David Lynch's Days on Set Are Done

"Smoking was something that I absolutely loved," says David Lynch, "but in the end, it bit me." This by way of announcing that the beloved 78-year-old director has emphysema and probably won't be doing any more directing—at least in person, reports the AV Club. The problems are twofold as Lynch tells it to Sight and Sound magazine: He's on oxygen and can only go short distances, and the risks of catching COVID—or even a cold—are too great. But "I would try to do it remotely, if it comes to it," he says, per Variety, though, "I wouldn't like that so much."

Still, he waxes poetic about his former love of smoking:

• "It was part of the art life for me: the tobacco and the smell of it, and lighting things and smoking and going back and sitting back and having a smoke and looking at your work, or thinking about things; nothing like it in this world is so beautiful. Meanwhile, it's killing me. So I had to quit," he said, per Consequence Film.

(More David Lynch stories.)