David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977) remains an unrivaled enigma in the history of cinema, a cult film that launched the career of one of Hollywood’s most enduring outsiders. The process of making the film, detailed in Lynch’s 2018 memoir Room to Dream (co-written with Kristine McKenna), reflects the complicated intersection of individual vision and economic reality that would define Lynch’s path as a filmmaker. But do these cultural and economic conditions even exist anymore? Musician, writer, and fellow Lynch-head Tyler Scruggs joins us to talk about Eraserhead’s unique production and cultural legacy, in a conversation that explores authorship, adaptation, consciousness, and what it means to be an artist in the digital era.
Nostalgia Trap