The Elephant Man (film) me hate acting." Because of the strain on the actor, he worked alternate days. Lynch originally wanted Jack Nance for the title character. "But it just wasn't in the cards," Lynch says; the role went to John Hurt after Brooks, Lynch and Sanger saw his performance in "The Naked Civil Servant" as Quentin Crisp. Lynch bookended the film with surrealist sequences centered around Merrick's mother and her death. Lynch used Samuel Barber’s "Adagio for Strings" to underline the end of the film and Merrick's own death. The film's composer, John Morris, argued against using the music, stating that "this piece
The Elephant Man (film) for Best Film, Best Actor, and Best Production Design and was nominated for Golden Globe awards. It also won a French César Award for Best Foreign Film. Frederick Treves, a surgeon at the London Hospital, finds John Merrick in a Victorian freak show in London's East End, where he is kept by Mr. Bytes, an alcoholic and sadistic showman. His head is kept hooded, and his "owner," who views him as intellectually disabled, is paid by Treves to bring him to the hospital for examination. Treves presents Merrick to his colleagues and highlights his monstrous skull, which forces him to