A
boy grabs it and takes it to a suited-man in a small office. "Hiya,
sonny, whatta ya got there?" He asks, pointing to Henry's head. The
boy shows him and the man smiles.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - ERASERHEAD (2:30)
The boy and the suited-man walk into another room where a Pencil
Machine Operator, takes a piece of Henry's head and makes erasers for
the ends of pencils.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - MARY GONE AGAIN (0:30)
Henry wakes up to find Mary gone again. He gets dressed and waits by
the window.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - ROW OF DIMES (4:20)
Night falls and Henry is still sitting by the window. He looks out and
sees two people fighting outside his building. (For a complete
explanation of this scene, look at the Director's Cut section in the
F/X page of the Eraserhead site).
Henry goes across the hall and knocks on the Beautiful Girl's door,
but there's no answer. He walks back to his room, where his baby
starts to laugh maliciously at him, mocking him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - MR. ROUNDHEELS (2:00)
Henry hears the Beautiful Girl going into her apartment and springs
out of bed. He opens the door, and sees her with another man.
She smiles wickedly at Henry. From her perspective, she sees the
baby's head, instead of Henry's.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - LAYING BABY DOWN (5:25)
This is the last straw for Henry. He takes a pair of scissors and cuts
through the baby's bandages, exposing its internal organs.
The baby convulses and shivers as a thick goo spreads all over its
body.
Henry starts to hallucinate and sees a giant baby head moving around
the room as the lights flutter.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - IN HEAVEN... (1:35)
The planet begins to crumble, and the Man in the Planet dies in a
sparking envelopment of light.
In the final sequence, we are in a place of light. Henry turns around
and sees the Lady in the Radiator. She runs into his arms and they
embrace. Henry smiles. He is in heaven.
Scénes coupées :
SCENE
ONE - STRANGE MAN & BLACK BOX
In this scene, Henry hears some strange noises coming from a room down
the hall from his apartment. He investigates and sees this:
Two women lie bound on a bed, while a man approaches them with two
prongs connected to a black box. Hmmmm.... I'm told that this is
Lynch's idea of sexy. Does not surprise me.
The scene ends with Henry being spotted by the women and he takes off
back to his apartment.
CATHERINE COULSON: "My friend [V. Phipps-Wilson] and I were lying on a
bed, bound by these kind of
battery cables. And the guy with the black box walks
toward us with these prongs.
It wasn't sexy; it was David's [version
of] sexy, which is always kind
of pristine in a way."
SCENE TWO - HENRY'S DRAWER
In this scene, Henry is looking for the vaporizer to soothe his baby's
sickness. He opens a drawer and finds...
A drawer full of vanilla pudding and peas.
CATHERINE COULSON: "The problem was how to make a drawerful of vanilla
pudding. Doreen and I went out
to the grocery store, and we tried to figure out what
kind of vanilla pudding would
mix up the fastest. So we hand-beat
instant vanilla pudding,
filled this drawer with it, and then put these
green peas on top of it.
SCENE THREE - ROW OF DIMES
A lengthy scene, cut by Lynch, had Henry sitting in his apartment with
his baby. He starts to hear a sort of calling and looks out the
window.
DAVID LYNCH: "It's daytime, the wind is blowing dust, and there's this
little kid out in the alley. He suddenly
sees this shiny thing in the dirt, and he gets down and starts
digging, and he finds these rows of dimes.
So, he really starts digging, and Henry sees
this. Henry runs out of the room, but the baby starts crying; but he's
got a good run going and he makes it to the
elevator. He's pushing the button, but the
elevator won't come. So he runs down the stairs. He runs into the
lobby, and we see the elevator door is
propped open with a mop. There's a mop bucket
in there, and the landlady has been cleaning. That's why he couldn't
get the elevator."
"But because the door's open, the baby's crying is real
loud and echoing all through the elevator shaft. So
Henry gets frustrated and kicks the couch in the lobby,
and the landlady [V. Phipps-Wilson] comes and says,
'Don't kick my wood.' She starts into this
landlady-tenant thing. So Henry leaves her and goes
back upstairs. He looks out the window, and more people
have come, and they're digging, and the dust is
blowing. By night there's fighting going on out there."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
DID YOU KNOW....?
- ERASERHEAD first appeared on video in 1981 for a pay-TV showing on
New Year's Eve.
-----------------------------------------------------
- Jack Fisk, a friend of Lynch and fellow director, endured painful
make-up to become the Man in the Planet, while his wife, Sissy Spacek,
took on the duties of the Script Assistant.
-----------------------------------------------------
Human umbilical cords were used in a scene that called
for Henry to pull fetuses from a convulsing Mary.
-----------------------------------------------------
- Early in the film, Henry's right foot steps in a mud puddle. Later,
in his apartment, his left sock is the one that's dirty. A lot of
people have tried to read some astral significance into this, but it
was really just a mistake in production.
DAVID LYNCH: "We couldn't remember which shoe went in the puddle. It's
hard to believe that someone looks at your
films so closely."
-----------------------------------------------------
- Jack Nance (Henry) was drawn to the script for many reasons, but one
the more personal ones involved the scene in the end where Henry is
haunted by a giant baby head.
JACK NANCE: "I was struck by that because it was describing, in some
detail, a sort of hallucination that I had at
one time when I was very sick and running a fever."
-----------------------------------------------------
- Shooting began on the AFI stables on May 29, 1972. It was the scene
where Henry comes over for dinner and meets Mrs. X. It was filmed in
one take.
-----------------------------------------------------
Henry Spencer's Eraserhead haircut was styled and
maintain over the years by his then-wife, Catherine Coulson.
-----------------------------------------------------
- Lynch keeps close ties with the people he worked with on Eraserhead.
Jack Nance appeared in Dune, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks and Wild At
Heart. Charlotte Stewart (Mary) played Betty Briggs in Twin Peaks, and
Catherine Coulson would carry a log as Margaret, the Log Lady.
-----------------------------------------------------
- In the original script, Henry's world was much darker, and there was
no Lady in the Radiator. The film concluded with Henry killing the
baby, and then his world disintegrated. This was due to Lynch's own
foulness during first year production. It was only after a friend
recommended meditation that Lynch mellowed out and took better control
of his work.
-----------------------------------------------------
- Due to their small budget, Lynch and his crew often went to swap
meets to buy costumes and props.
DAVID LYNCH: "Henry's whole wardrobe was gotten at Goodwill."
----------------------------------------------------------------------
IN CLOSING:
Catherine Coulson sums ERASERHEAD up the best:
"We became like a family. Basically Jack's and my home life became
ERASERHEAD, and oftentimes, after we were through shooting, David
would come over, and we would eat pancakes at our house."
"Peggy [Lynch's first wife] and Jenny [their daughter] used to come
down to the stables, and Jenny would ask David if she could go play
with the "baby". I remember spending New Year's Eve at the stables.
We
were all drinking champagne and Jack gave Jenny, who was about 4, a
couple sips of champagne, so she would go to sleep. We all listened to
music and had a real nice time in our little home away from home."