David Lynch Trivia
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70 free David Lynch trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This David Lynch trivia quiz covers the whole of the great American surrealist's life and work, from a boyhood spent following his forester father through the woods of Montana and Idaho to the flowers left at a Bob's Big Boy statue in Burbank after his death in January 2025. The early questions deal with the painter who wanted to see his paintings move: the art schools, the Philadelphia house bought for $3,500, the first shorts, the AFI grant and the five-year struggle to finish Eraserhead. The heart of the quiz is the films and the show: Mel Brooks and The Elephant Man, the offer to direct Return of the Jedi, the Dune disaster and the pseudonym Lynch put on its extended cut, the song that sparked Blue Velvet, the coffee-shop idea that became Twin Peaks, the booing at Cannes when Wild at Heart won the Palme d'Or, the abandoned ABC pilot that turned into Mulholland Drive, and the cow Lynch used to promote Inland Empire. The last questions cover everything else he did: the comic strip, the albums, the Paris nightclub, the coffee brand, the daily weather reports, Transcendental Meditation and the foundation, the roles in Louie and The Fabelmans, and the tributes that followed his death. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on Lynch and his films.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which Montana city was David Lynch born in January 1946?
Missoula
Missoula was home for only two months: his father's government job took the family to Sandpoint, Idaho, and through four more moves by the time David was 14.
Q 02David Lynch's father Donald experimented on tree diseases as a research scientist for which federal agency?
The USDA
The USDA's Forest Service had Donald Lynch running experiments in a research forest near Boise, and he would drop young David in the woods for the day while he worked.
Q 03Which Boy Scout rank did David Lynch say he reached 'so I could quit, and put it behind me'?
Eagle Scout
Eagle Scout is scouting's top rank. His father urged him to see it through, promising that one day he would be proud he had.
Q 04Which Robert Henri book inspired the teenage Lynch to dedicate himself to 'the art life'?
The Art Spirit
The Art Spirit was pressed on him by Bushnell Keeler, a friend's painter father who gave the teenager space in his studio; Lynch said the 1923 book 'sort of became my Bible'.
Q 05In which city did David Lynch attend the Academy of the Fine Arts and make his first short films?
Philadelphia
Philadelphia frightened and thrilled him: he called the city 'the biggest influence in my whole life' and described Eraserhead as 'my Philadelphia Story', minus Jimmy Stewart.
Q 06Which one-minute animated loop of 1967, David Lynch's first film, was made to be projected onto a sculpted screen?
Six Men Getting Sick
Six Men Getting Sick played on a loop to a wailing siren and shared first prize at his art school's year-end show; a fellow student then paid him to make another film.
Q 07Which newly founded institution financed David Lynch's 1970 short The Grandmother?
The American Film Institute
The American Film Institute put up $5,000 for his tale of a boy who grows a grandmother from a seed, then found the rest after an official took the train up to see the nearly finished film.
Q 08To keep Eraserhead going, Lynch took a paper route delivering which newspaper?
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal: the route was at night, like the filming, so Lynch would stop the shoot, race round his deliveries and come back.
Q 09Which actor played Henry, the quiet young man left to care for a deformed baby, in Eraserhead?
Jack Nance
Jack Nance's towering hair was a fluke: co-star Charlotte Stewart teased it up on the first night of shooting, and Lynch took one look and kept it.
Q 10Which legendary director named Eraserhead one of his all-time favorite films?
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick showed it to visitors at home as 'my favourite film'; the news reached Lynch as he prepared The Elephant Man, and he called it the highest compliment.
Q 11Which comedy director's company produced The Elephant Man after he saw Eraserhead and declared 'You're a madman!'?
Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks kept his own name off the credits so that nobody would walk in expecting a comedy.
Q 12Which real Victorian, played by John Hurt, is the subject of The Elephant Man?
Joseph Merrick
Joseph Merrick is called John in the film, a mistake that goes back to his own surgeon, Frederick Treves, who used the wrong first name in his writings.
Q 13Which blockbuster did George Lucas ask David Lynch to direct, only for Lynch to turn it down?
Return of the Jedi
Return of the Jedi: by his own account Lynch, who called Star Wars 'not my cup of tea', turned Lucas down and urged him to direct it himself.
Q 21Which composer scored Blue Velvet and most of Lynch's later work, including Twin Peaks?
Angelo Badalamenti
Angelo Badalamenti was called in only to coach the film's leading lady through the song 'Blue Velvet'; Lynch had not planned to hire him as composer at all.
Q 22With which writer-producer did Lynch create Twin Peaks after a failed Marilyn Monroe biopic?
Mark Frost
Mark Frost and Lynch were talking in a Los Angeles diner when they pictured a body washing up on the shore of a lake, the image the whole series grew from.
Q 23What was the working title of Twin Peaks before it took its final name?
Northwest Passage
Q 14Which producer hired David Lynch to make Dune and went on to back Blue Velvet?
Dino De Laurentiis
Dino De Laurentiis agreed to give Lynch final cut on Blue Velvet on one condition: that he halve both his salary and the budget.
Q 15Who made his film debut as Paul Atreides in Dune, beginning a lifelong collaboration with Lynch?
Kyle MacLachlan
Kyle MacLachlan was an unknown acting in Molière's Tartuffe on a Seattle stage when a casting agent, hunting for a fresh face, was pointed his way.
Q 16Which rock band composed the soundtrack for Lynch's Dune?
Toto
Toto were told by Lynch to keep the music low and slow, and recorded it with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra; the one piece that isn't theirs, 'Prophecy Theme', came from Brian Eno.
Q 17Which pseudonym took David Lynch's screenwriting credit on the extended TV cut of Dune, which he disowned?
Judas Booth
Judas Booth, a name that seems to splice Judas Iscariot with John Wilkes Booth, took his writing credit, while the directing credit went to the stock Hollywood alias Alan Smithee.
Q 18What does college student Jeffrey Beaumont find in a field at the start of Blue Velvet?
A severed ear
A severed ear: Lynch said it had to be an ear because he wanted an opening into the body, one that 'goes right into the mind'.
Q 19Who played Frank, the gas-huffing psychopath, in Blue Velvet?
Dennis Hopper
Dennis Hopper rang Lynch to say he had to play Frank because he was Frank, which the director called good news and bad news.
Q 20Lynch said Blue Velvet was 'sparked' by which singer's 1963 recording of the title song?
Bobby Vinton
Bobby Vinton's hit did nothing for Lynch at first, he said, until one night it called up dark lawns and a woman's red lips in a car.
Northwest Passage is still the title of the pilot episode; in its earliest form the story was set in a small town in North Dakota.
Q 24Whose murder brings FBI agent Dale Cooper to the town of Twin Peaks?
Laura Palmer
Laura Palmer was Sheryl Lee, hired to play a corpse wrapped in plastic; one home-video scene so impressed Lynch that he gave her a second part as the dead girl's lookalike cousin.
Q 25Which hard-of-hearing FBI chief did Lynch himself play in Twin Peaks?
Gordon Cole
Gordon Cole borrows his name from Sunset Boulevard, a Lynch favourite, where a Paramount man called Gordon Cole keeps phoning Norma Desmond about her car.
Q 26What did its network make Twin Peaks do in season two, to David Lynch's regret?
Reveal the killer's identity early
Reveal the killer's identity early: Lynch and his co-creator had meant the mystery to run for years, and he said that solving it killed the goose that laid the golden eggs.
Q 27Which Twin Peaks villain was played by a set dresser whom David Lynch cast on the spot while filming the pilot?
Killer Bob
Killer Bob was born when set dresser Frank Silva boxed himself into a bedroom while moving furniture; Lynch asked if he could act and filmed him crouching by the bed.
Q 28The Twin Peaks pilot was shot largely in and around which small town in Washington state?
Snoqualmie
Snoqualmie's waterfall became the show's emblem, and the town now celebrates Twin Peaks Day every 24 February, the date Agent Cooper gives in the pilot.
Q 29Wild at Heart was adapted from a novel by which writer, who later co-wrote Lost Highway?
Barry Gifford
Barry Gifford's novel ends with the lovers parting; Lynch said that 'didn't seem real' and wrote them a happy ending instead.
Q 30Which classic film does Wild at Heart repeatedly reference?
The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz keeps breaking in: the heroine clicks the heels of her red shoes, and at the end the Good Witch floats down to tell the hero not to turn away from love.