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Eraserhead (released in France as The Labyrinth Man) is a 1977 film written and directed by David Lynch. The film stars Jack Nance and Charlotte Stewart. Eraserhead initially polarized and baffled many critics and movie-goers, but over time the film has become a cult classic. Lynch has described his 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.
Interpreting the film
SynopsisSpoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
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. Henry Spencer (Nance) is a printer who is "on vacation". He gives off an air of nervousness, but makes few direct complaints about his life situation. At the start 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 invited to have dinner with Mary and her parents at their house, where he is told that Mary has given birth to a reptilian-looking baby after an abnormally short pregnancy. Henry is then obliged to marry her. Mary and the baby move into Henry's one-room apartment. The baby continually cries. A sleep-deprived Mary abandons Henry and the baby. After Mary leaves, Henry must care for 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 his neighbor, the Beautiful Girl Across the Hall (Judith Anna Roberts).Image:Henryspencer.jpg Henry Spencer. The film's title comes from a dream sequence occurring during the last half hour of the film. In it, 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 a servicable material for pencil erasers. The boy is then rewarded for bringing in Henry's head.
Spoilers end here.
FilmingImage:Eraserset1.jpg Lynch and Nance on the set of Eraserhead Lynch calls Eraserhead his “Philadelphia Story,” emphasizing the fears and anxieties he experienced living in Philadelphia, attending the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. 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 the film's 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 American Film Institute, and built most of the sets in the basement of the AFI conservatory. 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 nicknamed "Spike" by the cast and crew. 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 six years. Sets were disassembled and reassembled several times. The film was finally completed in 1977, premiering in March of that year. Influence
DVD availability in Region 1This 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 essentially 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. It was released on DVD in Australia, but the DVD was discontinued in 2003, rumours have circulated that a new DVD may be released in mid to late 2007 (2007 being the film's thirtieth anniversary). Trivia
See alsoReferences
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