The story goes that when Brooks was trying to find a director for Elephant Man he went to see Eraserhead. When he met David Lynch he said: "You're a crazy man. You're hired." Considering how much Brooks work was based on a separate kind of insanity and surrealism it makes perfect sense that Brooks would be drawn to Lynch.

As brilliant as the Elephant Man it is hard to know if it would have deserved to triumph at the Oscars in 1980. Certainly it was superior to the eventual winner Ordinary People but it is hard to look at the other absolute masterpiece Raging Bull - also in Black and White and glorious on many of the same technical level lYNCH's film is - and argue that HURT was robbed when DeNiro won. Perhaps one could have given Best Picture to Raging Bull and director to Lynch - Scorsese did actually have better work ahead of him.

Still it is shocking that someone could have seen this film and thought that Lynch would be a great choice to direct Dune, which at the time was being marketed as the next Star Wars. Even then, Lynch was never going to be mistaken for a commercial director.