard about David from his early days at The American Film Institute was making sense. A common frustration for directors, particularly ones who are artists, is to have a last-minute idea and know that the normal steps you have to take through a film company hierarchy don’t always produce results as quickly as you want them to.

Instead of going to the Production Designer with his request, which would then get passed to an Art Director, who would then get a Set Designer to measure the vehicle, model the box for approval and then create a construction drawing, Lynch made a quick sketch and went directly to the guy who he knew would end up building it. Voila. Complex process streamlined.

In 1970, Lynch applied to The American Film Institute Conservatory by submitting a short film he had made and was offered the opportunity to attend as well as the money to make a short film he had planned for some time whose cost to produce was beyond his means.

He received a call from Tony Vellani, the director of the school, who offered him a place at the Conservatory and $7,200 to make the film.

At AFI, Lynch started work on a film called Gardenback, but was so frustrated in the process by what he felt were constant interference’s that he left at the beginning of his second year.

Vellani and others of the school administration felt that he was one of their best students and convinced him to come back by promising that he could finish his film without any more interference. He abandoned Gardenback and started on another film that would become the feature-length film, Eraserhead.

Initially the concept for the film was opposed by several of the AFI administrators who felt that it veered too far from the typical Hollywood narrative film, but they finally relented when the dean, Frank Daniel, threatened to resign if they vetoed it. The story is said to be inspired by Lynches own fear of fatherhood and his experiences living in a crime-ridden neighborhood in Philadelphia while going to college. Shot over a period of nearly four years, the surreal horror film was initially panned by most critics but became a midnight movie cult favorite along with films like The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I knew the film led to his being tapped by Mel Brooks to direct The Elephant Man which was one of my favorites but I didn’t see it until years after Elephant Man had been released. At first I was shocked by how different they were in tone from each other but later I started to appreciate the mind that had imagined it and began to see threads of commonality.

Vellani would often talk about Lynch when I was a Directing Fellow at AFI in the mid 1980s. He once told me that he considered David to be the most naturally gifted filmmaker he had ever met.

I had always heard that David didn’t like to talk about his films too much and brushed aside questions that required him to explain endings or motivations, which made me wonder how he had dealt with the AFI critique sessions.

The typical sequence of film projects at The American Institute Conservatory was that Directing Fellows made three films the first year. On the completion date the film is screened before the entire school for critique.

At the end of the screening, The director, writer and producer were seated at the front of the room with Tony Vellani who gave the director an intense look and asked, “What is the premise?” Your response was supposed to be a three or four word answer in the pattern of, “Blank leads to blank“, as in “Betrayal leads to tragedy”, condensing the dramatic structure of the story into as few words as possible. The film was judged primarily on how successfully you had fulfilled the goal of matching the final film to its premise.

Knowing of Lynch’s reported distaste for being pinned down on story points, I wondered how he maneuvered through this process when his film was critiqued at the school.

Vellani said that he had gone to Mexico and Davids invitation to visit him at the Churubusco Studios in Mexico City while he was shooting Dune. He described how he was trailed by an army of people. Producers, Art Directors, and ADs. He said he looked uncomfortable and distracted by this entourage and it reminded him of the early 70s at AFI when David was there shooting Eraserhead. They had taken over some stables near the Doheny Mansion in Beverly Hills where the conservatory was originally located and turned them into their stage space.

Tony had brought a group of AFI dignitaries and financial supporters to view the students in the process of making their films and he arrived with these guests, unannounced, to watch David shoot a scene. After a few knocks on the ‘stage’ door, it opened slightly and Lynch stuck his head out, surprised to see the group.

Vellani explained the reason for their visit and introduced the visitors. He said David listened politely and then said simply, “Sorry, it’s a closed set”, and shut the door.