Eraserhead (1977) was my mom’s favorite movie.
My mom was the picture-perfect, Norman Rockwell model of a mother. She chaperoned school events and baked for bake sales. She was exactly the type of mom you might see in a David Lynch film… you know, before the dirt was dug up. But she didn’t have any dirt (except for maybe that one story about bourbon and peppermint schnapps). And still, something exceptional resonated with her when she saw Eraserhead. Something only a mother like her would know.
Since its release 45 years ago, premiering at the Waverley Cinema in New York, and slotting itself into a 99-week run, Eraserhead grew from obscure, surrealist nightmare fuel from a first-time director to bonafide classic. It obtained recognition from the Library of Congress in 2004 as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
So, what does any of this have to do with my mom?
My oldest brother was born with cerebral palsy, made worse through complications at birth. The doctors said he would not live past seven years old (he lived to 37, doctors be damned!). She told me once that during all those seven years, she felt a lot like Henry Spencer. Henry became a sort of spirit-neighbor, portrayed by Jack Nance, with wild hair and quiet intensity (Nance became a long-time collaborator of Lynch’s, appearing in four films and as Pete Martell in Twin Peaks). She identified with him, sitting there at night, watching her first child, the complete opposite of the promises of motherhood.
One would imagine this is how David Lynch felt when his daughter Jennifer was born on April 7th, 1968, the same year Lynch received the Independent Filmmakers Grant by AFI. She was born with severely clubbed feet, leading to many corrective surgeries. While Jennifer cites this experience as inspiring the themes of the film, David Lynch himself has foggier memories of the ideas behind Eraserhead.
At its most basic, Eraserhead is the story of a man isolated in the backdrop of an industrial wasteland and left to care for his dreadfully deformed newborn. At its most entrancing, it’s a single-minded vision of nightmare surrealism. The film exists in a parallel universe, full of black smoke and foreboding dread. Filth and violence lurk around every corner, closing in on Harry’s already distorted reality. One wonders if the child-worm is actually as misshapen as it appears on screen, or is it just Harry’s vision of his broken reality. But by the end, does it even matter? That visceral anxiety Lynch created is what makes Eraserhead a cinematic classic. It’s even more entrancing when you realize it took five years to make.
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In his 2001 documentary Eraserhead Stories, Lynch confirms he doesn’t remember where the ideas came from; a Bible verse here and a moment of clarity there. The 20-page script just existed one day. A culmination of the dichotomy between his two upbringings. He told the Canadian talk show City Lights in 1986, “I started out in the Northwest in one of the most happy childhoods you can imagine… and so things became contrast to me,” speaking of the five years he spent in a violent Philadelphia neighborhood. The impact of this upbringing is seen in the desolate factory-scape of Eraserhead.
The interior sets were re-purposed from the unused stables at the Center for Advanced Film Studies, an AFI affiliate in California, for promising young filmmakers. Shortly after arriving, he found himself floundering. The films he wanted to make were deemed too experimental, so he dropped out. To his surprise, he was begged by then Dean Frank Daniel to come back, saying, “If you’re unhappy, then it’s our fault.” When asked what they could do to make it better, he said, “I want to make Eraserhead.” AFI obliged (only after Daniel threatened his resignation, which they actually accepted while also giving Lynch his creative freedom). They even allowed Lynch to shoot on the school grounds.
Production took five years, with meager funding coming together sparsely throughout. Lynch took on a paper route to help fund the project, with contributions from long-time friend Jack Fisk and Assistant Director Catherine Coulson (who fans know as “The Log Lady”).
They spent a year on sound design alone with Alan Spelt, and what a soundtrack it is. Spelt created an immersive industrial experience, as though listening to the beating heart of a dying mechanized organism. He layered fifteen different sounds with emotional precision. It’s easy to understand that having the right sound design can make or break a film, giving unconscious music-visual cues to the audience. In the case of Eraserhead, the soundtrack transcends its usual role of simply adding to the film, but is its own independent experience altogether.
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The black and white cinematography only adds to the otherworldly atmosphere. Herbert Cardwell started with Lynch for the initial eight months of production, and cinematography was carried on by Frederick Elmes when Cardwell had to part. Elmes worked with Lynch on his short film The Amputee (1974), produced by AFI to test two different types of film stock before bulk purchasing. Elmes went on to serve as DP on Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) and Wild at Heart (1990). He just had an eye for Lynch’s transcendental vision of the world, one that broke expectations and buried normalcy.
Known for his forays into transcendental meditation, Lynch started his practice a little less than a year into production. It credits his meditation with the creation of the iconic Lady in the Radiator. He envisioned her as the embodiment of all the happiness in Henry’s life, living in the small, warm nook of the radiator. A “sort of a beacon of light, and Henry’s world… was really dark, you know, without her,” Lynch said. Her striking features were all done by his small crew, as were all the effects, with actors even stepping in on set design and makeup FX. Lynch, of course, had his hand in every part of production.
The spermatozoan creature of Henry’s baby is a secret that Lynch will take to his grave. When asked on set, he would say cryptic things like “it was born nearby” (according to the book Lynch on Lynch). Though, he has shared stories in the past of a rigor mortis-ridden cat that one could speculate gave the architecture for the final heart-wrenching, albeit ambiguous moments of the finale.
Upon its release, Variety called the film “a sickeningly bad-taste exercise”. Many reviewers found it too bleak and incomprehensible, all the way to outright pretentious. It grossed $23k, over double its $10k budget, making it a box office success despite primarily making its rounds on the midnight movie circuit. It had year-long stints in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and the notoriety only grew from there. You’d be hard-pressed to find a modern critic with a bad word about Eraserhead.
With an intensely personal flair, David Lynch pulled off what critics today still call his best film. A film my mother cites as the reason she was able to hold herself together during a difficult time in her life, finding catharsis in the bleak beyond.
And perhaps that is what sticks with us about Eraserhead, as we sink into the depths of Lynch’s personal exploration, we all develop a singular connection to Henry Spencer – one that represents that piece of ourselves that was lost when it should have been gained. I know my mom did, and because of her, my connection to this film is forever personal, forever moving, and simply forever.
