What connects Blazing Saddles and Mulholland Drive (except that both end up as weird metacommentaries about Hollywood)? This 1980 multi-Oscar-nominated biopic about Joseph Merrick, a talented artist and gentle soul whose early life saw him exhibited in a London freak show. Against all expectations, the David Lynch film was produced by comedy legend Mel Brooks, who was a huge fan of director Lynch’s first movie and saw beyond its weirdness to the heart beneath. As Brooks said of Lynch, “Eraserhead made me feel he could handle melancholy and freaks and could use black-and-white film.” – Richard Whittaker
