Yahoo Lifestyle David Lynch To Posthumously Receive Writers Guild Laurel Award For Screenwriting
Screenwriter and director David Lynch, who died this month, has been named the recipient of the Writers Guild of America West’s 2025 Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement.
The guild says he was aware of the honor and accepted several weeks before his January 15 passing. It will be presented by his Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks star Kyle MacLachlan at the WGA Awards ceremony on February 15 .
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The guild’s lifetime achievement award is presented to members who have “advanced the literature of motion pictures and made outstanding contributions to the profession of the screenwriter.”
“Writer-director David Lynch’s uncompromising vision pushed the boundaries of filmmaking,” said WGAW President Meredith Stiehm. “We’re proud to honor him and his legacy.”
While studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Lynch first was drawn to filmmaking out of a desire to see his paintings move. He left after three semesters to study at the AFI Conservatory, where he wrote and directed his first feature, Eraserhead (1977). An experimental cult classic, Eraserhead was later selected for preservation the National Film Registry by the U.S. Library of Congress.
His work caught the attention of Stuart Cornfeld, personal assistant to film legend Mel Brooks, who would go on to hire Lynch to co-write and direct the acclaimed biographical drama The Elephant Man (1980), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Lynch’s next project was the 1984 film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novel Dune for the De Laurentis Entertainment Group. Lynch’s experiences working on a large-budget, studio-driven project inspired him to take a cut in pay in order to maintain complete creative control over his next film, the genre-bending Blue Velvet (1986), which led to Lynch being nominated for an Academy Award for Best Directing. Though polarizing critics and audiences upon release, Blue Velvet established Lynch as a visionary master of psychological horror.
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In 1990, along with Mark Frost, Lynch created the surrealist primetime television series Twin Peaks, which ran two seasons and won two Primetime Emmys and a Peabody Award. In 1992, Lynch and Robert Engels co-wrote Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, a prequel to the series for which Lynch was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. A 2017 Showtime revival series called Twin Peaks: The Return reunited many of the original cast and characters.
With Barry Gifford, Lynch co-wrote Lost Highway in 1997, the first of three Lynch films set in Los Angeles. In 2006, Lynch wrote and directed his final film, Inland Empire.
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