• by Barbara Lippert , Columnist, January 18, 2025

 
Image: One of Lynch's ads for Calvin Klein's Obsession fragrance.

The amazing human amalgam David Lynch -- Lifetime-Achievement-Oscar-winning film director, one-of-a kind expressionist, surrealist, psychologist, and creator of the revolutionary TV series “Twin Peaks” -- died last week at age 78.

His family announced his passing on his Facebook page. After saying that his death will leave a hole, they added, with true uniquely Lynchian-American verve, “Don’t remember the hole. Remember the donut.”

I remember the donut, starting way back with cult favorite “Eraserhead,” a filmic nuclear bomb, featuring a character who like him, had an enormous, upright shock of hair.

His genius film career has been assessed in the most elegiac ways.

Less talked about, however, is his ad work: He directed 29 commercials between 1998 and 2014.

Some were the expected, beautiful kind, like for Calvin Klein's Obsession fragrance, to which he brought atmospherics, intelligence and a patina of nostalgic Hollywood glam. He added unexpected intrigue to much of his work with designers and perfumers, but also helmed spots for more humble packaged goods, like Alka-Seltzer.

“I sometimes do commercials to make money,” he said in a 2008 interview, emphasizing the last two words like a cartoon bad guy.  This came during a rant about how product placement in movies is “bullshit,” and “putrifies the environment.” 

And to that I say, like Frank Booth, a psycho in Lynch's “Blue Velvet":” “Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!”

Still Lynch said he learned a lot from doing commercials -- economy of dialogue, to name one.

But in an industry in which clients like to avoid risk, it took a leap of faith to hire him. I spoke with several ad people who had made that leap.

One was David Cohen, an executive producer at Ogilvy New York, who worked with Lynch in 1997 on a Clearblue Easy commercial.  “It was a simple spot: A woman in a bathroom has just done the pregnancy test. She puts the stick down. And for 60 seconds you see what’s going on in her mind,” Cohen explained. So the spot needed some psychological insight and depth.

There’s a visual of a watch dial with the second hand going around as the woman stands in the bathroom, excited but anxious, with the watch dial now reading "Yes/No." Then she picks up the stick and smiles.

“We spoke to a lot of directors who did beauty work,” Cohen said. “They all said to get rid of that clock mnemonic, that it was horrible.

“Finally, we got on the phone with David Lynch, who told us he was on a ladder painting his house.  He said, no don’t get rid of the clock, it’s brilliant. It’s so simple and it tells the whole story.

"Some of the other directors we talked to wanted to build an extravagant bathroom with extra wardrobe, hair and makeup. All for a woman in a bathrobe. Whereas David was the lowest bid. He was the cheapest.

"We shot on a tiny little stage. He was so incredible with the talent.

"You don’t need all the excess in production when you have a smart director who is interested in delivering the story and the message. It was a terrific experience.”

Andrew MacDonald, aka AndyMac, is a creative director/VX supervisor, known for doing high-end visual effects in movies. He worked with Lynch on two commercials, including one for the Nissan Micra that aired in France. 

“It showed a tiny blue car driving in a fantasy city that had a pair of blue lips following it and whispering, 'Micra, it’s coming,'" MacDonald said. “Give him a vision and he will produce his purest piece of work. He didn’t need any whispering from me.” 

MacDonald added a friend told him that “meeting David was the closest he’d been to a unicorn in the wild.”

Lynch's "process was a flow. He just flowed," said MacDonald. "He was constantly thinking, and he talked to you through the movie he could see in his head. He wasn’t directly engaged in small talk, because he was so incredibly focused.

"I learned to speak to him emotionally, like instead of ‘Do you want the green darker?’ and mention a Pantone number, I’d say,  'Do you want the green to feel more like pain and suffering?'

"He spoiled me. I’ve worked with lots of high-end pros, but they were much more craftsmen.  They had a skill: directing. David was a bubble of artistic creation.”

Madison Wharton, now COO of Residence, was an executive producer and head of production at Momentum when she worked with Lynch in March, 2011, on "Unstaged: An Original Series from American Express." It was a Duran Duran concert shot live at the Mayan Theater in L.A., live-streamed on You Tube, a daunting new medium.

 “I was trying to explain that we’d have a range of six to 10 cameras on the band. But he got this idea where he wanted all the cameras on the band, but he also wanted to overlay the live footage with shots like a spatula hitting a hot dog on a grill and an egg beater flopping around, to create more emotion," Wharton said.

"He was creating from scenes in his head, responding to how each track made him feel.... When we shot the other scenes overnight at his house, every six hours, we’d have to shut everything down, and be completely silent, without moving or talking, so he could do his transcendental meditation.

"The shoot the next day was magical. He was wonderful to work with. He embraced this medium and came in with an idea that really challenged us. Directors who want to get a lot of work don’t come with challenging ideas. He was so authentic to what he believed in.”

Ad icon Jerry Della Femina, former chairman of Della Femina, Travisano & Partners, was one of the few not to have a magical reaction to Lynch.

“I didn’t work with him, but my agency did. We were doing a public service commercial for keeping New York City clean. [Lynch] was one of the few people who worked with us who hated us. He didn’t like the way it came out -- the way it was edited.

“The concept was that every time [someone] threw a piece of paper away on the sidewalk, they cut to rats coming out at you.

“I am afraid of mice, so I close my eyes when I see a rat.“

So Della Femina wasn’t on set. “I was frightened by Lynch’s work. He thought about things I didn’t want to think about.”

Indeed, the spot is black and white and foreboding, with scary sounds, showing people littering and rats festering.

“Talk about great moments in advertising history -- let’s get David Lynch, he can direct rats!” Della Femina said.

And, it turns out, everything else.