David Lynch, the groundbreaking director of films including "Twin Peaks" and "Blue Velvet," has died at the age of 78, his family announced Thursday.

The brilliant auteur whose unsettling, beautiful dreamscapes skewered the hypocrisy of the American dream has passed away at 78

Then David Lynch dropped a movie-length pilot for a show that would become a beacon of artistic audacity for TV creators in the boom years to come. Among them: David Chase, whose brainchild “The Sopranos” would follow in 1999.

Visionary filmmaker David Lynch died Thursday. Actor Kyle MacLachlan and other Washington filmmakers talk about what he and his work meant to them.