It would not be an exaggeration to say that film director David Lynch, who died in January 2025, was one of the most important artists of the 20th century. His films, from the post-industrial expressionist nightmare “Eraserhead” to the eerie Hollywood hallucinations of “Mulholland Drive” and “Inland Empire,” have become so influential that to describe something as “Lynchian” is a shopworn critical cliché. Lynch co-created “Twin Peaks” (no relation to the themed restaurant of the same name), the first show to be described as “water-cooler TV.” Virtually every major show of the past 30 years has “Twin Peaks” baked into its DNA, and yet its third and final season in 2017 managed to outdo all of them. His work was a heady brew of earnest Americana, gut-wrenching terror, gentle humor, and the kind of surrealism everybody sees in their dreams but almost nobody can capture so vividly. We will never see his likes again.
The Americana we mentioned in the previous paragraph is what separates Lynch’s work from the scads of imitators. Although he showed the horror lurking beneath the surface of American society in “Twin Peaks” and films like “Blue Velvet,” Lynch had a deep and genuine love for that surface: the picket fences, the golden countryside, and the food and drink. Beyond the cherry pie and “damn good coffee” of “Twin Peaks,” David Lynch was a devotee of the classic American fast food chain Bob’s Big Boy.
David Lynch used to eat lunch at Bob’s Big Boy Burbank at the same time every day
Bob’s Big Boy is a fast food restaurant chain, known for its mascot of a young boy in checkered overalls and for creating the double-decker hamburger, influencing McDonald’s and Burger King along the way. At its peak, hundreds of restaurants operated under the Bob’s Big Boy name; today, only a handful remain, all in Los Angeles. Every day for at least seven years, from when he was making “Eraserhead” to the end of his 1984 “Dune” adaptation, David Lynch went to the Bob’s Big Boy location in Burbank at 2:30 p.m., where he would drink chocolate milkshakes and multiple cups of coffee. While he was there, he would use the energy buzz from the caffeine and sugar to jot down ideas on napkins. (Lynch was a lifelong coffee drinker and claimed that he used to drink twenty cups a day.)
Although he stopped this lunchtime habit after a while for health reasons, Lynch would always be associated with Bob’s Big Boy. Laura Dern described meeting Lynch and future “Blue Velvet” co-star Kyle MacLachlan at the restaurant, watching as they scribbled on napkins and used a knife to draw in ketchup. A photo of Lynch and fellow directing legend John Waters shaking hands in front of the Big Boy statue is often reposted online. And, after Lynch’s death, fans left flowers on the Burbank Bob’s Big Boy statue.
