Eraserhead
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Eraserhead is a 1977 film directed by David Lynch. It stars Jack Nance as Henry, a man living in an industrial town set in the future.
His girlfriend Mary has a premature baby and he's forced to marry her. After she leaves him, he has to take care of the baby by himself. Throughout the movie, Henry finds comfort in his daydreams. The title comes from a fantasy scene where bits of Henry's brains are used to make erasers on pencils at a factory.
It is rumored that Lynch created the baby from an embalmed cow fetus. To this day, Lynch refuses to discuss how the baby was really made. The movie took five years to make, as Lynch had difficulty financing it because the finished script was only 22 pages long and most movie studios didn't want to touch it. The movie was financed by friends and family, including actress Sissy Spacek, who was married to Jack Fisk (The Man in the Planet) at the time.
Most of the actors in the film have appeared in few films since. Jack Nance would become a frequent cast member in most of Lynch's films (except The Elephant Man), including a stint on the show Twin Peaks.
Eraserhead has since become a cult classic because of its stark imagery and intensely surreal shots. Director Stanley Kubrick claimed it was one of his favorite movies. Lynch's first feature, Eraserhead eventually kickstarted his film career, as Mel Brooks gave him the director's chair on The Elephant Man after watching it.
Eraserhead is referenced in a song by The Pixies called "In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song)" after the eerie tune the lady in the radiator sings to Henry. ("In heaven, everything is fine...You got your good thing and I got mine") Eraserhead is also alluded to in "Too Drunk to Fuck" by Dead Kennedys: "But in my room/ Wish you were dead/ You bawl like the baby/ In Eraserhead"
External links
- Eraserhead (http://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=1:15947~C) at All Movie Guide
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- Ray Wolfe's Online Guide To Eraserhead (http://www.geocities.com/~mikehartmann/papers/wolfe.html)
- Eraserhead (http://www.kamera.co.uk/reviews_extra/eraserhead.php) at kamera.co.uk