David Lynch, the iconic auteur of television and film, passed away yesterday, January 16th at the age of 78. The announcement was made by Lynch’s family on his Facebook page.
Lynch had a cult-like following that he had garnered over his 40-plus years as a writer, director, and sometimes actor. From Eraserhead to Twin Peaks to Mulholland Drive, Lynch was a genre-exploding weirdo outsider who nevertheless carved out a place for himself in Hollywood through his singular, often surreal vision of what art and entertainment could be.
He was also a big time lover of coffee, and it showed in his work. You really need not look any further than “damn fine cup of coffee,” a phrase given to Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks that has come to be synonymous with Lynch himself. Before the world of celebrity coffee brands and name-dropping collabs, there was David Lynch, Hollywood’s biggest coffee fan. His love of coffee was pure and true and deeply weird in the best way, just like him.
And coffee loved him back. We here at Sprudge have been covering Lynch and his intersection with the coffee world for something like 15 years now. There will be a litany of articles published in the coming days and weeks reflecting on Lynch’s life and impact on television and film, and we could certainly throw in our two cents as is relates to coffee, but it wouldn’t be substantively different than what we have done over the past decade and a half.
That’s why today, to honor the memory of David Lynch, we are looking back at some of our reporting on him over the years. This isn’t so much a rose-colored eulogy for a person now passed, but a remembering of the stories of his life, as we saw them in real-time, and I think it makes the love and admiration the coffee world had for Lynch comes through all the more.
Coffee In The Dark Heart Of The Real Twin Peaks
Back in 2017, Sprudge contributor Eric J. Grimm took a journey to the Pacific Northwest in search of the real Twin Peaks. Sprawling and eerie—and with a log companion of his own—Grimm’s search for coffee and cherry pie is itself a Lynchian endeavor that in light of the news feels like a fitting ode to the man.
The Unintentional Lynchianism Of David Lynch Coffee
What is it to be Lynchian? David Foster Wallace described it as “a particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine in such a way as to reveal the former’s perpetual containment within the latter.” And this is certainly an apt way of describing David Lynch Coffee as well as the accompanying commercial, directed and produced by Lynch all the way back in 2012.
It had all the Lynch hallmarks: unease, a mix of mundane and macabre, and just general confusion. In his recap, Sprudge co-founder Jordan Michelman described it fittingly:
“And if David Lynch dies tomorrow, or David Lynch never releases another film, these coffee commercials – and the coffee itself – will be the last work this brilliant, epochal, generation-defining filmmaker gives to the world. It is a fate so thoroughly Lynchian, the mind both recoils and delights in horror.”
The David Lynch Themed Coffee Pop-Up At Orange County’s Theorem
Back before he was the founder of Dayglow, the highly touted multi-roaster with cafes in Los Angeles, Brooklyn, and Chicago, Tohm Ifergan was a barista at Portola Coffee in Costa Mesa. There, as part of Theorem, Portola’s six-seat, barista-driven concept bar, Ifergan created a monthlong menu of coffee cocktails inspired by the works of Lynch. Which is to say, beautiful, esoteric, and a lot of fun. Relive the 2015 hey day of high-concept coffee—bowties and all—as seen through the lens of one David Lynch.
David Lynch, “Mulholland Drive” And The Meaning Of Specialty Coffee
The works of David Lynch are prone to analysis, to poring over the minutiae in search of some deeper truth. And often, with enough digging, those truths can be found. Thus was the case with Sprudge contributor Jackson O’Brien’s 2023 story about finding lessons for coffee professionals hidden within the intensity of Mulholland Drive. This article in particular speaks to the power of Lynch’s work, that a movie released in 2001 could still provide new insights over two decades later.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
