The Amputee, Version 2

David Lynch was one year into the three it would take to complete his feature film debut, Eraserhead (1977), when funding ran out and he was forced to suspend production. Depressed over the shutdown, Lynch felt hope reignited when fellow American Film Institute student Frederick Elmes was assigned to test two brands of black-and-white video tape that the AFI was considering buying in bulk. Though Elmes had intended on shooting the comparison with test patterns, Lynch convinced him to make a short film, twice, once for each brand of stock. The result was The Amputee (1974), which Lynch wrote over the course of a single night and which marked his first fully live action short subject. A static shot of a woman, a double amputee who sits composing an angry letter while a male nurse irrigates and dresses her stumps, The Amputee stars Catherine Coulson, a member of Lynch's Eraserhead crew who later contributed to its completion from her earnings as a waitress. Playing the part of the male nurse is Lynch himself, in his first of many cameo appearances. The halt in filming of Eraserhead cost Lynch his original director of photography, Herb Cardwell (who died of a sudden heart attack shortly thereafter), leaving Fred Elmes to take his place. Lynch and Elmes would collaborate on Blue Velvet (1986) and Wild at Heart (1990), while Catherine Coulson would play the prophetic "Log Lady" on Lynch's cult TV series Twin Peaks.

By Richard Harland Smith