We screened the film for you to bring you up to date as to the status of that venture. According to Cornfeld, Brooks tersely responded, "We are involved in a business venture. When shown a cut of the film, Paramount executives recommended that the surreal opening and closing sequences be removed from the film. With The Elephant Man, Brooks defied studio convention by hiring an avant-garde director to helm a major production, shooting the film in black and white, and refusing to allow studio brass to tamper with Lynch's vision. Responsible for such ambitious and diverse films as Frances (1982) and David Cronenberg's The Fly (1986), Brooksfilms was headed by screen satirist Mel Brooks, who proved himself to be a visionary producer as well as an accomplished comedian. It was not exactly the kind of film that launches Hollywood careers, but it caught the attention of producer Stuart Cornfeld, who was working for the newly formed production company Brooksfilms. Prior to making The Elephant Man, Lynch had made only one feature, the stylized and narratively oblique Eraserhead (1976), the tale of a forlorn man's lonely existence in a nightmarish industrial wasteland. A friendship between the two men blossoms and Treves, as well as the hospital staff, discover that Merrick is not the mindless victim they thought him to be, but a man of remarkable intelligence and sensitivity. A renowned and affluent doctor, Frederick Treves (Anthony Hopkins), endeavors to study Merrick's condition, and convinces the London Hospital to take him in as a resident patient.
John Hurt stars as Merrick, a man whose body is so grossly deformed by disease that he lives as a carnival attraction, "The Elephant Man," in the slums of London. Based upon the life of John Merrick, David Lynch's The Elephant Man (1980) is a moving portrait of one misshapen man's struggle to find and maintain his dignity amidst the horrors and hardships of 19th-century London.
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