The classic 1979 movie that failed to impress David Lynch: “He isn’t really enthusiastic about my work”
David Lynch emerged to mixed reception in 1977 when his debut feature, Eraserhead, was finally released after five years of production. Some people were enamoured, and the movie eventually found popularity on the midnight movie circuit. Others weren’t as impressed, finding it too bizarre, too abstract.
Little did some critics know, however, that this was just the beginning for Lynch, who would soon go on to become one of the most influential and beloved filmmakers of all time. Eraserhead was a taste of a surreal world that he would continue to expand upon over the coming decades with various gorgeously deranged forays into the human condition, into pain and suffering, and the innate beauty to be found beneath it all.
While he’d find more mainstream popularity with his next film, The Elephant Man, as well as future projects like Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet, Eraserhead would soon become a cult classic, inspiring many filmmakers with its haunting exploration of urban isolation and anxiety told through surreal characters, such as the alien-like baby.
In fact, Lynch was convinced that this alien baby had inspired a certain movie released just two years later – one that, reportedly, he wasn’t particularly keen on. In 1979, Ridley Scott’s second movie, Alien, emerged in cinemas. It was penned by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett, and it has since become one of the most acclaimed sci-fi horror films ever made, the movie’s legacy firmly secured in the pop culture canon.
But according to its visual effects designer HR Giger, Lynch was convinced that the movie had copied elements from Eraserhead, and he didn’t seem like much of a fan of Scott’s film.
Giger wanted to work with Lynch on Dune, but he had no luck in getting through to him. “Through friends, I asked Lynch if he was interested in my co-operation,” he revealed to Cinefantastique magazine. “I never heard from him.”
Giger would soon discover why. “Later, I came to know that he was upset because he thought we copied the chestburster in Alien from his monster baby in Eraserhead, which was not so. Ridley Scott and I hadn’t even seen that film at the time. If one film influenced Alien, it was The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. I would have loved to collaborate with Lynch on Dune, but apparently, he wanted to do all the designs by himself.”
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The special effects designer was disappointed by Lynch’s reaction, adding, “He isn’t really enthusiastic about my work… David Lynch said that it was filmed exactly as his was, but it couldn’t have been because Ridley hadn’t seen it! Lynch talked like it was some sort of homage to his work… He doesn’t seem to want to be friendly to me, and I don’t know why.”
So, did Lynch actually hate Alien? It’s hard to say whether he actually disliked the film as a whole, but it seems like he was put off by his belief that he’d been copied, which is, arguably, an artist’s worst nightmare.
