I Don't Know Jack

The documentary takes up the actor Jack Nance. Nance became known through Eraserhead, made in 1977. David Lynch directed that film. After that part he worked with Lynch on other projects too. The account is built almost entirely out of interviews. Those who speak are his family, his friends and his colleagues. Clips from the films he acted in run between them. What comes out is the portrait of a complicated man. The side of him that did himself harm could outrun the side that created. The film follows his life to the end of it. The circumstances of his death remain unresolved to this day. Catherine E. Coulson, who was married to Nance in the seventies, speaks in Chris Leavens’s American documentary of 2002, which runs ninety one minutes.