So, basically, this morning, after about 5 years or so of TALKING about it, I FINALLY started the script for Eraserhead.

If you haven't like, heard me ramble about this, here's the idea:
I'm a David Lynch fan. Not a HUGE one, like I don't have any "DAVID LYNCH" tattoos or anything like in Cecil B. DeMented, but I dig his work. And I completely adore On The Air, which might be my favorite of all his work. Which I know puts me in the minority, but Jesus Christ On The Air rules.

ANYWAY, though. Being a Lynch fan, I've read a lot about him. And, of course, in reading a lot about him, I've read a LOT about Eraserhead, which is his big, watershed film, being basically his Complete Breakout AND Debut Film which basically everyone has seen and loved and has influenced about a billion things including stuff I dig.

HOWEVER: I have not SEEN Eraserhead.

So, my idea is/was -- take all the stuff I've read about Eraserhead and the stuff that's in my brain about what I'm thinking it's like, and make my OWN version of Eraserhead, then when it's finished, compare the two. The real one and mine. And see how they turn out. How close I got and all that.

See, I'm really obsessed with that sort of thing, how different people do the same basic idea. In fact, that was the idea behind the Untitled TODCRA Productions Project radio series. I'd just gotten into Chris Morris at the time, and started reading everything I could about him. When I read about Blue Jam, I decided to make a radio series using what I'd interpreted the series to be, before I ever actually LISTENED to it. And, well, it actually turned out QUITE a bit different. Basically, you wouldn't really be able to tell that Blue Jam was the inspiration. But that's cool. (And speaking of which, I'm gonna post Epsiode 2 today at TODCRA@VOX, which is the first of the Blue Jam-inspired series, so you can hear for yourself how directly I failed at properly ripping it off.

But at any rate, I thought about doing this with Eraserhead for a long, long time. And, after talking about it with Danny at work, who's also a big Lynch fan (though much bigger than I am), he really thought it was a GREAT idea and really encouraged me to do it.

And, so, I was going to write it yesterday, but ended up napping and listening to records and writing the Furry Story and everything. And, after initally going back to bed this morning, I decided that I was going to WRITE ERASERHEAD FINALLY.

So I started it. Got about up to the point where Mary X just tells Henry about the premature baby. And then realized something. Or, rather a couple things:
a) I'd rather just be WATCHING Eraserhead and
b) I'd also rather be WRITING my OWN story. Ideally, the one that I said I was going to write after I finished Tinning Of Dorian Gray, particularly since I've finally worked out the mechanics of the plot. (I'm not going to reveal it, because I kept talkin' about it back then, and I've discovered that talking about plots is a good way to ensure that they never EVER get written.)

So, basically, I'm thinking I'm going to say goodbye to the Eraserhead project finally. Which is too bad, but, I dunno.

I'm still obsessed with that idea, but I think perhaps a better idea would be to start with a screenplay for a film that I've never seen but really enjoy and comparing that way, or, perhaps, even better, coming up with a plot outline with someone else, then each of us go off, write/shoot the film, and then compare them.

Or perhaps something like the Blue Jam/Untitled TODCRA Productions Project where the start is a bit more vague, and less Concrete as in First X happens, Then Y, Then Z. Like, if it's a story, perhaps a vague outline and a set of characters. Absolutely NOTHING about scenes or whatever. (Perhaps that was part of what killed Eraserhead -- I ended up reading TOO MUCH about it, i.e. the bit with the Chickens which I hadn't ever heard until yesterday when I did a little bit more freshening up my mind on the story, for example. Or the particulars on the Titular Dream Sequence So I had the whole thing of "OK, do I write it like Lynch did it, or do I do it how I imagined it?"
Basically, up until yesterday, all I knew is that Henry had a dream where his head got disembodied, and that his head was used to make pencil erasers. My version of this is that it would have gone into an animated sequence, similar to Terry Gilliam, I suppose, where a cutout of Henry's head would go into the hopper of a Big Machine and the machine would whirr into life and the gears would turn and whatnot and after all that kind of Old Style Industrial Business, a dutch angle would be on the conveyor belt coming from the output of the machine, where boxes of pencils would come out with freshly-minted white erasers.
So, I didn't know if I should be Willingly Different or If I should try to write it as close to Lynch's version as possible. I wasn't quite sure which would be the Truest to the original Concept.

Either way, though, I just ended up getting kinda bored with it and not really seeing the point as much anymore. (And, well, it might be hard finding a crew who'd never seen the real Eraserhead too, since I wouldn't want anyone to influence my version with what they'd known from the original, even subconsciously.

So, um, yeah. Hooray, I guess.

Still, though, in trying to remember the proper layout and such for scripts, I went back to Tinning, and I do like that. Also, flipping through the comments and whatnot that Ben had left on earlier drafts was enjoyable as well. Hooray! I still would love to make that film, though.