Original subtitles

I've used these shots from time

to time where people come out of darkness, and I love that.

I love seeing just black, miles and miles of black.

And then from it comes something,

and it keeps coming forward and reveals itself.

It's very beautiful.

So people coming out of darkness visually is beautiful,

but the idea of coming out of darkness

is really what life is about.

So it's something to think about.

I have this thing about darkness.

You know, if there's part of the frame that's really dark,

again, it's like room to dream.

You don't know what is back there.

If you see everything, it's more safe.

It is the unknown, this darkness, things coming out

of the darkness.

Herb Cardwell started the lighting.

This world of "Eraserhead" had to have a certain feel, sort

of back in time, other world, and Herb lit mostly

with these little inkies, many little, little lights,

little pools of light, so beautiful.

Took forever, but it was so worth it.

In the lovemaking scene, we first lit it with the inkies,

and then the mood was totally wrong.

So we reshot that with soft light,

but still really dark, but soft light

where they just sort of glowed in the darkness.

It was so beautiful.

It was magical.

And black and white they say is much harder to light than color

because you have to separate things.

Colors separate automatically, but you

get a pair of black pants against a black dresser

like we saw many times in "Eraserhead",

you've got to rim light those pants

or they just blend right-- it looks

like doesn't have any legs.

It's tricky business.

Every move is plotted out.

All the lights are set.

And with Jack Nance playing Henry, it was, like,

choreographed, you know, down to the n-th--

Jack loved doing this, you know, just

to know every single little move.

And it was so good.

Herb could just, you know, dial in the lights

to catch this and let this go into darkness

and come out and get this.

It was very beautiful, very, very beautiful.

Freddie Francis shot "Sons & Lovers."

Freddie knew black and white.

And Freddie also is British and knew those times

with gas lights and early electricity,

these kind of hospitals and the mood of them, the whole thing,

Victorian England.

So this was the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.

And smoke, smokestacks, machines, all these things

were coming into being, and so they

had to be in the world of the "Elephant Man."

Philadelphia is my greatest influence,

and all the architecture I fell in love with.

I fell in love the smokestack industry.

Smoke and fire, all the noise, the machinery, the steel,

the houses they lived in, the imagined life,

it just was thrilling to me.

That all came out of Philadelphia.

The only problem I ever had-- you

know, a lot of times Freddie didn't want to make

it as dark as I wanted it.

And he would always say Lynch wants

it so dark you can't see it, but that's not true.

There's a mood.

And also, London, you know in those days, you know,

they say the fog and smog, you know, was so thick.

You know, you want that kind of feel everywhere,

and a lot of times really, really dark

and a mood, especially at night.

Freddie was absolutely fantastic,

became a great, great friend of mine.

And after the "Elephant Man", he shot "Dune," and after "Dune"

he shot "Straight Story."

The play on the stage was shot many different angles.

So all the pieces were there, but, you know,

the play, if it had just shot straight, was, you know--

even though it was a nice play, it was quite boring.

And this is seen through the eyes of, you know,

John Merrick, and it's magical to him.

So it had to feel much more magical than just a live thing.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

It would be so easy to do that today in digital, so easy.

But then it was so difficult. All these things

have to go in an optical printer and get, you know,

all the little dissolves and fades

and all these different things.

Putting it all together had to be planned out

to the frame and sort of really kind of guessed and talked out.

And it was getting near the end of the mix.

That thing still wasn't cut into the film.

It took weeks.

And if something goes wrong, you would

have to start all over again.

It was a thing that was built and took a long time

on the optical printer.

In "Eraserhead," I would do these little storyboards

and kind of work things out for myself

and show them to Herb or Fred, but mainly I just drawing them.

And I would change them sometimes too.

But I always say, you know, like, again,

common sense for special effects shots or things

involving lots of things that need to come together,

everybody needs to know, those things

are talked about and drawn out and organized

so that lots of different people know exactly what needs

to be done and when and how.

I had printed up like these little 1.85 squares.

They're all up and down the page.

And then I would, say, have the dresser here,

and then I would have Henry, his suit here.

And I'd have the box on the wall here and a plant here.

And maybe he would be reaching out to get something.

So it would be like that.

Yeah, they were a little bit bigger than that,

and I was using a pen rather than a marker,

so they were a little bit better detail.

But then Henry-- the thing about the widescreen,

pretty widescreen, is Henry's hair is tall.

So I would, you know, have to, you know--

his hair probably would go out of frame.

And I'd go along, you know, do the sequence.