Frequent collaborators include Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, Isabella Rossellini, and the late Angelo Badalamenti, Harry Dean Stanton, and Jack Nance. Obvious influences on his films are Federico Fellini, Billy Wilder, Ed Wood, The Wizard of Oz, Film Noir, 1950s pop music (and '50s culture in general), Tod Browning and Luis Buñuel. His short " Six Men Getting Sick" won a cash prize from this point forward, he would be a professional filmmaker.
Motivated by a desire to see his paintings in motion, he went into filmmaking in the late 1960s.
Like Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, and Kathryn Bigelow, Lynch was originally trained as a painter. He is considered one of the most influential filmmakers of his time for his idiosyncratic audiovisual style (since semi-formally dubbed "Lynchian"), as well as arguably the most popular director regularly associated with surrealism. David Keith Lynch (born Januin Missoula, Montana) is a filmmaker, artist, musician, writer, and occasional actor.