Werner Herzog has spoken about how contact with David Lynch became “difficult” in his later years due to his dedication to transcendental meditation.
The director’s forthcoming movie Bucking Fastard is dedicated to the late Twin Peaks creator. The film is said to be based on a real-life story of Joan and Jean, twin sisters who live together on the fringes of society and stars real-life sisters Kate and Rooney Mara.
Speaking in a new interview with IndieWire, Herzog said he wanted to show Lynch the film, and wasn’t able to before he died.
Herzog put this down to having less contact with Lynch in his later years due to the director moving “completely into transcendental meditation”.
“There was a deep respect for each other’s work, although we are so different in what our output is. I had the feeling, ‘Oh, he should be the first one to watch the film with me’, he explained.
“And I think one shouldn’t read too much into it. In the last years, contact with David was difficult because he had been moving completely into transcendental meditation. And, for example, speaking to him across a table, he would have a photo placed facing him on the table. I saw the backside of the photo, and the photo was of a guru, and he would have the picture of the guru, and beyond the picture of the guru, there was me. He wanted to talk about world peace and meditation, and I’m not into that. So it shifted.”
Lynch passed away in January 2025, aged 78. He began Transcendental Meditation in 1973, and wrote on his website that it enabled him to access to “pure consciousness” and gave him “effortless access to unlimited reserves of energy, creativity and happiness deep within”.
In 2022, Lynch unveiled his plans for a new multi-million dollar mental health program, with the Mulholland Drive director announcing initiative fund Transcendental Meditation training for 30,000 international college students, hoping to inspire the next generation to “become advanced peace-creating meditation experts and build a legacy of lasting global peace”.
Bucking Fastard recently debuted at the Venice Film Festival.
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