David Lynch’s weird ad for PS2

With David Lynch’s passing this past January 15, fans around the world took to social media to share their grief and recall the cinematographer’s greatest works and the heavy influence he’s had over artists over the decades. The gaming community did not fall behind recognizing the amazing impact Lynch’s surrealist and often horror-like aesthetics and narrative has had on videogames. Though we may easily recognize the inspiration drawn from his movies on several games like Alan Wake, Deadly Premonition and Disco Elysium, his influence on games is way more vast than what we may imagine. For example, in one interview ‘The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening’ director Takashi Tezuka admitted to drawing inspiration from David Lynch’s TV show Twin Peaks for the creation of this popular Gameboy game. Go figure.

However, there was a moment in time where David Lynch wasn’t just an inspiration for games but rather worked directly on a video game related project. It was the turn of the century, the year 2000, and the Sony Playstation 2 was set to release to the global market, making way for a new generation of games and technology. Recently after directing critically successful films Lost Highway and The Straight Story, Lynch was offered the job of directing a commercial ad aimed at European markets for the new game console.

The selection of such an avant garde filmmaker may come as a surprise to many, but Lynch had a long tradition of creating television ads for companies including Armani, Dior, Gucci, Honda, Adidas and many many more. As to why such an out there creator and successful filmmaker was even interested in making TV ads for brands he once stated in an interview: “The money’s good, and the added bonus is that I get to use and learn about the latest technology, tools that normally wouldn’t be available to me, and then I can use those tools in my feature work.”

Even considering his experience and adaptability to brands, it would seem Sony was very willing to give David Lynch some vast creative control over the creation of what some might consider one of the strangest ads ever. The campaign was titled ‘The Third Place’ and according to the European Marketing Director David Patton: “If there was one person that was gonna understand what we needed to communicate […] it was going to be David Lynch”. Here’s the ad he made:

Its release certainly raised some eyebrows, and even though many might have been confused and even disturbed by the ad it certainly didn’t harm its sales as the PS2 sold over 10million units after its first year in the market. What can be said about the ad today, a quarter of a century after its release, is that Lynch captured a profound sense of curiosity and exploration many would find in videogames in the years to come. Though the trends up to that point were usually revolved around portraying gaming as a youthful, colorful or even edgy teen sort of activity, Lynch viewed it as a dream-like state in which the player disconnected themselves from reality and dived into surreal world which subverted our expectations.

David Lynch was a true visionary and even looking back at some of his zaniest work we can find depth and deep meaning. Yes, even if it includes a talking duck.

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