Repulsive Interactions - I saw Eraserhead for the first time a couple...

12th April 2011

Photo reblogged from fuckyeahdavidlynch with 137 notes

I saw Eraserhead for the first time a couple months ago. It was kind of a big deal because there had been nearly a year’s worth of buildup, and by the time I actually saw it, the film had acquired a great deal of personal weight for me.

Those of you who don’t know me personally may not be aware that David Lynch has played a pretty big role in my relationship with Geoff. I drove up to LA from school last spring to go to a party at his house the night before the LA Festival of Books, at which David Lynch was doing a signing. What we intended to be buddy/buddy hangout time with the added bonus of meeting one of our favorite directors (Lynch asked me in that delightful voice of his, and I quote “Would you like a little bit of gold?” as he signed my sketchbook) ended up being an unintentional first date. Auspicious start, no?

So far so good.

The first text I got from Geoff following this was about Eraserhead, saying that we should watch it together next time we hung out (neither of us having yet seen it). Which we never quite got around to doing. The watching Eraserhead, not the hanging out. We did a lot of that. Plans to watch Eraserhead together became plans to watch Eraserhead over the phone once he moved to New York, and again, we didn’t quite get around to it. Then in February, I came to visit. It was a great time, and we ate a lot of pizza, as one is apt to do in New York. We were together over Valentine’s day, having all kinds of fun around the city before going home for the evening. At which point we had a great idea.

“Wouldn’t it be fun,” we mused collectively (conversation condensed into single quotation for the ease of the reader), “if we finally watched Eraserhead together?”

O wretched young lovers (as my elementary Latin reader might phrase it), you do not understand the foolishness of your plan (I swear, some variation on this sentence appeared in every. single. story)!

Those of you who have seen Eraserhead can surmise, I’m sure, why this was such a comically misguided idea, but also why it would have been even more comically misguided during the burgeoning stages of our (really any) relationship. At no point were either of us under the impression that it was any kind of date movie, but we were little prepared for the sheer depth of grotesqueness to which we were about to bear witness. In short, it was one of the most unspeakably horrifying movies I have ever seen (remember, this is coming from a huge David Lynch fan, so calibrate accordingly!), and we both spent most of it tense and nauseated, and thank god we ate our dinner first, and then we also had to watch The Omen afterward as a kind of mental palate cleanser. (Have you seen The Omen? It’s really good and creepy, and Gregory Peck rocks some super inspiring fashions, you should check it out.)

So basically it was the most romantic thing that ever happened in the history of all time.

Tagged: david lynch motion pictures shut up about your boyfriend