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Hosting conversations around David Lynch
Hidden City presents Song of Lynchadelphia
Rachel Bellwoar
“As W.C. Fields would say, ‘I'd rather be here than Philadelphia.’" A direct quote from the pilot episode of Twin Peaks, Dale Cooper, the series' lead played by Kyle MacLachlan, is driving into Twin Peaks for the first time and recording a message for his secretary, Diane. It's a monologue fans from the series will remember well, though not necessarily because it throws shots at Philadelphia. Why was Philly called out, though, and what was series co-creator David Lynch’s connection to the City of Brotherly Love?
That Philly feel
As it turns out, and as fans of the director who passed away a year ago in 2025 may already know, Lynch lived in Philadelphia from 1965 to 1970. A student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, he would direct his first short films in the city. He would also get married and have his first child, Jennifer Lynch, in 1968.
Philadelphia’s impact on Lynch and his films doesn’t stop there. As podcast host and professor Julien Suaudeau explores in the latest season of Song of Philadelphia, Lynch may have moved to LA after receiving the grant from AFI that allowed him to make his debut feature, Eraserhead, but the influence of Philadelphia on that film and his art is undeniable. From the soundscape of Eraserhead to the film’s depiction of parenthood, Lynch himself has acknowledged Philadelphia as an inspiration and now Suaudeau is unpacking the connections over the course of seven episodes.
While previous seasons of the Hidden City podcast have focused on capturing the sounds of the city or revolved around the theme of “hanging in there,” Suaudeau offered this as one of the reasons he choose Song of Lynchadelphia for this season's theme: “…Philly is present throughout Lynch’s filmography in ways that I find fascinating. I am not talking about visibility—the city itself only gets two exterior shots in the entire Twin Peaks universe—but about an extremely powerful aura, which had never been discussed substantially in film theory.”
In the episodes released Suaudeau includes new interviews with the people who lived with Lynch during his Philly years, including Lynch’s best friend and lauded production designer, Jack Fisk, and Lynch's ex-wife and fellow PAFA student, Peggy Reavey.
The whole perspective
Suaudeau also talks to Philly locals like PhilaMoca head programmer Eric Bresler (who provides some audio from PhilaMoca's Eraserhead Forever events) and Josh Hitchens, who was the last Philadelphian to interview Lynch in 2022 for Philadelphia Weekly.
Lynch wasn’t always complimentary in his descriptions of Philly. The words “filthy” and “hellhole” were used. In fact, as Suaudeau touches on in episodes three and four, Lynch returned to Philly at one point with the idea of making Ronnie Rocket, a film that never came to fruition, but changed his mind when he found the city gentrified. As Suaudeau clarifies though: “One of the most interesting things I learned while producing Song of Lynchadelphia is that Lynch did not use those words while he lived here. The perception of Philly as a place filled with fear, corruption, insanity, and violence is a narrative he came up with later in life. Why? We can only speculate. … What I do know is what Peggy Reavey…, told me: the fear—of failing as an artist, of not making it, of not being able to pursue what he called the ‘art life’—was inside him when he arrived in Philly, and he projected it on the city to make art.”
As for what future seasons of Song of Philadelphia could hold, Suaudeau had this to say: “…I have always been amazed by the discrepancy between the city’s rich history in the arts and its apparent inability to memorialize it. …. Why do we make this assumption that the world comes to Philadelphia mostly to check out the Rocky statue, the Liberty Bell, and visit the museums? What about the Philly Sound? Young Americans, the album David Bowie recorded here? Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky? These are just a couple of examples that I’m planning on highlighting in seasons to come.”
Suaudeau further added: “There are so many blind spots in our perceptions of artists, and so many key factors and people get forgotten because of our focus on the end product and the way it’s promoted. Moving forward, I want to focus more on the ones in the shadow, the unsung heroes, who often happen to be women. What we refer to as the artist contains multitudes, and David Lynch’s cinema as we know it would not exist without Peggy Reavey.”
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