This past week on November 10, 2010, marked the death of a golden age Hollywood producer, Dino De Laurentiis. His death last week at the age of 91 has struck a cord for many cinephiles. For me, the first thing that came to mind upon hearing his death was to praise him for the production of one of my favorite films of all time, The Bounty (1984) starring Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gobson.   In 1976, De Laurentiis left Italy for the USA to create his...

These themes continued and matured with his feature debut, Erasurehead. The story of a new father and factory worker who lives among the hydraulic drone of an industrialized town, Lynch sheds light on the fear inherent in first-time fatherhood. The father is himself, as are many characters from Lynch films, like a newborn baby in adult form -- an outsider who is at once curious and unnerved by the world around him. The baby in the film is a mutation and all it knows how to do is cry; in other w...