Part 1: the films separately
Part 2: 10 connections between them (+ feedback/bonus)
And a Patreon podcast comparing Eraserhead to Twin Peaks has just gone up as a tie-in:
(update 2023: now available as a public episode as well)
There was so much material here that I decided to release it as two separate podcasts on my feed. The first episode offers some independent thoughts on Eraserhead and then Inland Empire. The second episode brings the two together, teasing out commonalities and then differences based on those commonalities. Eraserhead and Inland Empire stand as bookends to David Lynch's perfectly symmetrical feature film career - a 1977 celluloid midnight movie debut about a man terrified by his bizarre-looking infant and intrigued by a singing lady behind a radiator, and a 2006 video farewell to cinema about a woman falling into a multiplicity of universes after taking on a "cursed" film role. They mirror one another in ways that provide a great template for this sort of connection, and ten is the right number to choose, given Lynch's obsession with numerology (ten is "the number of completion" as Twin Peaks tells us), the decalogue of his filmography, and even the number of letters in his name!
The ten connections I dig into are:
1. Avant-Garde
2. Personal Narratives
3. Intense Psychodramas
4. Family
5. Infidelity
6. Los Angeles
7. Hidden Spaces
8. Long Productions
9. Climactic Killings
10. Concluding Embraces in Light
There is also an unusual amount of feedback/bonus material which I tacked onto the first episode (the shorter of the two), all on Inland Empire, including a listener's evolution with the film, my own meditation on the backyard location, and a comparison to the Teresa Banks story in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (that section begins at 33:09). Please note that all of this discussion, which draws on Lynch's work as a whole, does include some vague spoilers for Twin Peaks. And if you want to hear particularly Peaks/Eraserhead connections, I just released a patron episode on that subject, in conjunction with this podcast. A long list of my writing and video work on both Eraserhead and Inland Empire follow below...
PART 1 - INTRODUCING...
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(and most places podcasts are found)
PART 2 - 10 CONNECTIONS
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(and most places podcasts are found)
LINKS FOR EPISODE 29
video of the 1982 Eraserhead trailer (Lynch introduces his "boys")
What Did Five Woody Woodpecker Dolls Do to Upset David Lynch? by Cheryl Eddy (io9)
My other work on these 2 Lynch films
(non-narrated video essay focused on how Lynch's early films - including Eraserhead - depict violence and assign the roles of abuser, victim, and rescuer, using brief audio from Inland Empire as well)
(includes individual full-length reviews of Eraserhead and Inland Empire)
(discusses Eraserhead and Inland Empire)
(interview about her books The Passion of David Lynch & David Lynch Swerves)
(video essay exploring how Twin Peaks represents a shift in Lynch's work and how it affected his later films, includes an extended sequence about Inland Empire)
- see still images here
(reviewing a double feature from the David Lynch/Jacques Rivette retrospective at Lincoln Center)
(reviewing a double feature from the David Lynch/Jacques Rivette retrospective at Lincoln Center)
(comparing the late films of Lynch, including Inland Empire, to Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon, scored to the soundtrack from Inland Empire)
- see still images here
(video essay exploring the evolution of Lynch's style including both Eraserhead and Inland Empire which came before and after his collaboration with editor Sweeney)
MY RECENT WORK
Guest on another podcast
Guest on another podcast
New on Patreon
(for $5/month)
Lost in Twin Peaks #31: Fire Walk With Me
(& for free)
(for $1/month)
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