Friends Of Duane Manwaring

ERASERHEAD! Well, I promised to talk about this, so here it is. Whenever I visited Duane in Winnipeg on the weekends, there was always some new experience for me to partake in. We were both curious and eager to seek out interesting things, which could range from the Art Gallery to a Chinese restaurant. One weekend, Duane told me about this movie he had heard about called Eraserhead, and the selling point for him was this one scene which featured (and you'll pardon the expression, which is Duane's own) a "menstruating chicken." So we went to the theatre, which was this small independent place that used to be at the corner of Sargeant & Arlington. It isn't there any longer and I can't recall it's name but I'll never forget that movie. Ever. The movie started at midnight as most cult movies do. We sat down in the theatre and quickly discovered we weren't in the best spot as there were some university aged yahoos in the seats directly behind us who had sneaked in some liquor and who were pretty boisterous. Unfortunately we couldn't find other seats - the theatre being pretty full, so we had to resign ourselves to that. We needn't have worried: 15 minutes into the movie the yahoos shut up and stayed shut up: the movie was that strange and overpowering. I won't even attempt to describe this movie to you, except to say that it almost seemed to reset your logic. Yes, there was a menstruating chicken, which was almost incidental -- there was so much in that movie. Yet the story is relatively simple: a man meets a woman, they fall in love, have a child, the woman leaves and the man has to raise the child alone. When it was over, Duane and I left in a daze, walking home at about 2:00 am, heading down Banning Street to Portage Avenue, and we were about half a block up Banning when we realized that we were walking bent over sideways, so that we were viewing life basically as close to a 90 degree angle as possible -- which was mimicing one of the opening moments of the movie when the "hero" (played by John Vance, if I recall correctly) is mysteriously floating sideways on the screen. That was how strong that movie was and how it could impact and possibly impair your perceptions. We don't even recall how we ended up walking like that -- it just happened.

We went back and saw it at least a couple more times, and I haven't seen it since, although it was playing locally in the fall of 2008 and I thought of calling Duane to go see it again, but I didn't, to my regret now. I've wanted to see it a few times, but not on DVD -- the small screen cannot do this movie justice, in my opinion. To truly get the effect you have to see it in the theatre. We dragged a few of our friends, selectively, to also see it, but for others (including Tonni), our advise was to NOT see the movie. I'm still shocked that Duane took Roxie to see it -- and when she was pregnant no less: it's a wonder that Natsha wasn't born with extra fingers or something after Roxie suffered through that. What a strange, wild, rich movie. And if you're even halfway normal and want to stay that way, don't see it! Seriously.