DAVID LYNCH
True-life 1980 tale The Elephant Man was David Lynch's breakthrough movie, but it was a nightmare to make Here, in an exclusive excerpt from his new book Room To Dream, the director reflects on his quest to bring the story to the screen
THIS IS AN EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT FROM DAVID LYNCH’S NEW BOOK AND CONCERNS THE MAKING OF THE ELEPHANT MAN.
Ronnie Rocket wasn’t happening, so it wasn’t a stretch for me to consider directing something written by somebody else. I was married, I wasn’t working, and I was in a shed-building mode, doing small jobs and maybe working on some art if I had any money. I didn’t really care about money and Mary [Lynch’s then wife] was supporting me. She was a great executive secretary and could get a job in a second. She was totally boss looking and was great at the job, and every morning she’d look like a million dollars as she headed off to executive world while I stayed home like a bum. I don’t remember what I did all day, but I probably just thought about Ronnie Rocket. Finally my mother-in-law said to Mary, “Nothing’s going to happen with Ronnie Rocket and you better light a fire under this turkey. Maybe he could direct something written by somebody else.”
I’d been thinking maybe I could do that, too, so I called [executive producer] Stuart [Cornfeld] and said, “Stuart, do you know of any films I could direct?” He said, “David, I know of four films you could direct — meet me at Nibblers.” So I went to Nibblers and as soon as we sat down in a booth I said, “Okay, Stuart, tell me.” He said, “The first one is called The Elephant Man,” and a hydrogen bomb went off in my brain. I said, “That’s it.” It was like I knew it from somewhere in the deep past. That was absolutely the one, and I never heard what the other three were and didn’t want to know. Stuart said, “There’s a script,” and I said, “I wanna read it.”
[Producer] Jonathan Sanger had bought the script, and he got to know Stuart when both of them worked for Mel Brooks. Mel was busy starting his company Brooksfilms, and somehow Stuart got Mel’s wife, Anne Bancroft, to read the script, and luckily she loved it and told Mel to read it. Mel reads it and loves it and says, “This will be my first film for Brooksfilms.” So he got everybody together and he pointed to each one of them and said, “You’re in.” Then he said, “Who is this David Lynch?” They said, “He’s the guy who made this film Eraserhead,” and he said, “I want to see it.” They called me and said, “Mel wants to see Eraserhead before you can do this,” and I said, “It’s been nice knowing you guys.” I just felt, well, that’s it. They said, “He’s seeing it this afternoon and you have to come and meet him afterward.” So I’m in the lobby outside this screening room and the doors burst open after the film and Mel comes charging toward me, embraces me, and says, “You’re a madman, I love you!” It was really great.
Chris [De Vore] and Eric [Bergren] had written a good script that caught the essence of The Elephant Man, but there was no turmoil in the thing and Mel, being a savvy guy, said, “It’s gotta be rewritten.” And I got to be a writer with Chris and Eric. I’d been doing the paper route and stuff and was making 50 dollars
a week, and automatically I was making 200 a week to do something that’s as much fun as writing! My mother-in-law’s happy, this is a gravy train — I had it fuckin’ made. We worked in an office on the Fox lot and we’d have lunch in the commissary and it was like suddenly I was in the movie business.
Mel was pretty involved with the rewrite. I like more abstract things, but we needed to get some tension in the script; I don’t know who came up with the ideas, but the night porter and the bar and the hookers were born, so there was this force in opposition to the Elephant Man. None of us typed, so either Chris or Eric wrote what we came up with in long-hand, and whichever one wasn’t writing was juggling. They had these little beanbags they’d juggle and I learned how to juggle then.
I hadn’t flown too many places at that point in my life, but here I am off to London with Jonathan, and we have to stop off in New York to meet this DP who was there shooting Billy Friedkin’s film Cruising, because maybe he’s going to shoot The Elephant Man. So we get there and go to see this wealthy friend of Jonathan’s who’s married to one of these TV news anchormen and lives on Central Park West. We get to the building and there’s a doorman, and you take this beautiful old wood elevator and when it stops you’re not on a floor; the doors open and you’re in their giant apartment. The butler meets us and takes us through these rooms and the walls are lined with deep green, brown, and violet suede. We go into this front room with a huge window overlooking Central Park and the butler starts bringing us hors d’oeuvres and wine, and we’re drinking and talking. This was the first time I’d been exposed to this kind of wealth. Meanwhile, Billy Friedkin’s in Central Park shooting Cruising with this DP we’re there to meet, and we’re supposed to go down there. I didn’t want to go, though, because I never want to go on other people’s sets. So Jonathan went and I waited in Central Park, which just reeked of urine. Pitch-black paths, urine, dark vibes everywhere, and I hated it. New York scares the shit out of me, right? So I’m freaking out. I guess we met the DP and he was a good guy, but he didn’t commit to anything; then the next day we get on the Concorde.
Three hours and 20 minutes later and we’re in London. It was still light out because it was summer, so we walked around for a while, then when we got back to the hotel there was Stuart. We were sitting there talking to Stuart when he said, “Mel’s going to come over because he doesn’t know if David can hit the emotional points of this film.” I said, “What?” Then I stood up and said, “I’m outta here.” I went upstairs and couldn’t sleep, and I got a high fever and was sweating like crazy all night long. Like, torment. In the morning I showered and got dressed and meditated, then went downstairs thinking, “If someone doesn’t apologise and straighten this thing out, I’m going home.” The elevator doors open and Stuart’s standing there and he says, “I’m so sorry, David. Mel trusts you one hundred per cent.” I don’t know why Stuart said what he’d said the day before, but this is what the making of that film was like. It was a testing thing.
I would’ve loved to have Jack Nance play the Elephant Man, but I knew very early on that wasn’t going to happen. And, just like Dennis Hopper was Frank Booth, John Hurt was the Elephant Man. It was meant to be that he played that role, and
I don’t remember any other actors we considered for the part.
I was going to do the Elephant Man make-up, but after I got to London a bunch of strange things happened. The house in Wembley where we lived had a garage where I was working on the make-up using glycerin, baby powder, latex rubber, and some other materials. We were living in this real British little house with knickknacks all around, and one day I was walking through the dining room and suddenly I had a déjà vu. Usually a déjà vu feels like, “Oh, this has happened before,” but as I entered the déjà vu it got slippery and it went into the future! I saw it and I said to myself, “The Elephant Man make-up is going to fail.” Because I saw it. I saw the future. You can go into the future. It’s not easy, and you can’t do it when you want to, but it can happen. I was quite a ways into the make-up by then, too, but when I tried a piece of it on John Hurt, he couldn’t move and he said, “A valiant effort, David.”
When Kennedy was assassinated, the country had the four dark days; well, that’s when I started my four dark days. When I was awake I couldn’t stand being awake, and when I was asleep it was solid nightmares. I thought it would be better to kill myself, because I could hardly stand to be in my body. It was something so powerful that I thought, “How can anyone stand to be in a body with this torment?” They found Chris Tucker, and he had so much fun bad-mouthing me and letting it be known that I was a joke and he was going to save the day. It was horrible and I was a fuckin’ basket case. Mel said, “I’m flying over and I want to see David,” and after four days of waiting, Mel arrives. I went in and Mel smiled at me and said, “David, your job is to direct this picture. You shouldn’t have taken this on — it’s too much to take on — and thank God for Chris Tucker,” and that was the end of it.
In London at that time there were streets you could walk down where you’d swear you were in the 1800s. The people in the streets, their faces, their clothes, the atmosphere — it was like Sherlock Holmes is going to come out a door, or a horse-drawn carriage could come around a corner, or Jack The Ripper’s going to pop out. It was incredible. Two years after we finished the film, the great DP Freddie Francis called and told me
that almost every location we’d used was gone. Urban renewal hit London right after we finished.
We had a great cast for that film. Alan Bates was originally going to play Frederick Treves but for some reason that didn’t work out, and it was Mel’s choice that we go with Anthony Hopkins. And John Gielgud was one of the most elegant men ever. He smoked cigarettes but there was never one ash on his clothes, ever. Smoke went away from him! His cigarettes were oval and made especially for him in a shop in London.
Sons And Lovers was a film I really like that sort of caught the feeling of The Elephant Man. It’s black and white, and I liked Dean Stockwell in it, and Dame Wendy Hiller’s in it, and she was going to play Mrs Mothershead. So I go into this room and there’s Dame Wendy Hiller, and she looks at me and grabs me by the neck, and she’s small, and she starts walking me around the room, squeezing my neck, and said, “I don’t know you. I’m going to be watching you.” She passed away, bless her heart, but I loved her, and I love Freddie Jones, too. He’s just my kind of guy. There are some people you get a great feeling from, and Freddie is one of them. He’s so funny and I love being around him. Freddie Jones was going to be in INLAND EMPIRE in the part Harry Dean Stanton wound up playing, but Freddie left his house to come to LA and collapsed when he was walking through the airport. I get this phone call, Freddie can’t come over and he’s under a doctor’s care. I don’t know what happened, but Freddie’s got staying power and he’s hanging in there.
Mary got pregnant while we were in London and we found out it was twins. There are two characters in Ronnie Rocket named Bob and Dan, so I wanted twin boys and I’m going to name them Bob and Dan, and they’d have round black shoes, polished, and slick haircuts. Neat little guys. I was pretty pumped about that and then one night I came home and Mary was bleeding and for some reason, who knows why, we went from Wembley to Wimbledon, which is a long way away, to some Catholic hospital. I don’t know how long it took us to get there, but I was up until the wee hours of the morning, then I had to get up real early to go to work. I go in that morning and this woman comes up to me and says, “Anthony Hopkins wants to see you.” So I go into his room at the end of this long hallway and I’m pale, hadn’t had any sleep, and he tears into me and says, among many other things, that I have no right to direct this picture. I said, “Tony, I’m sorry you feel this way, but I’m the
director of this picture and I’m going to keep on directing it,” and I left. In a weird way Tony Hopkins was right — I had no right to direct The Elephant Man. I came from Missoula, Montana, and this is a Victorian drama with these giant stars, and all I’d done is this small film that ten people went to see — it was crazy. But there I was. That film was a baptism of fire. You cannot believe the stuff that went on.
There’s a scene early in the film where Dr Treves sends for the Elephant Man to come to the hospital, so in comes the Elephant Man with the cabbie. There are all these people in the hospital lobby and two women are having a fight and they’re pulling at each other’s clothes, and all this stuff is going on, and Mrs Mothershead is at the desk. She’s never seen the Elephant Man, so she’s looking at him in his cloak and hood, and the people in the lobby are looking at him because he’s got a smell, but Mrs Mothershead doesn’t care about the smell. And then Dr Treves is supposed to arrive. So we’re having a rehearsal and Anthony Hopkins comes down, almost running, and he races around and grabs the Elephant Man at hyper speed, and I said, “Wait a minute.” I took Tony aside and told him, “You’re coming down too fast.” And he says, real loud, so everybody could hear, “Just tell me what you want!” And this anger comes up in me in a way that’s happened just a couple of times in my life. It rose up like you can’t fuckin’ believe — I can’t even imitate the way I was yelling, because I’d hurt my voice. I screamed some stuff at him, then screamed what I wanted him to do, and Wendy Hiller turns to Tony and quietly says, “I would do what he says.” So he did. Then at lunch he called Mel and said, “I want this fuckin’ guy fired,” and Mel talked him down. Tony’s perfect in the film, he’s absolutely great, but he had a sullen attitude most of the time we were shooting. But it’s like those four dark days I had. When it’s inside you, it just comes out and you can’t really help it. Tony was just pissed off at life.
We were looking for a hospital so we went into Eastern Hospital, which was a derelict London hospital where everything had just been left, and it could not have been better. There was pigeon shit everywhere, and broken windows, but it just had to be cleaned up. The beds were still in the wards, there were these beautiful little stoves and gas lamps — it had gone electric, but stuff was still in place for gas. So I was standing in this hallway and I’m looking into the ward and a wind comes into me and I know what it is to live in Victorian England. I knew it. Just like that. No-one could take it away from me anymore — I knew the fuckin’ thing. Anybody can tune in to something and know it, and it doesn’t matter where you’re from.
Mary wanted a dog after she had a miscarriage, and that’s when we got Sparky. I always say Sparky was the love of my life — you can’t believe what a great dog he was. We found out Sparky loved to bite water — he just bites water — and if you get the hose going, Sparky will go in and bite it. You can see him doing it at the beginning of Blue Velvet.
After we finished shooting, Al [Splet] came over to work on the sound, and Al is an outsider, too. The British have their own sound department and they think they know best, right? After The Elephant Man, Al said, “I fuckin’ hate the British!” One day I was in with Al working on the mix at Shepperton, and somebody from the production crew came in and said, “David, don’t you think it would be a good idea if you had a screening for the cast and crew?” I said, “Yeah, okay, but it’s not finished yet,” and he said, “They’ll understand — they’d just love to see it.” So they have a screening and see the film, and they don’t like it, and some of them wrote me letters saying how much they didn’t like it and what was wrong with it and how disappointed they were. I finished the film pretty soon after that and left on that bad note.
Mary and I flew back home, and I carried the one print of the film through customs because Mel wanted to see it right away. John Hurt was in town and he had a bunch of people who wanted to see it, so there’s going to be a screening on the Fox lot. I tell Al, “I’m not going, but make sure the sound is good, okay?” So the film is supposed to have started and I get this call from Al and he says, “David, it’s not even mono! The sound system broke. It’s like the worst sound — it’s horrible.” So they run the whole film that way and John Hurt, bless his heart, said, “I am so proud to be in this film. I love it.” So it went well, and that was the beginning of the turn for the film. Then it started getting these reviews that were more than glowing — they were kind of cosmic. People just loved the film.
The Elephant Man is a film that should come out every four years, because it helps the world for people to see it. It’s a beautiful story and a beautiful experience and it’s timeless.