Too Scary; Didn't Watch - ERASERHEAD with Amy Nicholson

Episode Date: February 8, 2023

Thrilled to be joined by film critic Amy Nicholson (Unspooled, Tom Cruise: Anatomy Of An Actor, The AMC Mayfair Witches Podcast) to discuss David Lynch's first film ERASERHEAD. Tiny mutant-baby screams, heads falling off, a lady in a radiator...this surreal watch has something for everybody!! Except new parents. If you are a new parent, do NOT watch this. TRAILER Recap begins @ 36:09 Follow the show: @TSDWpodcast on Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram. Check out our Patreon for bonus episodes and additional content! Rate Too Scary; Didn’t Watch 5 Stars on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and leave a review for Emily, Henley, and Sammy. Advertise on Too Scary; Didn't Watch via Gumball.fmSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a HeadGum Podcast. This is Emily, Henley, and Sammy, and you're listening to Too Scary, Didn't Watch. Hi everyone, welcome to Too Scary, Didn't Watch, the horror movie recap podcast for those too scared to watch for themselves. I'm Emily and I am too scared to watch scary movies. I'm Henley and I'm also too scared to watch scary movies. I'm Sammy and I love watching scary movies and so I watch them so that you don't have to. And we have an interesting one this week that I'm very excited to get into. a interesting one this week that I'm very excited to get into. But before we do, first,

we have a little bit of haunted housekeeping, which is that we have a live virtual show this weekend, February 11th. Oh my gosh. It'll be at 5 p.m. Pacific, 8 p.m. Eastern. You can get tickets at moment.co Slash TSDW We will be recapping Knock at the Cabin I'm so excited I am so excited What's great about M. Night Shyamalan And that is how you say it Is that if it's great Great

If it's crazy, great If it's awful, great It will be something. Win, win, win. It's a classic win, win, win. And I feel like the initial reactions I've seen are strong. And I'm thrilled that it is rated R. Again, I won't be seeing it.

I will be hearing about it. And I'm very excited. The trailer came on TV today while Tim was watching football. And I had to shield Silas's eyes. I was like, Silas, are you able to process fear yet? I can't wait until I know the answer to that because he's been too little to like be scared of anything. He was scared of that jack in the box. That's true. But just like obvious surprises, but like visual imagery, he's just kind of like, whatever. I don't care't care but i was like this show is a little

scary is this gonna give you nightmares i don't know we're on the cusp of nightmares wow what a time i can't wait i can't wait to know about it i'm so excited it's gonna be great um and patrons get 20 off so if you want to become a patron you can do that at patreon.com slash tstw podcast and now that that haunted housekeeping is out of the way, did anything scary happen to us this week? So many scary things happened to me this week. Oh my God. Per usual. One scary thing I do want us all to talk about, even though we've all talked about it too much is the Oscar nominations. Okay okay so you know the surprise best actress nomination andrea riseborough yes everyone no one saw coming they didn't know it was going to happen

everyone's shocked out of their seats it's a real coup um we've all heard about it a lot the thing that's scary to me is that tim and i had a long conversation about it um he was asking what is she from? I was saying, you know, she's been in a couple of movies that we've recapped. Mandy. Mandy Possessor. She is Mandy. She is Mandy. The titular Mandy.

And it took me a full 24 hours to connect the dots to the fact that she's also the star of one of my favorite TV shows. Zero, zero, zero. It tv shows zero zero zero chameleon man i i'm not surprised to hear it because she really transforms in her roles i loved that tv show i definitely talked about it when i watched it like two years ago or whenever that was i remember you talking about it and i never watched it okay for anyone that's listening who hasn't seen it, like go watch it.

I mean, it's pretty fucking dark and it's really fucking insane. And the ending is the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life, but it really flew under the radar when it came out. I feel like people didn't talk about it a lot. I feel like it wasn't watched enough. I was obsessed with it when it came out. And I think that I was just scared That it took me so long To realize that she's the actors from it I was like oh no My brain has holes in it Like I have like Swiss cheese brain

I don't remember anything I can't remember anything You gotta give yourself more credit here Because again she's a chameleon She is a real chameleon And she is probably the ugliest She's probably the ugliest haircut you'll ever see in your whole goddamn life in that show it's so ugly but man i loved it and it's just this is just an excuse for me to get to talk about the tv show again i'm imagining what this haircut could be oh you got

a google image search it's real bad davis andenzie Davis in Halt and Catch Fire's first season. Oh, it's worse. It's so much worse. You know what I was thinking of is Jessica Chastain in Mama. What was that? Mama? Is it Mama? What is that?

It's not like that, but it's like similarly vibes. Similarly shocking. That hair is really bad. Her real natural hair. Yeah. really bad her real natural hair yeah how did you guys feel about the Oscar nominations I guess I was when all that came out I haven't looked into it too much

people like oh my god how could this happen we're conducting review I was sort of like there's how could if they were so surprised why did they announce it before dealing with it i'm sort of like how did it get away from them like that's the part of the process that i don't understand yeah i mean they were compelled to to say it but then be like but but now we don't know and it's like i don't know i guess i don't get it the systems are all broken none of them it just

feels like you guys are the ones who said that this Happened so how could you be surprised If you're surprised. I don't know I just don't know. I don't get it and also I have Swiss cheese brain I mean you know my feelings is That Justice for Mia Goth Is my main takeaway. Yeah Justice for Mia Goth

Mia Goth and Pearl Yeah I mean i haven't incredible performance a ton of attention to the oscars and justice for no justice for horror they never get they never get their due at the oscars they really don't no no yeah that's how i feel about the oscars i thought about it very little because i am so all i do is homework, as you know. I can't even believe I'm still talking about it. It's so, so stupid. Who cares? Everybody's busy.

Every time I think about how busy I am and how overwhelmed I am, I'm like, shut the fuck up. Everybody's busy. But that's all that's what happened. What's happening to me now is I'm very busy and I'm always doing work and I'm always sitting in my computer. And it like is I keep thinking it's going to let up and it's just simply not and so i'm i'm just always doing work and that's all i'm doing and i'm tired and who cares everybody's tired but we had an earthquake this week a first earthquake in a while as that i could remember um a 4.2 a 4. something in malibu Pretty close, you know, and big enough to feel And I Hate earthquakes so much they really

Really scare me I think they're so scary It shouldn't It feels so wrong when it's happening And in the ten years of the Janelle I never once Have I felt like neutral About an earthquake, I always freak out I always freak out

This earthquake happened. First of all, thought it was my cats being annoying, which is also how annoying my fucking cats are in the night. Woke up. Our like mirror was, you know, shaking as well,

which I don't know how I thought that could have been our cat cats. But I was like, looked up, was confused. I looked at Joel and he went earthquake. And I went, Oh, couldn't care. Didn't have it in me to care was too worn out was like fucking she's overworked she's overworked what

can i do she doesn't even care about a natural disaster she doesn't even care about the big one anymore and that's not correct you know and the status of like things you should care about an earthquake is up there. Anyway. Realistically, what are you actually going to do to protect yourself in an earthquake? What are you going to do? I mean, you're supposed to get into a doorframe. Like, who's even going to do that? It's really hard to remember what you're supposed to do. It's really hard to remember what you're supposed to do.

You're supposed to get, I think, to like an inner corner. So a corner of two interior walls is, I believe. See, I don't even know what that means. You're saying that to me in my head. I don't even know what those words mean. So like two walls, two walls where none of the walls are the outside. Yes, no, I get it now. You know?

Also, you're not supposed to put your bed under a window, which we did move our bed out from under the window. But like, what are you going to do? So that's sort of where I'm at. Just feeling like the inevitability of death and being like who cares Um, okay, well mine is taking a turn a bit. This is very stupid The stakes are much much lower And that is that I discovered that chocolate has caffeine in it. How did I not know that?

How did you not know that? I know. I don't know. I don't know. I bought, so I haven't been having caffeine and I bought a like cacao latte thinking no caffeine in there. Obviously it's chocolate and I had 25 milligrams of caffeine. I was really, really shocked. And then it just, yeah, shook me to my core that I consume so much chocolate. Did you not realize till after? Was it like a can where you could see the measurement of 25 milligrams? Did you feel weird when you looked it up?

I drank it in three servings to minimize the caffeine. But I did drink it. Well, that's, I mean, that's... Because if there's chocolate, I'm having it. Was it store-bought? Do you buy it from like a grocery store? Yeah. Okay, okay, I see.

Yeah, well, and darker, the darker the chocolate, the more caffeine. So sometimes... Which is, I usually eat dark chocolate. I usually eat dark chocolate like after dinner and you're just having caffeine. I just didn't know. So anybody out there, you know, be careful, be careful. If you're having chocolate in your bedtime, just know that it might be, you know, be careful, be careful. If you're having chocolate in your bedtime, just know that it might be, uh, you know, keeping you up at night. That's huge news. No, no. Okay. Honestly, I really do think this helps curb my sugar

addiction is the fact that I, I'm so concerned about it affecting my sleep. So I really won't eat it because I know that it'll keep me awake even like after, you know, noon. I'm worried about it. Oh, wow. Yeah. Well, it's going to be changing my chocolate habits, which is the scary thing because I'm a big chocolate person. I'm a big chocolate person. This is huge. Yeah. So we'll see. I don't know. Do I have to start eating milk chocolate now? i switch it up any tips out there would be appreciated this is rocking my world i don't know what to make of it that's tough um but another scary thing i did this week was watch this week's movie

which is eraser head came out in 1977 this was my first time seeing it. This is a classic. Written and directed by David Lynch. Our first Lynch film here on the podcast. It's going to be interesting. I would imagine it's not super well suited for the recap format. That's right.

I mean, we'll see. We'll do our best. It's starring Jack Nance, Charlotte Stewart, Laurel Neer, and Judith Roberts. right i mean we'll see we'll do our best uh it's starring jack nance charlotte stewart laurel near and judith roberts it is streaming on hbo max and we have a guest with us today to talk about this film she is a film critic an author she wrote a fucking book about tom cruise Tom Cruise. Holy shit. She is the host of the podcasts unspooled and the AMC Mayfair witches podcast. And she has an incredible cat. Yes. Amy Nicholson. Thank you for joining us. Of all those things. I think I'm most proud of the cat. The cat is beautiful, beautiful, incredible. And in fact, I was thinking about the cat earlier

this morning and was like, if Sammy doesn't mention the cat I will have to wait tell me more about this cat I don't know anything about the cat it's beautiful like I met Emily and Sammy with my cat the first time I really got to meet y'all yeah yeah and it was a really special day it was magical because like I think you were wearing my pants already I think I was Yeah Some context there? Maybe there should just be no context No, we're not going to give Context, no context. No, we have a mutual friend Also in the podcast, Jessica Jarden

Who sells clothes at Flea Market And she had taken some pants from Amy Sold them, I got them They're great pants, and I think I was wearing them And then Amy showed up with the perfect Cat Mind you, we're outside, we're at the flea market and there's a cat here, which is not something you expect to see. It was incredible. It was really his first time

trying out his backpack. My boyfriend gave me a cat backpack for Christmas. And so we were like, all right, let's break it out. Let's break it out. Let's break it out. And he did a very good job. I have to say, like they walked over there to say hi to Jessica. So well behaved. Thank you. I appreciate that. He's an angel. He's a gray Maine Coon kitten. So he's quite large. He's also young.

He got out and sat on the table. He just laid down on the table outside with people around, petting him, talking, hanging out, unfazed. Oh, gorgeous. What a chill cat. hanging out unfazed oh gorgeous chill cat it was kind of the high point of his chillness because then we tried to take him to the farmer's market and he was not chill so like you saw him on the greatest day and then he was so bad at the farmer's market that we haven't taken him out again but he had one really good moment and i'm glad that you were there for it and you can just imagine we were there the greatest cat of all time from here on out. But hi, you guys.

It's nice to be here. It's very nice to have you here, Amy. Before we get into you, I mean, a true film expert on our podcast, which is very exciting. Before we get into all of that, did anything scary happen to you this week? You know, it's going to sound so silly. It's going to sound very silly. Oh, silly. Um, it's going to sound very silly. So the context of this is that I'm trying to learn how to bake because I can't bake at all. Like it's always been a thing that I've just said my whole life. I can't bake blah, blah, blah. There's two kinds of people in life, like people who can

cook and people who can bake. And I guess probably three people, which is like people who don't make food for themselves at all in like any kind of natural substance way but i'm like you know people who cook are like jazzy and we're improvisers you know we like live in the moment and people who bake are really good at following rules spoken like a true person who cooks exactly exactly and i was like it's cool that i can't bake because i don't like to follow rules i'm an individualist. Exactly. But then I was like, that's kind of lame. Like what if you just trusted that a recipe was right and did it eat it as I'm trying to make myself learn how to bake as like practice caring about things. Do you know what I mean? Like as like a psychological, like a process over food.

Yeah. It feels psychologically important to learn how to bake and so i asked my boyfriend uh for this christmas i want a lot of baking stuff he was like we got the cat backpack we're good yeah baking stuff um and one of the things he got me was like a thing of mini mini bunt pans from surla top or they're like kind of geometric looking tiny buns like cupcake tin sort of and i had to do a book club yesterday that was like we formed this like erotic book club and so we're doing this like book club about like a gargoyle it's like a sexy gargoyle romance oh my god it was like it's called romancing his stone it's amazing i was gonna say we're gonna need the

title of this book he We're missing his stone. He does things with his tail that are just unbelievable. Oh, my God. I'm scandalized. And the girl he does it to is like a child actress who's now grown up. So it's like sort of she's like 28 and trying to fight her like mom for like power of over her like a state of the money that she made when she was a little kid. And she's earning money as a sugar baby on the side to pay for for her Louboutins and that's how she meets the gargoyle anyways it's a really exciting book and so I thought I would make little bunt cakes and I would call them gargoyle bunts drive me nuts because I just like marble the icing yeah and so

you know like mini bunts are a hard thing. And we've been watching a lot of like junior British bake-off and those kids can make it. And so I was like, I'm going to try to grease a pan and flour it like real people do. And the first batch worked out okay. And I was like, great, I've got this. I'm really doing the process. And I like greased it again. I floured it again.

And then none of my bunts came out the second time. And like, I knew they weren't going to, you know, like I flipped it and they're all just stuck. And I was like, I, that is what I was scared of is like, I was scared that I would like work really hard and I would do it wrong. And I did. And then I'm like looking at my bunts and like really thinking and hammering them and trying to like wriggle them out. And there's no happy ending my bunts. I fucked it up. And I was like, still can't, I'm trusting the process, but the process isn't there for me but it felt like a failure and i was really bummed out like very sad and scared that i didn't do it right yeah and and like baking and and cooking too it's like you put in a lot of work and then if it's so much

it doesn't work and it's not good you're're just like, there's nothing to be done with this. Like, it's just wasted time, resources, energy. Like, and it's also like, what did I do wrong? Yeah. It's a failure. Like, baking is like failure. Like, the kids on Junior British Bake Off are crying all the time. You know, and I get it.

That's true. Like, they're crying like it's a nightmare. They're crying like the worst nightmare came true. And it's that their buns didn't work. And like, I get it. There they're crying. Like it's a nightmare. They're crying. Like the worst nightmare came true and it's that their buns didn't work. And like, I get it. There's something deeply human about that. These kids are better than me and they're nine. And it's like, so yeah, even that's like extra humiliating.

I guess baking like rewards perfectionism. And so maybe that's like a bad part of the brain to be operating sometimes if you're like trying to work towards perfectionism and other aspects. I will say this is resonating with me deeply because when COVID right before COVID started or right around COVID, I mean, everyone did this, but I was like, I'm also going to learn how to bake because I am 100% not this way. I never follow a recipe ever. And it's because it's almost like, um, I have no control control over it like i'll just do a little bit less or a little bit more almost to be like fuck you like that's exactly it you think you know how this is supposed to taste you don't fucking know the person who wrote this recipe and practiced it

i've never made it before and I'm going to tell you. I don't even know who you are. And it's so wrong. It's like, I am not good at any of this and not an expert, but nonetheless, it's like my whole body. So I totally understand wanting to teach yourself how to bake. Now I live in a New York City apartment that has like one tiny counter space with, I don't even know where to put an extra bowl.

So I can't. Baking would be tough in that environment. I admire I admire anyone who can bake there's a world where yes it like you know it's perfectionism right perfectionism that's the right word you said that perfectly thank you so much I immediately doubted myself um but I think it also like really rewards the process like you get better at it the more you do it the more you understand it sometimes it'll But I think it also like really rewards the process. Like you get better at it. The more you do it, the more you understand it. Sometimes it'll come out weird.

Like Joel got into baking bread in the pandemic like everybody did. And he is similarly a he is a cook, not a baker, because he like doesn't like to follow recipes. This is a very interesting common thread with people in my life. It's a personality type but but he started making bread and like now he he like understands it and the more you do it you like as he's baking it he can be like i think this one isn't gonna rise in this way because of this factor that i did that like so there's something really cool about watching i'm not doing it but watching somebody else Bake and learn And grow and like understand

It's just it's like learning a new language It's just like it operates differently you know I believe in you Amy is all I'm saying Thank you how is his bread So good It's so good It's so good it's so cool I'm just gonna say that it was like my new years resolution

To learn how to bake and like all of you guys are just making me feel like this is a good path. I think it's a very good path. It's an admirable path. Absolutely. And like when you fail at it, it's a real bummer. It sucks. It totally sucks. It sucks to fail at things. But if you

when you succeed, you have sweet treats. And so it's sort of like it's a pretty great thing to be working towards because that's a great thing to have on hand. I know this is a horror podcast and not a baking podcast, but I really would love to run the numbers on friend groups and figure out like, are there clusters of friends who only cook

and clusters of people who are all really good bakers? And I would love to know if it's a natural underground divider of friendships, like who gravitates towards who okay can i just say wait this is huge this is huge okay this is really interesting this is interesting i'm fascinated by this question always worked with a group of women who love to bake i'm always in office situations with a lot of bakers that's like a very common thing in my life. What do you think?

Like, what is this? This is huge. Now I want to know. I want to see breakdowns by career paths. I want to see breakdowns by jobs. Which jobs are bakers? Which jobs are cooks? Huge, huge, huge. I'm in the wrong job.

I think, well, maybe they need you. But it's also like, I sort of am like, wait, I knew a lot of people in my office jobs who baked. Love to bake. Love to bake. And so... Wait, you guys, we need to stop talking about baking and we need to start talking about

this movie. It is interesting. I'm just saying it's an interesting divide. It is interesting. And just to throw this out there, you guys, I'm a baker and it sounds like you both are cooks. So I just want to, I don't know if that's going to end the friendship. I'm a nothing. I don't do either. I don't do either. Okay. So we got one to each. Yeah, we have a mix.

We're really balanced. That's magical. And I'm kind of thinking, you're right, that there should be like a calibration in every setting. Some people need to be the bakers. Some people need to be the cooks. And together, the collaboration of the different strengths. Right? It's a meal. You can't have a spaghetti without a cannoli. Life is a meal. That's how it works. Friendship is a meal.

And we've figured it out. Now we know. We've cracked it. We cracked it. Thanks, Amy. We cracked it. The secret of life. All right.

Podcast over. OK. OK. Oh, perfect. Yep. Yep. That's a wrap. Um, uh, no, Amy, what are your thoughts about horror films in general, your history with horror? I love them. Like I wouldn't have said that I love horror when I was a teenager,

because when I was a teenager, horror was so gross. I think it was like very stabby, very like, here's a dumb girl and let's torture her. There were some horror films that popped out like the Blair Witch, which was so terrifying or Scream, which was so terrifying that they stood out to me as like, those are great movies. They gave me nightmares. I don't know how much I want to revisit that well. And then I would say I kind of put horror aside for a lot of my life and then came back to it when I was a film critic. Because I realized weirdly early on that horror is the genre where all the interesting directors are going to come from. Oh, yeah. For the most part, like that's where somebody who's a real weirdo but smart and has something to say can get enough money to make their first movie. Because otherwise they're going to make one of those Sundance movies where it's like a bunch

of people like driving through the country and talking about their feelings. And like, there's enough of those to me. Like those movies are all sort of the same and like horror movies are all different in their own way. Hopefully the good ones that the good people will make. And so I have become a person who watches a lot of horror and likes to keep up with horror, but still closes my eyes at the gory parts and still feels like if somebody is getting stabbed, it's happening for real. So you'll love this, Sammy, the new Mia Goth movie from Brendan Cronenberg, David Cronenberg's son. She's wonderful in it. I'm like very team Mia Goth as well. And when I got bloody or pukey, I'm like, well, I'm not looking at this and you can tell me when it's fine i saw it i saw it last night and you better believe i

watched every single say i have anything i love some violence i think it could have gone further can you watch violence and think this isn't actually happening i appreciate the aesthetics of how they got the blood to go there. Yeah. Usually, yes. I think there's probably times where I get caught up in it. But for the most part, yes. And I think there's something that is a well, I guess also depending on the movie, but it's usually the moment of violence is a moment of relief for me because it's like the build

up tension to that part that I find very stressful and scary. And so once it's like the violence is happening, I'm like, OK, great. Now we're in it. It's not getting worse than this. What's happening right now? So it's actually when I kind of relax and then I am usually thinking, usually thinking about, oh, wow, that like looks really good or that looks really bad. And so, yeah, I'm a big fan of gore. Yep.

Part of me wants to get there. Like, I want to ask a director to let me be on set when they're filming a gore scene. So I can kind of see the magic get taken away because it's me. It's always real. Like, it's weirdly always real. It's something that I probably wouldn't have said a couple years ago i think from doing this podcast and watching more and more it's it's certainly like heightened my tolerance of it and i think i probably even in early episodes would have said like i wasn't a big fan of gore and now i am yeah bring it on

bring me the blood well we're watching a movie that doesn't have a ton of gore. Yeah. But when it does, it does. What's your relationship to this movie in particular? Eraserhead is weirdly a kind of important movie for me in understanding and caring about David Lynch. Like, David Lynch is probably of almost all living directors today. The one that I've had the most like contentious one-on-one relationship with, I mean, one-on-one as in like me and his films, not me and the person where like, you know, the first film of

his that I saw was Lost Highway, which is probably one of his more confounding ones. It's like, we're, um, we're like, uh, like a guy kind of like goes through this, like, well, I don't even know how to summarize it. It's hard to another character. There's a lot of driving. There's like doubles of people. There's like crazy porn parties. Nothing makes a lot of sense. Patricia Arquette's like vamping the whole way and like talking in a way that felt really alien to me because I didn't know a lot about cinema when I saw that movie I just knew about the about the Zarghetti was like really hot so I was like okay that sounds interesting and you know you're watching this movie and it's like taking place in an alien kind of landscape where everyone talks dramatically and nothing is real and I was in a kind of young hot-headed position of being like well then this movie's bad you know like yes you don't talk like a real person you're I did the same thing I had the same

journey I feel like with David I feel like I'm just similar response to the recipe writers I think I saw I think my first uh film of his I saw was Mulholland Drive in high school. And I was like, well, anyone can make a movie that doesn't make sense. And I just wrote it off as like, well, it's dumb because it doesn't make sense. That's exactly what I thought. I was like, he's not even thinking this out. He's just making us do the work. Like, lazy.

You know, like, I feel like he was making movies just to laugh at people and pretend that like everybody should figure it out on their own. But then he knew that it didn't mean anything. And that as much as people like tried to theorize it, he was just laughing at us, which seems really crazy. Now that I think about it, like you spent all of this time and passion and hours of your life doing something as a prank to feel superior. But I really felt that way about him for a while. Cause I think I didn't see his more like approachable movie Blue Velvet until later and that one I think you can that one I feel like I understood more and I can kind of track how to feel about it but it was really a racer head his

like movie that felt like it was about what scared him you know this movie is like super weird and surreal and strange but it felt like he was being honest about something about himself when I watched this and he suddenly felt like a human being to me when I watched this and now I'm able to go back and like see with empathy and now I really love the man like I love him deeply yeah I think he's a tremendous person that's so so cool. Yeah. Um, I saw lost highway for the first time a couple months ago and like similarly, like if I had seen it 10 years ago, I'm sure I would have had a negative reaction to it. And I don't know, I'm just like at a point in my life now where I feel like I can appreciate David. I'm just like, I'm into it. I love it. This is, it's, it's less about logic and more about emotion. And I feel like that just resonates with me

more now than it did then, which maybe again, yeah, coming back to me being a baker and maybe I'm getting a little bit of a little bit of the cook mindset. It's a perfect metaphor. Like everything that I think I accused him of,, that he didn't care about people or understand people, it just feels like he loves humankind in such a deep way that I wasn't grown up enough to appreciate. And now that I'm older, you can't really hear about him without hearing about how much he loves meditation. And I read his book on what meditation means to him. And I'm trying to learn how to meditate because I'm a really restless person. But my boyfriend is a big Lynch fan and a big meditator.

And so he kind of put those things in front of me. And one of the first times I meditated, I suddenly felt like I understood David Lynch. I was getting these weird images kind of coming out of the dark corners of my head. And I was like, oh oh so if you just open yourself up wider to the universe oh i just got chills because i wrote down as i was watching this it's like reminding me of and i didn't associate it with meditation but like that moment before you

fall asleep when your thoughts get like weird but like really vivid and then you some it's they sometimes wake you up because it's like what was i thinking yes exactly like it feels like that in a movie yeah like last night i had a dream that i was cleaning out my popcorn maker because i make a lot of popcorn at my house because i watch movies for a living and i had a dream that i was like cleaning out my popcorn maker and as i was cleaning it out the leftover leftover kernels that hadn't popped were turning into bugs, like bugs were crawling out of them. And I was like, oh no, the popcorn had bugs in it. And then underneath some of the popcorn kernel burned bugs were baby mice.

And I was like, oh, we have to get these mice out and rescue them. And now that I'm talking out loud, I'm like, that could be in a David Lynch movie. Like that would just happen, you know? And I would understand it now because I felt whatever that is, I feel it. Even if I don't know what it means. Oh my gosh. I love this. Is Eraserhead his first film or one of his first films? I mean, this is very first. Very first. Okay. Um, I will tell you that it has a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, 87% Metacritic, 7.3 IMDb. The budget, $10,000 made $7 million. Holy shit. It was, I think, originally run just as like a midnight movie, but then certain other directors,

people like were really blown away by it and expanded, I think, the screenings. Yeah, like Stanley Kubrick said it was his favorite movie. And when he was shooting The Shining, he made like the cast of The Shining watch it to understand the mood he wanted to capture. Whoa. But it's also like an L.A. movie. I mean, it sounds beloved now, but like he made this movie when he was an AFI student. You know, he was a fine arts guy, like a painter, a woodworker. He goes to AFI to make movies.

He's young. You know, he's like in his early 20s. And he's like, well, this is what I want to make. He's young. He's like in his early 20s. And he's like, well, this is what I want to make. I had this really weird dream about a guy whose head falls out of a window and a little boy picks up his head and he takes it to a pencil shop and they use it to make erasers. And he told AFI, I want to make this. And one of the deans at AFI was like, that's great. And I think you should. And then the other board executive members of AFI were like, that's so dumb. Absolutely not. And so this dean basically tells them, I'll resign if you don't let us make this movie.

And he gives them his letter of resignation and they accept it. And he leaves AFI. What? Oh my God. And David Lynch does still like get enough money to make this movie, but it takes him six years. Like he doesn't really have the money to actually do it. So there he's working on it just slowly and slowly and slowly

for most of the 70s. He starts it in 1971. Oh my god. What happened to that Dean? He's considered one of the greatest tastemakers of 70s history. Terrence Malick was one of his

protégés. He's one of those guys. Okay, so this guy knew what was up He knew what was up He gets to brag about that forever Well, he's dead now, but he did But he did get to brag about it Yeah This is making me really want to see it, actually

I'm very curious now Well, I think time will tell, Henley I know, I know I always say that I say that so often in the beginning of these Let's just wait and see how you feel in a little bit. There is a part of me that thinks you might actually like it, Henley. I mean, there's things you're really not going to like, but I think some, it could resonate.

The thing I always think about is like, what was his childhood like? You know what I mean? Like, this is like what he's dying to show. And it's like, what did you grow up? Like like what he's dying to show and it's like what did you grow up like what are the images seared in your brain from childhood like what was your day-to-day you know where this is the stuff you're creating it's like i don't know kind of blows my mind he's fascinating yeah there's actually a documentary out um called lynch oz that's all about how he was like a little kid who loved The Wizard of Oz and like how

if you watch his films closely it's like all nods to The Wizard of Oz and full disclosure I'm a talking head and that actually I keep forgetting that I'm in that movie but I am yeah and I'm more of like a Wizard of Oz person than anything so I like really

open it by talking about like Wizard of Oz is like a touchstone and how great it is that like here's a person who I think than anything. So I really opened it by talking about Wizard of Oz as a touchstone and how great it is that here's a person who I think makes some films that I consider to be so surreal and distancing sometimes, or I used to, but he uses this touchstone movie that everybody does know and everybody loves.

If you start thinking about it, all of his movies are like curtains and he has so many characters named Dorothy. It's a real running thing. God, that's cool. That's so cool to be so singularly inspired. Like to be like, oh, yeah, it's all this one thing that just blew my mind and is so rich with things to pull from. And I just like whenever I hear the stories like that, I'm like, I can't even imagine being able to look back on my life and be like, it was that one thing.

It's that one thing I'm inspired by. That's kind of genius. Everything in The Wizard of Oz is like going into other worlds, leaving what you think is normal and entering someplace surreal. But then I think every movie is actually The Wizard of Oz if you look at it. To me, that's like my number one kind of touchstone movie for everybody. I love that movie. And how do I sound more relatable? I'm like, I love The Wizard of Oz. And you're like, yeah.

I get that. I get that. Oh, that makes sense. Wow. I can't... I know nothing about this movie. Nothing about this movie at all. And I might... Who knows how much i'll know about it

by the time we're done but i'm eager to see in the past few years i have hit a point where i only want to be wearing clothes that are comfortable it happened it happened to me but you know what i still also want to look cute and these are two desires that are often extremely opposing and i don't want to have to sacrifice. I want both. I want comfort and I want to feel cute and confident. And guess what? Skims has freaking done it again with their soft lounge collection. I am currently very, very obsessed with, I have the soft lounge tank and boxer set. Okay. This tank, it's a great little rib tank. Classic. You can wear it every day. You can pair it with jeans. You can wear it out in the rib tank classic you can wear it every day you can pair it with jeans you can wear it out in the world or you can wear it with this little boxer short

that is so comfortable it is super super soft lightweight rib they're great I also truly have been for years stealing Joel's boxer briefs to wear as sleepwear and loungewear and guess what that ain't cutting it I'm not feeling too cute in those. I'm not feeling too comfortable. But Desperate Times, however, Desperate Times know more because Skims has done it. You too can get on board with this. You can see just how cute and comfortable you can be. Shop the Skims Soft Lounge Collection at Skims.com. Now available in in sizes extra extra small through 4x and if you haven't yet be sure to let them know that we sent you after you place your order select podcast in the survey and select too scary didn't watch in the drop down menu that follows if you're a new parent a bad day means you either ran out of coffee diapers patients or all of the above

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off your first customized bundle and a full-size freebie product of your choice. That's HelloBello.com slash TooScary to start bundling with 30% off your first order. Don't forget, that's HelloBello.com slash TooScary. I'm eager to see where we get here. Let's try. Let's see what we can do. All right. Well, it opens up with the shot of that guy that you

just saw with the giant hair. His name is Henry. I have seen that guy. You've seen that guy, Jack Nance. That guy, I'm like, okay, that guy with the big hair, yes. But his name isn't a razorhead. That guy that acted, by the way, Jack Nance had to keep his hair like that for six years because they took so long to finish the movie. That is so funny. six years because they took so long to finish that is so

funny six years that's so long pompadour gotta keep that pompadour alive in the 70s tallest hair in the world it's very funny so the movie opens with like his head kind of floating sideways in space over like a thing that kind of looks like a giant planet now i'm realizing as i'm describing this anything i might say could be also described as something totally different because it's sort of just your impression of what you think you're looking at yep yeah and then you kind of zoom in and there's these large hums and everything's kind of eerie uh it's silent for a very long time with just this kind of like thrumming soundtrack there's a hole There's that man with the boils who's like pulling the levers out a window. That guy, by the way, is like married to Sissy Spacek. And wasn't David Lynch married to his

sister at the time? Yeah. Like basically this is a movie that's being shot as David Lynch is going through divorce from his first wife, which might kind of seem clear. He got married pretty young. He was a pretty young father. He had a kid at 22. That sort of backdrop, I think, for the emotional world of this movie. Yeah, that does feel important. He's going through divorce and marrying his friend's sister.

Yeah, well, I'll say also that the sound design throughout this movie is just so noisy,'s so noisy and it's it's unsettling and basically every like new thing has a sound but i i mentioned this to say that my cat hated this movie he was on my lap and just could not relax like he just kept looking at the tv like what is that would you stop are the cuts are the cuts at all like the trailer in terms of like going black and like is that similar at all like in terms of the editing not so much not as fast as that but it does cut to cut to black and um um but it's not as uh not quite as cut up. Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah, we see Henry's floating head. He opens his mouth and this kind of worm like creature comes out. I think it looks like vaguely umbilical cord esque. And then we go back to presumably earth. It looked like a bean sprout seahorse. And he's walking through a industrial looking area and he gets back to his apartment building, which you can see behind amy it's her background he's in this apartment building he looks like anxious i think pretty much the whole the whole time he checks his

mailbox nothing and that gets into his elevator goes up to his apartment building and he's got a hot neighbor who passes along a message that there's been a call from Mary. And she said that he is invited to dinner with her and her parents. And so he seems nervous about this. He's kind of walking around his apartment. When you look at his apartment, like he's got a torn up picture of Mary in his dresser. He's also just got a bowl of water in his dresser that he takes out and he puts some coins into it. He's got moss kind of growing from the walls.

His window faces a brick wall. He's got this radiator that's really loud. When the dogs kind of bark, he gets flinchy and nervous. And then he like finally gets ready and he goes to mary's house and like walking to her house is even worse like this whole neighborhood is just so torn down and like chain link fence covered and industrial it's inspired by like when he lived in philadelphia and just hated it like he really thought philadelphia was like hell on earth i like philadelphia he had a really bad time i've never lived there who knows it was the 70 Um, and he shows up at Mary's house

and Mary is like this blonde and she just seems sort of nervous and terrified that he's there too. They're kind of like vibrating all of this anxiety at each other. Uh, she's like, you're late. And he's like, I never see you and we don't talk anymore, but the, he's not that emotional about it really. They're just sort of, it, it feels very much like they've broken up or something weird is happening. You know, they're not in a good place. If this is his girlfriend, things are going really, really wrong. Mm-hmm.

And he goes inside and Mary's mother is there in kind of the living room greeting him. This is not a welcoming home. It's very, like, cold, and she's not smiling, just acknowledges him. I can't remember. Just says hi, and there is a dog in the corner that's nursing a bunch of puppies, but it's, like, the sound design, again, is very loud,

and it sounds like rats it's like not presented it's not presented as cute it's um just like this mama dog being mama dog being overrun by puppies uh they sit in silence for a while. And finally, Mary's mom asks what Henry does for work. He says he's on vacation. And as he says this, it seems like Mary has some sort of seizure. She starts twitching. And the way that her mother soothes her and gets her like gets it to pass is by brushing her hair. And then they just go back

to normal and back to talking and um she says oh henry works at a at the printing factory he's like so he's so great at that and uh then the her dad comes in and he is so funny. He really made me laugh. He is so, so much more chipper than everybody else. Like he's in a great mood and he's like dinner, like chicken tonight. We got these new chickens. They're man, man made strangest damn thing, smaller than my fist. And you're like, what is he talking about? He's like, says that he is a plumber, I guess that he, he does, he does puts pipes and housing. And he says like, people think pipes grow in their homes, but they sure as hell don't look at my knees and starts like pointing to his knees. You're just so thrown. What is this man talking about? I'm so glad you guys described, you gave such great context before diving into

this recap because it does does it just feels like a dream it's like when you're trying to explain your dream to someone and you're like it made a lot of sense it made a lot of sense he's talking about chickens the size of his hand and he but it's also kind of like vaguely what i feel like the mood of meeting your partner's parents for the first time of like i'm so stressed and I don't know what to say or do in these situations. So they always are. Do I react to this? How do I talk to them? Yeah. And it's funny, like it's playing his mental tricks on you. Like as soon as the dad is talking about how we put all the pipes in, in the neighborhood, you're suddenly like, Oh, there's a pipe right in front of his face in the corner of the screen. And like, I didn't even notice that there's just like a big

black pipe there. And it's like, you just feel like you're kind of waking up into this reality of, right, that's what he's talking about. Okay. And then you go into the kitchen and like her grandmother is there, but she's just absolutely checked out. And like the mom wants her to toss the salad, but it really just means the mom kind of puts the salad in her lap and then tosses it a little bit and then lights a cigarette and just puts it in her mouth. And the cuckoo clock goes off, but the cuckoo clock has a dog in it, but it's just like, well, that's a dog. And then it kind of goes on and then it's time to eat this chicken. And it is all these like tiny chickens, like apple sized chickens, but they've got, you

know, drumsticks, like the tiniest little chickens. There's tons of them on this little plate and so then they tell henry that he has to carve up the chicken and he seems terrified to do this and they're like just like a normal chicken you know and so he starts trying to cut it with a knife but the chicken starts kicking like don't cut me no and it looks roasted but it's like don't cut me cut me oh my god and when it starts to cut into it it starts like bubbling and bleeding this like dark goo

that comes out of the chicken hole the chicken orifice I have to cut up a chicken right after this so it's like woo when it starts like oozing the mom just goes into this fit it's sort of like she's having an orgasm about the chicken but also

that it's like a scary orgasm and then her having a fit makes mary look like she's about to cry and the dad is just smiling like stiff like it's almost like he's been freeze-framed whoa my god this is terrible this is terrible this has given me so much anxiety without even seeing it or being present. So the mom and daughter leave the room and go into the kitchen. And while they're gone, the dad is again, still just smiling this big smile at Henry. And eventually the mom comes out of the kitchen and says, Henry, can I speak? Can I speak with you for a moment? And we see Mary is in the kitchen crying, like stares at Henry crying.

And Henry's looking very concerned and goes with the mom to discuss whatever she has to talk about. And she asks him if he and Mary have had sex. Oh, my God. He's very uncomfortable with this question. Says like, I don't see how that's any of your business, but she's very persistent about it. And,

um, she keeps, she keeps asking him, he's so uncomfortable. And then she, she leans in and kisses him and he calls out to Mary. What like Mary, what's happening? Oh my God. Runs in, pulls the mom off of him. It's like mother. And we find out, uh, I believe the mom says there's, there's a baby. It's at the hospital

and you're the father. And Mary chimes in and says, they're not sure. They're still not sure if it's a baby. And the mom says it's premature, but it's at the hospital. And as soon as the two of you are married, which will be very soon, you can go pick it up. Oh, my God. Cut to them in their apartment and you get your first glimpse of this baby and i wait i want to say my like context for this because this is my first time seeing it was there's a line in bo burnham's inside where he says that his dick looks like the baby in eraser head that song has

been in my head all day that's my only context for this movie so that was like literally all i knew was like okay this is uh to be a alarming looking baby. Well, they did say they don't know if it's a baby. And so I'm alarmed. I'm alarmed given that context. Yep. I wanted to tell you guys this backdrop that this movie came out, what, 40 years ago? And nobody to this day knows what that baby is exactly.

I don't mean in a metaphorical sense i mean what that prop was like david lynch has never told anybody what this prop is like throw it away right after and like what did it look like yeah it looks like like he even had like the guy who like worked on the dailies he had them blindfolded when like they were gonna have things on screen that would like reveal what the prop might be. So it is this great mystery. It kind of looks like theories that have been out there that seem like maybe they could work. It's like a premature lamb fetus or like a rabbit that's

been skinned. It's like shiny and really fleshy. It looks kind of peeled or boiled but also like a worm. It also has these eyes that move around in its head and like really look realistic. And a tongue that looks super realistic. Because the first thing we see is like them now in his apartment.

Mary's trying to feed this like worm-boiled dog baby. And it has this little tongue and she's trying to put this goo in its mouth and it keeps spitting it out. And the tongue is just moving in and out. And the eyes are rolling like a real creature. you can just see on mary's face that she hates this thing that they absolutely hate this thing she's just terrified and it is just like sobbing and awful and the a nightmare creature in their house oh my god i can't believe bel burnham said that's what his penis looks like i'm never gonna get that out of my head i'm just gonna imagine that's like stuck to his body wandering around wandering i see him now

um and the bottom half of the baby is like wrapped in in a like blanket type of gauze type thing and it stays on this little cabinet desk in the corner this is a studio very small little apartment and we see Henry comes home and he like jumps on his bed in a very weird way that I felt like was necessary to mention it's almost like he crawls on it kind of like a little dog or like a baby or something like a little dog like pads his paws across the bed and then lies down. Yeah. And then he is staring at his radiator and we get, I think, a flash of that. He sees a stage within the radiator and we don't really know what that is yet. But that night we just hear the baby crying and crying and crying and crying and crying and crying and it's it's animal sounding cries like they're not quite baby cries

they're sound almost like dinosaurs noises like they're it's awful it's a really really horrible sound it's terrible and like like he and Mary are in bed and they're not touching and they're both just awake, but acting like they're asleep. And there's this gulf between them and it just seems so empty and lonely. And then she snaps. She's just like, shut up to this thing. This like nervous little blonde lady is like, I can't stand it. I'm going home. And she just takes off and leaves him with this baby. Oh, no. Yeah. She says, you're on vacation. You can take care of it.

I need sleep. What's up with this dude's vacation? I don't know. You're on vacation. He's been on vacation for a while. Does he just not have a job? So, like, does the printing factory just give you, and if you're on vacation, why are you at home? Interesting.

Got a lot of questions. Why are you at home? Interesting. Got a lot of questions. But so then he goes back over to the baby and he takes its temperature and he's like, oh no, the baby is sick. And when you look at the baby again, it's gotten even worse. It's like covered in boils now.

And it has what looks like kind of rice coming out of its mouth. It's like, it looks disgusting. But it also looks really pathetic and really vulnerable. And so there's this combination of that is the worst thing I've ever seen. But also, it's crying. Like, it's legitimately sad. It's like, I can't help this. I'm covered in boils. I'm the most vulnerable thing on earth.

I wish I weren't gross, but I am. Exactly. I still need help. I still need help. Oh, and Henry puts a little humidifier next to him. That's his, that's the way that he is dealing with it. And that is, by the way, literally one of the only thing you can do when you have a baby.

Oh my God. Like there's nothing else to do. Everyone's like, did you put the humidifier on? And it's like, yeah, I put the humidifier on. Like what the fuck else is there? Why haven't we figured out anything? That's so funny. The thing is, it feels like nightmarish, but it also feels like you see him as a 22 year old dad being like, what have I done? Yeah. It's really scary. That makes me like really endears me to him, I guess, because it like cut so much to me against the idea of, oh my God, have a baby and everything will be lovely and you're going to love it so much.

And the love will make all the good things go away. And you're always like, I know that that's true, but I also know that there's something that parents aren't telling you. There's so much. Sorry to give you like total looks of suspicion, Henley, but I'm like, there's so much hardship and especially probably in the seventies, nobody was talking about it. And male fathers weren't getting to talk about it and him just being like, there's an alien in the house and I have to keep it alive. Yeah. It wasn't until very recently that people started to reveal like the best keep kept secret of, uh, humanity ever, which is that having babies is fucking hard. Literally no one talked about it until truly in the past like

couple years i feel like everyone was like no it's great it's like easy and women are just i love it so much and it's like no no you're fucking wrecked and also a newborn baby a newborn baby is like what are you like where did come from? You are not like anything else I've ever held or experienced in my life. Like there are other creatures. Um, I was saying before we started this, cause Sammy did warn me that there was baby stuff. Um, but now that I'm a full year and a half out, cause he's 18 months old. I feel like my hormones have receded enough where honestly hearing about this is kind of just making me laugh instead of like a year ago. A year ago I would have been like, I can't hear any of this.

We're silent right now. Is he a rice coming out of his mouth? I need to go check on him. And now I'm just like, wow, he's spot on. Like David Lynch. He's nailing it. He's nailing it. It's exactly like that. And we see Henry like sitting by the baby and every time he walks away, the baby cries.

So he just like continues like sitting near it and listening to this like awful labored breathing that the baby is having. Just like. Jesus Christ. this like awful labored breathing that the baby is having just like and then he is staring at the radiator once again and now we are taken back to that stage we saw a glimpse of earlier and a woman comes out onto the stage and she has these big like chipmunk cheeks and a big smile on her face and a little dress on a little headband. And like a Marilyn kind of bouffant. And like when we say big, like, like big, like it's not the actress has big cheeks. It's like, oh, yeah. Prosthetic.

They put a face on her that's like big, but also really textured. So it doesn't quite look like plaster more than cheeks. Yep. Yep. Like that kind of stucco wall ceiling stuff you know okay yeah yeah yep and it starts raining who it just got like dark in here at that exact moment um it starts raining down the same little worm umbilical cord uh what did you call them earlier of a seahorse beansprouts little little mini ones are being dropped onto the stage and she is smiling and stomping on them

and this like white goo explodes out of each one as she stomps it but she's stomping on them not like you're here to watch me stomp on them she's stomping on them like oh i should stomp on these before people notice they're on stage she's like trying so hard to keep her smile going like it's all great and she's like embarrassed a little bit that the worms are falling and then she's like oh if i just squish them they can stop sharing the stage with me horrible Horrible. This is just one big anxiety dream. Yeah. I'm like, I'm just anxious.

I'm just very, very anxious. And so the things about this goo, and then you kind of get blown into this black void and then you're back in their apartment and he's in bed with Mary again. And it's like the, he starts finding the kind of bean sprouts, Burmeese,

seahorsie things in bed with Mary. And he sort of like pulling them out from under the bed and like throwing them away. And they're like squeaking and dancing. And then there's, I don't know, big holes. This is where it starts to get weird.

It starts to get weird. There's a, he had earlier in checked his mailbox and found this little worm and he keeps that in a thing on his cabinet and that little worm is dancing around as he's like throwing the umbilical cords. I think. Oh, right.

It's like a cuter worm. He has a second worm that's like smaller. Small little guy. Okay. It's like a little black worm. It's kind of like a shriveled date looking thing yeah and that worm is happy that he likes that worm okay love it love it it's like a shining worm yeah shining light of this secret little worm i'm gonna hold on to it but these other worms he's like fuck these worms i hate them and then i think it it eventually cuts to black again and we come back up on him sitting on the edge of the bed pulling threads out of his pants and for kind of a while

just like watching him pull threads out of the pants i think probably that could be said for everything in the film like it all happens for a while. We're going through it pretty fast, but like just know that each of these things is weird lingering on them. And there's a knock at the door and it is his hot neighbor. And what does she say in this exchange? Maybe not. I don't remember what she says. Okay. Maybe it doesn't matter,

but she's basically saying, I thought she said like the, something was broken in her apartment. Can she come in? Oh, she locked herself out. Oh, she locked herself out. So yeah, she locked herself out. And can she come inside? Because it's really late at night.

And then she's like, can I stay over? It's really late at night. And Mary is at her parents again. Mary basically is like, I'm, I'm over this. And like, you're a single parent now. Okay. So the neighbor comes in and she is, she's kind of like a proto Isabella Rossellini.

Like he's not going to make blue velvet for basically another decade, but that's like the template. She has the most beautiful nose you've ever seen in your life. It's like dramatic and straight. And she's kind of very sultry. She just exudes like grown up female child furry sexuality kind of stuff, you know? So she's like, I'm coming in.

He's like nervous. His default personality is just nervous. He's never like, yeah, you know, he's nervous. She comes inside. They start kissing. They're in this water bath and the water water's kind of, like, milky. He's embarrassed about the baby, though. So he's, like, trying to keep the baby quiet.

He's trying to keep the baby quiet kind of roughly. Like, it's almost suffocating, kind of putting his hand over the baby's mouth. Like, terrified that she'll hear the baby. And, like, his kind of passionate, grown-up romantic life will end. This, like, finally good thing he feels like is happening to him and then yeah then she like finds about the baby and freaks out um and then oh but no but they do have like a moment where they're still in the milky bath and they're kind of like making out and they he starts submerging himself under the water and the water is really opaque

and so he goes under the water and just sort of disappears and then she goes under the water and the water is really opaque. And so he goes under the water and just sort of disappears. And then she goes under the water and then it looks like her hair floats on the water for a while. And the next thing I have written is that the lady in the radiator comes back and we see her singing this song. That's honestly, it's a great song. we see her singing this song. That's honestly, it's a great song. She says in heaven, everything is fine. And it's just that refrain kind of over and over. I think there are other lyrics, but it's like in heaven,

everything is fine. Keep going, keep going. It is like a really nice song i like was really enjoying it but um he then goes into the into the like radiator stage room with her and is i guess also enjoying her beautiful song and they're looking at each other and then I think she disappears and then he turns around to this other part of the stage and his head just falls off I believe and the baby head takes its place yeah and there's also like one of those like barren trees that he's kind of obsessed with like you know he's like really obsessed with trees that don't have leaves which is like a thing in twin peaks and in twin peaks it's like his proto version of the tree that will

be in twin peaks like this it gets rolled on stage like it's part of the act um but yeah then like when his head falls off and there's this like baby thing then all this blood is starting to like flow and then like his head falls out of like the window and it like hits the pavement underneath his apartment but like in such a violent way um that like his skull cracks open and you kind of it's like oh you're dead like it really looks like dead dead like violently dead yeah and then a little boy finds this head

and seems like excited about it like so is the baby head on his shoulders now or he has no head we're kind of following the head itself we've left the body we've left the body behind so we're not matter. Okay. We've left the body behind. Okay.

Yeah. So we're not sure. But you do see like the baby head sticking out of, you know, shirt, shoulder, suit kind of jacket. Yeah, like it's grown out of the neck area. But the adult head, the big hair head. Oh, gross. Has fallen out, smashed, found by a boy.

Found by a boy who seems very excited by like he's come up on a treasure here and he takes it to a store where they seem like, OK, yeah, sit there. They know they know the deal here. It seems like this is a drill, a normal drill for them. Like, OK, yeah, he'll be out in a second or you'll be able to take it in in a second and eventually this door opens and he takes the head into this guy who's sitting at this machine oh jesus and the guy's like in a pinstripe suit are we supposed to be like fear right now are we like dreading the moment his head is gonna experience the machine or are we more just like okay like it's weirdly just kind of bureaucratic like oh you have to pick up some clothes from the dry cleaner yeah that makes sort of like waiting

yeah that yeah there's this dude in the back room and he's like all right and he takes this drill and he starts drilling into his brain and then like you see that he works in this kind of factory room where there's all these pencils behind him like stacks and stacks of pencils and you have this shot this shot of like a factory where the pencils are kind of fanning by you i don't know if you've ever seen like this busby berkeley movie from the 30s like gold diggers of i think it's 1933 but there's like a number where they have all these soldiers dancing like that in a line like over this like kind of white and black radiate like rainbow shape basically and

it's exactly that shot but he does it with pencils okay um and so you're realizing that somehow his head is being turned into pencils because when it's done then the man in the pinstripe suit takes a pencil and he like sharpens it and then he draws a test line with the pencil and then he erases it with the eraser head and he's like it's okay and then he blows the thumbs up like yes it's great wait so he uses his head henry's head to erase it no this is the pencil that has theoretically been created from whatever he drilled into his drilled out of his head he like put it into this like this uh okay machine and out came the pencil. Got it.

Got it. Got it. Okay. It doesn't quite make sense. If you can believe it. But it's just sort of there. It's just like, and that's how it works. Yeah.

And then he blows the eraser shavings. And then you realize that these eraser shavings that are kind of floating in the air are this thing that you've sort of seen an image of throughout the movie. I gasped. That I thought was like a galaxy like space like you thought it was the universe but it's eraser shavings oh that's cool that's really cool like the like the famous photo of him with the things behind his head that look like these particles it's eraser dust do you think that this is an ode to the asbestos that's the snow in Wistervoss that was the only thing I could think of now I'm trying to find Wistervoss clues but so then he winds up just back in his apartment and there's a sense of oh god we, we're back here. Oh God, the baby's still crying. You kind of get that sense of like, this is just every day now. It will never stop. He's back there.

Baby's still freaking out. Mary's just done. And he's kind of just, he seems like broken, but also still kind of blank faced, but broken while still being blank faced, just like, I'm tired, you know, like I am cracked out. And so he goes and he gets a pair of scissors and he walks over to the baby and you're like, what is he going to do? And what he starts to doing is like, he starts cutting open that kind of wrap that the baby has been wearing the whole time. Just like kind of to be like, what is just, what's even under here? Basically, like he he starts cutting it and as he's cutting into it the baby is moaning and like panicking you know just like don't be doing this don't be doing this

and when he cuts through it like he doesn't reveal the baby underneath it what he reveals is that the fabric is kind of the baby and when he opens it up it's just like it's like you split up in a chicken like it's just open like he sees the lungs and the goo and the baby is in such pain oh my god it's like just whimpering and miserable yeah yeah this is the part that you're not gonna like it's happening it's happening. It's happening. We're in it. You see him kind of breathing, like the guts that are breathing. And he's just like, the expression on his face, I don't even know what the expression is. It's sort of like a mix of like, what have I done? Is this inevitable?

I feel terrible. Maybe the best thing to do is to do what he does, which is just stab it to death, to put it out of its misery. Because what else do you do like it's you already cut it open you know yeah okay goo just in an impossible amount of goo starts like coming out of it and it looks just so sad and it's like the goo gets like into chunkier goo it's really nasty goo This is horrible This is horrible This is probably the worst Baby content

I've ever heard This is worse than the basket of babies and the sadness Remember that huge old trash can Is it worse than the baby in the witch Have you locked it out That's like turns into like a crow No no no she grinds it up into like a mortar and pestle locked that yeah sorry i was like that one's worse i remember her

nursing and she rubs it on herself i don't remember that at all okay and i'm not gonna remember this either okay so we're blocking it out it's gone but i cannot stress enough how much you feel that this baby is repulsive but also it is so sad it is so sad remember the sadness it is so sad it really is crazy how anytime i watch anything Where Something creature Person animal and is like Suffering it doesn't matter What the thing is the feeling of Suffering is like it's awful

It's awful and it's like so visceral and you just Want it to stop and there's like not Yeah it doesn't matter how nasty that baby Is as you hear it suffering or see It you're like oh my god no no no no no no like Oh it's giving me the creeps That's the thing I hate most about horror movies is the suffering. It's tough. It's really tough. Yeah. It's bad. Oh my God. Um, and then while all this goo is coming out, the lights are going crazy now. Like the lights are flashing again.

The sound design is very Um Just like crawling Crawling on your skin Bunk is in my lap being like what the fuck is happening I don't like this And then Then the baby head Becomes elongated

Kind of like the worm Wormy guys bean sprouts that we've Seen earlier Sorry that's what Bo is talking about this part maybe it's this part and then it gets his head gets really big like dinosaur size big and I'm using dinosaur I feel like a lot but it is it does look like a little dinosaur like a like a t-rex size head but I don't actually know how big that would be but it's big bigger than a human how big do you think is like a size of a dresser too big to fathom there are a lot of different size dressers

i feel like bigger there's just a lot of different size dressers it's like a beanbag chair maybe oh really that's smaller than i would have thought but i guess it's just the head because the hands are so tiny that it's hard to know. It's hard to know based on the hands. But it is staring at him. Yep. And it doesn't look happy. Yeah.

But it doesn't. It's like flashing and like changing. It's in different parts of the room. It's getting bigger and moving around and staring at him. And he's like, what the fuck is going on and then eventually it goes silent and dark and how does it transition out of this room like the giant planety thing that we saw at the beginning explodes you go inside darkness I guess and then my next note is

who is ripped guy with a gun and I feel like I blanked it out I'm like who is the ripped guy with a gun I don't remember that and I have three exclamation points I wrote who is ripped guy with a gun there must be a little shot and we'll never know I missed

and then I also wrote I mean this is my last line in my notes. I wrote, sparks, boils, blonde lady embracing him in whiteness. He looks numbed, question, question, question, peaceful, question, question, question. I wrote at peace. Wow. Sometimes I want to, sometimes whenever I rarely recap movies, but sometimes I want to just do an actual like live reading of the real actual notes. Because sometimes that's all you want is the stream of consciousness reaction

to whatever's happening. Whoa. Yeah. Wow. It's a wild one. So that, so that the mashing of the, the cutting and the man, sorry, Henley of the baby. That's, that one So that The mashing of the Cutting and the

Sorry Henley Of the baby That's like Our big final act Is The baby And the head gets big And then

Then he's Maybe free Of Being Anxiety Well Does he die too Somehow

I don't know He dies We'll never know David Lynch guys we'll never know david lynch said david lynch says nobody has ever i don't know if this is true he says nobody has ever like correctly said what his exact influence other than i think the um you know anxieties of fatherhood in general but it's up to interpretation henley it's. It's all up to us what it means. Wow. Whoa. Okay, I could watch this movie except for the final.

However, I don't know how long that sequence took, but I'll skip that part, but I'll watch the rest of it. That's fucking awful, because that is a worse fear, is that you think you're doing something extremely benign and like out of curiosity or whatever and then you're literally murdering your baby is horrible i think there's a reading of it where it's not literal of like killing the baby but just of like that part of the of fatherhood passes at some point and eventually you kind of get the hang of it could that's a more positive reading of it of like that it grows up to beanbag size and then you can relax a little bit

but you know again up for interpretation whoa how did you guys feel after watching this? Yeah, what feeling are you left with emotionally? Ooh Drained and metallic Ooh Like Yeah, I had to immediately go do something cheerful And I was like, this isn't gonna work out

Oh Yeah Mm-hmm And I was like, this isn't going to work out. Oh, yeah. You needed like a like a spiritual cleanse. Yeah. Like even my boyfriend who loves David Lynch. This is the movie that I think he's watched the least because he's like, oh, it's just a lot heavy. Yeah, I felt sad but also also um the joy of having seen a good movie you know like sometimes like i'm so excited by being like wow something like i had never seen before so well captured in a way that really moved me and that's exciting to experience. But the content is quite sad.

But it feels complete, too. Like, in a way, I feel like I trust this movie. Oh, that's a good way to describe it. I do feel like I trust it. Like, I feel like he said something. And he wants us to figure out what it is on our own. And he said what he wanted to say. You know, he did it.

He did it. wanted to say. You know, he let, he did it. He did it. It's confident. And it's not done with the intention of just like selling tickets. I feel like that's something we struggle with a little bit with horror movies these days is it's like, are you trying to say something? Are you just trying to be like sensationalist for no reason? And he's like, obviously not doing that, which is a relief. Exactly. Yeah. And I like now that I'm like on board not like i wasn't i was like first watching davy lynch movies but now that i'm on

board with the fact that he makes movies and he wanted to fill in the gaps with what it means to you i really like that because i feel like a lot of horror has gotten kind of reductive like this is about how this is bad you know don't do this this is a metaphor for this can you see it can you see the metaphor yeah right exactly right and it's it's tired like it was exciting for a minute a hot minute and now i'm tired of it again yeah yep yeah yeah and so i like this it feels like it feels like he trusts me to let me watch this nightmare that he had about being a dad huge huge yeah i feel excited to revisit some david lynch films that i wrote off in the past i'm i'm ready for it now wow i'm in my david lynch era that's exciting because doesn't this make you see him as a human being with weaknesses and things that scared him yeah yeah yeah it's great i'm very curious i'm very curious i've never seen

twin peaks i want to watch it i want to i'm this makes me very curious about him generally yeah what would you say you mentioned blue velvet as maybe the most accessible one what's a good starting point for people would you say yeah i would definitely say blue velvet as maybe the most accessible one what's a good starting point for people would you say yeah i would definitely say blue velvet yeah because that's like that's his one that's like really bright colored neonish like saturated red saturated blue in the suburbs with like kind of a pretty clear story it's like about obsession and abuse and like you know finding people who share your dirty secrets or wanting dirty secrets with people or like how small town life is corrupt under the surface it's

a lot of the stuff he'll like start to explore in twin peaks but it you know it's like kyle mclaughlin being a guy who has to come home he starts to romance like his neighbor who's played by laura dern she's like young he finds an ear like a severed ear and it leads him to the apartment of this mysterious woman who's isabella rossolini who's in a really screwed up relationship with dennis hopper who's unhinged and like in inhaling gas the whole time and like yelling at people um and it's all just like about the dark side of desire it's really it's like it it's like everything in it feels dark. What a pitch you just made for this movie.

Oh my God. Oh yeah. Like when it came out, like Roger Ebert was like angry. He was like mad at this movie. He was like, how could you put Isabella Rossellini through the things that that character goes through? But she's like, I love this movie. And it's like so dark and it really, it feels really.

Crazy thing for a film critic to say he got really moral about it yeah but yeah it was a little firebomb of a movie I like a firebomb we should do that one next wow

will you watch it Henley and tell me about it absolutely not absolutely not Will you watch it Henley and tell me about it? Absolutely not Absolutely not I really feel like I've read the Wikipedia Plotline for Blue Velvet before I definitely have I have not and I would watch it I would watch it

It is quotable as hell I've seen it and I actually don't really remember it And I don't really remember my reaction to it Time to rewatch I'll take in any way i can get oh i want to know what you think if you do okay and after he made that like that kind of gave him the juice to do twin peaks there's like a story from the set of twin peaks where charlotte fenn who plays you know like the beautiful bombshell audrey that show, she told him that she was thinking she wanted to have a baby. And David Lynch just said, go take a look at Eraserhead first.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. She has a baby. She was like, OK. OK, but yeah. OK, yeah. No, David Lynch should make a movie about being like a doula or a midwife that is about he himself doing that funny to be like

okay but watch my weird movie about how much it sucks hey before you have a kid let me show you how much i hated it my dude david lynch went on to have i feel like six more kids I think he has seven kids. Okay, hypocrite. I would not want him to be the dad of my kids, if that's the sport of you. Having a kid at 22 is a specific way to be a father. That's fair. That's crazy.

Yeah. Have you guys seen the movie made by his daughter that I think this is sort of inspired by Jennifer Lynch? She was the one that he had when he was young. And she was born with club feet. So she had kind of like a deformity that they had to deal with when he was really young. She made a movie called Boxing Helena with Sherilyn Fenn. No, I haven't seen it. Whoa.

I'm just going to put that on your radar. Okay. That's all. Put it on your radar. Whoa. There you go. Ooh, this is exciting. I feel thrilled about all the movies i have to watch

movies are so great you guys i love them yeah you do you really love movies i really love movies and i think this went really well surprisingly well i think we had a tough task i had a great recapping eraser head and i think we fucking knocked it off i freakishly liked it although i could picture at the end i don't remember what happened oh my god that's so shocking that's so shocking i'll tell you henley remember first about how in the witch um there's a baby no no i won't and that's how i get through the day okay yeah you know what and i respect it um oh wow i i mean i don't i don't know if what i was seeing in my head is correct to what the movie is, but I saw a full movie in my head based on these descriptions and I feel satisfied.

Great. Yeah. Amy, thank you so much. Thank you. My pleasure, you guys. Tell our listeners,

Amy, about, um, about your other podcasts, about your book, about where they can check you out. Any recommendations you might have. I feel like you're just such a wealth of knowledge.

Totally. Uh, uh, well, Any recommendations you might have I feel like you're just such a wealth Of knowledge Totally Well I review movies for the New York Times That's my highfalutin thing But really I I wrote a book on Tom Cruise That's true about like him as An artist you know like not The biography of like oh and then he did so and so And oh my god and did you know that he used to like

Date share or whatever I did not know that Actually i don't know if he did or if that was uh it was either him or val kilmer one of them is dating share when they're making top gun uh it's more just about like hey this guy's actually a really good actor it's kind of like amy i have to tell you like i i have hovered over so i have like hovered over opening my browser this entire time to just go to get that book, get your book immediately and I keep being like wait till the wait till the podcast

it was almost like I wasn't in control of it, like I would feel my arm moving to be like go buy the book and then I was like do you have to wait but yeah I mean oh my god oh my god you wrote a book wrote about emily's brain is exploding obsessed it's all i ever want to talk and think about huge tom cruise fan huge cats what else is there i just hope that like this oscar nom he got for best picture and i think he had like the

number one box office movie of the year can put his blockbuster era to bed. And he can go back to actually trying to get real performances for things like Magnolia. Oh, my God. That's a win for him. That's what I want. I mean, his body can't keep doing... Look, I love Mission Impossible. I love Maverick.

I love watching him do crazy fucking stunts. But also, eventually, he's going to hit a limit on that. But he's not going to hit a limit on his ability to act. And I want, I want it all. I want it all. And yeah, I should say,

um, I do that podcast with Paul share the lovely comedian. He does like, how did this get made? We do a podcast on movies. We actually really like it started by doing, uh, the AFI top 100.

We went through all of those and now we're kind of blazing our own trail. We actually did an episode on blue velvet recently. Cause we were, we're doing kind of like a mini on controversial movies. And so that's why I was like, Roger Ebert was so mad. But that podcast is called Unspooled. And then I'm hosting kind of a mini thing that we're in the middle of right now called the AMC Mayfair Witches pod. You know, Mayfair Witches is the book that Anne Rice wrote when she moved back to New Orleans after she was rich and famous for doing Interview with a Vampire.

The book that Anne Rice wrote when she moved back to New Orleans after she was rich and famous for doing Interview with a Vampire. And it's her book about female power and New Orleans and family and legacy. And I've been doing the podcast where I get to interview, like, the cast and crew about making this movie. And I will say, like, when you talk to anybody about witches and witchcraft, they just are fascinating. Like, it's just, like, the portal into getting people to be super, super weird. And so all the conversations we've been doing in the pod are great. my highlight so far is that harry hamlin took out his iphone and started showing me a video he took of two rattlesnakes having sex oh my god a video that he took he took i called him a snake pornographer to his face and he didn't kill me so thank you harry for that i appreciate it not killingographer to his face and he didn't kill me. So thank you, Harry. I appreciate it.

Not killing me. He literally is. And he wanted you to know. That's all I take from this. And he did it. Yeah, he did it, man. It's on his resume forever. What does it even look like?

Are there like one on top of the other? Is it like a vertical situation? I would think they'd be like kind of corkscrewed. They're kind of like. Are they like spooning? They're like London bridging, I guess. Harry, send us the video. We got to see this. Whoa, London bridging i guess harry send us the video we gotta see this london bridging i didn't even think of that

wow wow the more you know the more you know so thank you harry so thank you to that pod it's been a lot of fun and this has been so much fun so thank you guys for having me oh my gosh thank you for this this was a big a big task i think and uh couldn't couldn't have been done by just anyone so thank you for for doing this and good luck with the bundt cakes and the baking i really do believe in you and i think it's a long game and again like you know you get you get goodies and that's a great thing that's a great thing to have thank you i will share i'll bring them to the to the flea market the next time oh my god perfect um and we end the podcast with a voice there wasn't really a voice in this um i can i can sing that song i can love try to sing our outro in that tune okay from all of us

you're too scary didn't. That was pretty good. I love this song. But I really liked it. Goodbye. Goodbye. Wow. Thank you so much for listening to another episode of Too Scary Didn't Watch. If you like the show, please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and give us a rating a review on apple podcasts or spotify you can follow us on social media at tstw podcast on instagram and twitter and if one episode a week

just is not enough for you head on over to patreon.com slash tstw podcast to become a patron and receive all sorts of extra goodies from us including bonus episodes trailer reactions and more and no matter what we will see you right here next week for another episode we love you so much bye that was a hate gum podcast