Eraserhead
The soundtrack features organ music by Fats Waller and includes the song "In Heaven", written and performed for the film by Peter Ivers, with lyrics by Lynch.The couple move into Henry's one-room apartment and begin caring for the child, a swaddled bundle with an inhuman face that resembles the spermatozoon creature seen earlier.Several board members at the AFI were still opposed to producing such a surrealist work, but they acquiesced when Dean Frank Daniel threatened to resign if it was vetoed.[12] The script is also thought to have been inspired by Lynch's fear of fatherhood;[7] his daughter Jennifer had been born with "severely clubbed feet", requiring extensive corrective surgery as a child.[16][7] Additional funds were provided by Nance's wife Catherine E. Coulson, who worked as a waitress and donated her income,[17] and by Lynch himself, who delivered newspapers throughout the film's principal photography.The projectionist who worked on the film's dailies was blindfolded by Lynch to avoid revealing the prop's nature, and he has refused to discuss the effects in subsequent interviews.[30] Among the cut footage is a scene featuring Coulson as the infant's midwife, another of a man torturing two women—one again played by Coulson—with a car battery, and one of Spencer toying with a dead cat.[32] The two tracks included on the album feature excerpts of organ music by Fats Waller and the song "In Heaven", written for the film by Peter Ivers.[34] The album has been seen as presaging the dark ambient music genre, and its presentation of background noise and non-musical cues has been described by Pitchfork's Mark Richardson as "a sound track (two words) in the literal sense".Although the film features several hallmark visuals—the deformed infant and the sprawling industrial setting—these are matched by their accompanying sounds, as the "incessant mewling" and "evocative aural landscape" are paired with these respectively.This fosters a "threatening" and "unnerving" atmosphere, which has been imitated in works such as David Fincher's 1995 thriller Seven and the Coen brothers' 1991 black comedy Barton Fink.[36] The constant low-level noise has been perceived by James Wierzbicki in his book Music, Sound and Filmmakers: Sonic Style in Cinema as perhaps a product of Henry Spencer's imagination, and the soundtrack has been described as "ruthlessly negligent of the difference between dream and reality".[39] In his book David Lynch Decoded, Mark Allyn Stewart proposes that the Lady in the Radiator is in fact Spencer's subconscious, a manifestation of his own urge to kill his child, who embraces him after he does so, as if to reassure him that he has done right.Spencer's passivity has also been seen by film critics Colin Odell and Michelle Le Blanc as a precursor to Lynch's 1983–92 comic strip The Angriest Dog in the World.After this, it ran for ninety-nine weeks at New York's Waverly Cinema, had a year-long midnight run at San Francisco's Roxie Theater from 1978 to 1979, and achieved a three-year tenure at Los Angeles' Nuart Theatre between 1978 and 1981.[44] During a run of screenings in New York and Los Angeles, Eraserhead was paired with the 1979 animated short film Asparagus, created by Suzan Pitt, for nearly two years.Buckley called Eraserhead "murkily pretentious", and wrote that the film's horror aspects stemmed solely from the appearance of the deformed child rather than from its script or performances.[50] In a 1993 review for the Chicago Tribune, Michael Wilmington described Eraserhead as unique, feeling that the film's "intensity" and "nightmare clarity" were a result of Lynch's attention to detail in its creation due to his involvement in so many roles during its production.[51] In the 1995 essay "Bad Ideas: The Art and Politics of Twin Peaks", critic Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote that Eraserhead represented Lynch's best work.The site's critical consensus reads, "David Lynch's surreal Eraserhead uses detailed visuals and a creepy score to create a bizarre and disturbing look into a man's fear of parenthood.[57] A reviewer writing for Film4 rated Eraserhead five stars out of five, describing it as "by turns beautiful, annoying, funny, exasperating and repellent, but always bristling with a nervous energy".[47] In an article for The Daily Telegraph, film-maker Marc Evans praised both the sound design and Lynch's ability "to make the ordinary seem so odd", considering the film an inspiration for his own work.[61] A review of the film in the same newspaper compared Eraserhead to the works of Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, describing it as a chaotic parody of family life.The production covers six films which are credited as creating and popularizing the genre; also included are Night of the Living Dead, El Topo, Pink Flamingos, The Harder They Come, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.[72] Jack Fisk directed episodes of Lynch's 1992 television series On the Air[73] and worked as a production designer on 1999's The Straight Story and 2001's Mulholland Drive.[78] Following the release of Eraserhead, Lynch attempted to find funding for his next project, Ronnie Rocket, a film "about electricity and a three-foot guy with red hair".
EraserheadsShōta Aizawapointing stickDavid LynchJack NanceCharlotte StewartJeanne BatesJudith RobertsFrederick ElmesFats WallerPeter IversAFI Center for Advanced Studiesindependentsurrealistbody horrorblack and whiteJudith Anna RobertsJack FiskAmerican Film Instituteprincipal photographySissy SpacekCatherine CoulsonGreystone MansionAlan SpletIn Heavenmidnight moviecult filmLibrary of CongressNational Film RegistryEarly life and workJennifer LynchFilmographyThe Elephant ManBlue VelvetTwin PeaksThe ReturnWild at HeartLost HighwayThe Straight StoryMulholland DriveInland EmpireDiscographyEraserheadBlueBOBThe Air Is on FirePolish Night MusicCrazy Clown TimeThe Big DreamThought GangCellophane MemoriesBibliographyImagesCatching the Big FishGenealogies of PainRoom to DreamDale CooperLaura PalmerSheriff Harry TrumanShelly JohnsonDonna HaywardAudrey HorneMaddy FergusonBenjamin HornePhillip JeffriesWindom EarleLeland PalmerLog LadyThe GiantThe Man from Another Place / The ArmTommy HillBobby BriggsFrank BoothUnrealized projectsAccolades receivedCultural impactFrequent collaboratorsDavid Lynch Foundationspermatozoonradiatoreraserswhite noiseDarwin JostonT. Max GrahamHal Landon Jr.Franz KafkaNikolai GogolFrank DanielThe MetamorphosisThe NoseMetro Silicon ValleyOld TestamentNew TestamentJenniferclubbed feetPhiladelphiaPacific NorthwestbipolarHeavengreen-litCatherine E. CoulsonThe Amputeesound designercinematographerdailiesThe GuardianJohn MerricksandwormsEpisode 2transcendental meditationvegetarian dietreverbtest screeningEraserhead (soundtrack)I.R.S. RecordsSacred Bones Recordsdark ambientPitchforkDavid FincherCoen brothersBarton Finkdiegetic musicRoy OrbisonIn Dreamsgirl next doorDavid J. Skalsubconscious