Eraserhead Stories: David Lynch on the Making of His Famously Nightmarish Movie

Not only does the doc­u­men­tary Eraser­head Sto­ries offer as much infor­ma­tion as you’ll find any­where on the mak­ing of David Lynch’s first fea­ture film, it has a few Lynchi­an qual­i­ties of its own. For almost an hour and a half, David Lynch sits down behind a micro­phone and rem­i­nisces about the six years his rag­tag team spent putting the movie togeth­er. But he does it in black-and-white, in front of a cur­tain, smok­ing, like some­thing out of an ear­ly-1950s tele­vi­sion broad­cast. The ambi­ent dull roar of an ill wind appears, inter­mit­tent­ly and inex­plic­a­bly, on the sound­track. Pho­tographs flash by, sup­port­ing some of Lynch’s inspir­ing, ardu­ous, and bizarre rec­ol­lec­tions. Many of his sto­ries deal with the nuts and bolts of bring­ing one’s finan­cial­ly impov­er­ished but cre­ative­ly over­flow­ing ear­ly movies into real­i­ty. Oth­ers involve tubs filled with milk, sets cov­ered in peas, dead cats impreg­nat­ed with tar, and the ghost of oil tycoon Edward L. Dohe­ny.

Lynch’s fans, and even his detrac­tors — per­haps espe­cial­ly his detrac­tors — will tell you that his films could have come from the mind of no oth­er direc­tor. But Eraser­head Sto­ries gives you a clear idea about the kind of ded­i­cat­ed, famil­ial pro­duc­tion atmos­phere it takes to get an idea suc­cess­ful­ly out of Lynch’s brain and onto cel­lu­loid. On Eraser­head’s inter­mit­tent­ly active, often-mov­ing shoot, every­one had to work sev­er­al jobs: Lynch chuck­ling­ly remem­bers trow­el­ing a great deal of plas­ter along­side star Jack Nance, and he gives col­lab­o­ra­tor Cather­ine Coul­son a call to talk about all the myr­i­ad tasks she han­dled. Though the unusu­al visu­al, aur­al, and nar­ra­tive require­ments of Eraser­head meant nobody had any easy work, Lynch and his team man­aged to fin­ish the pic­ture and live every cre­ative film­mak­er’s dream: to make a movie which does­n’t com­pro­mise, which no view­er for­gets, and toward which nobody feels neu­tral. H/T Bib­liok­lept

Relat­ed con­tent:

What David Lynch Can Do With a 100-Year-Old Cam­era and 52 Sec­onds of Film

David Lynch’s New ‘Crazy Clown Time’ Video: Intense Psy­chot­ic Back­yard Crazi­ness (NSFW)

David Lynch’s Sur­re­al Com­mer­cials

David Lynch and Inter­pol Team Up on Short Film

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Bob Dylan Shares a Drug-Hazed Taxi Ride with John Lennon (1966)

D.A. Pen­nebak­er’s ciné­ma vérité doc­u­men­tary Dont Look Back [sic] fol­lowed Bob Dylan on his cel­e­brat­ed 1965 tour through Eng­land, let­ting view­ers see what hap­pened along the way — the good, the bad and every­thing between. Today, it’s con­sid­ered both a clas­sic doc­u­men­tary and a pop-cul­tur­al arti­fact, some­thing Dylan fans can’t afford to miss.

The same can’t be said for Eat the Doc­u­mentPen­nebak­er’s fol­low-up doc­u­men­tary that cap­tured Dylan’s return to the UK in 1966. The premise had promise. Bob Dylan had just gone elec­tric and boos fol­lowed him wher­ev­er he went. In Man­ches­ter, they famous­ly called him “Judas.” That could have made for an intrigu­ing film. But, accord­ing to Dylan’s most recent biog­ra­ph­er Daniel Mark Epstein, the singer-song­writer was per­son­al­ly unrav­el­ing. He had toured to the point of exhaus­tion, and tak­en far too many amphet­a­mines. Dur­ing one moment filmed by Pen­nebak­er, Dylan shared an inco­her­ent taxi ride with John Lennon. Their ram­bling con­ver­sa­tion touched on John­ny Cash, The Mamas & the Papas, Dylan’s home­sick­ness, and how the Thames Riv­er sup­pos­ed­ly saved Britain from Hitler. And, once we get 20 min­utes into the footage, we find Dylan slumped for­ward in the back­seat, seem­ing­ly staving off nau­sea.

Dylan per­son­al­ly edit­ed the film and gave ABC tele­vi­sion the option to air it. The net­work declined, say­ing it would­n’t be com­pre­hen­si­ble to a main­stream audi­ence. Because the film was nev­er released, it has been passed around in var­i­ous boot­legged ver­sions. You can watch a 52-minute ver­sion on Dylan­Tube.

As a quick foot­note, it’s worth men­tion­ing that, accord­ing to Epstein’s biog­ra­phy, Lennon lat­er told Rolling Stone mag­a­zine that he and Dylan were doing “junk” (aka hero­in) that day, and that Lennon thought Dylan was close to OD’ing. It’s all dis­cussed in The Bal­lad of Bob Dylan: A Por­trait.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions: Twelve Rare Record­ings

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

John Lennon’s Vic­to­ri­an Cir­cus Poster Lov­ing­ly Remade by Artists and Engravers

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Jean-Paul Sartre Writes a Script for John Huston’s Film on Freud (1958)

In 1958, leg­endary direc­tor John Hus­ton decid­ed to make a film about the life of Sig­mund Freud. Hav­ing met Jean-Paul Sarte in 1952 dur­ing the film­ing of Moulin Rouge, Hus­ton felt the philoso­pher would be the ide­al per­son to script the Freud film, since Sartre knew Freud’s work so well and since Hus­ton sur­mised that he would have “an objec­tive and log­i­cal approach.” Despite Sartre’s obvi­ous tal­ents, this still seems like an odd choice on its face, giv­en the spe­cif­ic demands of screen­writ­ing ver­sus philo­soph­i­cal or lit­er­ary work. But Sartre had some expe­ri­ence writ­ing for the screen by that time—like most lit­er­ary screen­writ­ers, he’d most­ly done it for the mon­ey and dis­avowed most of this work in hindsight–and he loved the movies and respect­ed Hus­ton. The direc­tor and the exis­ten­tial­ist philoso­pher also had very sim­i­lar views of their bio­graph­i­cal sub­ject:

Iron­i­cal­ly both Sartre and Hus­ton con­sid­ered them­selves anti-Freud for large­ly the same rea­son: Sartre because as a Com­mu­nist he believed the role of the psy­cho­an­a­lyst was lim­it­ed and of lit­tle social impor­tance.  For his part Hus­ton felt that psy­cho­analy­sis was an indul­gence for bored house wives and the prob­lem chil­dren of the rich while the “movers and shak­ers”’ were too busy for it and those that most need­ed it could­n’t afford it.

Hus­ton and Sartre’s treat­ment of Freud promised to be crit­i­cal, but the part­ner­ship soon soured due to Sartre’s inabil­i­ty to keep his script at fea­ture length. First, he deliv­ered a mod­est 95-page treat­ment. This, how­ev­er, became a 300-page draft in 1959 that Hus­ton cal­cu­lat­ed would pro­duce an unac­cept­able five-hour-long film (see an image from Sartre’s draft screen­play below, and click it to read it in a larg­er for­mat).

When Hus­ton and Sartre met in per­son in Gal­way to find a way to cut the screen­play down to a rea­son­able length, their work­ing rela­tion­ship was less than cor­dial. In Huston’s rec­ol­lec­tion, Sartre nev­er stopped talk­ing long enough for any­one else to get a word in. The direc­tor also remem­bered that Sartre was “as ugly as a human being can be.” Sartre’s remem­brance is hard­ly more flat­ter­ing of Hus­ton, if some­what more com­ic; he described the direc­tor in a let­ter to his wife Simone de Beau­voir as a pre­ten­tious, thought­less char­ac­ter.…

…in moments of child­ish van­i­ty, when he puts on a red din­ner jack­et or rides a horse (not very well) or counts his paint­ings or tells work­men what to do. Impos­si­ble to hold his atten­tion five min­utes: he can no longer work, he runs away from think­ing.

After their Gal­way meet­ing, dur­ing which Hus­ton tried and failed to hyp­no­tize Sartre, the philoso­pher attempt­ed anoth­er revi­sion, but this time, he sent Hus­ton an even longer draft, for an eight-hour film. At this point, Hus­ton gave up on Sartre and sal­vaged what he could, even­tu­al­ly enlist­ing the help of Ger­man screen­writer Wolf­gang Rein­hardt to fin­ish the script. Hus­ton final­ly made his Freud film, released in 1962 as Freud: The Secret Pas­sion, with Mont­gomery Clift as the doc­tor (see the trail­er for the film above).

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, Sartre had his name removed from the final film. For a fuller account of the meet­ing of Hus­ton and Sartre, see the sec­ond chap­ter of Eliz­a­beth Roudinesco’s Phi­los­o­phy in Tur­bu­lent Times, where you’ll find oth­er fas­ci­nat­ing details like Sartre’s desire to cast Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe as Anna O and Huston’s bemuse­ment at Sartre’s den­tal hygiene.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

 

Bowling for Columbine: It’s Online and 10 Years Later the School Massacres Continue. Have You Had Enough?!

http://youtu.be/9jGtAcDefHg?t=50s

In April 1999, Eric Har­ris and Dylan Kle­bold mur­dered 12 stu­dents and one teacher in Columbine, Col­orado, while injur­ing 21 oth­ers. Michael Moore doc­u­ment­ed the tragedy in his 2002 film, Bowl­ing for Columbine, which sits on YouTube, avail­able for every­one to see. It’s heart­break­ing to think that a decade lat­er, stu­dents are no safer at their schools. If any­thing, gun con­trol has slack­ened dur­ing the inter­ven­ing years (thanks part­ly to the Supreme Court) and mass mur­ders have become more com­mon­place, if not a month­ly occur­rence. 12 were killed and 52 injured in Auro­ra, CO in July. 10 killed in a Sikh tem­ple shoot­ing in Wis­con­sin this August. Five gunned down at Accent Sig­nage Sys­tems in Min­neso­ta in Octo­ber. Two shot dead at a mall in Port­land, Ore­gon ear­li­er this week. And now 20 young­sters and sev­en adults killed at an ele­men­tary school today in Con­necti­cut.

We’ve reached the point where it has become an excep­tion­al Amer­i­can pathol­o­gy. Indeed, we’ve had 27 mass mur­ders since Columbine, with the worst two tak­ing place in schools — Vir­ginia Tech and  Sandy Hook Ele­men­tary. We also have expo­nen­tial­ly more gun-relat­ed deaths than any oth­er coun­try in the devel­oped world. I sin­cere­ly hope this isn’t anoth­er instance where we breath­less­ly express out­rage for a week, then turn back to the Kar­dashi­ans, until the next shoot­ing hap­pens in Feb­ru­ary at best. Pub­lic spaces should be safe, schools all the more so. It’s time for the apa­thy and the fear of lob­bies to end, and for our lead­ers to final­ly lead. What might a prac­ti­cal action plan look like? Let’s turn to Nicholas Kristof’s plan out­lined in The New York Times. You can also donate to the Brady Cam­paign to Pre­vent Gun Vio­lence.

Below, I have post­ed Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s mov­ing speech made last night in New­town, CT. It worth watch­ing and reflect­ing on.

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( Comments Off on Bowling for Columbine: It’s Online and 10 Years Later the School Massacres Continue. Have You Had Enough?! ) |

What Makes Us Tick? Free Stanford Biology Course by Robert Sapolsky Offers Answers

First thing you need to know: Before doing any­thing else, you should sim­ply click “play” and start watch­ing the video above. It does­n’t take long for Robert Sapol­sky, one of Stan­ford’s finest teach­ers, to pull you right into his course. Bet­ter to watch him than lis­ten to me.

Sec­ond thing to know: Sapol­sky is a MacArthur Fel­low, a world renowned neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gist, and an adept sci­ence writer best known for his book, Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. Much of his research focus­es on the inter­play between the mind and body (how biol­o­gy affects the mind, and the mind, the body), and that rela­tion­ship lies at the heart of this course called “Human Behav­ioral Biol­o­gy.”

Now the third: Human Behav­ioral Biol­o­gy is avail­able on YouTube and iTunes for free. The course, con­sist­ing of 25 videos span­ning 36 hours, is oth­er­wise list­ed in the Biol­o­gy sec­tion of our big list of Free Online Cours­es (now 575 cours­es in total).

Ok, stop read­ing and just watch.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Robert Sapol­sky Breaks Down Depres­sion

Dopamine Jack­pot! Robert Sapol­sky on the Sci­ence of Plea­sure

National Geographic Gives Us Intimate Moments with a Leopard Seal

Too bad there are no leop­ard seals on Nation­al Geo­graph­ic’s pay­roll. Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Paul Nicklen’s inti­mate por­traits of the one who took par­tic­u­lar inter­est in him on a recent Antarc­tic expe­di­tion are delight­ful. Imag­ine how great it would be to have some reverse angle reac­tion shots of Nicklen as his new friend attempts to serve him a suc­ces­sion of live, dead, and muti­lat­ed pen­guins.

He may have turned up his nose at his sub­jec­t’s cui­sine, but Nicklen brings some­thing else to the table, name­ly four days’ worth of up close and per­son­al shots of an ani­mal doing some­thing oth­er than going about its busi­ness. With­out anthro­po­mor­phiz­ing its inten­tions over much, this crea­ture went out of its way to accli­mate its strange guest to his new sur­round­ings, stick­ing around when less­er hosts would have aban­doned him along­side the buf­fet. Pret­ty cool when you con­sid­er that Nick­len’s entire head could — and briefly did — fit inside its mas­sive, sharp fanged jaws.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mari­achi Band Ser­e­nades Bel­u­ga Whale at Mys­tic Aquar­i­um

The Wild King­dom: Brought to You by Mutu­al of Oma­ha (It’s on YouTube)

Film­ing a Sprint­ing Chee­tah at 1,200 Frames Per Sec­ond

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day’s encoun­ters with species oth­er than her own are a fea­ture of her mem­oir, No Touch Mon­key! And Oth­er Trav­el Lessons Learned Too Late

Miles Davis and His ‘Second Great Quintet,’ Filmed Live in Europe, 1967


In the mid 1960s Miles Davis respond­ed to the form-break­ing influ­ence of free jazz by sur­round­ing him­self with a group of bril­liant young musi­cians and encour­ag­ing them to push him in new direc­tions.

The group was Davis’s last with all acoustic instru­ments, and came to be known as his “sec­ond great quin­tet.” It fea­tured Davis on trum­pet, Wayne Short­er on sax­o­phone, Her­bie Han­cock on piano, Ron Carter on bass and Tony Williams on drums. Between 1964 and 1968 the quin­tet record­ed a string of inno­v­a­tive albums, includ­ing E.S.P., Sor­cer­er and the tran­si­tion­al Miles in the Sky, in which Han­cock intro­duces the elec­tric Fend­er Rhodes piano.

For Guardian jazz crit­ic John Ford­ham, the sec­ond great quin­tet was Davis’s best group ever. “Their solos were fresh and orig­i­nal, and their indi­vid­ual styles fused with a spon­ta­neous flu­en­cy that was sim­ply aston­ish­ing,” writes Ford­ham in a 2010 arti­cle. “The quin­tet’s method came to be dubbed ‘time, no changes’ because of their empha­sis on strong rhyth­mic grooves with­out the dic­ta­to­r­i­al pat­terns of song-form chords. At times they veered close to free-impro­vi­sa­tion, but the pieces were as thrilling and hyp­not­i­cal­ly sen­su­ous as any­thing the band’s open-mind­ed leader had record­ed before.”

You can hear for your­self in these two con­certs, shown back-to-back, record­ed for tele­vi­sion dur­ing the quin­tet’s 1967 tour of Europe. The first con­cert was record­ed on Octo­ber 31, 1967 at the Kon­serthuset in Stock­holm, Swe­den. Here’s the set list:

  1. Agi­ta­tion (Miles Davis)
  2. Foot­prints (Wayne Short­er)
  3. ‘Round Mid­night (Thelo­nius Monk)
  4. Gin­ger­bread Boy (Jim­my Heath)
  5. Theme (Miles Davis)

The next con­cert was record­ed one week lat­er, on Novem­ber 7, 1967, at the Stad­halle in Karl­sruhe, Ger­many:

  1. Agi­ta­tion (Miles Davis)
  2. Foot­prints (Wayne Short­er)
  3. I Fall in Love Too Eas­i­ly (Sam­my Cahn/Jule Styne)
  4. Walkin’ (Richard Car­pen­ter)
  5. Gin­ger­bread Boy (Jim­my Heath)
  6. Theme (Miles Davis)

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Miles Davis Sto­ry, the Defin­i­tive Film Biog­ra­phy of a Jazz Leg­end

‘The Sound of Miles Davis’: Clas­sic 1959 Per­for­mance with John Coltrane

Mashup Duet: Miles Davis Impro­vis­ing on LCD Soundsys­tem

Listen to the Beatles’ Holiday Messages to Fans: Seven Vintage Recordings from 1963 to 1969

1963:

Every year from 1963 to 1969, the Bea­t­les record­ed a spe­cial Christ­mas greet­ing to their fans. It start­ed when “Beat­le­ma­nia” took off and the band found itself unable to answer all the fan mail.  “I’d love to reply per­son­al­ly to every­one,” says Lennon in the 1963 mes­sage, “but I just haven’t enough pens.” The first mes­sage was intend­ed to make their most loy­al fans feel appre­ci­at­ed. Like those that fol­lowed, the 1963 mes­sage was mailed as a paper-thin vinyl “flexi disc” to mem­bers of the Bea­t­les fan club. The record­ing fea­tures the Bea­t­les’ trade­mark wit and whim­sy, with a cho­rus of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Ringo” and a ver­sion of “Good King Wences­las” that refers to Bet­ty Grable. It was made on Octo­ber 17, 1963 at Abbey Road Stu­dios, just after the band record­ed “I Want to Hold Your Hand.”

Lis­ten to the Bea­t­les’ 1963 Mes­sage

1964:

The band record­ed their next hol­i­day greet­ing, Anoth­er Bea­t­les Christ­mas Record, on Octo­ber 26, 1964, the same day they record­ed the song “Hon­ey Don’t.” Lennon’s rebel­lious nature begins to show, as he pokes fun at the pre­pared script: “It’s some­body’s bad hand wrot­er.”

Lis­ten to the Bea­t­les’ 1964 Mes­sage

1965:

Record­ed on Novem­ber 8, 1965 dur­ing the Rub­ber Soul ses­sions at Abbey Road, the 1965 mes­sage fea­tures a re-work­ing of “Yes­ter­day,” with the refrain “Oh I believe on Christ­mas Day.” The band’s gift for free-asso­ci­a­tion­al role play­ing is becom­ing more appar­ent. One piece of dia­logue near the end was even­tu­al­ly re-used by pro­duc­er George Mar­tin and his son Giles at the end of the re-mixed ver­sion of “All You Need is Love” on the 2006 album Love: “All right put the lights off. This is John­ny Rhythm say­ing good night to you all and God Bless­es.”

Lis­ten to the Bea­t­les’ 1965 Mes­sage

1966:

You can sense the band’s cre­ative pow­ers grow­ing in the 1966 mes­sage, Pan­tomime: Every­where It’s Christ­mas. The record­ing was made at Abbey Road on Novem­ber 25, 1966, dur­ing a break from work­ing on “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er.” The Bea­t­les were just begin­ning work on Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Heart’s Club Band. Instead of sim­ply thank­ing their fans and recount­ing the events of the year, the Bea­t­les use sound effects and dia­logue to cre­ate a vaude­ville play based around a song that goes, “Every­where it’s Christ­mas, at the end of every year.” Paul McCart­ney designed the cov­er.

Lis­ten to the Bea­t­les’ 1966 Mes­sage

1967:

This was the last Christ­mas mes­sage record­ed by the Bea­t­les all togeth­er in one place. Titled Christ­mas Time (Is Here Again), it reveals the group’s con­tin­u­ing exper­i­men­ta­tion with sound effects and sto­ry­telling. The sce­nario, writ­ten by the band ear­li­er on the day it was record­ed (Novem­ber 28, 1967), is about a group of peo­ple audi­tion­ing for a BBC radio play. Lennon and Ringo Starr designed the cov­er.

Lis­ten to the Bea­t­les’ 1967 Mes­sage

1968:

By the Christ­mas sea­son of 1968, rela­tions with­in the Bea­t­les were becom­ing strained. The hol­i­day mes­sage was pro­duced around the time the “White Album” was released, in Novem­ber of 1968. The four mem­bers’ voic­es were record­ed sep­a­rate­ly, in var­i­ous loca­tions. There’s plen­ty of self-mock­ery. Per­haps the most strik­ing moment comes when the Amer­i­can singer Tiny Tim (invit­ed by George Har­ri­son) strums a ukulele and sings “Nowhere Man” in a high falset­to.

 Lis­ten to the Bea­t­les’ 1968 Mes­sage

1969:

The Bea­t­les were in the process of break­ing up when they record­ed (sep­a­rate­ly) their final Christ­mas mes­sage in Novem­ber and Decem­ber of 1969. A cou­ple of months ear­li­er, just before the release of Abbey Road, Lennon had announced to the oth­ers that he was leav­ing the group. Yoko Ono appears promi­nent­ly on the record­ing, singing and talk­ing with Lennon about peace. Fit­ting­ly, the 1969 mes­sage incor­po­rates a snip­pet from the Abbey Road record­ing of “The End.”

Lis­ten to the Bea­t­les’ 1969 Mes­sage

« Go BackMore in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.