Jack Fisk discusses how David Lynch brought ‘Eraserhead’ to life
Every great filmmaker often has a network of close associates behind the scenes who help them craft the final masterpiece. Martin Scorsese has his long-time editor and accomplice Thelma Schoonmaker, Yorgos Lanthimos worked closely with screenwriter Efthimis Filippou and production designer Jack Fisk, has helped countless directors create visual marvels, from Paul Thomas Anderson to David Lynch.
Emerging to success in the 1970s, Fisk is one of Hollywood’s most underappreciated talents, receiving three Oscar nominations throughout his career thanks to his extraordinary cinematic scope. Credited with constructing the beautiful central mansion in Terrence Malick’s 1978 masterpiece Days of Heaven and helping to frame the wilderness of Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s The Revenant, Fisk is an unrivalled genius in his field.
Brian De Palma’s 1974 phantasmagorical musical Phantom of the Paradise was Fisk’s first taste of success. Still, three years later, he would get the chance to work with his old school friend David Lynch on his curious debut project, Eraserhead. Best friends in high school, Fisk and Lynch ended up going to art school and even moving to California together, where the pair pursued a career under the industry lights.
“When he started Eraserhead, we went to the Allied Artists Studios, which was going out of business,” he told Far Out in an exclusive interview, “They said, ‘We can have anything we want for $100’. So we rented this big truck and filled it up with fireplaces and walls and doors from all their scene dock, where they kept all the settings because they were just getting rid of everything”.
Made on a measly budget of just $100,000, Lynch’s debut was the true meaning of DIY filmmaking, using friends and low-paid crew members to bring his nightmare reverie to life. Though the young, eager punters who travelled to independent picture houses in their masses to see the film weren’t exactly bothered about the plot, as time went on, the narrative’s existential angst about fatherhood began to become clear, with the movie depicting the life of a young man living in a monochrome hellscape where nothing is normal nor emotionally stable.
Recalling his time working on the film, Fisk further recalled: “David had a close circle of friends working on Eraserhead, and he actually lived in the stable illegally because it was a public place. He would work at night and in the daytime sleep, so you get locked into the stable, and if the guard came by, he’d see the door locked and never go in. Then, at night, his crew would come and sort of unlock the door, and they would start working”.
But, while Fisk helped here and there behind the scenes of the film, his biggest contribution was playing the part of ‘The Man in the Planet’, which the protagonist briefly dreams of during one surreal sequence. “I just started growing a beard,” Fisk recalled about the role, “He put this plastic on my face, and it made it look a lot different. But we shot the scene. It went well. David’s one of the most down-to-earth, sweetest people I know. But that night, when I went home, I was trying to get this plastic out of my beard and it wouldn’t come out. I remember sitting in a hot tub, just like steaming my face and trying to. I ended up shaving my beard. It took me three days to get out of that makeup”.
Take a look at Fisk as ‘The Man in the Planet’ from Lynch’s Eraserhead below.
