It was 35 years ago when Twin Peaks premiered on TV on ABC and just eight years ago when fans finally got some resolution with Twin Peaks: The Return. I saw some resolution because David Lynch, who passed away earlier this year, never believed in anything finite. I’ve often debated the latter part of Blue Velvet is actually a coma-induced lucid dream Kyle MacLachlan’s Jeffrey is having after being beaten up by Dennis Hopper’s Frank Booth and his goons.
Lynch often dealt with dreams and visions that people see in their dreams. He made avant-garde more mainstream with this show which premiered in the spring of 1990. Watching the first pilot episode, which Lynch directed, it might have seemed odd to Americans in a hangover from Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” nonsense. If he had been a standalone film, it probably would’ve been one of the best movies of 1990. But Lynch just like Quentin Tarantino is always more fascinated by what other writers and directors don’t think they need to show. Or at least they didn’t at the time.
The Irishman took a lot of criticism but one scene that I liked was how Sally Bugs discusses with Chuckie O’Brien what type of fish did Chuckie have in the backseat as they are going to the restaurant to pick up Jimmy Hoffa. Sally knows Frank Sheeran is going to kill Hoffa as he randomly talks with Hoffa’s adoptive son. On the way back from the restaurant to the house where Frank shoots Hoffa in the back of the head, they’re all chatting about the fish smell and Hoffa comments about Sally Bugs’ glasses.
In this iconic first episode, MacLachlan’s FBI agent Dale Cooper loves coffee and pastries such as cherry pies and donuts. He is also fascinated by the trees of Twin Peaks, Wash. that while in town investigating a kidnapping-murder he asks the local sheriff Harry S. Truman (Michael Ontkean) what type of trees they are with an excited demeanor. Twin Peaks is a fictional small town in the Pacific Northwest that has a thriving lumber business and not much else.
Cooper and Truman have joined together to investigate what happened to a local teenage girl Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). She is the daughter of a local businessman Leland (Ray Wise) and his wife, Sarah (Grace Zabriskie). While the murder of Laura was supposed to be the catalyst for the series, neither Lynch nor co-creator Mark Frost never really intended for the murder to be solved. Mixing horror, mystery, dark comedy with soap operatic drama as well as elements of the supernatural and maybe even science-fiction, Twin Peaks was a perfect satire of TV culture.
Before he passed away, Paul Reubens amusingly told an audience of writers and movie-lovers how he, Phil Hartman and Michael Varhol used Syd Fields’ Screenplay: The Foundation of Screenwriting to help them write the script to Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. The book is controversial in the entertainment business as some say it doesn’t allow writers and filmmakers to be creative and imaginative with its three-act format. Lynch never used the three-act format because once the audience seems to get comfortable, he pulls out the rug.
In the 1980s, a lot of dramas focused on ensemble casts but they all seemed to follow a same format. There was St. Elsewhere, Hill Street Blues, Dynasty, Falcon Crest and Knots Landing to name a few in which there might have been a few lead roles, but the focus shifted to the people around them. With about two dozen characters including high school students, law enforcement and local people, Twin Peaks had a surrealist look at America.
This could be just about any other town, city or community in America. Laura was torn through her affection for teenage bad boy, Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook), and the sensitive misunderstood James Hurley (James Marshall) who is often treated as an outcast. Bobby is having an affair with Shelly Johnson (Madchen Amick), who is in an abusive marriage with Leo Johnson (Eric De Re), a trucker who is also involved in petty crimes. Shelly works at the local diner with her older co-worker/owner Norma Jennings (Peggy Lipton) is also attracted to gas station owner Big Ed Hurley (Everett McGill), who is also James’ uncle. Ed’s wife, Nadine (Wendy Robie), is often very toxic to him as well. (Incidentally, both McGill and Robie would play a married cannibalistic couple who keep people locked in their basement in Wes Craven’s critical and financial success The People Under the Stairs.)
The connection between the characters is what made the show work in its first season. It might have seem weird with people like Margaret Lanterman (Catherine E. Coulson), who carries a log with her everywhere and is known as the Log Lady. Or there’s the eccentric Dr. Lawrence Jacoby (Russ Tamblyn), who is the town psychiatrist. To describe all the characters would take too long, but Lynch and Frost created a show that seemed strange, but you had to ask yourself – Don’t you know people like this in real life?
You could probably do a 10-minute search on social media and find people who made The Log Lady or Dr. Jacoby with his strange glasses and earbuds look more like they belonged in Mayberry. Bobby might have seemed like a badass but he was actually weak as his father, Maj. Garland Briggs (Don S. Davis), is hard on him but really loves him. Also it seems a lot of people know that Bobby and Shelly are probably fooling around as well as Ed and Norma.
The pilot episode was the highest rated show for the week despite some initial criticism the show wouldn’t last long. And the ratings began to decline for the remainder of the first season as it ended on a cliffhanger with Cooper being shot. But the injury wasn’t too severe as they continued to work on the case. However, pressure from ABC executives pressed Lynch and Frost to solve the mystery.
And they did. And it was kind of a let down. To be honest, you can watch the earlier episodes and see Leland as a distraught parent. But to have him be the killer as he was possessed by an evil spirit, Killer BOB (Frank Silva), seemed like a cop-out. The mystery was solved halfway through the second season which set the ground for a mediocre season as a new villain, Windom Earle (Kenneth Walsh), a former FBI agent was introduced.
The series was canceled after airing its final episode of the second season in early June 1991. It ended on a major cliffhanger. Cooper is possessed by BOB. And a bomb exploding in a safety deposit box at the bank left the fates of Audrey Horne (Sherilynn Fenn), Pete Marshall (Jack Nance) and Andrew Packard (Dan O’Herlihy) unknown. Audrey had handcuffed herself to the vault gate to protest proposed business developments that would hurt the environment.
The first season had spent a lot building up characters like Catherine Martell (Piper Laurie) and her family struggles with her sister-in-law, Josie Packard (Joan Chen) who was having a secret affair with Truman. Josie has controlling interest in the saw mill, which angers Catherine who only owns a portion. Then these characters just went to the wayside popping up but not really adding anything.
Cooper was also supposed to get a love interest with Audrey but ABC executives didn’t think Cooper would be dating a woman who was still a teenager. In real life, Fenn was 25 while MacLachlan was 31 when the show premiered. In real-life he had begun dating Lara Flynn Boyle, who was only 20, and played Donna Hayward, Laura’s best friend. So, they introduced Norma’s younger sister, Annie Blackburn (Heather Graham ) to be Cooper’s love interest.
Graham herself was only 20 but there’s rumors that Boyle and Fenn had some behind the scenes tension and Boyle didn’t want Fenn kissing her man. Boyle and MacLachlan would separate in 1992. It seemed like life was imitating the show or the show was imitating life.
The cancelation by ABC led to Lynch and Frost trying to work out a deal with Aaron Spelling Productions. But the production company refused to spend the necessary $500,000 an episode for a third season. Lynch had signed a three-movie deal with CIBY 2000 in February of 1991 and they wanted the first movie to be a Twin Peaks movie.
However, Lynch and Frost disagreed on whether the movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me be a prequel or sequel. Frost retained an executive producer credit but had no involvement. The movie was a prequel mainly detailing about a week or so before Laura’s murder. This meant the movie would mainly focus on Laura and the people she normally interacts with and not much else. MacLachlan appears as Cooper but his role mostly seems like a glorified cameo.
Also the beginning of the movie deals with an extended prologue as FBI Bureau Chief Gordon Cole (Lynch) sends FBI agents Chester Desmond (Chris Isaak) and Sam Stanley (Kiefer Sutherland) to Deer Meadow, Wash. to investigate the murder of Teresa Banks (Pamela Gidley). Desmond ends up disappearing after doing some investigation in the area on his own.
Later Gordon, Cole and Albert Rosenfield (Miquel Ferrer) are all visited by Phillip Jeffries (David Bowie) another agent who went missing who recounts a vision of mysterious spirits before vanishing. But the agents soon learn the security desk notes that Jeffries never entered the building.
The movie cuts to one year later as we see the last days of Laura. With the freedom to include drug use, graphic profanity, violence, nudity and sexual content, the movie seemed to lose some audience members. While the series blended comedy and drama, the movie seemed to be too dark probably for some audience members.
The incestuous tension between Leland and Laura is on full display with a scene of Laura discovering she’s having sex with Leland. Also, Laura isn’t the big mystery she was in the series where she is often recounted by people. Writer David Foster Wallace said part of the movie’s failure was due to Laura’s moral ambiguity. Just like Kevin Costner’s Alex in The Big Chill, it’s best to keep him mostly dead and open to the audience’s interpretation based on how she affected the people around her.
James and Bobby are featured throughout. However, Boyle was unable to return as Donna. Moira Kelly fills in as Donna. It’s possible Boyle whose career was on the rise didn’t want to appear as the best friend. In the show, Donna was her own character. But in the movie, she’s a secondary character. It’s also the nudity and sexual content that more or less led to Boyle passing.
And that’s the problem. Kelly doesn’t play the role the way Boyle did. So, Donna just seems like a throwaway character who is more a victim to Laura’s emotional abuse as Laura seems to always be yelling, screaming or crying at Donna. And that’s another reason people were turned away. Laura is an emotionally scarred traumatized person. In 1992, that was a turn-off. But it seems like she is suffering from mental issues.
Now, Lee’s performance as a victim of sexual abuse is an examination of the despair, self-loathing and mood swings people go through. It also turns Leland into more of a sadistic character who can play a Jekyll and Hyde personality as he is responsible for the murder of Teresa. I don’t know if it was the intention of Lynch and Frost to make Leland Laura’s killer, but they were able to weave it together to make it look intentional.
For the first season, Leland seems like an grieving parent. But there was something off the way he’d behave around his niece, Madeleine “Maddy” Ferguson, who was also played by Lee. I’d like to add the scene at the Great Northern Hotel where Leland is on the phone with Sarah when they both learn of the death of Laura is brilliant direction by Lynch. We see Truman walking in from the background as they walk up to the front desk to ask to speak with Leland, not knowing he’s right there behind him. And Leland looks at them realizing something bad has happened while you hear Grace’s sobs followed by Angelo Badalementi’s beautiful somber music on the soundtrack.
Fire Walk With Me may not have been the best thing for Twin Peaks fans who were hoping for some resolution as well as scenes of their favorite characters. Reportedly they all appeared in deleted scenes compiled in Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces which I haven’t seen. But I agree with Lynch for their exclusion from the final cut of this movie. It makes no sense to have them in if they’re not needed. Just as Marge Gunderson not appearing until a third way in Fargo, her role isn’t necessary.
During the summer of 1992, Lynch and Frost also had a TV show On the Air that only aired three episodes before it was canceled. It was about a live variety show in the 1950s where everything seems to go wrong. This along with the negative response of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me led to Lynch abandoning TV shows and filmmaking for years. He got by directing musical videos and commercials.
In the late 1990s, he had a career resurgence with the divisive Lost Highway followed by the universally praised The Straight Story, a G-rated movie distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. When ABC passed on his Mulholland Drive pilot, he was able to expand it into a feature film for which he was nominated for an Best Director Oscar.
But non TV executives decided to take bigger chances on shows that didn’t play it straight always. CBS aired Northern Exposure, a dramedy about a doctor having to practice in a small town of eccentrics in Alaska. In 1992, David E. Kelly introduced us to the strange world of Rome, Wis. It was another dramedy where strange things happen just like in Twin Peaks but it was mostly about the townspeople. The show tackled many unusual topics for primetime TV such as abortion, incest, homophobia and during a controversial airing, two teen girls kissing each other.
On Fox, the cult classic The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. ran for one season. Then, the sci-fi/supernatural show The X-Files premiered with many critics theorizing the show would be immediately canceled. It’s obvious that Twin Peaks laid the ground work for modern TV shows today.
In the mid-2010s, Lynch and Frost would reunite again for Twin Peaks: The Return, which I will be focusing on in next week’s blog post.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 