366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 215

The Date: May 2

The Movie: Eraserhead (1977)

What Is It?: It’s a baby. It’s at the hospital, and you’re the father. Actually, they’re not even sure it is a baby. They just know that it’s the darkest, deepest, funniest nightmare to come out of the original Midnight Movie movement and the deep wells of David Lynch’s mind. I know that it’s my favorite movie, period.

Why Today?: Today is Baby Day!

I May Be Dreaming, But Don't Pinch Me..."Twin Peaks" Is Coming Back!!!! (for real this time)

Remember how everyone thought Andrew Packard was dead, but he wasn't really dead, then he came back, and then Josie went into that wooden pull knob? Well, Andrew may have been a minor "Twin Peaks" character, but it now seems he was actually a metaphor for the entire show, because it is coming back in 2016! 

Rumors that David Lynch would be returning to that town both wonderful and strange have been rampant for the past few years, but when he made a really short film featuring the mostly deceased Palmer family for the recent "Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery" blu-ray set, the mystery of all Lynch's chat about TP being an ongoing story seemed to be solved in unspectacular fashion. Then everyone went cuckoo a few days ago when Lynch and "Peaks" co-creator Mark Frost simultaneously tweetled "That gum you like is going to come back in style". The rap was that "Twin Peaks" would be returning to TV, and additional clues indicated it might be coming to Showtime.

I'm rarely seduced by rumors, so I decided to wait and see before reporting anything. Naturally, I'm now at the back of the line in announcing that "Twin Peaks" will indeed be coming back with all-new episodes, and Showtime will indeed be the network to show it.

The show will pick up with nine episodes to film in 2015 and air the following year, 25 years after Coop's unfortunate visit to the john in his room at the Great Northern Hotel. That means we'll probably finally find out how Annie is.

Lynch will be directing all nine episodes, which is major news in itself since he hasn't directed anything but commercials and music videos since INLAND EMPIRE in 2006.

The only major problem is the deaths of some key Twin Peaks citizens. Though I will certainly miss Jack Nance as Pete Martell and Don Davis as Major Briggs, they are not quite as integral to what happens next as Frank Silva, who embodied the terrifying Killer BOB. As much as I usually loathe CGI, and think it's downright odious when departed people are digitally inserted into films, commercials, and the like, I think it may be necessary in this case. Even if Silva had not died two decades ago, it may have been necessary anyway since I doubt BOB ages.

Although these kinds of reunion deals don't always work out ideally (I wasn't an "Arrested Development" watcher, but apparently a lot of its hardcore fans were disappointed by its Netflix revival), I actually have faith in the return of "Twin Peaks". David Lynch is our greatest living artist. He has rarely made a piece of art that hasn't thrilled me on some level. And the fact that Mark Frost is involved makes the entire thing utterly legitimate and ensures that the project will be on track and true to that very specific style the classic series forged. I only hope no one pinches me and wakes me before this wonderful, wonderful dream come true.

Review: The Criterion Edition of 'Eraserhead'

Eraserhead has been streaming on Hulu as a member of the Criterion Collection for two years, which means excited speculation that Criterion might give it a proper home-media release has also been circulating for years. The ultimate cult movie meets the finest video-distribution company to achieve cult status of its own. That is a relationship much happier than Henry Spencer and Mary X’s.

Ten Outstanding Performances in David Lynch Works

David Lynch a master of conjuring uncanny, dreamy atmosphere, of terrifying viewers with films that aren’t quite horror movies, of blending genres into swirling nightmares that defy pat analysis. This is the stuff of which the term “Lynchian” is made. But let’s not forget that he is also an expert conductor of actresses and actors, and he has superb taste in them despite his cheeky use of specimens like Billy Ray Cyrus every now and then. The emotional and logical demands of a David Lynch script require remarkably talented interpreters and very often result in thoroughly unique, flat-out stunning performances. Here are ten of the greatest.

1. Jack Nance as Henry Spencer in Eraserhead

Jack Nance would deserve a place on this list if for nothing but his commitment. Eraserhead famously took five years to make as Lynch kept running out of money. That meant Nance had to both remain in character for five years and wear Henry Spencer’s—ummm—distinctive hair style for five years. Nance’s work in the film is far more than that though. With a bare minimum of dialogue, he relies on his subtly expressive face and masterfully controlled body language to convey the real emotion roiling away beneath Henry’s placid surface as he contends with his monstrous, mocking baby. The slightest smile conveys a flash of fatherly pride, the upturn of eyebrows conveys his despondency with his lot in life, his restful expression at the end of the film let’s us know that he finally feels loved, and it is a most moving climax. And when Nance does speak, his choked delivery draws out the film’s humor and sadness with expert balance. Lynch regards Nance as one of the most expert actors with whom he’s ever worked and handed roles in almost all of his films to Nance until the actor’s death in 1996.

2. Freddie Jones as Bytes in The Elephant Man

20 Things You May Not Have Known About 'Eraserhead'!

I thought I heard a stranger. We've got 20 things you may not have known about the greatest cult movie ever made tonight. Strangest damn things. They're man made. Little damn things. Smaller than my fist. But they're new! Hi, I'm Psychobabble. Oh, printing's your business? Psychobabbling’s mine. For 35 years now we've watched David Lynch’s surrealist masterpiece change from a marginalized movie only fit for the midnight crowd to the celebrated hellhole it is now! I wrote every damn trivial tidbit on this list of 20 Things You May Not Have Known About Eraserhead. People think that trivial tidbits grow on lists. But they sure as hell don't! Look at my knees! Look at my knees!

1. In 1970 David Lynch wrote a screenplay called Gardenback in which the marriage of Henry and Mary is disrupted by adulterous impulses represented by an insectoid monster growing in Henry’s head. These themes of adultery and a ruinous monster born in the head, as well as a couple named Henry and Mary, would soon be reborn in his Eraserhead script.

2. An unfilmed scene in Lynch’s poetic Eraserhead script involved main character Henry Spencer receiving chunks of flesh and bone in the mail, which fuse into a toothy mouth. This sequence was reworked into a sequence in which Henry receives a small worm in his mailbox. The worm grows into a large-mouthed but toothless creature in his cabinet.

3. According to Greg Olson’s Beautiful Dark, Eraserhead was originally supposed to end with the baby growing so large that it swallows Henry, the final image being “Henry’s feet disappearing into the creature’s gaping mouth.”

February 13, 2009: The Psychobabble Double-Feature: ‘Bride of Frankenstein’ and ‘Eraserhead’

One of the earmarks of a truly great movie is that it can be watched over and over again while offering something new with each viewing. Last night I was watching my favorite movie, David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977), which I’ve seen so many times that I’ve basically stopped thinking that it might continue doling out nuggets of newness. So naïve. What struck me with this latest viewing are the numerous similarities it shares with another of my favorites, James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein. Hear me out. Yes, the films were made forty years apart and for completely different kinds of audiences (Whale’s film was aimed at mainstream, blockbuster-attending crowds; Lynch’s at tiny Midnight Movie audiences), and whether or not Lynch ever even saw Bride is highly questionable. According to Greg Olsen’s biography David Lynch: Beautiful Dark, Lynch spent a good portion of his youth attending screenings of B-horror flicks like The Fly, yet he professes to not be a fan of the genre. Still the influence of period horror films is unmistakable in much of his work, from The Alphabet (1968) to Blue Velvet (1986) to Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) to Inland Empire (2006). Lynch also says that he is not a film buff and hasn’t seen most of the essential classics. In any event, whether or not Eraserhead was directly influenced by Bride of Frankenstein (even I think that’s a stretch), the thematic resemblances are uncanny.

Both films: