Before ‘Eraserhead’ and ‘Blue Velvet,’ David Lynch honed his craft as a young artist in Boston.
By James Verniere/Boston Movie News
One of the most unique visionaries in cinema history is gone, leaving a void that may never be filled. At a time when cookie-cutter movie-making (sequels, reboots, remakes, etc.) is the rage among film studios, what would they do with the young man who made “Eraserhead” as his thesis film?
When I first met David Lynch, who has died at age 78, it was on the Estudios Churubusco Azteca set of his controversial 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s “Dune,” a film that was produced by the Italian neorealist legend Dino De Laurentiis (“Bitter Rice,” “La Strada”) and a work that was once going to be made by Chilean-French fantasist Alejandro Jodorowsky. Taking inspiration from the Airfix model kits of his childhood, Lynch was creating and photographing “kits” made from dead animals. Making “Dune,” he was into “chicken kits.”
An Eagle Scout from the American Northwest, Lynch attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1964, where he was roommates with Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band. Lynch dropped out and went to Europe with his friend Jack Fisk (“The Straight Story, “Mulholland Drive”), who would go on to become one of the industry’s most acclaimed production designers. Later, at the AFI Conservatory in Los Angeles, Lynch would create “Eraserhead,” a surrealistic effort featuring a deformed baby and floating-haired actor Jack Nance, who would work with Lynch for the rest of his life, including in “Dune,” Blue Velvet” and “Twin Peaks.” “Eraserhead,” Lynch’s first feature, became a “midnight show” sensation in the ’70s along with Jodorowsky’s “El Topo” (1970), Jim Sharman’s “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” (1975), and John Waters’ “Pink Flamingos” (1972). Stanley Kubrick declared “Eraserhead” one of his all-time favorite films.
Lynch’s next leap was big. He got himself hired by producer Mel Brooks, founder of Brooksfilms (“My Favorite Year,” “The Fly”), to direct the film adaptation of “The Elephant Man” with the great John Hurt in the title role as the real-life, disfigured, notable Victorian John Merrick along with Anthony Hopkins, Anne Bancroft, and Wendy Hiller. The acclaimed resulting film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Director (Lynch was nominated for a total of four Oscars but never won, joining the ranks of such snubbed giants as Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks).
George Lucas was such a fan of “Eraserhead” that he offered Lynch the opportunity to direct the third film in the early “Star Wars” series “Return of the Jedi.” Lynch declined and took the reins of “Dune” instead. The finished film, an epic, disjointed, at times surrealist space opera, was famously taken out of Lynch’s hands, cut and released to mostly negative reviews (Siskel and Ebert gave it a resounding two big thumbs down). Lynch even had his name removed from some versions of “Dune.”
Lynch was a master of dream-like imagery and the profound connection between cinema and dreams. As the great English filmmaker John Boorman (“Deliverance”) once said, “Film is like a dream. One moment, you are in a room; the next, you are in a river.” These transitions are an earmark of Lynch’s work, in addition to the kind of imagery you might only find in your darkest dreams or in the work of Hieronymous Bosch, Otto Dix, or Czech animator Jan Svankmajer. Lynch was our generation’s Tod Browning (“London After Midnight,” “Freaks,” “Dracula”). Like very few others, Lynch had the power to get inside our heads and mess with us in ways to which we were unaccustomed. Watching “Eraserhead,” some parts of “Dune,” Lynch’s triumphant 1986 follow-up “Blue Velvet” much of the 1990s TV sensation “Twin Peaks” and Lynch’s 2001 masterpiece “Mulholland Drive” as well as “Wild At Heart” (1990), “Lost Highway’ (1997) and “Inland Empire” (2006), you often feel like you enter a realm in which you could slip from “reality” to weird mirror-world or demon-fairyland in the blink of an eye. When a door opens in a Lynch film, something strange beckons. Now, the master himself has slipped through that ever-beckoning door. Adieu, divine, inspired artist.
James Verniere was the film critic for the Boston Herald for 39 years. He is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics and the National Society of Film Critics. He is a Tomatometer-Approved Critic.
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