David Lynch’s TV com­mer­cials are even weird­er than his films

“Bull­shit” is what David Lynch thinks about prod­uct place­ment. Yet the Amer­i­can film­mak­er has shot more than 30 com­mer­cials over the course of his career, from per­fume ads to pub­lic ser­vice announce­ments. ​“I do com­mer­cials to make mon­ey,” he remarked in a 2008 inter­view, ​“but I always say, every time I learn some­thing: effi­cien­cy of say­ing some­thing, and new tech­nolo­gies.” With that in mind, here are the best of the bunch.

This series of ads for Calvin Klein inter­prets quotes from F Scott Fitzger­ald, Ernest Hem­ing­way and DH Lawrence. Inter­est­ing­ly, two of the ads fea­ture mod­els who would lat­er go on to star in Twin Peaks just a few years lat­er. The Hem­ing­way ad fea­tures James Mar­shall, who played the solemn bik­er James Hur­ley in the director’s land­mark show, while Fitzgerald’s presents a kiss between Heather Gra­ham (a late addi­tion to TP’s sec­ond sea­son) and a 21-year-old Beni­cio Del Toro.

It may come as a sur­prise to learn that David Lynch direct­ed four Twin Peaks tie-in com­mer­cials. These ads for Geor­gia Cof­fee, named after Coca-Cola’s home state but mar­ket­ed to Japan, even come with their own sto­ry­line. With the assis­tance of Japan­ese detec­tive Ken, Spe­cial Agent Coop­er search­es for a miss­ing girl. Each ​‘episode’ con­tains clues, Log Lady cameos and plen­ty of canned cof­fee to go around.

Com­mis­sioned by the New York Depart­ment of San­i­ta­tion, this pub­lic ser­vice announce­ment was tar­get­ed at lit­ter­ing, specif­i­cal­ly how it con­tributed to the city’s already ram­pant rat infes­ta­tion prob­lem. Lynch’s trade­mark use of sound to induce dis­com­fort and ter­ror cul­mi­nates in an image of swarm­ing rats imposed over the New York City sky­line. We imag­ine plen­ty of view­ers nev­er lit­tered again.

The rhythm of Lynch’s extend­ed com­mer­cial for Armani’s Gio per­fume is effort­less, from the smooth flow of images at its begin­ning to the more jar­ring flash­es and cuts of its musi­cal finale. The exper­tise behind the cam­era is appar­ent, but it doesn’t real­ly chime with the director’s dis­tinct style.

This one is about as melo­dra­mat­ic as it gets, with the actress over­come by the mere act of open­ing the per­fume. Yet the cam­era hyp­not­i­cal­ly plung­ing into the bottle’s dark inte­ri­or is a trade­mark Lynch shot, most mem­o­rably asso­ci­at­ed with mys­te­ri­ous blue box­es and a sev­ered ear.

Ger­ard Depar­dieu stars as a Samar­i­tan so con­cerned over the wel­fare of a young girl who has fall­en off her bike that he com­man­deers a restau­rant kitchen to cook her a meal. The strange upbeat music of this com­mer­cial for the Ital­ian pas­ta is so boun­cy it ends up being a lit­tle unset­tling, while the tone is clear­ly meant to be comedic.

If you were to imag­ine an adi­das com­mer­cial direct­ed by David Lynch, this would be it. The flash­es of the fleshy inner work­ings of a runner’s body make exer­cise seem excep­tion­al­ly unpleas­ant, and that’s before he’s tor­tured by scor­pi­on sil­hou­ettes, elec­tric­i­ty and fire. His break through the (lit­er­al) wall of pain to grace­ful­ly run among the clouds is as ludi­crous as it is cathartic.

One of the most aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing of Lynch’s many fra­grance com­mer­cials is this effort for Jill Sander’s Back­ground. The visu­als are strik­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly the desert imagery which evokes Lost High­way. It doesn’t hurt that the score sounds like unre­leased music from the Twin Peaks soundtrack.

This teas­er for a col­lec­tion of music videos from Michael Jackson’s ​‘Dan­ger­ous’ album is exact­ly like what you’d expect the inside of David Lynch’s head to look like. A red room, bursts of flame, blue vel­vet cur­tains drop­ping from out of frame… it may sound like lazy auto­homage but effect is quite special.

These four tele­vi­sion idents fea­ture rel­a­tive­ly mun­dane sce­nar­ios infused with mys­tery, each end­ing with the phrase ​‘Ever won­der?’ accom­pa­nied by the Sci-Fi chan­nel logo. While Rock­et isn’t worth writ­ing home about, both Aunt Droid and Dead Leaves are sur­re­al and wit­ty, the for­mer described by Lynch as ​“like a sym­pho­ny, only the music is in the vac­u­um clean­er.” Nuclear Win­ter is the best of the bunch, though

Reverse motion makes a wel­come return to Lynch’s reper­toire after Twin Peaks immor­talised the tech­nique in our col­lec­tive cul­tur­al mem­o­ry. Part of a series of com­mer­cials that also fea­tured Jean-Luc Godard and the Coen broth­ers, this short was shown in cin­e­mas across Switzer­land. The direc­tors were giv­en free rein, which explains why this is one of the weird­est that Lynch has made.

When look­ing to build antic­i­pa­tion for their new con­sole, Sony turned to the sur­re­al­ist direc­tor to adver­tise a ​‘third place’ – a mys­te­ri­ous world that can be accessed through their games. The pre­vail­ing weird­ness of these PS2 ads mean that a lot of unre­lat­ed cre­ations have been wrong­ly attrib­uted to the direc­tor. Yet the one that Lynch actu­al­ly made is also the best, a minute-long jour­ney through twist­ed cor­ri­dors lead­ing to the most bizarre crea­tures ever seen dur­ing a com­mer­cial break.

When Nis­san first approached Lynch about the con­cept of ​‘Do you speak Micra?’ we doubt they realised quite how seri­ous­ly he would take the idea. He turned to sur­re­al art for inspi­ra­tion for the imagery of this ad, stat­ing, ​“I think it was Magritte who put lips in the sky – this is a bit of the feel of those big beau­ti­ful lips speak­ing in a super­mod­ern and very graph­ic city.”

Mar­i­on Cotil­lard stars in this atmos­pher­ic Shang­hai-set short for Dior. Filmed with the stan­dard def­i­n­i­tion dig­i­tal video he used in Inland Empire and main­tain­ing that film’s strange­ly-paced dia­logue, this may be the clos­est any of these entries has come to hav­ing a nar­ra­tive. It has famil­iar motifs of his work – scep­ti­cal author­i­ty fig­ures, lost mem­o­ry, and the feel­ing ​“that I have been here before”. Lady Blue Shang­hai also boasts exquis­ite sound design cour­tesy of Inland Empire’s sound mix­er Dean Hurley.

As creepy as the con­cept of David Lynch flirt­ing with the head of a Bar­bie doll sounds, this is actu­al­ly one of the sweet­er com­mer­cials list­ed here. Play­ing him­self, Lynch has a con­ver­sa­tion with the doll (which he also voic­es), telling her about his own line of organ­ic cof­fee sold through his web­site, then offers to get her one. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Mat­tel even­tu­al­ly request­ed that he remove the video from his website.

In a rare for­ay into 3D ani­ma­tion, Lynch’s most recent ad essen­tial­ly used Chris­t­ian Louboutin’s new line of nail pol­ish as an excuse to exper­i­ment with shad­ows and light­ing in a com­put­er designed three-dimen­sion­al land­scape. Whether this tech­nol­o­gy will come up in any of his future work, only time will tell.