(Written and directed by David Lynch; starring Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Judith Anna Roberts, Laurel Near, Allen Joseph, Jeanne Bates, and Jack Fisk. Released 19 March 1977; watched 2023w19 via Criterion Channel )

That I'm as much of a David Lynch devotee as I am and have been for years (even when he climbs too far, as Quentin Tarantino said, up his own ass – though I did buy the 4k Criterion release of INLAND EMPIRE, which I'm nonetheless looking forward to seeing again), that I hadn't seen ERASERHEAD until now is (yet another) of my cinematic crimes in an otherwise solid record.

Hopefully subsequent viewings will let me see this marvel on its own two feet – it is, after all, Stanley Kubrick's favorite film – instead of taking it in as a reverse summation of Lynch's 40-year career but I can't deny my surprise and elation at how much of everthing – character, idea, trope, etc – Lynch has done/explored since can be traced to ERASERHEAD: The Lady in the Radiator = Lil in TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME (and The Lady's plaster cheeks returning in the plaster mask of Mrs. Chalfont's grandson in FIRE); the "beautiful neighbor"= Isabella Rossellini in BLUE VELVET; Mary X's mom = Sarah Palmer; the tree in dirt and the baby (oh, that baby) became the Man From Another Place's latest incarnation in TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN; the floor in Henry's apartment lobby (nevermind the curtains) is the floor in the Black Lodge; and nevermind that the whole film should have prepared everyone for the divine madness of TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN's eighth episode (got a light?); and Jack Nance's Charlie Chaplin industrial channeling as Henry is revisited as his Charlie Chaplin channeling Pete Martell in the woods and environs of TWIN PEAKS (I miss Jack Nance so very, very much - should be mentioned in the same breath as Cazale, IMO; what a treasure)

Normally, if a creator was doing that, I'd say they're trying to refine and hone what they did in their earliest work: it's been said that we all do one work and everything is an attempt to make it better. Maybe that's true, but given that this is Lynch, it feels less like he's trying to improve with time and more like he's trying to return to this freedom, this time before success, when he was closer to being a painter than a filmmaker. He's called it his most spiritual film – and probably considers it his best. It was when he didn't know what he was doing and just doing - when he was most in his beginner's mind: if this is what beginner's mind brings, sign me up. Love it.