(Los Angeles) “Pleasure has a price”: American director David Lynch confirmed Monday that he suffers from emphysema, a lung disease, due to “years of smoking”, but reassured his fans by saying that he would “never retire”.
After a Lynchian ode to tobacco, its smell and the gesture of lighting a cigarette, the 78-year-old director acknowledges in a publication on X that “pleasure has a price” and that, for him, the price to pay is this disease which leads to the destruction of the pulmonary alveoli and causes rapid shortness of breath.
In an interview with the British magazine Sight and Sound which is due to be published in the September issue, the director of Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive Or Sailor and Lula (Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1990) says his mobility is limited and he may have to direct his actors remotely for future projects, multiple media outlets reported Monday.
He then posted a reassuring message on social media: “I quit smoking two years ago. I recently had medical checkups and, good news, my health is excellent apart from emphysema. I am full of joy and I will never retire.”
Director of ten feature films, all cult classics, released between 1977 and 2006, the filmmaker was nominated for an Oscar for Elephant Man (1980), Blue Velvet (1986) and Mulholland Drive (2001). He received an Honorary Oscar in 2019 for his entire filmography.
In 2017, the director returned to the legendary series Twin Peakswhich he created in 1990, for a third season, a true television UFO in 18 episodes.