David Lynch's debut feature Eraserhead was an artistic darling when it was released in 1977 and, thanks to some enterprising film developers, stayed in theaters for years, gaining popular appeal on the midnight movie circuit. One of the film's many fans was, of all people, Mel Brooks, the acclaimed director of Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles. Brooks, wanting to boost Lynch's career, created his own production company, Brooksfilms, to finance his next project: a stylized biography of Joseph Merrick, known to the world as The Elephant Man.

Lynch "The Elephant Man" despite having the same oppressive black-and-white visuals as the surrealist Eraserhead, it was a curious Oscar front-runner, nominated for eight Academy Awards. It was up for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor, among others. Unfortunately, it lost in all eight of its categories.

But Lynch—a quirky painter and art student from Montana—suddenly became a power player on the Hollywood scene. So far, his short films and his two features have been oblique and raunchy, but Lynch has also proven to be talented and honest, which has caught the eye of major Hollywood producers. Many may know about how George Lucas approached Lynch to direct the then-upcoming Return of the Jedi. and how the offer hurts Lynch. Lynch was also approached by super-producer Dino De Laurentiis to direct the film adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune, a project that had been in development hell for years.

Lynch agreed to direct Dune, rewriting the story to his liking. It took him many months to produce a script and eventually went through six drafts before producing one that Universal would agree to do. However, Dune proved to be a nightmare to complete. Filming was delayed, the studio interfered, and Lynch ended up hating the whole experience. His resentment of "The Dune" would subsequently shape Lynch's entire career going forward.

Back in 1983, when Dune was being filmed, Universal assumed it had a hit on its hands. The studio wanted something expensive and epic to compete with Fox's Star Wars franchise, and felt that a more mature sci-fi story was the way to go. The film required a huge cast and extras, over 80 sets and extensive special effects. The film's crew is said to have numbered 1,700 people. It was intended to be a super-blockbuster.

But it was never meant to be. Lynch had to rewrite the script so many times that he began to tire of the film. After that, filming took place in Mexico and lasted a full six months, not ending until September 1983. Many people fell ill during production, communication lines were constantly broken, and filming was often halted by blackouts. It was very, very difficult for Lynch.

When filming finally ended, Lynch had essentially four hours of raw footage. The final (seventh!) draft of the script was supposed to be about three hours long, but Universal, fearing such length, insisted that Lynch shave it down to two. Lynch went into a wild editing frenzy, adding voices to clarify the film's dense plot and mythology, and always reshooting scenes for clarity. The final cut was 137 minutes. Lynch never had a longer "director's cut" up his sleeve. Most of the film's creative demands were dictated by either Universal or De Lauretiis, all of whom sought to wrest control of the film away from Lynch.

Later, in 2022 interview with AV ClubLynch admitted it "Dina" was his "sale" moment. He gave the old college try, but he definitely wasn't comfortable working for the company, so to speak.

Many fans may be familiar with the 183-minute TV mini-series version of Lynch's Dune, often referred to as The Extended Cut. That version has been edited into a new narration and overlaid with stills from the film's concept art, all in an effort to make Herbert's story more appealing to a wider moviegoing audience. Lynch hated the summary so much that he removed his name from it. That cut is credited to Alan Smith.

"Dine", perhaps expectedly, failed. It only made about $31.4 million at the global box office against a $40 million budget, killing Universal's franchise hopes. The source material, after all, was too dense and weird for a mainstream feature (at least at the time), while the actual film was constantly pulled between Lynch's sensibilities and the studio's need for production grandeur. Nobody got what they wanted.

Lynch then decided to make his next film more personal, more surreal and more comfortable to shoot. From "Dina" onward, he was determined to only participate in productions he wanted to be in and wouldn't be swayed by studio whims or worry about big budgets. "Dine" was as "mainstream" as Lynch would ever get.

The following year, Lynch pitched a much more modest, personal film to Dino De Laurentiis, and the super-producer was intrigued. The movie was Blue Velvet. a film noir that took Lynch's career on a whole new path. Now he was freer to tell strange, dark, nightmarish, violent stories of sex and obsession. In the book of interviews "Lynch on Lynch", the director admitted he had nowhere to go but up the Dune. He was now free to experiment as he pleased.

Lynch's other films after Dune were unquestionably his own, with the director maintaining close creative control over each one. "Dune" was a lesson for Lynch; he learned never to do such a thing again.