"Eraserhead"

"Eraserhead" is still my all time favorite film. It came out in the same year as "Star Wars" and it also changed my life. This surreal and abstract film written, directed, and produced by David Lynch took five years to complete while he lived in stables at the AFI Conservatory. He used money from friends, family, a Wall Street Journal paper route, and from production designer husband of Sissy Spacek and childhood friend, Jack Fisk.

I used to live in various warehouses and bad neighborhoods because of cheap spaces and because of having little money, so the industrial and the sounds it makes and how it drills into your bones is something I very much recognize in this film. There was a time in fact where I would say I watched the film on a weekly basis. I would hold pot luck parties on Friday with one group of artists and the Saturday a party with another group of artists and then I'd live the rest of the week on the leftovers. Some annoying artists would stay and stay so I would start playing movies I thought would make them all leave so I could sleep, but "Eraserhead" was one that would keep the interesting ones there.

There have been times when I've been really down and that world in the film would pick me right up. I honestly don't know why. There is something profoundly spiritual in the film that moves me. Every time I see it, it takes me back to the feeling I had when I first saw it. There was a deep feeling of smuggling contraband, seeing this film. If a friend was showing it to you, he was pushing some mind altering, philosophy changing drug that he believed would awaken something inside you, a nonverbal experience that would open you up for hours of discussion.

If this is your first time seeing "Eraserhead," I'm glad I'm that friend pushing it onto you.

Watch the film "Eraserhead" click here!