Eraserhead

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This is article is about the movie Eraserhead. For the Filipino rock band, see The Eraserheads.

Template:Infobox Film Eraserhead (released in France as The Labyrinth Man) is a 1977 film written and directed by David Lynch and starring Jack Nance. The film has become a cult classic due to its surreal imagery, strange soundtrack and its generally dreamlike aura. Lynch himself summarized the film as, "A dream of dark and troubling things." [1] In 2004, the film was deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.

1 Synopsis
2 Filming
3 Influence
4 DVD availability in Region 1
5 References
6 External links

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Synopsis

Eraserhead is considered a difficult film to understand and is open to various interpretations. See, for example, the review at DVDVerdict.com, which offers at least three interpretations.[2] The story does not have a strictly linear trajectory, it is punctuated with fantasy/dream sequences of differing lengths, and the boundary between these fantasy/dream sequences and the primary narrative strand is often blurred. Lynch has said he has yet to read an interpretation of the film that is his.

The setting of the film seems to be a sort of industrial wasteland. Electric lights continually flicker, sewer pipes constantly leak and a mechanical humming sound is ubiquitous.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Henry Spencer (Nance) is a printer (although, for the length of the film, he is "on vacation") who gives off an air of nervousness but makes few direct qualms about his life situation.

At the beginning of the film, Henry, who has not heard from his girlfriend Mary X (Charlotte Stewart) for a while, mistakenly believes that she has ended their relationship. He is then unexpectedly invited to have dinner with Mary and her parents at their house, where he is told that Mary has given birth to a strange, reptilian baby after an abnormally short pregnancy. Henry is then obligated to marry her. Mary and the baby move into Henry's one-room apartment, but the baby continually cries, which deprives Mary of sleep. This pushes her to the breaking point, and she abandons both Henry and the baby. After Mary leaves, Henry has to take care of the baby by himself, and he becomes involved in a series of strange events. These include bizarre encounters with the Lady in the Radiator (Laurel Near), a woman with grotesquely distended cheeks who lives in his radiator (she sings the iconic song "In Heaven"), visions of the ominous Man in the Planet (Jack Fisk), and a sexual liaison with the Beautiful Girl Across the Hall (Judith Anna Roberts).

Mysterious worms appear in many of the film's scenes and are often seen as a metaphor for sin, although other interpretations are possible. In this particular interpretation (i.e., the worms as a metaphor for sin), their resemblance to sperm cells indicates that the premarital sex that lead to the baby was Henry’s first and most troubling sin.

The film's title comes from a relatively long fantasy/dream sequence (occurring during the last half-hour of the film) in which Henry’s head detaches from his body, sinks into a growing pool of blood on a tile floor, falls from the sky, and, finally, lands on an empty street and cracks open. A young boy (Thomas Coulson) finds Henry's broken head and takes it to a pencil-factory, where Paul (Darwin Joston), the desk clerk, is rendered speechless by the gruesome sight and summons his ill-tempered boss (Neil Moran) to the front desk by repeatedly pushing a buzzer. The boss, angered by the summons, yells at Paul, but regains his composure when he sees what the little boy has brought. The boss and the boy carry the head to a back room, where the Pencil Machine Operator (Hal Landon Jr.) takes a core sample of Henry's brain and determines that it is perfect material for pencil erasers. The boy is then rewarded for bringing in Henry's head.

Eventually, Henry grows frustrated with his life and cuts the baby’s bandages (this can be interpreted as an attempt to kill it or merely to see what was under the bandages). The cutting of the bandages (which turn out to be part of the baby's flesh) splits open the baby's body. As the baby screams, Henry stabs its exposed heart with the scissors he used to cut the bandages. This causes the apartment’s electricity to overload, and, as the lights flicker on and off, an apparition of the baby's head, grown to an enormous size, materializes in the apartment. The last scene features Henry being embraced by the Lady in the Radiator, which suggests that, after killing the baby, he may have committed suicide and is now dead. Template:Endspoiler

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Filming

Image:Eraserset1.jpg

Lynch calls Eraserhead his “Philadelphia Story,” emphasizing the fears and anxieties he experienced living in Philadelphia, attending the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Like most U.S. cities, Philadelphia was in the midst of major urban decay at the time, which may explain the vast landscape of abandoned factories in Eraserhead.

Another definitive influence on the film was the pregnancy of Lynch’s wife. Lynch has described the film as his attempt to deal with the anxieties of first time fatherhood.

Eraserhead developed from Gardenback, a script about adultery Lynch wrote during his first year at the Centre for Advanced Film Studies at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. The script for Eraserhead was only 21 pages long. Because of this, the unusual plot and the inexperienced director (Lynch had made three short films at the time), no movie studio expressed interest in the project. Lynch won a $2,200 grant from the AFI.

Lynch built most of the sets in the basement of the AFI conservatory. The greatest mystery surrounding Eraserhead has been the creation of the baby. A long-standing urban legend states that Lynch created the baby from an embalmed cow fetus. To this day, Lynch refuses to discuss how the baby was really made.

Although the baby's name is never given, it was given the nickname "Spike" by the cast and crew.

Lynch struggled to fund the film. Aside from the AFI grant, the movie was financed by friends and family, including actress Sissy Spacek, who was married to Lynch’s childhood friend Jack Fisk (Fisk appears in Eraserhead as “the man in the planet.”) Lynch claims he got a paper route to help finance it. Because of the lack of reliable funds, Eraserhead was filmed intermittently over the span of five years. Sets were disassembled and reassembled several times. The film was finally completed in 1977, premiering in March of that year.

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Influence

Thanks to the efforts of distributor Ben Barenholtz, the film made its way to many repertory theaters and independent cinemas. It quickly became a cult classic and a standard at midnight movie showings for the next decade. Like many cult films, it was exceptionally popular on VHS given its limited box office gross.

Eraserhead also became popular among experimental film fans, Hollywood insiders and fellow directors. After seeing the film, Mel Brooks hired Lynch to direct The Elephant Man (1980), which more or less launched him into the Hollywood mainstream.

Director Stanley Kubrick claimed it was one of his favorite movies. Before beginning production on The Shining, Kubrick screened Eraserhead for the cast to put them into the mood he wanted to convey. Tales from Gimli Hospital, The Institute Benjamenta, Begotten, and Pi are other films that appear to have been influenced by Eraserhead.

Poet, novelist and cult figure Charles Bukowski ranked Eraserhead among the few movies he deemed worthy of praise. Interviewed on the subject of cable television, Bukowski said, "We got cable TV here, and the first thing we switched on happened to be Eraserhead. I said, 'What’s this?' I didn’t know what it was. It was so great. I said, 'Oh, this cable TV has opened up a whole new world. We’re gonna be sitting in front of this thing for centuries. What next?' So starting with Eraserhead we sit here, click, click, click — nothing." [3]

Eraserhead has been a favorite film of punk and alternative rock artists. "In Heaven," the song sung by the Lady in the Radiator, has made its way into the work of many such artists. It has been covered by Bauhaus, Devo, Norma Loy, Haus Arafna, Miranda Sex Garden, Annie Christian, Pankow, The Pixies and Tuxedomoon. Indie rockers Modest Mouse borrowed lines from "In Heaven" for "Workin' on Leavin' the Livin.'" The goth rock band Sex Gang Children's song "Dying Fall" makes a mention of "the lady in the radiator." Also a video clip of Lady in the Radiator singing “In Heaven” introduced the heavy metal band Pantera during many of their mid-1990s concerts. The Mars Volta have also admitted an influence, as have Morning Runner.

Eraserhead is referenced in "Too Drunk to Fuck" by Dead Kennedys: "But in my room/ Wish you were dead/ You bawl like the baby/ In Eraserhead."

An Eraserhead poster can be seen in the video for the Rush song "Limelight".

At least five rock bands take their name from the film, the first is the Filipino alternative rock band The Eraserheads, the second is the 1980s rockabilly group Erazerhead, and the third is the Northern California band Eraserhead [4]. A fourth band "Henry Spencer" takes its name from the main character. Another band is Apartment 26 whose name refers to the residense of Henry.

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DVD availability in Region 1

This movie was once notoriously difficult to acquire in Region 1 (North America) of the DVD region code. Until recently, the only way to acquire this DVD was to purchase it (at $39) through davidlynch.com. The version of the film on the official Region 1 DVDs was remastered for the medium by Lynch himself.

Viewers who ordered the film from David Lynch's website received the disc packaged in a special presentation box. The DVD included deleted scenes and a 90-minute documentary about the making of the movie, which basically consists of Lynch sitting before a microphone, talking about his memories of making the movie (almost like a director's commentary track, but with video). During the piece he also calls Catherine Coulson and they reminisce together about the making of the film.

On January 10, 2006, Eraserhead was made commercially available through retail stores (and Amazon.com) when the DVD was redistributed by Subversive Cinema. This re-release had normal DVD packaging instead of the large boxset from David Lynch's website, but the content on the disc itself was the same. The UK DVD release is Region-free, as is the Korean DVD release. Copies of both foreign DVD releases have turned up on eBay.

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