My favorite memory of watching Eraserhead and freaking out this girl

I'm a cult movie junkie, border lining obsessive compulsive (but perhaps more of a hoarder mentality), and I got the shelf with everything from Addams Family to Jesus Christ Superstar to Braindead to Back to the Future to Holy Mountain and Lilo & Stitch and Taxi Driver and Idiocracy and Salo. Just cool ass movies, maybe some are a little too campy or a little too abstract or violent and sexual, but something to make any type of person leave the room.

When I was roommating many years ago, we would always have a couple different movies playing during parties and this was one of those movies everyone enjoys more when it's in the background and occasionally you get engrossed in how messed up and bizarre it is.

So this woman left the room in the middle of Eraserhead, I think during the scene with the chubby cheeks girl singing about Heaven being jus fine, and complained that the movie would forever screw with her head.

Wasn't my girlfriend, was my roommate's date and she was a controlling individual, so neither my roomie nor I had any qualms with that. It is just amazing to see a film cause that behavior.

The only art that has evoked that response from me was listening to an audio recording of a World War I flamethrower operator describing how watching melting and burning humans screaming and dying in agony and the mess left behind scarred him for life. (Audio section of a WWI propaganda art exhibit at the Getty.) That made me nearly throw down the headphones and leave.

Quite frankly, I'm just obsessed with colors/shades and sounds and patterns. You might not understand a film like Eraserhead, but to me a strange film or a character driven piece is like voyuerism:

I'm just staring in and waiting for something to happen, to observe human behavior and see how it changes the surroundings, how character's interact and what causes events to occur and why? What was the artist thinking? I mean, if you don't ponder that, this movie will make you uncomfortable and kinda bored and puzzled. Maybe angry.

You need to enter a mindset that involves pondering and interpreting human behavior in the arts. I simply love staring at pictures and wondering about them, even if it's just some shapes on a white background. These artistic and philosophical ponderings are the reasons some people enjoy films that others find distasteful or pointless.

Thank you and f you <3