Greg lent me his copy of the David Lynch box set of short films and Eraserhead. When I saw Eraserhead in San Francisco back in the late 70's I was really intrigued by it. Now I can barely sit through it. His short films aren't fairing much better as they pass in front of my eyes. The guys had watched these during movie night when I was in Winnipeg. Luckily for me I was out of the country and didn't have to watch them at real speed. There are 6 short films on the dvd. Six Men getting Sick, The Alphabet, The Grandmother, The Amputee, these are the first four, done in the early 70's. They look like David Lynch art student films, and they really aren't much different from many other art student films. Eraserhead has a bit of that art student look, but by the time it was finished Lynch had made a major growth spurt in sophistication and technique over these short bursts of subconcious mentalness. Eraserhead also had the benefit of a story 0f sorts. Lynch has this fixation for rotting organic forms that I just don't care for. There is so much ugliness in his work. Look at the cover of the box. That's not an attractive piece of art, not something I would put up on my wall, although I might have 25 years ago. Even then I would have positioned it in with nicer things to create more of a contrast between them.
These short films don't speak to me in a language I can understand, although I think The Grandmother is about bedwetting. I wouldn't know what they are about without Lynch's telling me via the introductions, and even then he's often only talking about the circumstances that surrounded the making of the film. His vision in these early shorts is so uniquely his own, and so internal I have nothing to reference to, leaving me standing there wondering what the joke is. And let's face it, the more you know the more jokes you get. I ain't laughin' here, but I did get a smile from the fifth short. The Cowboy and the Frenchman was made in 1985 and it's a bit silly and fun. Some Frenchmen asked several directors to make shorts about their impressions of the French. Lynch dresses up three of his favorites, Jack Nance, Harry Dean Stanton and Tracey Walter, as cowboys and Michael Horse as an indian. Throw in a frenchman and you've got comedy. The sixth short is Lynch's contribution to the Lumiere and Company project from the late ninties. I'd seen that movie, a lot of shorts by many directors using the original Lumiere Brothers camera. I thought it was pretty boring and never kept a copy. Lynch was one of the few with a story in his bit, and there is a naked lady in a big glass tube of water, what's up with that.
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