2025 Was David Lynch

The filmmaker, who died in January, showed us what our world was becoming, and how we should respond. In the summer, the actress Natasha Lyonne relayed an anecdote about the late director David Lynch, in which he told her that A.I. in the creative arts would soon be as ubiquitous and indispensable as the pencil. Lyonne, who happens to be the co-founder of an A.I. studio, seemed to be implying that the revered filmmaker had offered his approval to the same nihilistic and destructive technology that recently enabled President Donald Trump to imagine himself as a king in a fighter jet dropping payloads of diarrhea on the people he's sworn to serve. In an interview with magazine in November, 2024, he said that, on the one hand, "the good side" of A.I. could be "important for moving forward in a beautiful way," and, on the other, "if money is the bottom line, there'd be a lot of sadness, and despair and horror." He added, "I'm hoping better times are coming." In January, amid the wildfires that ravaged Los Angeles, Lynch was evacuated from his home and died shortly thereafter, of complications from emphysema.