Eraserhead Quotes

Eraserhead is my most spiritual movie. No one understands when I say that, but it is.

The idea tells you everything. Lots of times I get ideas, I fall in love with them. Those ones you fall in love with are really special ideas. And, in some ways, I always say, when something's abstract, the abstractions are hard to put into words unless you're a poet. These ideas you somehow know. And cinema is a language that can say abstractions. I love stories, but I love stories that hold abstractions--that can hold abstractions. And cinema can say these difficult-to-say-in-words things. A lot of times, I don't know the meaning of the idea, and it drives me crazy. I think we should know the meaning of the idea. I think about them, and I tell this story about my first feature Eraserhead. I did not know what these things meant to me--really meant. And on that particular film, I started reading the Bible. And I'm reading the Bible, going along, and suddenly--there was a sentence. And I said, forget it! That's it. That's this thing. And so, I should know the meaning for me, but when things get abstract, it does me no good to say what it is. All viewers on the surface are all different. And we see something, and that's another place where intuition kicks in: an inner-knowingness. And so, you see a thing, you think about it, and you feel it, and you go and you sort of know something inside. And you can rely on that. Another thing I say is, if you go--after a film, withholding abstractions--to a coffee place--having coffee with your friends, someone will say something, and immediately you'll say “No, no, no, no, that's not what that was about.” You know? “This is what it was about.” And so many things come out, it's surprising. So you do know. For yourself. And what you know is valid.

Our position as the policing agency within fiction gave us licensed access to abstract technology. One blast from the eraserhead in Bradshaw’s rifle and the Minotaur would be reduced to the building blocks of his fictional existence: text and a bluish mist—all that is left when the bonds that link text to meaning are severed.

Eraserhead is my most spiritual movie. No one understands when I say that, but it is. Eraserhead was growing in a certain way, and I didn’t know what it meant. I was looking for a key to unlock what these sequences were saying. Of course, I understood some of it; but I didn’t know the thing that just pulled it all together. And it was a struggle. So I got out my Bible and I started reading. And one day, I read a sentence. And I closed the Bible, because that was it; that was it. And then I saw the thing as a whole. And it fulfilled this vision for me, 100 percent. I don’t think I’ll ever say what that sentence was.

Unless you're living in the best neighborhoods, Philadelphia is indeed everything David Lynch claims it is: a very sick, twisted, violent, fear-ridden, decadent and decaying place. Huyen was so shocked, she wanted to go back to Vietnam immediately. Only pride prevented her from doing so. Grays Ferry was sullen and desolate and everyone seemed paranoid. Saigon is often squalid but it is never desolate. Vietnam is a disaster, agreed, but it is a socialized disaster, whereas America is -- for many people, natives or not -- a solitary nightmare. If Americans weren't so stoic and alienated, if they weren't' so cool, they wouldn't be so quiet about their desperation. Huyen could handle poverty, but she had no aptitude for paranoia, the one skill you needed to survive in Philadelphia. In Saigon you dreaded being cheated or robbed; in Philadelphia you feared getting raped and killed. In the end, Philadelphia was even worse than Eraserhead, because it didn't last for 108 minutes but went on forever. As in Vietnam, Huyen sought comfort in American movies to escape from the real America she could see just outside her window. Every American home was its own inviolable domain, a fortress with the door never left open. The rest of the world could go to hell as long as there was enough beer in the fridge and a good game on TV. And utopia was already on the internet, why go outside if you didn't have to? In the morning, Huyen kept the door locked, bolted and chained, and watched Jerry Springer -- in his glasses and tweed suit the image of a college professor -- to learn more about Americans and improve her colloquial English. In the afternoon, she took a bus to the YMCA to attend an ESL class. At night, the couple barely screwed in the land of bountiful screwing. His wife was so tense, Jaded went back to masturbating.

You guys had a good run. You can’t expect her to lose her sense of judgment forever. You know, Theo, every now and then Eraserhead will hook up with Tinker Bell, or Sling Blade Carl will marry Lara Croft—that sort of thing gives us hope—but you can’t count on it. You can’t bet that way. Why, guys like us would always be alone if some women didn’t have a deep-seated streak of self-destruction, isn’t that right, Professor?

The Los Angeles Times reported that one early contender to helm the sequel was none other than filmmaker David Lynch! This was years before he would perfect his surrealistic imagery with the likes of Twin Peaks. At this point in his career, Lynch was still a fresh commodity in Hollywood, having only helmed the bizarre midnight movie Eraserhead and unsettling biopic The Elephant Man. The degree to which Lynch was connected to Halloween II remains a mystery. Carpenter would ultimately choose Harvard grad Rick Rosenthal to direct the film. This was to be his first feature directing experience.

THERE WAS ANOTHER, much bigger risk we took that first season. Based on a literal back-of-a-napkin pitch at a restaurant in Hollywood, ABC’s head of drama had given the go-ahead to a pilot from David Lynch, by then famous for his cult films Eraserhead and Blue Velvet, and the screenwriter and novelist Mark Frost. It was a surreal, meandering drama about the murder of a prom queen, Laura Palmer, in the fictional Pacific Northwest town of Twin Peaks. David directed the two-hour pilot, which I vividly remember watching for the first time and thinking, This is unlike anything I’ve ever seen and we have to do this.

SO, ERASERHEAD WOULD YOU LIKE TO EXPLAIN TO THE LISTENERS WHY YOU JUST FIST PUMPED AND WHY YOU BARELY DID YOUR JOB FOR THIS ENTIRE RACE?" "No.

He caught sight of Eraserhead watching him. Well, that was a conversation he was fucking dreading. Perhaps he should compose a will.

You can stay," said a gruff voice from the doorway, and he saw the hero watching him. "Just don't fucking be here in the morning, so I can pretend this was a nightmare." "Y-yes Eraserhead." "It's Aizawa, Hawks. I've no idea what the fuck you are to my son, but since, after going through what he just went through, the person he wanted there is you, you'd best call me Aizawa." "Okay, Aiz-" was all he managed before the underground hero had closed the door leaving him alone with the sleeping Izuku.