American director, screenwriter, producer, illustrator, cartoonist, composer, video artist, and performer. He received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director for the films Elephant Man (1980), Blue Velvet (1986), and Mulholland Drive (2001). He also received awards from the Cannes Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival. In the 1960s, David began making short films, beginning with the animated film Six Men Getting Sick (1966) and The Alphabet (1967), a mixture of animation and live action. The Grandmother (1970) was his first fully live-action short film.