Why It Took David Lynch Five Years To Make His First Masterpiece

In 1967, when he was only 21, the late David Lynch moved to Philadelphia with his pregnant wife, Peggy. The city would change him forever. He moved into a cheap home in an impoverished neighborhood that was lousy with crime. He also felt he wasn’t prepared to be a father, although he did very much love his daughter, Jennifer. In the interview book “Lynch on Lynch,” the filmmaker said that Philadelphia was a city of fear. People regularly broke into his house, and his car was stolen. “There was violence and hate and filth,” he said. He took a job as an engraver, and his thoughts turned dark.

From 1967 to 1970, Lynch began making his first short films, including “Six Men Getting Sick,” and “The Alphabet.” The former was to be projected on a specially sculpted screen that Lynch made himself, with six human figures emerging from the wall. At about the same time, the American Film Institute was founded and Lynch felt it was a great in-road to getting funding for additional film projects, as well as to engage in the program’s Center for Advanced Film Studies. The AFI, by Lynch’s recollection, was still organizing itself at the time and seemed to be poorly assembled. Lynch ultimately received funding from the AFI to make his short film “The Grandmother,” which he shot in his own house. While making “The Grandmother,” however, he learned the AFI Conservatory rarely checked in on him and didn’t seem to demand any results. It merely handed him some cash and he was free.

This ethos, he found, would be carried over into his first feature film, “Eraserhead.” Lynch was given a grant and was allowed to work at his own pace. Being a perfectionist, Lynch shot slowly and meticulously. Money ran out often. Breaks were taken. Filming on “Eraserhead” began in 1972. It wouldn’t be completed until 1977.

Lynch wasn’t super fond of AFI as an organization, but when he was offered a chance to make whatever script he wanted without any interference, he jumped at the opportunity. He presented a 21-page script to the higher-ups, and they were baffled when he assured them it was a feature film and not a short. The school’s dean, Frank Daniel, insisted that Lynch be allowed to make it and even threatened to resign if funding wasn’t secured. The script was inspired by Lynch’s fondness of Franz Kafka, as well as the short story “The Nose” by Nokilai Gogol. More than anything, however, Lynch was inspired by his miserable time in Philadelphia, recalling the big city as being full of hate and soot. Not the warmest place for a kid who was born in Missoula, Montana.

The film was Lynch’s first masterpiece, “Eraserhead.” It followed a worried-faced man named Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) who lived in a nightmarish industrial hellscape. His window faces a brick wall, and his apartment is tony and creaky. Pipes hiss and the radiator beckons him with its warming inner glow. He has a girlfriend named Mary (Charlotte Stewart), but they never see each other. Henry goes to Mary’s family’s house for dinner, and the Cornish game hens come to life — and bleed — when he cuts them. There’s also a baby, although nobody’s ever certain it actually is a baby. In time, Mary and Henry move into Henry’s apartment with the baby, which looks like a small, bandage-wrapped, skinless animal. Lynch was always coy about how he constructed the baby for “Eraserhead,” but fans have long theorized that it was made of a lamb fetus.

Lynch shot “Eraserhead” on and off for years, taking multi-month hiatuses throughout production. Money would run out, so he would have to supplement funding from his own pocket, the pocket of Sissy Spacek (who was married to the film’s production designer, Jack Fisk), and other friends. Production ground on. And on. Construction started. It stopped. Lynch worked when he could.

Nance, the stories go, was never sure when, over the course of the five years of shooting, he would be called in to play Henry, so he kept his hair teased up at all times. For those five years, Nance tooled around Los Angeles with his six-inch-high coif.

It was also said that Lynch would blindfold the projectionists who ran the film’s dailies so that he could retain the mystery of the baby’s special effects. This couldn’t have sped up the process any.

Then, once four years of shooting was done, Lynch hunkered down with sound designer Alan Splet to create the film’s unique industrial hums and groans. No film sounds like “Eraserhead.” It feels like being inside the womb or being trapped deep underwater. It’s terrifying and comforting at the same time. The sound design was so meticulous, it took an entire year unto itself. Finally, after all the shooting, delays, and editing, Lynch came out with a 109-minute version of the film.

As one might expect, it was received poorly by test audiences, and Lynch edited out 20 minutes. He also mixed it to be a little quieter, feeling that many audiences were overwhelmed by all the groaning and hissing. Armed with the now-familiar 89-minute cut, Lynch was at long last ready to unveil the film to the public. It was March of 1977. Lynch has told stories about how the AFI, when it found out “Eraserhead” was finally going to be released, were surprised their project was still a thing. It had kind of forgotten Lynch even existed.

No one, however, could ever forget “Eraserhead.” It’s an unmitigated nightmare, a gaze into Lynch’s innermost fears. It was also a dark mirror of his time in Philadelphia, and, many have said, a portrait of his anxieties of being a new father (which Lynch denied). The film took five years to make, but it was well worth the wait.