Eraserhead Stories (2001)

Sorry, this movie sucks

Admirable film.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Leave in to the ever-atypical David Lynch to make a strange and unconventional, but still engrossing and illuminating sort of retrospective documentary on the making of his debut feature "Eraserhead." Basically an extended interview with Lynch along with plenty of behind the scenes still and a few clips, among the things we learn are that Lynch got the idea for the movie from the industrial landscape in Philadelphia, lead actor Jack Nance was recommended by a friend (of course, we also get the straight dope on Nance's highly distinctive haircut), Lynch almost didn't cast Jeanne Bates because he thought she looked too beautiful, a scene with a nurse in a hospital basement that was never shot, a disastrous screening for Cannes, and how the picture eventually became a huge success on the midnight movie cinema circuit. By far some of the best anecdotes shared by Lynch pertain to cinematographer Herbert Cardwell, who sadly died in his sleep at the too young age of thirty-five. Lynch's stories about first arriving in Los Angeles and attending the American Film Institute are also cool and enjoyable to hear about while his dead cat anecdote rates as super freaky and alarming stuff. Worth a watch for fans of the film.

Eraserhead Stories (2001) *** (out of 4) Back in the day David Lynch was releasing several of his films onto DVD through himself and this "documentary' was produced to go along with the release of ERASERHEAD. I'm not sure if documentary is the correct word to use but we've basically got Lynch talking about how the film got made and how it eventually became a cult favorite.We start off with Lynch talking about his film school, his grant through the AFI and then how he ended up leaving film school. From here we get into the production of ERASERHEAD and we pretty much go through every aspect of its production. We hear some pretty bizarre stories throughout including one dealing with the legendary director buying a dead cat to explore. Some of the best stuff comes towards the end when Lynch talks about a failed Cannes screening as well as the film becoming a favorite on the midnight circle.

There isn't that much to say about this. It's just David Lynch telling a lot of stories abut the five year long making of Eraserhead with short segments of a phone interview with Catherine Coulson who was an assistant on the film, and pictures and behind the scenes videos spliced in. So this really isn't the most striking thing to watch, but lynch has a lot of really good stories that he tells very well. He does tend to go off on a tangent several times, but still these stories are also very interesting. Overall this isn't really a documentary, More of an extended interview, but anyone who enjoyed watching Eraserhead should check this out.