What David Lynch Said About His Work’s Connection to ‘Seinfeld’

Like peanut butter and chocolate — if peanut butter was full of observational humor and chocolate was obsessed with psychosexual dreamscapes — the comedy of Seinfeld and the work of late filmmaking genius David Lynch are a surprisingly great combination. 

As we’ve mentioned before, Seinfeld and Twin Peaks specifically have a lot in common. For one thing, diners feature prominently in both shows: Monk’s and the Double R, respectively. Plus, the two series also shared a number of actors, including Grace Zabriskie and Warren Frost (father of Twin Peaks creator Mark Frost) who played Susan’s parents. And we’re not sure that the old lady with the marble rye wasn’t supposed to be the Black Lodge entity known as Mrs. Tremond/Chalfont.

Fans have found a number of creative ways to pair up these two tonally disparate shows in interesting ways, including the Sein Peaks YouTube channel, which figured out that Angelo Badalamenti’s haunting score is a weirdly perfect fit for certain Seinfeld scenes. 

They even made a whole narrative podcast melding the two properties: The Other Side of Darkness (named after the movie Kramer watched about a woman in a coma). 

More recently, at the Toronto Fringe Festival, David Lynch’s Seinfeld similarly presented an “original episode of Seinfeld that descends into a Lynchian nightmare.”

You may be wondering then: Was David Lynch ever aware of this cosmic bond between his art and the sitcom that introduced America to masturbation contests and the Soup Nazi?

Well, Sein Peaks once shared a video of a fan asking Lynch about the “uncanny” similarities between Seinfeld and Twin Peaks during the 2017 Rome Film Festival, explaining that they “balance each other out.” He also suggested that the comedy series contains some similarities to Lynch’s trio of films that fans have subsequently dubbed the “L.A. trilogy”: Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire.

So was Lynch a fan of the show about nothing? 

Unfortunately, he revealed that he never actually saw Seinfeld, which isn’t a huge shock, considering that his idea of a sitcom involved people in creepy rabbit costumes and unsettling sound effects that in no way involve slap bass. 

“I’m not aware of this at all,” Lynch responded to the question. “But I met Jerry Seinfeld, and it’s true — he’s been meditating longer than I have.” 

That’s right, while Lynch wasn’t a viewer of Seinfeld’s TV show, he was impressed by the comedian’s history with Transcendental Meditation. In fact, Lynch himself once introduced “the great Jerry Seinfeld” at a benefit for the David Lynch Foundation. 

Seinfeld began meditating in 1972, and has claimed that the practice helped him “survive” making his show for nine seasons, while Lynch came to meditation in 1973. So interestingly enough, meditation was an integral part of the creative process for both Seinfeld and Lynch. Could that be why their shows have so much in common?

Then again, it’s pretty hard to argue that the guy who helmed Blue Velvet and The Elephant Man had anything in common with the director of Unfrosted.