David Lynch Almost Didn’t Play John Ford In The Fabelmans, But Turns Out Cheetos Helped Convince Him To Take The Role

The 2022 The Fabelmans served as a way for Steven Spielberg to tell a semi-autobiographical account (one that was critically well received) of how his love for movies came to be and how his early years of directing went, albeit with the primary characters’ names changed. By the end of this heartfelt and messy masterpiece though, audiences were treated to an almost beat-for-beat recreation of something the filmmaker experienced in real life, with Gabrielle LaBelle’s Sammy Fabelman meeting director John Ford. It turns out that while fellow filmmaker David Lynch almost didn’t accept the role of Ford, Cheetos helped convince him to come aboard. No, seriously!

While Lynch is primarily known for his work behind the camera on movies like The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, occasionally he’s gone in front of the camera to perform roles, like when he played Gordon Cole across the Twin Peaks TV shows and 1992 tie-in movie. However, when Spielberg called Lynch to ask him to play Ford in The Fabelmans, Lynch initially wasn’t keen on portraying the director behind classics like The Grapes of Wrath and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, telling Empire:

Hey, if the man wants to give a platform for other performers to shine on screen while he focuses on crafting theses stories from behind-the-scenes, he has the right to do so! But ultimately when it came to The Fabelmans, David Lynch agreed to play John Ford because he “really liked the scene.” Well, that was at least part of the reason, with Lynch going on to talk about how the key thing that secured his involvement was having a bag of Cheetos in his dressing room. As he explained:

Lynch is obviously someone who can afford as many bags of Cheetos as he once, but as he pointed out, they’re not the healthiest food to be eating. So he avoids keeping them around his home, but when the opportunity came for a major production to supply him with the snack for a brief period of time, he grabbed it. Surely I’m not the only one who finds that extremely relatable, right?

Although David Lynch only had a few minutes of screen time in The Fabelmans, they were quite memorable, with John Ford telling Sammy Fabelman (again, this also really happened to Steven Spielberg) about how he should never frame a shot with the horizon in the middle because it’s “boring as shit,” a sentiment with which Lynch agrees. You can relive that concluding scene in The Fabelmans below:

Those of you who are now wanting to stream The Fabelmans can do so if you have a Paramount+ subscription with the SHOWTIME add-on. Otherwise, consult our 2024 release schedule to learn what movies are coming out next year, and remember that Steven Spielberg’s upcoming work includes directing Bradley Cooper in Bullitt and executive producing a movie about Martin Luther King Jr. that Chris Rock is directing.

The 2022 The Fabelmans served as a way for Steven Spielberg to tell a semi-autobiographical account (one that was critically well received) of how his love for movies came to be and how his early years of directing went, albeit with the primary characters’ names changed. By the end of this heartfelt and messy masterpiece though, audiences were treated to an almost beat-for-beat recreation of something the filmmaker experienced in real life, with Gabrielle LaBelle’s Sammy Fabelman meeting director John Ford. It turns out that while fellow filmmaker David Lynch almost didn’t accept the role of Ford, Cheetos helped convince him to come aboard. No, seriously!

While Lynch is primarily known for his work behind the camera on movies like The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, occasionally he’s gone in front of the camera to perform roles, like when he played Gordon Cole across the Twin Peaks TV shows and 1992 tie-in movie. However, when Spielberg called Lynch to ask him to play Ford in The Fabelmans, Lynch initially wasn’t keen on portraying the director behind classics like The Grapes of Wrath and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, telling Empire:

Hey, if the man wants to give a platform for other performers to shine on screen while he focuses on crafting theses stories from behind-the-scenes, he has the right to do so! But ultimately when it came to The Fabelmans, David Lynch agreed to play John Ford because he “really liked the scene.” Well, that was at least part of the reason, with Lynch going on to talk about how the key thing that secured his involvement was having a bag of Cheetos in his dressing room. As he explained:

Lynch is obviously someone who can afford as many bags of Cheetos as he once, but as he pointed out, they’re not the healthiest food to be eating. So he avoids keeping them around his home, but when the opportunity came for a major production to supply him with the snack for a brief period of time, he grabbed it. Surely I’m not the only one who finds that extremely relatable, right?

Although David Lynch only had a few minutes of screen time in The Fabelmans, they were quite memorable, with John Ford telling Sammy Fabelman (again, this also really happened to Steven Spielberg) about how he should never frame a shot with the horizon in the middle because it’s “boring as shit,” a sentiment with which Lynch agrees. You can relive that concluding scene in The Fabelmans below:

Those of you who are now wanting to stream The Fabelmans can do so if you have a Paramount+ subscription with the SHOWTIME add-on. Otherwise, consult our 2024 release schedule to learn what movies are coming out next year, and remember that Steven Spielberg’s upcoming work includes directing Bradley Cooper in Bullitt and executive producing a movie about Martin Luther King Jr. that Chris Rock is directing.