Eraserhead (1976)/The Short Films of David Lynch New Year’s Day. Not willing to start the year shuttling in the new, especially with a ton of paperwork to move from one end of his desk to the other. Frank dusts off a stack of LPs and selects Help! (Beatles 1965) (British Release). Frank taps his Chuck Taylor’s to the title track for 00:20 but doesn’t quite make it to the well-known double tracking timing error on “I never needed anybody's help in any way.” He instead opts to skip over to Track #3, “You've Got to Hide Your Love Away,” and returns to checking his logbooks. But he finds himself staring at some old crew photos tacked to the wall behind his monitor. When the track is over, Frank waits til the stray guitar noise on the right channel at 00:41 in Harrison’s “I Need You,” then switches back to Track #3. Frank liked the Beatles much much better down then he ever liked them up (and if he had selected the White Album he’d now be jumping between “Happiness is a Warm Gun”: on side A “I’m So Tired” on B. Besides, if Frank wanted schmaltz, he’d listen to the same titled, “I Need You” on America’s self-titled 1971 debut. Anyway, the bottom line was that Frank puts Track #3 on for a third, fourth and fifth time. It’s no record (pun?). Frank once listened to Tom Waits’ “Cold, Cold Ground”/”Train Song” (Franks Wild Years 1987) for ten hours straight while drinking Laird’s apple jack from a mason jar, and had also listened to Cool for Cats (Squeeze 1979) over and over all the way from Philadelphia to New Orleans, tapping out Gilson Lavis’ catchy drums on the dash board of his Impala, long before the Louisianan heat and had irrevocably cracked said dash, wrecking the speaker underneath. Now he strolls into the office lobby and fills a glass from the water cooler. He dons his knit cap and scarf and hangs in the doorway watching the snowfall. As Y.G.T.H.Y.L.A. climaxes for a sixth time Frank can see Andrea down the block undoubtedly headed towards Starbuck’s. Her head is down and she playfully swings an umbrella and jumps snow bank to snow bank in her little yellow rubber boots. It is perfect moment that makes Frank smile and cry at the same time and wish she was forever and always that innocent. But she wasn’t. And Frank is as much a conflicted dream state as Henry in David Lynch’s classic 1976 debut Eraserhead. It will be re-released by Subversive Cinema on January 10, 2006. Frank has no idea what extras this new disk will contain, however, it is certainly a film which cannot be appreciated on pan and scan VHS [check out a comparison of screen captures on DVD Beaver]. Even if you don’t “get it” [and to be honest, no one truly 100% gets it], there are volumes of deep textured imagery that are clinically beautiful, even if they makes you cringe. Frank won’t attempt synopsis, de-coding, interpretation, Freudian analysis, deconstruction, or anything. Eraserhead is, if ever there was, something you just have to see to believe. Its somewhere between an industrial tone poem, Gnostic parable and personal nightmare. In synopsis, Henry lives in a burnt out husk of a cityscape. He has given in to his physical urges and knocked-up Mary X causing her to prematurely give birth to---err, something.

‘Nuff said. The greatest mystery is why movie fans once flocked to midnite showing of the cult film in the same way they did for The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Sharman 1975). The film is cool, but Frank cannot figure where the group experience might come in. Now, the real disappointment is the “companion” DVD, The Short Films of David Lynch, also to be released January 10. The films, mostly early work, are far from spectacular and are not in the least an eye-opening look into the mind behind such a large body of odd work. Packaged as supplemental material on the Eraserhead DVD, where they should be, they’d be worth perhaps a single viewing by a Lynch fan. They ar,e after all, interesting singularities along the Lynchian timeline. Packaged as a separate DVD for $22–$29, it is simply a rip-off. Try as Frank might, there doesn’t seem to be that hidden Easter egg that makes the whole disk worth it. That said, the films on the DVD: Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times): Lynch’s first film, a looped animation from an art installation. Short and Gilliam-esque (Monty Python and the Holy Grail 1975). The Alphabet: Live action and animation. Pretty cool. Short and Gilliam-esque (and Edward Gorey-esque, too.) The Grandmother: Live action and animation. An abused boy plants seeds in his bed to grow a grandmother. Think Un Chien Andalou (Buñuel 1929) meets Naked Lunch (Cronenberg 1991). The Amputee: Two versions. Weird static nine minutes, but is really Lynch testing video-tape for the American Film Institute. [irony pointed out by Lynch in intro.] The Cowboy and the Frenchman: Lynch invite to French TV. Comedy isn’t Lynch’s strong point as shown in this one one-gag disappointment. Really sad to see it stars Harry Dean Stanton (Cool Hand Luke; Rosenberg 1967). Lumiere: As a tribute to 100 yrs of film, Lynch invited to film 55 seconds using a model of an original Lumiere camera, and given the production restrictions of the 1890s. Possibly the best thing on the disc, although, not for any particular reason except that “brevity is the soul of wit” (Hamlet; Shakespeare 1602). Anyway, most likely Lynch had to cheat to accomplish the piece. Lynch himself, introducing each piece, is a bit sigh of relief, however. Far from the egoist, he lets the pieces stand for themselves forgoing any interpretation or explanation beyond the circumstances of their creation. Still, if you want to see early films to blow your mind and give you a new appreciation for a director, Frank recommends shelling out for the Criterion two-disc release of Polanski’s Knife in Water (1963). The films are gorgeous, thought provoking. If you are a Lynch fan (or a fan of surreal stoner flix in general) buy the Eraserhead DVD, but wait for the rest to be re-packaged again. Or borrow the disc from Frank, he wouldn’t give it a second look, even if he wasn’t stuck at work indefinitely…

The Wages of Fear (1953) New Years Eve. Working over the holidays isn’t so, so bad, Frank thinks. At least he isn’t out “ringing in the new year” with a bunch of people who secretly despise each other. Vapid small talk with co-workers for 4–5 hours followed by 10 seconds of Carson Daly’s countdown. Alternatively, perhaps, then to usher in the next 100th-part of this hateful millennium with a weak, macerated, hug from the gal who never had enough time and the overtly brawny handshake of her current lover? No sir, Frank is much happier spending the evening going through the endless sheaf of papers on his desk. In particular, he is looking at the writing projects he’s been pitched, an exhaustive stack of hackneyed and re-hashed drivel that had been piling up since he’d been off in the Caribbean. Few had a proper log line, and none had even a semi-fleshed out plot. It just seemed that so very many, many people worked with a group of “wacky” and/or “A-type personalities” whose comical and yet serious or dangerous hi-jinx were sure to make Spielberg laugh, weep, then open his wallet. All Frank needed to do was cobble together a few half-good anecdotes into a compelling two-hour script and he’d be a millionaire. Simple! Bah! Whose story should he pick? The wacky hotel staff? The wacky firemen? The one that particularly annoyed him as was the one about the wacky gun-for-hire truck drivers going overseas. Their wacky, A-type personalities keep them in the hot zone and all they have to show for it is money. They get no parade when they come home. Wah! Say what you will about the politics, death and destruction (and perhaps even freedom) when it comes to the war. Debate even the implications of the quote/unquote all-volunteer army. The simple fact is that if you are an average middle-American male with a CDL there’s work lots of places not inside a war zone. Buck up, chief. You took a job carting a truckload of TP and sanitary napkins to Al-Basrah for Halliburton and all you got to show for it was some decent scratch. Hard to feel bad when there’s school buses and UPS trucks that need driven in Peoria. The bigger offense Frank takes with this one, of course, is that the movie has been done. A little thing called The Wages of Fear (Le Salaire de la Peur; 1953) by Henri-Georges Clouzot. (Also re-made as Sorcerer [Friedkin; 1977] with Roy Scheider). Criterion issued a restored version of the film on October 25. Frank is tempted to send his would be truck-driving collaborator a copy. Wages centers on a group of wacky, A-type personalities who are hired to transport two trucks of nitroglycerine to a remote oil field in South America (though convincingly shot in the south of France). However, the fact that without safety gear, a mere pothole could spell death for the four outcast drivers is not enough. For their $2,000, they must also endure crumbling half-built-bridges, oil-filled bogs or boulders in the road, and of course their own mismatched personalities. Oh, the hi-jinx! While the photography, sound design and acting are not overly breathtaking, the film is a startlingly compelling piece cut down to only critical action. Over-analysis of the plot kills it for sure. Still, The 147 minutes fly by easily and mysteriously. What can be annoying about the film, to note, however, is the veiled homoeroticism of the kind that can only be present in French films from the 1950s. Our four heroes all expatriates to South America looking for work: The brash and young Frenchman Mario wanting to make the nitro-run to make money for airfare out of town, and his cowardly ‘mentor’ Jo. A jolly Italian named Luigi and his stoic partner Bimba, a German escaped from the Nazi salt mines. Though they fight amongst each other, they all have ambiguous relationships toward each other and (Europeanism, be damned!) seem all too interested in touched each other or having a group piss, etc. Mario, furthermore, has a love interest with a busty floor scrubber, Linda (played by Clouzot’s wife Vera). But, he pays very little attention to her, even smiling as she goes off to fuck the local bar owner, until his other three comrades are out of the picture. Of course, what this tale of wacky adventure for cash does have over all the other film ideas on Frank’s desk is, for lack of a better word: Motivation. Also naturalism. It is a must-see for fans of films like John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). From the opening credits, Clouzot paints a picture of poverty and squalor in which these semi-idle men languish. They are not undertaking a dangerous mission for just some extra cash any more than they are oil roughnecks flying into outer space to blow up an asteroid. They are poor men trying to survive. Yes, what this truck-driver wanted Frank to write for a measly $1,000-cut of his war time profit was the next Armageddon (Bay 1998), but it sure as hell read more like Smokey and the Bandit (Needam 1977). And sadly, this to Frank’s mind reads like a compliment, with Bandit being the better of the two named pictures. However, it is midnight and time to sneak off back to his room before the police roadblocks go up. The next ‘convoy’ masterpiece ends up in the trash next to the wacky hotel staff’s escapades…

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