David Lynch made a rare LI appearance at Huntington's Cinema Arts Centre

When David Lynch visited Huntington's Cinema Arts Centre in May of 2008 for a speaking engagement, he made sure to drop by the office and chat with the staff. But the first thing he did, according to co-director Dylan Skolnick, was light a cigarette.

“He’s up in our office, smoking away,” Skolnick recalls, adding that he didn't dare tell Lynch it was a no-smoking area. The director of “Blue Velvet” and creator of television’s “Twin Peaks” polished off a few cigarettes, then spoke to an audience as part of a fundraising effort for his David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace, according to Skolnick, who added: “You could tell he was a little nervous about having to go up in front of a big crowd of people.”

It was a somewhat rare public appearance for Lynch, who — despite his fearlessly strange movies — was known as a quiet, even retiring personality. Though he made tiny appearances in his own movies — a face in the crowd in 1980’s Oscar-nominated “The Elephant Man,” a menial worker in 1984’s notorious flop “Dune” — Lynch rarely took full-on acting roles. Among the notable exceptions were 1988’s “Zelly and Me,” a little-seen independent drama opposite his then-partner, Isabella Rossellini (now based in Bellport), and Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans” (2022), in which he played Western director John Ford.

Nevertheless, Lynch proved a gracious host at the cinema, says Skolnick, who recalls him signing copies of his recent book “Catching the Big Fish” and taking time to speak with his admirers. When it came to his own movies, “he was answering questions as much as he could answer, being David Lynch,” Skolnick says. “When you ask him, ‘What does this mean?’ You’re not going to get the answer.”

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com