“Believe it or not, the answer is yes, I do have a fondness for David Lynch,” begins Ben Godar, executive director of Varsity Cinema in Des Moines. Losing Lynch, who passed away on Jan. 15, 2025, has highlighted just how many people agree with this sentiment.
Artist David Lynch’s affinity for the macabre allure of Los Angeles, with touchstones of arthouse Americana including Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway, has led the city to feel his absence tenfold. Theaters have taken to honoring his legacy through messages on their marquee and repertory screenings of his work. But these tributes are not limited to Lynch’s place of residence and have been spotted internationally. Here in Iowa, several theaters have planned to show Lynch’s work throughout the coming weeks. I had the pleasure of speaking with these programmers not only about their slates but their general relationship to the artist and the impact his work had on them.
“The film I keep coming back to is Blue Velvet,” shares Godar. “It’s a little personal for me because it was the first of his that I saw. I saw it fairly young, late teens, and it was a little shocking the lengths it went to and the world it took me in. It awakened me to the idea that in real life, there’s the world you live in and then other [darker, hidden] places. But in a more significant way, it got me into art film, to understand that there was this whole other world of movies.”
It’s fitting, then, that Varsity has planned three event screenings of Blue Velvet on Feb. 18, Feb. 20 for their midnight series and a matinee on Saturday, Feb 22.
That Lynch introduced a young movie lover to a previously unknown form of storytelling is not uncommon. Heading east, Ben Delgado, programming director at FilmScene in Iowa City, cites Mulholland Drive as his “gateway into cinema.” Delgado recalls seeing the film on DVD, accompanied by an insert listing 10 clues to look for.
FilmScene has planned a tribute series for Lynch, including Dune (which they have never shown before) on Feb. 7, Mulholland Drive on Feb. 10 and Blue Velvet on Feb. 12.
The directing duo and co-owners of the Last Picture House in Davenport, Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, laud Mulholland Drive and its famously nightmarish Winkie’s Diner scene as their favorite in horror. On a more intimate note, the two naturally spotlight The Straight Story, as it was partially filmed in Laurens, Iowa.
“When we opened [the theater], we put up several posters from our personal collection, including a Japanese-release poster of The Straight Story,” remarks Beck. Blue Velvet screenings will occur on Feb. 16 and 19, and they plan to announce one for Mulholland Drive soon.
For a director whose filmography became synonymous with surrealism and confusion, it was not only Lynch’s films that served as a portal to understanding, blurring reality with the dreamlike, but his general humanist approach to meditation, writing and canvas artwork.
“I think [Lynch] meant more to the world than just his movies,” Delgado said. Beck seconded this: “For years, I’ve kept his book Catching the Big Fish on an easily accessible shelf so I can refer to it at a moment’s notice, whether I’m creatively stuck on a new film or I just had a difficult day and need some healthy perspective.”
It’s for this reason that Lynch must be remembered not just for his surrealist tendencies but his grounded ones as well. Though his work often embraces the absurd, it remains anchored in notions of community and affection, further emphasizing the value of local cinemas that foster creative and social spaces with his screenings.
Such an approach is vital to the Bijou Film Board at the University of Iowa, which has spent the last 50 years programming Lynch films. For their 50th anniversary, they screened Eraserhead.
Bijou kickstarted its 2025 spring semester program with Lynch’s Wild at Heart, though this was selected before news of Lynch’s passing had come out, making the event feel serendipitous. It sold out a week in advance, the first time this has happened since Bijou partnered with FilmScene.
Bijou Executive Director Kat Trout-Baron revealed their first Lynch film was also Blue Velvet, but their favorite is Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. “As a woman, there is a really sensitive way that he depicts Laura Palmer. I think she is probably, easily, one of the most well-written and iconic characters of all time.”
Lynch’s presence in Bijou was not lost on Trout-Baron, who points to the organization’s promotional trailer that plays before every screening at FilmScene. It features dialogue from Mulholland Drive’s diner scene (“I had a dream about this place…”), and the trailer has been around for longer than Trout-Baron has.
“I think there’s something very beautiful that so many generations of film students and filmmakers all wanted to play his work,” they said. “What’s so beautiful about his work and what we do with retrospective screenings is that years and years of people and lovers have been in these classrooms, and all of us still collect around the same thing.”
This sense of timelessness was palpable that late Saturday night as a diverse audience gathered to laugh, cry and swoon at the heat radiating between lovers Sailor (Nicolas Cage) and Lula (Laura Dern) and, in turn, toward us. Having first seen Wild at Heart three years ago, which was my first Lynch, the theatrical experience led me to fall more in love with the film, its gorgeous imagery beaming on the silver screen. Seated next to strangers, I felt that hopeful call to love Lynch illustrated so colorfully in the film, and I think it’s safe to say I was likely not the only one.
Repertory screenings in honor of a director’s death are an opportunity to mourn an artist one admires but cannot know personally, alongside the charm of theatricality and its promise of community. It’s a collective experience Lynch himself would champion.
You can find tickets for Varsity, The Last Picture House and FilmScene’s screenings on their respective websites.
