On the ERASERHEAD set

Photos from the five year shoot, on the set, of Eraserhead, (David Lynch, Los Angeles, California, 1972 - 1977,) featuring Jack Nance, David Lynch, Herb Caldwell, Charlotte Stewart and Catherine Coulson

Yesterday was the nineteenth anniversary of Jack Nance’s death.  He got punched in the face early in the morning outside Winchell’s Donuts in South Pasadena and a day later fell dead in his bathroom from a subdural hematoma.  Jack said, in an interview, that when they were working on Dune, David looked around at all the thousands of people under his command out in the Mexican desert and then directly into Jack’s face and they simultaneously burst out laughing.  I wish someone had taken a picture at that moment as someone (I assume it was Catherine) did in the last picture down, just above.

Ellsworth Kelly 1923 - 2015

Yesterday I read that Ellsworth Kelly died, yesterday, and I immediately thought of my favorite transfer station in the New York City Subway system, at 52nd and Lexington Avenue, and his contribution to my enjoyment of walking through that space that he helped so well to define.

Mulholland Dr, television pilot

David Lynch, Hollywood, California, 1999

I got to see the eighty eight minute pilot for Mulholland Dr many years ago when it was briefly available for viewing on Dailymotion.  From what I’ve read there are three hundred or so copies on low quality video tape out in the world, and David Lynch would prefer that they didn’t circulate; but I’m happy that I got to see it, and it certainly didn’t take away from the pleasure of watching the completed film that was constructed from its remains.  (The scene in the last part of the theatrical film where Camilla leads Diane literally up the garden path is one of the high points of film making over the last twenty years.) The images below are all from eliminated or severely altered scenes from that opened ended construct that the dim witted suits at ABC rejected.  I wish I was one of those three hundred possessors of a tape of it.