This biography of director David Lynch traces his career and the bizarre and eerily beautiful projects that have produced a growing cult following-- Provides an overview of all of Lynch's film, music, and television projects-- Contains 100 black-and-white movie stillsMaverick film director David Lynch has spent more than two decades turning his obsessions loose on film, earning himself a dedicated following in spite of some major flops. In his wildly varying career he has experienced cult adoration, mainstream success, flat-out Hollywood rejection and a renaissance of the bizarre.Surprisingly, readers will find that unlike Lynch the director, Lynch the man is about as normal as a guy can get. Laura Dern, the leading lady in Lynch's violent road film, Wild at Heart, has said that because he gets his freakish thoughts out of his system and onto film, he is more normal a person than most directors. The son of an agriculture research scientist, Lynch grew up in anonymous towns in Idaho, Washington, and Virginia, and remembers his teenage years as completely ordinary. After several years of trudging from one lousy job to another, Lynch landed at an art academy in Philadelphia, and there, amid the city's urban decay, his trademark perspective became apparent. He made Eraserhead with a group of friends; it caught Mel Brooks's eye: "You're a madman", he told Lynch. "I love you, you're in".

From early films like the successful Elephant Man, and the monumental flop Dune, Weirdsville U.S.A. follows the birth of Lynch's "Weird Americana" through cult classics such as Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, and the eccentric television soap opera Twin Peaks. Biographer Woods examines Lynch'sbehind-the-scene relationships with Isabella Rossellini and Kyle Maclachlan, arguably Lynch's favorite leading stars, as well as other eccentric actors such as Dennis Hopper.