David Lynch: The Art Life Page #5

In the house,

I kind of had started to have a setup.

And when I made the film,

I had all these rooms

to shoot the film right there.

I only had a couple of scenes outside.

It was just...

It was just perfect.

Tony Vellani came up to Philadelphia

on the train

and we filmed The Grandmother.

Tony flipped out.

I drove him back to the train station,

and on the way he said,

"David, I think you should go

to the Center for Advanced

Film Studies in Los Angeles."

Well...

I almost died and went to heaven,

just him telling me that.

I'd seen this booklet of the mansion

and all the stuff going on there,

and I would just look at this booklet

and dream about this place,

and here is somebody telling me, you know,

basically he's gonna help me get there.

You want a round cake?

- A round cake.

- Okay.

Can you make a dot?

A cake with a candle.

Cake with a candle.

Hot dog!

Here are the babies here.

There are the babies.

And there's the cookies for the babies.

Little tiny cookies.

Little tiny. Yum.

I thought...

When I got married I said,

okay, that's it.

That's it.

In some way, your life is over.

But...

it was actually the best thing

that could've happened to me.

Because, you know,

there are certain things that come along

that get you off the dime.

You know what I mean?

And...

I didn't think of where I would go

if I wasn't in Philly,

but it seemed like I was gonna be there.

'Cause to get up and move...

I had that huge house.

It was such a setup.

But I didn't know.. It wasn't

that I was miserable at all

It's just, um...

It seemed... like...

No, I wasn't miserable...

It just...

I don't know what would've happened

if I hadn't gotten that grant.

I really don't.

So when we drove out, we went, um, to...

down Sunset

and turned left on San Vicente,

parked the big truck,

and the next morning

was that first morning

I experienced California sunshine.

Unreal.

I just stood in the street

and looked up at the sun.

It was unbelievable.

And it was a kind of a thing where...

it was pulling, uh,

fear out of me.

You know, imagine coming

from Philadelphia and that world

out to LA

and being shown

where you're gonna go to school

a 55-room mansion on the top of a hill

in the best part of Beverly Hills.

And the stables were given to me.

And it wasn't like anybody else

even wanted them, you know.

It was just they were sitting there,

and I was able to get them.

It's just unbelievable.

What a gift that was.

Unbelievable.

For four years I had those stables.

And able to build down there,

live down there, eat down there.

It was incredible.

Go.

Play it, Fred.

Go.

I just love being in that mood.

Sometimes I would sit

on the sets at night.

I'd be working or something,

and I could imagine a whole world outside

that doesn't exist.

But it really would be such a world.

Around me was the factory neighborhood,

and I would imagine it,

and it was so real.

And sometimes it would rain,

and I'd hear this rain,

and I'd be in this room,

and I knew what the streets

were like out there, and the diners.

It was really dark

and filled with smoke

and big factories,

huge smokestacks,

fire and smoke and steel.

And these homes with little doilies

and stuffed chairs.

And hot inside,

and pipes kind of leaking,

and all these things.

I was divorced from Peggy

and living at the stables,

and my brother was visiting

out in Riverside.

And my brother and my father

wanted to talk to me.

I sit down.

I remember it was dark in the living room.

Then the whole thing was,

"Give up this film

and get a job,

because your...

you got a child, and

this film isn't getting made,

and you're wasting your time."

This kind of thing.

And it got me...

It got me really in a deep, deep way.

'Cause they didn't understand

and I just couldn't believe it,

what they were saying to me.

And they were totally serious.

And so I left there and I went back,

and my sister was in the back bedroom,

and I started crying.

But, um, it was...

it was just one of those things...

where, um,

there was no way I was gonna do that.

See, what I wanna do is have the...

mainly the look on Henry's face...

You know...

It's so real. I feel like he's here.

But anyway, um, uh...

The look on Henry's face just when he's

getting ready to cut. You know, the big cut.

Eraserhead,

to me, was one of my greatest,

happiest experiences in cinema.

And what I loved about it was the world

and having it be my own little place

where I could build everything

and get it exactly the way I wanted it

for hardly any money.

It just took time.

It just, uh, was so beautiful.

Everything about it.

Everything about it.

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