About the film | Credits | Pictures

  About the Film

David Lynch

[the script was] "very weird...it was just little images and stuff, sort of like shorthand and poetry."

"I painted the entire third floor of my house black to make a 34-minute abstract film called "The Grandmother," about a disturbed boy who plants a seed which grows into a loving grandma."

"There's a guy a projectionist, who will not see this film [Eraserhead], and he couldn't stand to see the film I made before this, The Grandmother. It would do something to him inside that he could not stand. It wasn't the film at all, it just triggered something. Everybody has a subconscious and they put a lid on it. There's things in there. And then along comes something, and something bobs up. I don't know if that's good."

Jack Nance

"I think Lynch kept it in a shoebox or something. he wouldn't let anybody see it."

"The next afternoon we went into the screening room and watched The Grandmother. I've always described to people that, for me, it was like sitting for about fortyfive minutes in the electric chair! It was a shock..."

  Credits

Assistant Script Consultants: Margaret Lynch, C.K. Williams
Music and Music Effects: Tractor
Sound Editing and Mixing: Alan Splet
Sound Effects: David Lynch, Margaret Lynch, Robert Chadwick, Alan Splet
Still Photography: Doug Randall

Cast: Richard White (Boy), Dorothy Mc Giniss (Grandmother), Virginia Maitland (Mother), Robert Chadwick (Father)

Running Time 34 minutes
16 mm, Color