Eraserhead Stories

David Lynch has stated that he refuses to ever provide an audio commentary for any of his films and allows the viewer to draw their own conclusions. You're not going to find anything that unlocks the mysteries of Eraserhead in this interview. It is just a behind-the-scenes look at the filming process and they varied of obstacles they had to overcome in order to get it finished. It's rather inspiring to see how much dedication both Lynch and his crew put into the project. He brings it to life in his little anecdotes, but never reveals either the "meaning" of the film itself or how he brought to life the "baby." This secret went with him to his grave and hopefully none of the few surviving cast members ever disclose how he animated this amazing prop.

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.