David Lynch Fans Flock to L.A. Landmark Bob’s Big Boy to Pay Homage to Late Filmmaker: “It’s An Extra Gut Punch”
At Bob’s Big Boy Thursday night, coffee and chocolate milkshakes were raised in honor of David Lynch.
Fans flocked to the Los Angeles landmark to pay tribute to the late filmmaker, who died at age of 78 and who once revealed that he ordered the quintessential menu items “for seven years every day at 2:30” after lunch and scribbled notes on the American diner’s napkins.
There are other reasons why the Burbank burger joint — the oldest one still standing from the 1950s chain and known for its iconic Southern California coffee shop architecture — is part of Lynch lore: He and fellow director John Waters snapped a famous photo outside, it’s where the idea of Dennis Hopper’s Blue Velvet character was born and the red vinyl booths are where the director invited Laura Dern and Kyle MacLachlan for a “chemistry lunch,” per an interview with W.
The five-foot-tall fiberglass Big Boy statue became an impromptu Lynch altar: Red roses, (unlit) candles, unsmoked cigarettes, white coffee mugs, Coca-Cola bottles and other memorabilia were left at its feet by grieving fans. The 166-person-capacity diner was already bustling more than usual for a Thursday night thanks to a local school fundraiser, and the waiting area was noticeably filled with film and TV superfans wearing T-shirts and hats inspired by Twin Peaks, Eraserhead and other Lynch hits. Those paying their respects included employees at nearby media giants such as Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros. Studios and NBCUniversal.
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At a time when over 10,000 Angelenos are rebuilding their lives after losing homes or businesses in the Altadena and Palisades wildfires, fans told The Hollywood Reporter that his loss was another knock to L.A. in an already heartbreaking beginning to 2025.
Melissa Molina was among those who stopped by with friends after work at NBCUniversal. “Especially right now in the midst of the recovery efforts after the wildfires, he was somebody who was such an integral part of the L.A. arts community for so long, so it feels like an extra gut punch to what’s already been a tumultuous two weeks,” she said.
Commercial director Ramesh Iyer and friend Adam Judd grabbed an early dinner at Bob’s after hearing of the Mulholland Drive director’s passing.
“We’re both filmmakers so inspired by him so we thought, what would be the most Lynchian thing to do? We’d go to Bob’s Big Boy and get a malt and a cup of coffee like he did,” Iyer told The Hollywood Reporter. As a staff called waiting guests’ names on the loudspeaker overhead, Iyer added that he and other friends have already commiserated that “2025 is already turning out to be a bummer of a year.”
“We already lost so much of L.A. with the fires, and then you add on top of that a very central to Los Angeles figure,” added Judd.
Inside the eatery, Ben Greco, Natalie Trainor and Dominick Lioto sat at the back of the restaurant, each sipping chocolate milkshakes with their dinners.
“We come here everyone once in a while, and [after the news] we said, ‘We gotta come here,’” said Greco. Sporting an orange Twin Peaks-inspired trucker hat, Trainor, a set decorator, added that eating at the Lynch landmark felt like a proper way to honor his influence and artistry. The North Hollywood locals didn’t need to travel far to grab a table at Bob’s, “but even if it was an hour away, we still would have come,” Lioto said.
The anonymous art project Diva Corp organized a vigil Thursday night that drew hundreds throughout the evening. Some attendees nodded to Twin Peaks with zig-zag-patterned clothing and show-inspired wardrobes; others brought apple pie.
Over email, Diva Corp members told THR that what stood out about the gathering was “the warmth, the celebration, all the beautiful things people brought to remember him with — drawings, pie, family photos, Coca-Cola, flowers, sunglasses, cigarettes. There are some personal things in there, too: Someone left a long letter from an ex that talked all about how Blue Velvet reignited their relationship, specifically the Frank Booth character [played by Hopper].”
They continued, “Everyone knows someone like him can never die. He’ll live on forever, so it was more just a way to celebrate what he’s done up to this point. I think we’re all excited to see what he does next. It was also nice just to be together in the wake of the fires. To take our minds off that.”
Some reminisced about Lynch’s daily pandemic weather reports that aired on local music radio station KCRW.
“The weather reports were so crucial to making it through each day of the pandemic,” added Molina.
“Despite all of the darkness and violence and really stark brutal stuff that is also present, that effervescence and the positivity, I like to think coming to Bob’s — we have enough of the violence, that part of the David Lynch stuff that we see all the time — but to also have that positivity and shining light that he was, this is a cool spot to feel that,” added local sound editor and designer Nick Wheeler, who waited outside with Molina and other friends for a table.
Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank was opened in 1949 by Scott MacDonald (no relation to the McDonald’s founders) and Ward Albert and is part of the dining chain founded in 1936 by Bob Wian. The popular filming location is known for its background role in Michael Mann’s Heat, and its vinyl booths have seated everyone from the Beatles and Bob Hope to Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato. The eatery is located on the outskirts of the starry Valley enclave of Toluca Lake and was designated a Point of Historical Interest in 1992 by the state of California.
In an archive video by Bob’s Big Boy posted to YouTube, Lynch explained, “I went there because I like to have a chocolate milkshake and there was a silver goblet shake; it wasn’t really ice cream. It was a thing that they called a Taylor machine and it would get cold and they’d pull the lever and it would come in kind of a tube of ice cream and fill this goblet. … If you came during lunch, they made so many of them, it never would get cold enough to be ice cream, it would be like soup. So I would go later and it would be cold enough, it would just be just right. And if I went later, I’d be so hungry, you know what I mean? I had these things for seven years with a cup of coffee and I would write on the napkins. It was like having a desk. You need paper, there’s a piece of paper and you write on it when you get ideas.”
Of Hopper’s violent drug dealer character in Blue Velvet, Lynch noted, “One day though in Bob’s I saw a man come in, and he came in to the counter, and that’s all I remember of this man. But seeing him came a feeling, and that’s where Frank Booth came from.”
