LostInTheMovies

Someone in another forum made an interesting observation: the article (which seems to be heavily shaped by Showtime's PR) writes "including" profit participation definitions, which means there were other concessions demanded. But that's the only one that gets mentioned, which makes Lynch look greedy/selfish for walking off the show: good spin for Showtime. For all we know, he might have been willing to bend, or at least negotiate longer, on that point but it was the other concessions that went too far for him. Showtime is really stuck right now because they have to defend their reputation but they also (I hope) don't want to lose the show and by now, as the cast and public outcry have made clear, Lynch IS the show. I hope an agreement is reached soon but I don't think Lynch is bluffing so Showtime will now have to give him whatever he asked, maybe including keeping his profits at the same level. What shocks me, from the same article, is apparently they made the huge public announcement without having read the scripts and thus having no real idea if their estimated budget was correct. I feel no matter what happens, they are going to be the laughingstock of the industry for the way they approached this. I wish everything had been locked down before they made it public but I guess if this budget was really too much for them, they wouldn't have agreed to the series in the first place.

This podcast was hilarious - more fun to listen to than this episode is to watch, to be honest.

This to me is where Twin Peaks starts to come back. Yes, I know it has the pine weasel riot. And Billy Zane's embarrassing serenade. And it DOESN'T yet have Also - Good Lord, Michael Ontkean cannot perform grief. "That's the good thing about the law IT DOESN'T BREATHE YOU CAN'T KILL IT!" (It's hard to imagine how any actor could have nailed that particular line, but it's also hard to imagine how anyone could have done a worse job with it!) Then again, no scene that makes me laugh this hard can be all bad. For many people, Annie is also worth a demerit although she kind of works for me. But for whatever reason, this is when I start to actually enjoy watching Twin Peaks again. Not in some train-wreck-fascination way but actually genuinely have a good time (at least until the last 10-15 minutes or so). The actors actually feel like they're enjoying themselves for the first time in a while. The story actually seems to be going places (the Log Lady & Maj. Briggs single, or double, handedly revive the listing mythology and start pushing it in a direction other than Maj. Briggs showing up at the station and saying "something something White Lodge confidential"). The mindnumbingly awful storylines such as Evelyn, Little Nicky, and Josie's endless shenanigans are finally over. I actually like Windom's scene in the Hayward house, in which he's finally subtle rather than flamboyant as a villain, and most importantly, he's beginning to threaten the townspeople and not just be this isolated madman-in-the-woods who has dropped in from another show. Even the silly stuff, like Nadine & Mike checking into the hotel, has a bit more spark to it. And I really like James Foley's direction (ok, the early 90s bleary drinking montage is a bit much, but even that charms me). For the most part it is very economical yet impressive, with clean camera movements rather than standard cross-cutting and tasteful lighting and compositions which are a relief after the garish over-the-top quality of last week's efforts. I think for many viewers, this may not really feel like a comeback but give it a week. If the next episode don't feel like a relief, you probably won't care for the last few episodes BUT sit tight for the finale, because that one will blow your mind. And the mediocrity of the show's second half will only make it stand out more (even compared to other Lynch episodes, it's an avant-garde mindbender but coming after Miss Twin Peaks - that's in the episode, right, and not a spoiler - and John Justice Wheeler it's like someone dropped a sugar cube of acid into the weak tea of early 90s TGIF-type programming). Mid-season 2 makes late season 2 a relief in a respite in my opinion, but the finale reminds you of how just good the show could be. God, Lynch has got to come back for 2016.

Here's a really good piece on Fire Walk With Me that covers some of the same ground as that op-ed, but far more cogently. To be fair, the author obviously had far more space and time to develop her ideas. Contains some superb analysis especially of how the film's form amplifies its themes: http://thequietus.com/articles/10431-twin-peaks-fire-walk-with-me-david-lynch-20-years-on

Some interesting ideas but not a well-edited piece at all. The organization is disjointed (that short paragraph on pace comes out of nowhere), there are quite a few grammatical errors and most importantly the author's argument is confusing and at times contradictory. Is the "fun" fetishization a new wrinkle ("hipster appropriation") or deeply-rooted in the show's original reception? Is Lynch complicit in the fetishization or is it a misunderstanding of what he's doing? What does this have to do with him leaving the show? It's a pity because an exploration of the show's mixture of fun and darkness is certainly a rich subject, and it's fine not to come to tidy conclusions but then the essay should be presented in a more Socratic fashion. Frankly I find this to be a problem with a lot of mainstream media commemorations of the show. It all reads a bit like Mr. Jones in the Dylan song.

https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedEnt/status/584873761851211776 http://welcometotwinpeaks.com/news/showtime-david-nevins-saving-twin-peaks/ Prediction: by April 8 (25th anniversary) we have good news. Fingers crossed anyway.

Showtime is backpedaling like crazy. Apparently Lynch didn't notify them, he just went ahead and contacted the actors, and social media took over from there. Showtime basically has three options at this point: a - continue Twin Peaks without Lynch, b - abandon the show altogether, c - cave in and give Lynch what he wants and plead for him to come back. They are all pretty terrible options, the third because it basically admits defeat in the most publicly humiliating way possible. But only c) allows them to save face SOMEWHAT. Otherwise, the fail only becomes more and more epic and they just look like absolute fools in the PR game. I think they will come groveling to his doorstep and give him what he wants. I hope.

He tops these in the next episode. Oh does he ever. Terrible dialogue to begin with but the delivery is spellbindingly awful.

I see this more as the end of the bad than the beginning of the good, but compared to the last couple weeks, yes, it's an improvement. It's a bit startling to see the Josie story limp to an actual end because the show has almost lulled you into thinking the mediocre storylines and endless wheel-spinning are just going to continue forever and ever and ever... Bringing Bob and the Little Man back is a nice idea in theory but I think the way it's executed just hammers home how far the show has traveled since early season 2. Seems so forced. I feel much the same about the drawer pull to be honest, even though it was Lynch's idea. First time I watched the series I felt like, ok they've already flubbed all the soap opera stuff - did they HAVE to go and flub the supernatural, as well? On the other hand, the show's efforts to finally bring lame-duck stories to an end, its guilty conscience about abandoning its own icons (see not just the Bob/LM stuff but Josie in the mirror, recalling the pilot), and ability to deliver a memorable, iconic moment (and silly as I think it is, the drawer pull does qualify as that) proves that there's some life in Twin Peaks yet. Or should I say, it's aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive! (That's not a Frankenstein reference, as you'll see when you watch this episode.)

Almost every account I can find of viewer reaction in 1990 skews heavily towards having no clue who did it. (I guess we're still using spoiler tags here for people catching up with the podcast. Except for alt.tv.twin-peaks. They were on that, to the point where I would say he was probably their #1 suspect, at least in the heavy sampling I've read.

Some interesting anecdotes from Reflections, regarding Uli Edel, director of this episode (for some reason there's a short chapter devoted just to his & Diane Keaton's directing stints - I guess they were pretty memorable for the cast): Russ Tamblyn: "I didn't like working with him. I just thought he was too bossy and kind of sarcastic and he just wasn't very friendly. It wasn't a good experience for me. I think someone did almost come to blows with him; he was just that kind of director - in your face. He would say terrible things. I can't remember what he said, but I just didn't like working with him, bottom line. I was so glad when that scene was over." Michael Horse: "Uli Edel was a pretty tough guy. One time he said [strict] 'You go here, you go there.' I asked the crew if this guy was really this good and they said, 'Yeah, he is, Michael.' I said okay, but if this isn't Emmy material I'm gonna kick his ass. [laughs] He was pretty pushy." Ian Buchanan: "Uli was great. He was very Germanic. I remember when Andy and Dick are at the police department and we are told the true story of Little Nicky's life. In the script it said we were upset, so we went for it, howling like babies. Uli was right in our faces: [loud] 'Stop the noise!'" David Patrick Kelly: "Uli was very inspiring. He runs a strict set. I remember specifically about Uli that there was a lot of comedy in these scenes. But like David, Uli liked to keep it serious on set so that the underlying reality of what we were doing came through. I really respected that a lot about Uli because sometimes it seemed as if comedy was overwhelming things, so to keep it serious and based in reality was really important."

I wish this forum had a thumbs-up button or something because it feels like a waste just to put up a post saying "LOL" but...LOL.

^This. I think the only times I haven't considered this the worst episode of the series is on rewatches when I was so exhausted by the sitcom-yness of the midseason that Keaton's empty bag of tricks at least felt like a welcome distraction. Other times, it just feels like doubling down on the nothing Twin Peaks has become. At least this is the lowpoint. I am not a fan of the next episode - its attempt at "hey, remember..." comeback fall flat to me - but at least it begins to dig us out of the hole. I do like the one after that, despite something that rhymes with "mine diesel" and something else that rhymes with "silly pain". I'm not rewatching the episodes at present (though I did rewatch many of these recently) but it's interesting to follow the reactions of those slogging through for the first time. Last year, when I got back into Twin Peaks in a big way and started to research and write/make videos about the show, I became more and more fascinated with the train wreck of the mid-second season. These episodes didn't seem much better to me than they did the first time but as I get used to them, the questions of "how did this happen?" and "how can this be part of the same show as ____?" and "where do things start to go wrong and start to improve again" came to the forefront. Somehow the mess began to make sense as part of the bigger picture, the flaws necessary in some cosmic way to balance out the strengths. Maybe it was just Stockholm Syndrome. However, the very first time I watched the show I didn't even have that morbid curiosity. All I knew was that the Twin Peaks I had loved watching had been magically replaced with its evil doppelganger halfway through and I didn't know if or when it was going to end. The second time I watched the series, to write up an episode guide for my blog, I skipped everything between Leland's death and the finale! So reading this despair brings back memories. I feel your pain. Ah, nostalgia...

6 Men was an art installation & The Amputee was a camera test (though I actually really like that one) so they are sort of abberations in that sense. But all the films are pretty different from one another depending what period they were shot. In a way you'd never know The Alphabet & The Grandmother were shot by the same director as The Cowboy & the Frenchman but in the context of Lynch's overall work it makes sense since they tap into different sides of his style. But he's oddly a more versatile director than people realize I think.

Oh and also you might want to throw the short films disc in there (recently included as special features on the Criterion Eraserhead blu but there's a disc that has them too. The Grandmother is interesting in relation to FWWM for several reasons: theme of abuse, young protagonist (only time a child stars in a Lynch film), creepy/crazy dinnertable scene, white face paint, but also the main character dresses like the

I think they definitely have Lynchian themes, handled in different ways - clumsy for Dune, cautious in Elephant Man (inasmuch as he was still developing some of these themes), subtle for Straight Story. I did not care for Dune but Elephant Man is excellent and very moving. Straight Story may actually be one of my very favorite Lynch films. Even aside from the novelty value of David Lynch directing a G-rated Disney film...EDIT: It also occurs to me that The Straight Story is about an old man doing something really, really slowly and what could be more Lynchian than that?

The book makes it nominally more plausible in that Of all the spin-off material, Cooper's autobiography is probably considered the least canonical because it explicitly contradicts something seen in the film: But I think it amplifies the themes of the finale in interesting ways - and that its use of Cooper's ring provides a resonant if coincidental precedent for a different ring in Fire Walk With Me. That said, the Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (which I know Jake and/or Chris are not fans of) is a much stronger read and more important in the overall development of Twin Peaks, as it was the first time Laura Palmer was given her own voice. It was also a huge influence on Sheryl Lee's performance in the film.

Also since we're posting Grantland links here's a fantastic article on Fire Walk With Me, one of the best pieces of writing in this film: http://grantland.com/features/twenty-things-david-lynch-fire-walk-its-20th-anniversary. Spoilers, including for the finale - Jake, don't read!

Thanks for posting that. I just finished the show the other day so I read it...great stuff. I'd been hearing references to The King in Yellow but didn't actually know what it was about - what a cool concept. I'll have to get my hands on that book now. Funny the author (of the article) says

Ah yeah, redaction redacted - it was me after all! Here's what I wrote: "The aliens - I've never been able to figure out exactly where this thread comes from, but in Martha Nochimson's Lynch book she suggests the UFOs were Frost's idea and something Lynch convinced him to turn away from. She based this on a conversation with Catherine Coulson, the Log Lady, who is also a close personal friend of Lynch. Either way, I think the reason they didn't seed it as "the woods" at this point is because it wasn't originally supposed to be. Love the anecdote about (Chris'?) parents. That really sums up the general response to season two at the time, I think." I took another look at the passage in the book (The Passion of David Lynch) and it's actually a bit more ambiguous than that. She says that Lynch is bored by UFOs and then footnotes it with "Interviews with Lynch relative to Dune generally refer to his self-avowed surprise at his interest in a futuristic story. [she elaborates] Lynch's repeated statements of this type give credibility to my surmise, parallel to that of his longtime friend and coworker Catherine Coulson, that the emotionless involutions of the UFO plot on Twin Peaks were much more Frost than Lynch." Aside from being speculatory (I actually put a lot of stock in Nochimson's speculations as they are generally very resonant and based in evidence) this is kind of problematic because it seems to assume there is a "UFO plot" in Twin Peaks when in fact there's only one scene (directed by Lynch!) followed, many episodes later, but the "twist" that it wasn't UFOs at all. So she might be unintentionally misrepresenting something on the show based on memory. I think I leaned toward the above reading a few months ago, but now I'm not really sure what to think. The inconvenient facts I have to look at are: a. Lynch himself directed the UFO episode (which doesn't necessarily mean a lot - he also supposedly wasn't keen on Windom Earle, but that episode mentions him for the first time) b. Lynch is generally absent from the episodes in which the UFO plot becomes "the woods" plot c. Lynch doesn't really seem to have shot down Frost on anything until the final episode. Actually, I take that back, according to Nochimson & Harley Peyton he did not like Invitation to Love (which was written & directed by Mark Frost) and Peyton says Lynch nixed it for season two.

That is - suddenly Twin Peaks Rewatch will magically turn into an introcast! Can't wait to hear your reaction to the finale. Although you mentioned knowing the final image, right?

I think it would be cool if Jake & Chris covered other Lynch films after FWWM, as another Twin Peaks podcast did. Thoughts?

Ok then, episode 22. I think this and the next are probably the worst of the series. At this point on a rewatch, my train-wreck fascination with just how far off the rails the show has gone starts to dim. The novelty aspect that kept you guys watching in incredulity in ep. 20 has now faded. It's just thin gruel. The directors, first-timers Uli Edel and (is this a spoiler?) , try to jazz things up with elaborate style to mixed effect. On the one hand, after the sitcom shenanigans it's a relief to see the show attempt visual interest. On the other, and this is especially true of the next one, some of the stylistic conceits just come off as so forced. I'm not sure what's worse: lame scripts with (relatively) plain presentation or lame scripts with baroque stylization. Either way, we've definitely reached the decadent stage of Twin Peaks. Ep. 24 will be an improvement but by that point my energy has flagged (and the Josie story is so frustratingly unengaging) so I consider ep. 25 the real beginning of the uptick (despite the ). The ep. 25/26+ episodes are sort of a test case for what viewers are willing to accept/take from Twin Peaks. The execution is sooo much better than all the stuff we're discussing now, but the premise is lacking in comparison to "Who Killed Laura Palmer?". Whether or not you like the final stretch of season 2, I guess, depends on whether you hold up against the mid-season (which is far less enjoyable to watch) or season 1/early season 2 (which feels much more deeply-rooted). I think at that point it definitely becomes a fun show to watch again, but it's still kind of a weak imitation of the first half of the series. Until the finale of course. For now, I'll re-post something I shared with spoiler tags in an earlier thread, since it's relevant: Been re-watching the mid-season and... Re: Cooper's approach to the one-armed man & general violation of FBI ethics one also has to consider that within a few episodes (really lame spoiler for ep. 22) Cooper's approach to crisis aversion is to lock a gun-wielding old man into a room with the young woman he wants to murder, and let them work it out. And then when time's up they charge into the room, guns raised just in case (I mean if they are that concerned about his threat shouldn't they maybe NOT have sent him in there with her alone?) Coop gets away with murder on this show! (Figuratively speaking...) And boy, does season 2 get weird (not in a good way).

I don't think it was me who said the UFO thing but I've speculated about similar things elsewhere, so maybe it was. Either way, I can't seem to find any evidence about what they were thinking there. It does seem a likely explanation though (that they were planning to bring in aliens and then thought better and made it "the woods") because Lynch is supposedly not very into UFO lore and he would probably have put the kibbosh on that angle. But then it's weird that it comes up in the episode he directs and is squashed during a time he's not very involved with the show. He and Frost were writing a sci-fi type thing before Twin Peaks...but it definitely doesn't seem to fit in with much of anything. Does anyone have quotes of Frost or Peyton or whoever talking about this? Not including the whole Bob Engels/Fire Walk With Me lore of I'd love to know more.

Ah you guys had to drop the True Detective reference the morning before I get the final disc in the mail? And just to think it was supposed to have come yesterday too. Oh well...not a huge spoiler I guess. But I guess now I can say with certainty it's not EDIT: On further listening, I think maybe you were just referring to the style of the killing, not necessarily the killer's identity? At least that's what I'm going to believe until I watch the last three... DOUBLE EDIT: This was actually meant for the episode 21 thread.