The coolest thing about ‘Eraserhead’ is that Jack Nance had to keep his hair like that for, like, five years

Q: When the film was first released, it wasn’t a huge hit. It found its audience on the midnight movie circuit. Do you think a movie like Eraserhead could find an audience today?

A: No. The midnight movie circuit was what saved or brought a lot of films to the public. You know, the word Eraserhead was on a marquee of many, many theaters for years. Whether people saw the film or not, they’d see the name, and it just went into their collective consciousness. It was the most beautiful thing for independent cinema and art-house cinema, this idea of running films at midnight. It was really important for Eraserhead. Ben Barenholtz, they call him “the grandfather of the midnight film” — if it wasn’t for Ben, I don’t think Eraserhead would have been discovered at all.