Twin Peaks Rewatch 31: Fire Walk With Me

The Twin Peaks Podcast · May 29, 2015

Currently listening to you guys talk about Fire Walk with Me. It’s a great time, but I find myself wanting to yell answers at my computer while I listen. Wish I could be part of the conversation… Here’s my running thoughts on your discussions.

The shooting locations are in the same town(s) as the pilot, but they feel different because the film was shot in the summer. Everything is much sunnier and more dry than when the pilot was filmed in late winter/early spring. Many of the scenes are shot in new locations that weren’t used in the pilot, but they are still all located in the same general area of the Snoqualmie valley. The Palmer House interior is the same as in the series, but the exterior has changed for the film. The exterior used in the series was actually a completely different house than the interior. Now in the movie, the same house is used for both interior and exterior.

You’re couldn’t be more wrong about how Agent Cooper and Sam would interact. Coop doesn’t find Sam endearing at all. For some reason he seems to really dislike Sam. You’re actually going to see the two of them together in the Missing Pieces. Extra trivia for you: Sam was mentioned by Cooper in the pilot episode after he pulled the letter from Laura Palmer’s finger nail. “Diane, send this to Albert and his team. Don’t send it to Sam. Albert is a little more on the ball.”

Desmond did purposely make Sam spill his coffee. He asked him to look at his watch while he was still holding his coffee cup, guessing he was too spaced out to realize he should put the cup down first before turning his wrist.

The Roadhouse was probably the other location with a neon sign that you were thinking of. There are iconic shots of the roadhouse’s neon sign reflected in a puddle in the parking lot.

The scene with David Bowie that is cross fading between him in the Philadelphia office and the scene of the lodge entities meeting “above the convenience store” was originally two separate scenes. When you watch the missing pieces you will see both scenes in their entirety without the static crossfading. So I’m guessing that when Lynch was trimming the movie, he still wanted to keep both scenes so he just stuck them in the movie on top of each other.

What you said about the black lodge and its effect on time and a person’s life seems to be dead on. This film takes place before Coop had ever gone to Twin Peaks, but the first time you see him you can faintly hear some black lodge music. Also Phillip Jeffries points to him and asks, “Who do you think that is there?” Possibly in reference to his future possession by BOB. Laura has a dream about Annie, who tells her about Coop being trapped in the black lodge. And of course at the end when Laura ends up in the red room, Coop is already there waiting to usher her to what we can assume is the white lodge.

James does say to Donna in the pilot that Laura told him Bobby killed a guy. He basically describes the whole scene where she gets off the bike and runs away from him into the woods, beat by beat. This all had to be in the movie, basically because it was previously mentioned that it had happened.

The Grandmother/Grandson are the “Tremonds”, not whatever name you were saying.

In the train car scene, Laura’s guardian angel that had previously left her alone (i.e. disappeared from the painting) in the middle of the movie seemingly helps Ronette escape her bonds. Mike throws the ring into the train car after Leland pushes Ronette out the door. The ring seems to be a weird thing in that whoever puts it on, BOB is compelled to kill them. BOB wanted to possess Laura, but when she puts on the ring he screams with rage as he must now kill her. This is her defeating him, by not letting him have her. Dream Coop told her not to take the ring previously, probably because he knew it would lead to her death.

After her death she goes to the waiting (red) room, where Cooper is waiting for her. She cries tears of joy when her guardian angel re-appears to usher her to the white lodge. There is a beautiful deleted scene in the Missing Pieces with Doc Hayward that foreshadows this.

In the final episode a lot of people think that Cooper injured his head on the mirror so that he would be taken to the hospital where Annie is. This would give BOB a chance to kill Annie before she wakes and has a chance to tell anyone that the real Coop is still in the lodge. Indeed in Missing Pieces of this film, Annie is seen wearing the ring in the hospital, presumably marked for death until a nurse steals it from her. Not sure where that would have gone. I guess Coop will end up killing that nurse.

Also, the ring seems to be made of the same material as the table that the “Man from Another Place” (The little man) runs his hands over while saying, “This is the formica table”. If I’m not mistaken there’s even a chunk of the table missing, presumably the piece that the ring is made from.

With the way you guys enjoyed this movie I REALLY think you should read “The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer”. The themes are extremely similar to Fire Walk with Me. I usually suggest people read it before the movie, to help prep them for its subject matter and shift in tone from the TV series. But since you’re already fans of the movie, I’m confident you’ll like the book a lot. I got my Twin Peaks Podcast co-hosts to read it before watching FWWM and they said it really helped them more fully understand the character of Laura and how dark the world of the movie is. Maybe you can do a bonus show on it? J

Other things you could check out are: You could listen to Cooper’s audio tapes and you could read Cooper’s autobiography. These 2 things are interesting, but not really necessary in my opinion the way Laura’s diary is.

That’s all for now. Feel free to grab any snippits from this that you found interesting and share them on the podcast! I wouldn’t expect you to read this whole thing aloud.

Matt Humphrey,

Host of “The Twin Peaks Podcast”

The Twin Peaks Podcast · May 29, 2015

Also while listening to the Nine Inch Nails song "Closer" at work, images of this movie popped into my head and I had to make this.

Not FWWM related, but the same thing happened with Dick Tremayne's theme. I felt compelled to put lyrics to the tune. Apparently they might play this for Ian Buchanan (Dick Tremayne) at this year's Twin Peaks Fest in the theatre on movie night.

Twig · May 29, 2015

The Grandmother/Grandson are the “Tremonds”, not whatever name you were saying.

Aren't they the "Chalfonts" in the movie? The trailer park landlord guy even says "the last two families to live here both has the name 'Chalfont'". I mean, I get that they're widely referred to as the "Tremonds", but the movie had a different name. (At least according to the subtitles when I was watching. I suppose they could've been incorrect!)

EDIT: http://twinpeaks.wikia.com/wiki/Pierre_Tremond This at least definitely mentions the other name.

Apple Cider · May 29, 2015

I might write something more expansive later but this is still one of the only movies in my entire life that I've seen that has been sympathetic and centralized the narrative of someone being overtly abused. Which is so important.

Edit:

As far as the movie and the show treat Leland as being responsible for his own actions, what I feel is more interesting is just how much you realize that it's not isolated to JUST him. The entire town is pretty pre-occupied with corrupting or destroying innocent kids in their teen years and the movie makes that way more astoundingly clear since you get more of a sense of Jacques, Leland, One Eyed Jacks, etc. Everyone in this town feels entitled to creeping on minors, essentially.

mikemariano · May 29, 2015

Coop doesn’t find Sam endearing at all. For some reason he seems to really dislike Sam. You’re actually going to see the two of them together in the Missing Pieces. Extra trivia for you: Sam was mentioned by Cooper in the pilot episode after he pulled the letter from Laura Palmer’s finger nail. “Diane, send this to Albert and his team. Don’t send it to Sam. Albert is a little more on the ball.”

Sam Stanley has tests and theories. He observes and quantifies. Cooper goes by intuition!

Gamebeast23456 · May 29, 2015

Something I've been thinking about but that is still ultimately underdeveloped: do you think that if the director of this film wasn't David Lynch, would people find so much of it as good as they do?

A theme that was mentioned a few times during the cast was the consideration of how involved David Lynch was in the creation of this film, beyond being the director. While I do agree that the film takes many later Twin Peaks ideas and re-forms them in a more Lynchian image, it still felt like several details of the film would be kind of weak if we didn't have the "Oh, well it's David Lynch and the things that interest him don't necessarily line up with mainline Peaks."

First of all, the entire structure of this film is strange the more I think about it. The first half hour, in my opinion, isn't very good. You have Gordon Cole who wants Agent Desmond to come, and then it cuts to the completely bizarre school bus scene. Unlike a lot of iconography in Peaks this scene just felt completely nonsensical and pointless- what is Desmond involved in here? What element of Desmond's character or his circumstances is explained by showing this? I don't think it can even fall back on Lynch's obsession with non-sequiturs, because I didn't feel like it was very powerful as an image. Moving on, they go to an airfield where Sam and Desmond speak to Cole, hilarious as ever, and then are shown the dancing lady. In the next scene, it was revealed to be a coded message, a message that only Desmond is equipped to understand. Why is Sam not given this information immediately? If the point of the whole display is to obfuscate this information (from some force that isn't seen), then why is it fine for Desmond to just tell him everything a few minutes later, except the rose? While the dancing lady is a more striking image, it's still connected to a series of events that seem completely nonsensical.

Then, there's all the Deer Meadow stuff. I thought this was fine, but again the entire episode seems like a mistake early on (not having Kyle to do the whole film) that someone just had to see to completion. You then go to the Philadelphia scene which I've already asked about. I don't understand what the relationship is between Cooper's dreams and the security camera scene, I don't know who Bowie is and I don't know what relationship he has to anyone else on an emotional level. He's just, from the looks of it, an FBI guy who saw some shit- some, again, indecipherable shit. Whatever the plot is, it got lost in these like crazy hazy crossfades where everyone is losing their minds in a room that has no relation to anything from the show... When I watched this I just felt, When does this get good; when will there be at least a comprehensible framework for insane shit to happen? I feel like if Twin Peaks proper was made in this strange style, the show might've just began with Coop chomping down on garmonbozia in the Black Lodge and then would be followed up with Laura in plastic. There just didn't even feel like a narrative framework for it.

The film, luckily, did get pretty good by the end. As everyone has said, the actual emotional relationship between Laura and Leland was haunting and powerful. But even through that, I felt I was like pulling at little real human emotions in between a film that felt disjointed in many ways. As an example of something that was also hard to follow, I didn't get what was going on with the paintings. I may have just not been at my most observant, but it felt confusing as heck.

Is it emblematic of what Fire Walk With Me is that there is an actual conversation about what the Tremonds' names are? Shouldn't we know the names, if names do exist? I didn't know their names when I finished the film.

I genuinely feel like this is a decent film whose flaws are unfairly handwaved because David Lynch. Characters in this film are noticeably different than they were in the episodes Lynch himself directed and helped write. I feel like he, as a storyteller, should've been at least slightly more careful about, well, lore and backstory. I assume Lynch wants you to care about the characters in Peaks, because he clearly does, but I don't possess his deep insights into who they are- the only things I know about them are based on how they are portrayed and how they respond to different circumstances. It just feels incomplete and far too dismissive of the source material.

Stories ultimately boil down to characters, and while some characterizations in this film are better than they were in the show (Leland and Laura, even Donna to an extent), I still think in many ways Lynch does a disservice to things he created.

Edit: Also, in response to saying some of this info was in the Missing Pieces- like in Alien 3, the extra content may make a film better, but if it's not there in the Theatrical Release of a motion picture, that is the directors fault. I shouldn't have to get on a forum just to understand the relationship between events in a film because the real explanation is buried in deleted scenes. That's not excusable.

The Twin Peaks Podcast · May 29, 2015

Aren't they the "Chalfonts" in the movie? The trailer park landlord guy even says "the last two families to live here both has the name 'Chalfont'". I mean, I get that they're widely referred to as the "Tremonds", but the movie had a different name. (At least according to the subtitles when I was watching. I suppose they could've been incorrect!)

EDIT: http://twinpeaks.wikia.com/wiki/Pierre_Tremond This at least definitely mentions the other name.

You know what? You're right. I completely forgot about that since within the fandom they are generally always referred to as the Tremonds.

Persistence of 3 · May 29, 2015

Aren't they the "Chalfonts" in the movie? The trailer park landlord guy even says "the last two families to live here both has the name 'Chalfont'". I mean, I get that they're widely referred to as the "Tremonds", but the movie had a different name. (At least according to the subtitles when I was watching. I suppose they could've been incorrect!)

EDIT: http://twinpeaks.wikia.com/wiki/Pierre_Tremond This at least definitely mentions the other name.

The Chalfont/Tremond thing goes one step further! In the series, it's revealed by Leland Palmer that when he was a boy his family had a cabin/house on Pearl Lake. Leland identifies the police sketch of BOB as the one who lived in the white house next door. Upon investigation it's determined that the family that owns (owned?) the white house was named Chalfont. The police are looking for a Robertson, so the name at the name is meaningless to the investigation. Hawk pays a visit only to find "a pair of retired female school teachers" living there. He had to drink 3 pots of chamomile tea to find that out.

Argobot · May 29, 2015

If this movie had been directed by someone else besides David Lynch (other Twin Peaks staff members, perhaps) I'm not sure I'd find it as successful. Especially if the movie continued the Black Lodge lore themes of the later part of the show that I find really unconvincing. Lynch's name might make people more open to this film because his name means something as a director, but I'm not sure people would bend over backward to love this movie just because Lynch did. In fact, I know a lot of diehard Lynch fans that hate this movie.

And I really want to continue defending the Agent Desmond part of the movie, because it works so well. Yes, I realize that the role was written for Cooper originally, but as is mentioned on the podcast, having a different but similar character get involved really drives home the idea that this town in not Twin Peaks and Teresa Banks is not Laura Palmer. Desmond's introduction in front of a bunch of crying children in bus as the bus drivers and prostitutes (?), is so incongruous to what you'd see on Twin Peaks the TV show. It's hard not to laugh at that stuff and also slowly settle into the fact that this movie will be different from the TV show. That's what really makes the beginning worth it for me; the way it straightforwardly prepares the audience from something different than what they might expect. People thought this movie was going to resolve what happened to Cooper at the end of the series finale and it kind of does, but the movie ends with Cooper still trapped there. Instead, the movie is a prequel that spends a lot of time with characters that aren't directly relevant to the show and I appreciate that expansion. It helps make the movie feel like a movie and not just an overly long episode of television, as I assume it would have felt if Lynch had strictly limited himself to Twin Peaks.

Honestly, it's kind of amazing this movie is any good. Usually shows that are kicked off by a dead girl mystery don't have any luck bringing those dead girls as real humans. They are symbols for whatever greater ills are plaguing the detectives or the particular town, and never are allowed to become their own fully realized character. The writing and acting in FWWM is so great though, that it breaks out of that unfortunate pattern. It gives Laura depth that she was never afforded on the TV and it is really rewarding to see her experiences as filtered through herself.

LostInTheMovies · May 29, 2015

Love how much this thread has taken off since Chris & Jake posted this episode. Hope it keeps going strong for a while, as there's so much about this movie to discuss. Rather than just drop an insane amount of posts in a row, I'm going to try to respond to various posts (some addressed to me, some not) in two replies (I was prohibited from posting this as one), with the multiquote button. Hopefully this does not make further responses to complicated! In order, then...

when you say that the red room is a place that Bob does not control. What do you think about the contrast between the red room in Cooper's initial dream - a very slow, methodical, (weird), safe space wherein he learns of Laura's killer - and the horrific hellhole that is seen in the series finale? Is it possible that Windom Earle's interference is what led Bob into the space, and therefore corrupted it, or am I overlooking the stuff where Mike and Bob come from the same place, i.e. the red room/black lodge too much?

There are a lot of different takes on the Red Room/Lodges out there. Some people feel that the Red Room straight up equals the Black Lodge, and that whenever we see that space (including in Cooper's initial dream) we are seeing the Black Lodge. This is problematic because, among other reasons, we see Laura get her angel there in the final scene which probably would not happen in the Black Lodge. Others claim that we never see EITHER Lodge, and that the Red Room is the waiting room (since the Little Man says "this is the waiting room" at the beginning of that long sequence in the finale). It's where it is determined where souls would go.

My take is a little different. Taking cues from Hawk's speech in ep. 18, as well as Lynch's own sensibility, I think the Red Room can be the White OR Black Lodge depending on the mindset of the person entering it. Since we're talking about a psychic rather than a physical space anyway that makes sense to me and I think when the Little Man says "this is the waiting room" he means that it is about to be determined which Lodge Coop will experience and/or both Lodges are themselves waiting rooms for some even more cosmic space that has no visual analogue. Hopefully that makes sense.

Just to be clear, I do think Bob inhabits the Red Room too. But I think the Little Man either is more powerful than Bob or is equally balanced, with the scales tipped in his favor at the end of FWWM probably because Laura took the ring. I also think it makes sense to consider the Little Man, who is the "arm" of Mike, as representative of Mike proper but that's sort of a complicated argument. Here's a video someone made that takes a stab at it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJgBQdCcvbI. Don't agree with all of it, but given the way Little Man/Phillip and Bob/Leland "face off" at the end of the film I think that's the parallel that makes the most sense. It begs the question of why Mike/Phillip WANTED to chop of his arm, and if the Little Man is therefore evil, but good God that opens a whole other can of worms which I'll hold off for now haha.

EDIT: It's also worth pointing out, on a practical level, that the Black vs. White Lodge idea was Frost's and Lynch seems to have done everything he could to obscure it without outright contradicting it. Notably, there is only one reference to "the Lodge" in Fire Walk With Me (in Annie's speech) and even then there is no Black/White distinction made. In interviews, Lynch prefers to use the term "Red Room" to the "Lodge," if I'm not mistaken.

LostInTheMovies, I really enjoyed your take on the movie. Your insights have been so much fun to read and I can't wait to hear more. While I don't necessarily disagree with what your suggesting about Laura accepting her dark side in the end, I think I might disagree with how the movie reacts to that final decision. It's why I asked Chris if the movie ever gives Laura a chance to save herself from her death or if her death is fated. I know it's literally fated because it's what kicks of Twin Peaks the TV show, but I can never tell if the movie-universe gives Laura any outs. The Log Lady confronts her outside of the Bang Bang Bar and says something along the line of "when a fire like this starts, it's very hard to put out." That to me suggests that Laura has some agency in what's happening to her and if she managed to pull back from the sex and drugs, maybe she could save herself from Bob. Looking at it that way, it's hard to see the end of the movie as a success on Laura's part. That might be a depressing interpretation of the film, but I think it's almost just as depressing to believe that Laura accepting herself is also what triggers her death.

Really great points here, and stuff I've been pondering a lot. I held off on my overarching interpretation of Laura taking the ring and dying in the train car because I want to save it for the on-air email but briefly I'll just say that I don't think Laura accepting herself triggers her death except indirectly.

That is to say in the end I think Laura's choice is not between life and death, but between freedom or possession (in EVERY sense of the word). Freedom means acknowledgement of her abuse (and Leland as her abuser), acceptance that there is more to life that trap Bob has put her in, and perhaps most importantly a willingness to feel and perhaps address the suffering of others rather than closing herself off in her own pain and/or hurting other people as an expression of that. It's my own interpretation, and requires something of a leap of faith (though it's perfectly consistent with what we see in the movie), but I think that last point is actually fulfilled with Laura, Ronette, and the angel in the train car in a way that explicitly parallels Laura's intervention to save Donna in the Pink Room. I think the ring, rather than symbolize death, symbolizes this freedom - or rather, in Lynch's terms, an attachment to a greater force and unity in the universe of Twin Peaks (linked to Mike, among other characters/elements).

Bob then chooses to react to this newfound power of Laura, her spiritual resistance to him, the only way he can - with physical destruction, killing her body since he can't have her soul. So while her decisions lead to physical death, that is a byproduct of the decision, and due entirely to Bob's (admittedly predictable) reaction rather than the direct result of it. That's maybe a very fine distinction, but I find it valuable. I'll try to delve a little deeper in the eventual email!

EDIT: Also, I suspect that the issue is less Laura's descent into drugs/sex than the self-loathing of which this is just a symptom. Lynch definitely has a conservative streak but in his films he never seems particularly judgmental of the characters' decisions from a moralistic, social-rules position - more like he is concerned for their well-being based on the decisions they make. For that reason, I also find it hard to believe that Ronette's self-hating prayer is what brings her angel into play - something I address below in the response to "Twin Peaks Podcast" so I won't reiterate it here.

And when I say Laura accepts her dark side, just to clarify, I don't mean to suggest she embraces and/or goes over to it, but that she accepts that her shadow is a part of her in a way Leland does not. So I mean "accepts her dark side" in a positive sense if that helps!

I don't think the movie is bad because Laura dies, I've just never been able to get a good read on what it's trying to say about fate and people. Maybe I'm too naive about what it's like to be a young woman in Laura's situation and I'm looking for an escape that just wouldn't exist.

No, I agree and feel similarly. I would say the first 5 or 6 times I saw it, the film seemed to be saying that Laura's only possible escape from abuse is death. I accepted that as Lynch's vision but I obviously don't agree with its real-world applications and thought it kind of odd that his own view was so pessimistic when, for all the darkness of his movies, his general philosophy on life seems to be positive and most of his films actually have silver linings/vaguely happy endings (hell, even FWWM ends with Laura getting her angel).

It's also worth pointing out that Lynch was stuck with this ending. When Twin Peaks and Laura were invented, she was the dead MacGuffin who triggered everything we would see on the show. Only much later in the process was he filled with the desire to animate her as a human being, to give her some agency and opportunity but it was too late to save her physically. He could only retcon so much.

That said, when I began to read some of the pieces I shared above and mull them over in my mind a new viewpoint slowly emerged. If the ring was not so clearly associated with a death wish, what was it associated with? Why does the train car scene, ostensibly about Laura's murder and torture, relegate her physical torment to just a few seconds of screentime in favor of some sort of metaphysical struggle? If Lynch sought to make Laura a more active protagonist in the movie how did he do so, and did he fail? Eventually I came to the conclusions described above. The film is wildly open to interpretation and I honestly suspect Lynch himself doesn't quite know what he was doing with all the symbols but he does operate on instinct. And I strongly suspect his instincts were telling him: find a way to give Laura choice, find a way to turn her death into the least important part of her climax, find a way to earn her that angel in the end instead of just having it be a gift from you & the universe.

One thing about the ring though. I like imagining that it is not literally connected to the Black Lodge. Laura and Leland see Teresa Banks wearing it, so it has a connection for both of them to their vices. Laura seeing it every where is a reflection of her fear that she is Teresa Banks, and wearing the ring in the end is her acceptance of that fact. Maybe not wearing the ring, like Cooper suggestions, would be a sign that Laura is no longer like Teresa and could therefore hope for a better fate. Then again, maybe the ring is just the Black Lodge manifesting a sign of who Bob will murder next. Who knows!

I agree with all of this. I do think the film makes many compelling links between the ring and Mike/the Little Man but I also think it is rooted in Teresa's mundane story for a reason. It is her connection to the ring which is arguably most important to the actual narrative of the film - Laura's self-discovery - though Lynch, who loves doubling, also makes it a throughline to the mythological substream.

In the train car scene, Laura’s guardian angel that had previously left her alone (i.e. disappeared from the painting) in the middle of the movie seemingly helps Ronette escape her bonds.

Matt, really glad you seem to have jotted down notes or bullet points while listening - you addressed a lot of the things I was hoping to, but forgot! I'm pretty much on the same page with everything here. However, I have a few observations about these parts here.

- The angel who appears to rescue Ronette is a different angel from the one that appears in the Red Room for Laura (different actress, different hair length). The one in the Red Room has short, curly hair like the one in Laura's picture but the one in the train car has long straight blonde hair like Laura herself. It's worth noting that throughout the film, it is suggested that the other elements of the spirit world are subconsciously summoned by the actions/feelings of the human characters (as noted in a previous post, Mike appears after Leland has the flashback of Laura/Ronette, the Tremonds visit Laura when she is entrapped by her diary, and Bob repeatedly emerges when Leland himself is agitated about something). In that sense, the angel who appears to Ronette in the train car would be there not so much because of Ronette's prayer (which is very self-loathing, a quality that Lynch doesn't usually reward) but because of Laura's compassion for her. And the angel who appears in the Red Room might have been summoned by Cooper's compassion for Laura. There is a "doubling" effect here, in which the angels are both representatives from a larger order (and/or White Lodge) and stand-ins for the human characters themselves. Because Laura is in a sense Ronette's guardian angel in the train car, and Cooper is in a sense Laura's guardian angel in the Red Room.

Mike throws the ring into the train car after Leland pushes Ronette out the door.

- I agree that Mike is probably the one who throws the ring into the car. It's worth noting though that Lynch doesn't explicitly show this in the movie, though it can be heavily inferred. The door opens, Ronette (hit by Leland) falls out and as the camera moves down, we see Mike's legs move across the frame suggesting that he is moving toward the opening. Then we see a close-up of the ring rolling into the train car. I believe Al Strobel said something like "If the ring was there, I wasn't carrying it" in a Wrapped in Plastic interview. This suggests that when they were shooting the scene there was no plan for Phillip/Mike to toss the ring to Laura (it isn't in the script). So it must have been added either when they shot the train car interiors in L.A. or even later, with pick-up shots in post-production. Some people still interpret the ring as coming from somewhere else but I think Lynch manipulates the editing to support your conclusion.

The ring seems to be a weird thing in that whoever puts it on, BOB is compelled to kill them. BOB wanted to possess Laura, but when she puts on the ring he screams with rage as he must now kill her. This is her defeating him, by not letting him have her. Dream Coop told her not to take the ring previously, probably because he knew it would lead to her death.

- Technically, you may be correct that when someone puts the ring on Bob wants to kill them (although as noted above, I don't think that's the ring's primary significance). However, I'm curious what you make of the fact that Teresa is not wearing the ring when she is killed in the Chalfonts' trailer. The shot is really quick and shaky but if you pause the image you can see that, for the few seconds we see her, Teresa does not have the ring on her finger. Morever, she is tightly grasping her left arm in front of her, suggesting both that it is numb - as her co-worker mentioned in the Desmond investigation - and that Lynch wanted to provide visual evidence, however fleeting, that Teresa was not wearing the ring when she died. This suggests that simply wearing/not wearing the ring does NOT have a Pavlov's dog effect on Bob which may not have been what you meant, but is something I've seen a lot of viewers assume; I think I assumed it at one point too. (h/t to StealThisCorn for pointing out the absence of the ring when Teresa dies.

In the final episode a lot of people think that Cooper injured his head on the mirror so that he would be taken to the hospital where Annie is. This would give BOB a chance to kill Annie before she wakes and has a chance to tell anyone that the real Coop is still in the lodge. Indeed in Missing Pieces of this film, Annie is seen wearing the ring in the hospital, presumably marked for death until a nurse steals it from her. Not sure where that would have gone. I guess Coop will end up killing that nurse.

For the reason mentioned above, I don't think this will be the purpose of the ring here because I don't think its primary significance is to indicate death/victimhood (quite the opposite of victimhood, in fact). Which of course begs the question, what is the purpose of Annie having, and the nurse stealing, the ring? The obvious answer is that when Lynch scripted and shot the scene, early in production, he had a different interpretation of the ring or hadn't come to any interpretation of it yet. But by including it in The Missing Pieces 22 years later, he's now suggested that somehow this is consistent with stuff he added later (like Laura getting the ring in the train car) so I guess it's up to us to make sense of it until, perhaps, the 2016 series addresses this thread.

My take? Both times Annie passes the ring to another person she is also passing the message about the good Dale being in the Lodge. Since the ring's appearance usually has something to do with Bob's identity (Lynch emphasizes it on Teresa's finger when she links Leland to Laura, Phillip waves it at Laura when yelling about her father, Desmond can't quite grasp it when he's trying to figure out who killed Teresa), perhaps its significance her is that Annie is passing on knowledge of Bob's whereabouts. The nurse obviously wouldn't understand this at the time but given the strange circumstances she will probably always remember what her comatose patient said, just as in literal/physical terms she takes the ring from Annie's finger because it is so striking to her. I think maybe in 2016 the nurse (like Laura's diary notes that Lynch says she wrote) could provide clues that Agent Cooper is not what he seems.

Also, the ring seems to be made of the same material as the table that the “Man from Another Place” (The little man) runs his hands over while saying, “This is the formica table”. If I’m not mistaken there’s even a chunk of the table missing, presumably the piece that the ring is made from.

I can't remember if I first heard this on your podcast or elsewhere but this is such a great detail. Lynch plant tiny clues like that throughout his work - it's never just as random as it seems on the surface.

With the way you guys enjoyed this movie I REALLY think you should read “The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer”. The themes are extremely similar to Fire Walk with Me. I usually suggest people read it before the movie, to help prep them for its subject matter and shift in tone from the TV series. But since you’re already fans of the movie, I’m confident you’ll like the book a lot. I got my Twin Peaks Podcast co-hosts to read it before watching FWWM and they said it really helped them more fully understand the character of Laura and how dark the world of the movie is. Maybe you can do a bonus show on it?

I love the Diary too, but Chris & Jake mentioned at one point that they, or at least the one of them who had read it, didn't like it. Maybe after this latest journey through the show and film they'd have a different take? Either way, positive or negative, I'd be interested in hearing their reactions and discussing the book on the forum for sure. I would definitely recommend it to first-timers and longtime fans alike.

(further multiquotes follow in the next post)

LostInTheMovies · May 29, 2015

(...and here's the rest of the multiquotes)

I might write something more expansive later but this is still one of the only movies in my entire life that I've seen that has been sympathetic and centralized the narrative of someone being overtly abused. Which is so important.

I agree. And while I can think of other films that have been sympathetic, I can't think of very many others that have been so centralized around someone who experienced sexual abuse: although I'm given to understand Mysterious Skin (which I haven't seen) also takes this route, and that in fact the filmmaker Gregg Araki counts FWWM as one of his favorite films. Martha Nochimson addresses this in her book The Passion of David Lynch (sorry to keep dropping this reference so frequently, but I really love her analysis), pointing out that the usual trope is for an intervening doctor-figure, usually older and male, to be our gateway into her experience and also to mitigate it in clinical/cathartic fashion. To a certain extent, Cooper serves this role on the show. The film's great power is that it plunges us headfirst into Laura's trauma without ANY mitigating/soothing framework to understand it.

Edit:
As far as the movie and the show treat Leland as being responsible for his own actions, what I feel is more interesting is just how much you realize that it's not isolated to JUST him. The entire town is pretty pre-occupied with corrupting or destroying innocent kids in their teen years and the movie makes that way more astoundingly clear since you get more of a sense of Jacques, Leland, One Eyed Jacks, etc. Everyone in this town feels entitled to creeping on minors, essentially.

I think there is definitely a sense of a more pervasive culture but I'd also point out that Lynch is drawing an even more sweeping conclusion. The whole "homecoming queen/pure madonna" aspect of Laura's identity is also linked to her psychological distress and it's another way of putting her inside a box and stripping her of her identity. Just to be clear: I am not trying to make some argument that crowning someone a prom queen is equivalent to abusing your daughter! But I think it's important to realize that, at every turn, Laura is set up as this object for the community to revere and/or denigrate and this loss of identity are two sides of the same coin. I think the film is also in a way a critique of the show, which both points out this divergence and exploits it to the max (the publicity for Twin Peaks made good use of the "dead girl" allure, and one of the series' central hooks was this widespread fascination with the madonna/whore aspects of Laura's identity).

That's one thing I love about it: this isn't merely Lynch calling others to task - the townspeople, the press and public reaction to the show; to a certain extent he is calling himself to task as well. I see Argobot just pointed this out too - the "dead girl" hook can be as cheap as it is alluring. I am hard-pressed to think of many other "dead girl" stories which go to such great lengths to turn "the object into subject" (which David Foster Wallace pointed out in regards to FWWM, calling it "the most morally ambitious thing any Lynch film ever attempted"). Only Laura (1944 noir) and Vertigo come to mind. But in both cases the detective protagonist is retained even as we get to glimpse the actual personality behind the iconic image of the victim (although in Vertigo our identification tends to shift much more toward her than him in the final part of the movie).

In a sense, Blue Velvet - Twin Peaks pilot - Wild at Heart - season 2 premiere - Maddy's murder - FWWM represents a trajectory in Lynch's work, beginning with an outside fascination with tormented/conflicted female suffering, sympathetic but exterior, and ending with a complete and total identification with the victim herself (Wild at Heart, with Lula's flashbacks, and the s2 premiere stand in the middle, beginning to allow us inside of the victim's head rather than peering at them through the closet door). Lynch's gateway into making FWWM was that he was in love with the character of Laura, but in the process of the movie it seems like he want beyond even that empathy, essentially becoming her - or unveiling a part of himself that felt just like her - before the film was finished, passing this opportunity on to the viewer. The effect of this, to me at least, is overwhelming, and I wouldn't hesitate to identify Laura as my favorite film character for that reason: I can't think of another person whose inner life feels so fundamentally synced to the viewers' experience.

Something I've been thinking about but that is still ultimately underdeveloped: do you think that if the director of this film wasn't David Lynch, would people find so much of it as good as they do?

It's a good question. It sounds like, essentially, you are asking if the screenplay is as good as the direction, or even if it's in the same class.

I would say no, although it's tricky because in many ways the screenplay provides the perfect blueprint for Lynch to knock it out of the park. The film is uneven and a bit messy in its structure. Later, Lynch would master this dual storytelling with Mulholland Drive and (arguably) Lost Highway but here it does seem to contain traces of the original practical intention: to include a Cooper part of the story alongside Laura's. I really like these sequences, and I feel they add to the film in an interesting way (and I'm actually glad that MacLachlan backed out, as I think Chet's presence makes for a stronger disorienting effect). But I agree that they suggest a fundamental imbalance and confusion at the source of the movie.

The fact is that when Lynch & Engels wrote Fire Walk With Me they did not have a tight conception of the film they wanted to make. Instead the long shooting draft seems less like a focused feature film and more like a sprawling audiovisual project. Lynch wanted to explore Laura's last days, and this obviously turned out to be the most important thread, but he also wanted to play around with the FBI, the spirit world, and the other townspeople. Laura's last week was more like a laundry line on which he could hang all of these different elements, including but not limited to Laura herself. Had Frost participated, he probably would have reigned Lynch in, and focused his vision, but - as evidenced by the second season - restraint was not Engels' forte and besides, his relationship with Lynch was somewhat different and more subservient (which may be partly why Lynch wanted to work with him on this project). I would definitely encourage you to read the screenplay at some point: it often really reads like a shaggy dog/kitchen sink tale.

But it's a double-edged sword. I don't think Lynch would have been able to hit the heights he did if he hadn't thrown off all restraints in his conception. The way he seems to operate is by keeping his antenna up, following his instincts, and then organizing the raw material after the fact rather than beforehand (Fire Walk With Me is not the only Lynch film to have copious deleted material). This leads to some dead ends and non sequiturs, but it also makes possible flights of brilliance and power that he would not be able to reach otherwise. I've come to accept that there isn't a more ideal version of FWWM possible; its strengths are too deeply intertwined with its flaws and since those strengths are - to me - stronger than those in just about any other film I know, I'm willing to accept the flaws. (Plus, I kind of like a lot of those flaws!)

Besides, even if the first 45 minutes of the movie, especially the Philadelphia sequence, is questionable in its detour from the film's mainline, Lynch DID do a lot of pruning. I may have mentioned this in an earlier thread, but Lynch feeds a lot off his collaborators. Engels brought out his wacky/abrasive/arch side, but in production and post-production I think Sheryl Lee's committed performance and editor Mary Sweeney's wise judgement helped to convert FWWM into a sleeker, tighter, more ruthless beast. Actually, I think Sweeney's role in Lynch's work is greatly underrated. The first piece of Lynch she ever edited was actually the episode of Twin Peaks in which Maddy is murdered which is arguably more of a turning point than anything else in his career. She wrote the only movie he directed without co-writing (The Straight Story), produced many of his works, and was his romantic partner for 15 years, longer than any other woman he was with.

Anyway, I'm getting off-topic but just wanted to say I definitely see where you are coming from but I think it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, and that in this movie - indeed, all movies - ultimately the direction is more important than the screenplay (not to say the screenplay isn't important at all but a great movie needs great direction more than it needs great writing, imo, given the nature of the medium).

Moving on, they go to an airfield where Sam and Desmond speak to Cole, hilarious as ever, and then are shown the dancing lady. In the next scene, it was revealed to be a coded message, a message that only Desmond is equipped to understand. Why is Sam not given this information immediately? If the point of the whole display is to obfuscate this information (from some force that isn't seen), then why is it fine for Desmond to just tell him everything a few minutes later, except the rose? While the dancing lady is a more striking image, it's still connected to a series of events that seem completely nonsensical.

I'm not saying I necessarily go with this, but a lot of people have interpreted this scene as Lynch & Engels making fun of overzealous Twin Peaks analysis, especially the kind that is very literal and on-the-nose about the 1:1 relationship between image and coded meaning. Many fans have actually taken personal offense at this sequence for this reason, and felt that Lynch was mocking his audience.

I definitely think there's an element of that there, albeit more playful than nasty. But I also think - perversely - that Lynch himself is indicating there will be a kind of code to the movie. Which may be having his cake and eating it too (or rather having it and throwing it in someone else's face, I guess).

When I watched this I just felt, When does this get good; when will there be at least a comprehensible framework for insane shit to happen? I feel like if Twin Peaks proper was made in this strange style, the show might've just began with Coop chomping down on garmonbozia in the Black Lodge and then would be followed up with Laura in plastic. There just didn't even feel like a narrative framework for it.

Here you are essentially demarcating the difference between Lynch and Lynch/Frost, I think. The upshot is that I'm not sure Lynch/Frost could/would have been able to create the stuff you did like in the movie (maybe I'm wrong about that). Frost, while he may have actually invented her character, doesn't seem to have had the same grasp on Laura that Lynch did and at this point their partnership seems to have been very broken. For me, I like the way this pans out, in that Lynch/Frost together gives us the strong, balanced opening to the series, Frost's hand over Lynch's later establishes a larger framework and stakes to this universe (Cooper's self-doubt, the Lodge mythology, even the Leland/Bob divide since Frost wanted to reveal the killer more than Lynch), and then finally Lynch's hand over Frost's allows us to delve into the heart of darkness/insanity beneath this structure. That crazy seesawing effect between the creators might actually maximize every possible triumph of Twin Peaks, pilot through film, even is it also facilitates a lot of messiness.

I genuinely feel like this is a decent film whose flaws are unfairly handwaved because David Lynch.

Well, yes and no. On this board the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive so far, but it's worth pointing out that the movie has been described as one of the most reviled films of the nineties, ranked alongside Showgirls(!). Metacritic, going mostly off contemporaneous reviews, ranks it 28/100. And most of the negativity was angry rather than lukewarm: Fire Walk With Me was attacked in terms I've hardly ever seen any other film attacked. And most of the vitriol was focused emphatically on Lynch himself. If you're a Neon Genesis Evangelion fan, picture the attack of the Mass Produced Evas on Unit-02 in End of Evangelion. That's pretty much what the critical response to Lynch was at this time - no wonder he couldn't get another movie made for 5 years!

All of which is to say you are probably seeing a bit of an overcorrection for a historical oversight. Many people come to the movie having heard negative things about it and are pleasantly surprised that it works as well as it does. Personally, I think the film is a masterpiece but I think all of the points you raise are also fair and valid. I do not really think it's a great screenplay, even if we toss out the stuff in the shooting draft that Lynch himself already tossed out. A lot of the stuff that plays onscreen, because of performance/direction/cinematography/editing, falls flat on the page. Mulholland Drive, despite its equally precarious/haphazard production and conception, ultimately plays as a tighter, more focused film than FWWM (although many of the same objections could be raised about it, I suppose). But I tend to privilege power over perfection so FWWM is my favorite Lynch film.

Edit: Also, in response to saying some of this info was in the Missing Pieces- like in Alien 3, the extra content may make a film better, but if it's not there in the Theatrical Release of a motion picture, that is the directors fault. I shouldn't have to get on a forum just to understand the relationship between events in a film because the real explanation is buried in deleted scenes. That's not excusable.

I would actually disagree with the people saying that. As much as I love watching them on their own, I think including the Missing Pieces would have made Fire Walk With Me a much less effective film. The deleted scenes don't really address any of your concerns and they just add a lot of material that would make the movie seem even more disorganized and scattered then you already felt it was. I think Lynch was very wise to extract almost all of them, though one or two might have added an interesting texture.

The Chalfont/Tremond thing goes one step further! In the series, it's revealed by Leland Palmer that when he was a boy his family had a cabin/house on Pearl Lake. Leland identifies the police sketch of BOB as the one who lived in the white house next door. Upon investigation it's determined that the family that owns (owned?) the white house was named Chalfont. The police are looking for a Robertson, so the name at the name is meaningless to the investigation. Hawk pays a visit only to find "a pair of retired female school teachers" living there. He had to drink 3 pots of chamomile tea to find that out.

I was really excited to read this, but pulled up the scene in ep. 12 when Hawk delivers this dialogue and couldn't find any reference to Chalfonts. Is it in an earlier episode? I would so love for this to be true - if it is, you just blew my mind!

Honestly, it's kind of amazing this movie is any good. Usually shows that are kicked off by a dead girl mystery don't have any luck bringing those dead girls as real humans. They are symbols for whatever greater ills are plaguing the detectives or the particular town, and never are allowed to become their own fully realized character. The writing and acting in FWWM is so great though, that it breaks out of that unfortunate pattern. It gives Laura depth that she was never afforded on the TV and it is really rewarding to see her experiences as filtered through herself.

Mentioned this above in the response to AppleCider but just wanted to +1 it again. True Detective is a great contrast here (for several other reasons too, actually). I don't begrudge a story for deciding to focus where it focuses, but when most stories go that route it does make something like Fire Walk With Me feel even more rewarding.

abuddah · May 29, 2015

You know what? You're right. I completely forgot about that since within the fandom they are generally always referred to as the Tremonds.

Matt,

I have to say I'm impressed with the attention to detail you exhibit in your posts and I can tell you're truly a devotee of the show. However (and please take this in the spirit its intended) I really struggled with some of the other voices on your podcast and ultimately gave up after two episodes. Some panelists were just too dismissive of the material and ended up going for a quick joke rather than a critical analysis of their reactions. And I get it, it's knee jerk reaction to something foreign or "artsy". The last straw for me was when someone called Cooper's detective skills laughable. It made me want to, as you say, "yell answers at my computer" That's just a complete misread of the show. This isn't a procedural on CBS where forensics help catch a killer within the hour. It's about feeling and intuition which is how the show's creator himself operates. I'll give the cast another go when the new episodes are out, but I hope you understand where I'm coming from

Turgid · May 29, 2015

Alright I haven't listened to the episode yet and I skipped most of this thread, just want to put my impressions down first. Apologies if I repeat things already discussed:

This movie was way more disturbing and gross than anything in Twin Peaks, even the finale. I knew it would be different, but damn, what an explicit depiction of abuse and mental illness, and self-destructive behavior. One of the few films I've seen that took me beyond intellectual and emotional understanding and into visceral disgust.

It was an effective film! So effective I don't think I'd watch it again.

I found myself simultaneously disgusted by Laura's behavior and yet understanding and pitying her. All the drug use, the indiscriminate sex with multiple partners, the destructive and extreme situations she put herself in...I was actually angry. This was surprising since I don't think of myself as a judgmental person. In fact I'm all for positive sexual or drug experiences, but these were clearly something else. Then it showed those godawful bedroom and dining room scenes and you could see the terror and absolute destruction on her face. I think the dining room scenes were actually slightly worse to watch, the way Laura looked at her father across the table. Devastating.

So I completely understood how she was trying to escape (as in escapism), and she was repeating her trauma compulsively, yet I still felt angry at her for it. As well as for failing to get actual help or take effective steps to escape for real. In effect I wanted to shout at her for feeling guilty and feeling that she doesn't deserve love or happiness, though obviously that was hardly in her control.

I've seen y'all mention that this movie shows Leland has more responsibility for what he does, but I still didn't see it. To me it looks like he's just a puppet of Bob, and whenever given the chance he tries to apologize for Bob's actions. Although it's an interesting theory that Leland is in control at the dinner table scenes, I just didn't see any evidence for it really. Isn't Bob capable of subtlety sometimes? The other thing you'd have to explain is why Leland is sometimes apologizing/crying and sometimes relentlessly domineering. It just seems easier for me to accept that Bob is capable of two modes than Leland being at once sincerely caring and yet abusive. Especially given that Bob's whole narrative purpose in the show is to explain the evil in Twin Peaks including Leland's crimes.

However going back to the Arbitrary Law thread, especially this initial post by Argobot, all of that goes out the window if I imagine Bob as a defensive projection by Laura, and Leland is just a human being. Leland's actions are completely believable as the result of abuse and denial, or mental illness, or even just a disgusting person. As Argobot puts it later in that thread:

And Cooper's just awful line about it being better to believe in a world with the supernatural than a world where a father will rape and murder his daughter. That line is garbage and the perfect capper for the horribleness of the end to this episode.

I'm actually glad the movie still had some supernatural elements, because the real-world truth of abuse is so horrific to contemplate, let alone see depicted. I'm not sure I could have continued watching.

---

Something I don't quite understand is Donna. Why does she follow Laura to the bar and join her? At first I thought she was going to try to get Laura out of there. When she went for the kiss I thought maybe she's trying to reflect Laura's actions back at her so she sees how messed up it is. But going to the club and downing those drugs seems beyond what Donna would do in that case. So is it really intended that Donna was just trying to participate in Laura's life, as a peer pressure sort of thing, and got in over her head? I suppose this plays into Laura's supernatural attractiveness.

By the way, interesting tidbit from Twin Peaks Explained regarding the David Bowie scene:

Also, this scene wasn’t supposed to be as confusing and surreal as it is. It was supposed to be two separate scenes: one showing Jeffries explaining everything and one showing the convenience store meeting. Lynch had to combine the two to save time.

Persistence of 3 · May 29, 2015

I was really excited to read this, but pulled up the scene in ep. 12 when Hawk delivers this dialogue and couldn't find any reference to Chalfonts. Is it in an earlier episode? I would so love for this to be true - if it is, you just blew my mind!

ACK! Misremembered the line!

For the record, it was Leland's. When he describes his neighbors at Pearl Lake he mentions the Chalberts --and points out that they lived in the other house.

Sincere apologies for the false alarm. I should have verified before I posted.

I realize now that the "other Chalfont" was something that Carl Rod of the trailer park had mentioned to Chet Desmond --he said there were two Chalfonts. Oh well.

The Twin Peaks Podcast · May 30, 2015

Matt,

I have to say I'm impressed with the attention to detail you exhibit in your posts and I can tell you're truly a devotee of the show. However (and please take this in the spirit its intended) I really struggled with some of the other voices on your podcast and ultimately gave up after two episodes. Some panelists were just too dismissive of the material and ended up going for a quick joke rather than a critical analysis of their reactions. And I get it, it's knee jerk reaction to something foreign or "artsy". The last straw for me was when someone called Cooper's detective skills laughable. It made me want to, as you say, "yell answers at my computer" That's just a complete misread of the show. This isn't a procedural on CBS where forensics help catch a killer within the hour. It's about feeling and intuition which is how the show's creator himself operates. I'll give the cast another go when the new episodes are out, but I hope you understand where I'm coming from

Yeah that's fair. I never really intended my podcast to be a deep delve into the show. It was more about the raw reactions of first time viewers, whether they ended up liking it or not I had no way to foresee.

However if you gave up after two episodes, I'll just let you know that by the end both of my newbies said that it was now one of their favorite shows ever, but they may have ended up liking it for different reasons than you I guess. Brad was hard on Cooper until the very end. But he loved Dick Tremayne, Albert, Nadine, Audrey, Hawk, Major Briggs and BOB. We all hated Donna though. Haha.

Chris · May 30, 2015

The Idle Forums have existed for almost a decade and a half and I have to say this is one of my favorite threads it has ever had in all that time. Just a really amazing range of opinions and reactions and analysis. I haven't been adding to it but I've read every single post and they've basically all had something interesting. It makes spending the better part of a year on this podcast feel incredibly worthwhile.

(Hopefully I didn't just jinx it!)

pabosher · May 30, 2015

Cool good job guys I'm glad we solved the mystery of twin peaks, see you next year

Gamebeast23456 · May 30, 2015

It's a good question. It sounds like, essentially, you are asking if the screenplay is as good as the direction, or even if it's in the same class.

I would say no, although it's tricky because in many ways the screenplay provides the perfect blueprint for Lynch to knock it out of the park. The film is uneven and a bit messy in its structure. Later, Lynch would master this dual storytelling with Mulholland Drive and (arguably) Lost Highway but here it does seem to contain traces of the original practical intention: to include a Cooper part of the story alongside Laura's. I really like these sequences, and I feel they add to the film in an interesting way (and I'm actually glad that MacLachlan backed out, as I think Chet's presence makes for a stronger disorienting effect). But I agree that they suggest a fundamental imbalance and confusion at the source of the movie.

Anyway, I'm getting off-topic but just wanted to say I definitely see where you are coming from but I think it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff, and that in this movie - indeed, all movies - ultimately the direction is more important than the screenplay (not to say the screenplay isn't important at all but a great movie needs great direction more than it needs great writing, imo, given the nature of the medium).

I'm not saying I necessarily go with this, but a lot of people have interpreted this scene as Lynch & Engels making fun of overzealous Twin Peaks analysis, especially the kind that is very literal and on-the-nose about the 1:1 relationship between image and coded meaning. Many fans have actually taken personal offense at this sequence for this reason, and felt that Lynch was mocking his audience.

I definitely think there's an element of that there, albeit more playful than nasty. But I also think - perversely - that Lynch himself is indicating there will be a kind of code to the movie. Which may be having his cake and eating it too (or rather having it and throwing it in someone else's face, I guess).

Here you are essentially demarcating the difference between Lynch and Lynch/Frost, I think. The upshot is that I'm not sure Lynch/Frost could/would have been able to create the stuff you did like in the movie (maybe I'm wrong about that). Frost, while he may have actually invented her character, doesn't seem to have had the same grasp on Laura that Lynch did and at this point their partnership seems to have been very broken. For me, I like the way this pans out, in that Lynch/Frost together gives us the strong, balanced opening to the series, Frost's hand over Lynch's later establishes a larger framework and stakes to this universe (Cooper's self-doubt, the Lodge mythology, even the Leland/Bob divide since Frost wanted to reveal the killer more than Lynch), and then finally Lynch's hand over Frost's allows us to delve into the heart of darkness/insanity beneath this structure. That crazy seesawing effect between the creators might actually maximize every possible triumph of Twin Peaks, pilot through film, even is it also facilitates a lot of messiness.

Well, yes and no. On this board the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive so far, but it's worth pointing out that the movie has been described as one of the most reviled films of the nineties, ranked alongside Showgirls(!). Metacritic, going mostly off contemporaneous reviews, ranks it 28/100. And most of the negativity was angry rather than lukewarm: Fire Walk With Me was attacked in terms I've hardly ever seen any other film attacked. And most of the vitriol was focused emphatically on Lynch himself. If you're a Neon Genesis Evangelion fan, picture the attack of the Mass Produced Evas on Unit-02 in End of Evangelion. That's pretty much what the critical response to Lynch was at this time - no wonder he couldn't get another movie made for 5 years!

All of which is to say you are probably seeing a bit of an overcorrection for a historical oversight. Many people come to the movie having heard negative things about it and are pleasantly surprised that it works as well as it does. Personally, I think the film is a masterpiece but I think all of the points you raise are also fair and valid. I do not really think it's a great screenplay, even if we toss out the stuff in the shooting draft that Lynch himself already tossed out. A lot of the stuff that plays onscreen, because of performance/direction/cinematography/editing, falls flat on the page. Mulholland Drive, despite its equally precarious/haphazard production and conception, ultimately plays as a tighter, more focused film than FWWM (although many of the same objections could be raised about it, I suppose). But I tend to privilege power over perfection so FWWM is my favorite Lynch film.

My original question was actually more hypothetical and probably less useful than how you interpreted it. I meant, quite literally, what if this film was exactly the same, but Lynch's name was not attached to it. It's a silly question, first of all, because as director Lynch was obviously hugely important to the finished product- it could not exist without him in it's actual state. Regardless, I was thinking at work last night about if the perspective on Twin Peaks specifically and David Lynch in general has changed in such a way that has influenced the critical re-evaluation of the film.

I'm thinking back to discussions we've had in the past about initial critical reactions to Twin Peaks and the show's meteoric rise and fall from grace. Throughout that entire time frame, there was a prevailing question that many critics came back to- is this show something more than a flash-in-the-pan, style-over-substance pop cultural phenomenon. Was there something more artistically powerful about this series than just the zeitgeist.

As people have pointed out, in 1992 Twin Peaks itself was sort of a joke. It had ultimately failed commercially, and I would also argue artistically, and so I imagine many of the critics of that time (adults who had grown up in the seventies or earlier), felt somewhat betrayed by this series and the promises of David Lynch. What may have once been exciting, to see soap opera antics meshed with horror and surrealism in this magical town, now appeared to just be smoke and mirrors.

In the current climate, and even extending a few years back, Twin Peaks has become even more of a cult hit, a piece of counterculture that is beloved for many of the reasons that it was originally baffling to reviewers in that time period. Lynch's style, especially in Peaks, has been further validated by shows like LOST and The Sopranos and he has influenced many of the current critics and cultural commentators.

Circling back around (haphazardly as usual), I think this general re-evaluation of Lynch's work on this show has resulted in a more fair analysis of the film, but it has also, probably, tipped it the other way. I still feel like some of the more, well, bad choices in this film are glossed over or explained because Lynch's techniques and styles are more appreciated now. People may even be more likely to read quality in to shakey material because of how TP has been re-evaluated.

This post is messy, but I hope I'm getting my point across decently. If not, I could try to be more specific.

pabosher · May 30, 2015

I totally understand what you're saying - I think - and I think I agree with the possible hypothesis that people look through the lens of "A David Lynch product" in order to view it more positively. As someone who, before now, had no knowledge of David Lynch's work (in fact, ALWAYS confusing the name with David Fincher), I think my lack of familiarity with Lynch and general willingness to accept TP on its own terms is why I (infamously?) don't hate S2Pt2 so much.

Or at least, why I didn't on my initial watch (I couldn't do the one episode a week thing, I had too much free time). Especially having read LITM's analyses, and having kept up with the podcast, I've started to approach TP as an object of analytical interest - wherein it's clear to me now that I have no right in having enjoyed Windom Earle's goofy antics.

What you're describing though, seriously, sounds to me like Clifford Geertz's models of and for reality. It's heady stuff, but basically breaks down into: theoretically, there is an objective reality - one we can never truly see or understand because we see everything through filters. In order to understand how a waterfall falls, we create a model of reality (I.e. Constructing a theory of fluid dynamics); in order to build a dam, we use that theory of fluid dynamics to understand the necessary dimensions etc in order to build an effective dam (a model for reality).

To bring that around to Lynch and TP - the name lynch is a lens through which people view FWWM and the non-lynch TP. In his post TP work, he has created a model of reality which those familiar with his work will look through. Simply by having the Lynch name attached, it's impossible to see anything else. You notice it a lot in the podcast as well, where Chris and Jake mention a director "trying a very lynch technique".

TLDR: So yes: I think Lynch's name helps people look past the dodgy bits.

The Twin Peaks Podcast · May 30, 2015

The Idle Forums have existed for almost a decade and a half and I have to say this is one of my favorite threads it has ever had in all that time. Just a really amazing range of opinions and reactions and analysis. I haven't been adding to it but I've read every single post and they've basically all had something interesting. It makes spending the better part of a year on this podcast feel incredibly worthwhile.

(Hopefully I didn't just jinx it!)

That's high praise! It certainly is a fun movie to talk about.

LostInTheMovies · May 30, 2015

My original question was actually more hypothetical and probably less useful than how you interpreted it. I meant, quite literally, what if this film was exactly the same, but Lynch's name was not attached to it. It's a silly question, first of all, because as director Lynch was obviously hugely important to the finished product- it could not exist without him in it's actual state. Regardless, I was thinking at work last night about if the perspective on Twin Peaks specifically and David Lynch in general has changed in such a way that has influenced the critical re-evaluation of the film.

...

Circling back around (haphazardly as usual), I think this general re-evaluation of Lynch's work on this show has resulted in a more fair analysis of the film, but it has also, probably, tipped it the other way. I still feel like some of the more, well, bad choices in this film are glossed over or explained because Lynch's techniques and styles are more appreciated now. People may even be more likely to read quality in to shakey material because of how TP has been re-evaluated.

Ah, I see. Well I think there is an element of this here - critics having changed their opinion of Lynch are more forgiving of FWWM now. But I honestly don't think it has much to do with the show's rebound in reputation and more to do with a - Lynch himself and b- the theme of the film. But there may be a difference here too between critical re-evaluation of the film and that of the average viewer.

Most of the published re-evaluations I've read make a point to separate the film from the show, to say something to the effect of: "Part of the problem in '92 was that viewers judged this as a part of Twin Peaks. Fans of the show wanted something like the series, and it wasn't. Haters of the show condemned the film for being connected. It was in a lose-lose situation. But hey, look this is a different beast altogether." In fact, I would say up until last summer (when The Entire Mystery blu-ray release encouraged people to look at Twin Peaks and Fire Walk With Me as part of the same entity) this was virtually the ONLY form of FWWM re-evaluation. To the extent the series was considered in the analysis, it was considered for the way the film rejected or subverted it.

What WAS the film praised for, then? Well, I think the first turning point in re-evaluation may have been Mulholland Drive which essentially restored Lynch's reputation (Lost Highway had not been as controversial as FWWM but it was still regarded as a bridge too far, and Straight Story had been widely praised - paving the way for MD - but it was praised as Lynch scaling back his "pretensions" and delivering something sincere and straightforward). Roger Ebert even made this explicit in his review, stating that MD made him reconsider all the earlier Lynch films he hadn't liked (and Ebert was one of Lynch's harshest critics, disliking even The Elephant Man and Blue Velvet, which I believe he initially gave zero stars).

You are quite correct that in '92 the film was judged in light of the series. And the lesson most critics, columnists, reporters, etc. had learned from Twin Peaks was, "David Lynch is trying to pull one over on us. He isn't a sincere artist at all, he just does what he randomly feels like doing and tricks is into thinking it's meaningful." Because these same people connected emotionally and intellectually to Mulholland Drive they were inclined to go back to Fire Walk With Me and say well, maybe there was something there after all.

The other factor is that the film deals with abuse, something almost nobody commented on in the media in 1992, when it was taken purely as a TV spin-off/horror film/exercise in random surrealism. In fact the very earliest champions of FWWM that I can find were scholars penning extensive essays that explored the feminist aspects of the film (and, to a lesser extent the series), authors like Diane Stevenson and Martha Nochimson. This also involved separating the film from the series to a large extent, ignoring the supernatural lore in favor of a more psychological reading - and this too was made even more tenable by Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, in which the dreamlike surrealism seemed to fall more neatly within a psychological explanation (although the earliest social/psychological re-evaluations long preceded those films).

To a certain extent, I think both of these viewpoints have been present in the wider re-evaluation of the film by viewers who aren't critics; however, I think appreciation of the series in general has also been more of a factor here. Especially since last summer, the film is increasingly being appreciated not just as its own thing, but as a part of the larger Twin Peaks phenomenon. In that sense you may be right that Twin Peaks' renewed reputation plays a role in people overlooking the things about FWWM that bothered the original audience. But I would say the other factors - Lynch's non-TP resurgence and the subject of sexual abuse - also play a big part, maybe equal to the general TP re-evaluation.

I don't know if this really addresses what you were saying, but hopefully it does!

EDIT: Btw, I've posted this in the forum before but I think it may be helpful here. It's a round-up I did last year of quotes from 100+ pieces of commentary on TP & FWWM, organized chronologically: http://thedancingimage.blogspot.com/2014/06/gone-fishin-collection-of-commentary-on.html. Obviously it's selective but it's still comprehensive enough to offer an impression, via perusal of the various quotes, of how the film's reputation evolved and where that evolution sprang from. The post-FWWM stuff begins about halfway down the page.

Gamebeast23456 · May 30, 2015

I've seen y'all mention that this movie shows Leland has more responsibility for what he does, but I still didn't see it. To me it looks like he's just a puppet of Bob, and whenever given the chance he tries to apologize for Bob's actions. Although it's an interesting theory that Leland is in control at the dinner table scenes, I just didn't see any evidence for it really. Isn't Bob capable of subtlety sometimes? The other thing you'd have to explain is why Leland is sometimes apologizing/crying and sometimes relentlessly domineering. It just seems easier for me to accept that Bob is capable of two modes than Leland being at once sincerely caring and yet abusive. Especially given that Bob's whole narrative purpose in the show is to explain the evil in Twin Peaks including Leland's crimes.

However going back to the Arbitrary Law thread, especially this initial post by Argobot, all of that goes out the window if I imagine Bob as a defensive projection by Laura, and Leland is just a human being. Leland's actions are completely believable as the result of abuse and denial, or mental illness, or even just a disgusting person. As Argobot puts it later in that thread:

I'm actually glad the movie still had some supernatural elements, because the real-world truth of abuse is so horrific to contemplate, let alone see depicted. I'm not sure I could have continued watching.

---

Trying to move this discussion in another direction, the idea that bothers me slightly about this whole affair is considering whether or not Lynch does think Leland has his share of the responsibility. I've even echoed this idea before, and it's comforting in a way to think that he does have a more nuanced, deep understanding of abuse- but I'm just not sure if this is really supported in the text. Much of the time it seems like arguments for Leland's partial culpability spawn from a desire to make sure the message of this show isn't "Rape and incest can't exist because some people have deep issues and are malicious, it's actually demonic possession."

Is this extrapolation on the part of the fans? Or are there more concrete reasons that I'm just overlooking for why Leland is a greater partner in this affair than just a victim.

I think of the "I thought you knew" line, and I don't know who's delivering it. I guess that's the problem with demonic possession.

Edit: It's also really weird to lay so much at the feet of Lynch, but it makes more sense for him than many other directors.

LostInTheMovies · May 30, 2015

I think there are a whole slew of reasons why it's untenable for "good Leland" and "bad Bob" to cleanly separated, but I'll save those for another post. I do agree that Lynch "plays with fire" (pardon the expression) by mixing a tale of demonic possession with a story of real-world abuse, but I think ultimately the mixture works to condemn Leland - although I also sometimes wish Lynch had made it clearer. To some specific points...

I think of the "I thought you knew" line, and I don't know who's delivering it.

Leland appears on one side of Laura, saying that line, and immediately afterwards Bob appears on the other side, to say another line. I'm not sure Lynch could make it any clearer that it's Leland himself saying the first line, unless he included them both in the same shot.

Also, what reason would Bob have for delivering that line, especially as it's delivered ("you *knew* it was me" not "you *thought* it was me")?

it's comforting in a way to think that he does have a more nuanced, deep understanding of abuse- but I'm just not sure if this is really supported in the text.

Well, it's supported by his depiction of Laura which is certainly nuanced and deep. So the question isn't if he has a nuanced, deep understanding of abuse in general so much as if he has a nuanced, deep understanding of the abuser's responsibility. Is his depiction of the abuser's side of the experience as true as his depiction of the victim's?

LostInTheMovies · May 30, 2015

In light of the Leland/Bob questions, I thought it would be interesting to share some exchanges from the book Lynch on Lynch, a collection of interviews between Chris Rodley and David Lynch. What's interesting to me is that the conversation reads like a match (tennis, chess, fencing, wrestling - take your pick; I'm not sure which analogy works best). Repeatedly, Rodley attempts to pin Lynch down, particularly about Bob, but Lynch tends to evade direct answers. Anyone who has read or seen Lynch interviews knows about this trait - there is nothing Lynch seems to hate more than explicitly discussing meaning.

Generally, though, I think Rodley is one of the better Lynch interviewers because he knows not to ask blunt, specific questions which Lynch has a habit of easily tossing aside. Instead, he makes assumptive statements which invite some sort of response. Nonetheless, it's difficult for him to get a straight answer out of Lynch and we have to essentially read between the lines. Here are some exchanges about Leland/Bob, annotated by myself in brackets for context and perspective.

RODLEY: "There are similarities to Blue Velvet, in that Twin Peaks is a lumber town and things are happening behind closed doors. But the new element here seems to be that the evil is not even of this world. It literally comes from beyond."

[This is Rodley's first attempt to broach the subject of Bob's nature.]

LYNCH: "Or it's an abstraction with a human form. That's not a new thing, but it's what Bob was."

[This opens an interesting door, suggesting that Bob's purpose is less to provide an escape hatch from human behavior than a clarification of it. From this point on, though, Lynch will retreat from addressing this point...]

*

RODLEY: "Do you think that the introduction of Bob helped to prevent the story from ultimately being just one of incest? Was that a worry?"

[This is about as directly and bluntly as Rodley will be able to push this question forward, although it seems to be an underlying question through the rest of the conversation.]

LYNCH: "No, it wasn't. What makes you worry about things like that is when you start thinking about what certain people might say about it later. Because you're not really sure what they might say. ..." etc.

[Lynch continues for a paragraph addressing only the second of Rodley's questions, "Was that a worry," by answering that he tries not to worry about what other people will think because it interferes with his work. The response is very generalized and non-specific. Lynch never addresses the first question, of whether or not Bob helped to prevent the story from being about incest. Rodley tries again:]

RODLEY: "The great thing about the presence of Bob is that Leland can almost remain a nice guy. He's not horrible, he's been possessed."

[sincerely or not, Rodley is putting forward the straight-up possession line to see if Lynch bites.]

LYNCH: "He's a victim. Everybody that has done bad things is not all bad. It's just that one problem which becomes a little too great. People are always saying, 'He's such a nice neighbour. I can't believe he could do that to those children and to his wife!' It's always the way."

[While affirming that Leland is not all bad, Lynch compares him to real-life killers and frames his actions as choices. It's an odd response, essentially ignoring Rodley's own terms.]

RODLEY: "By the time we get to the answer - that it was Leland - it doesn't really seem to matter any more. By then it's clear that an evil force - Bob - is operating from within the 'host' character anyway. So pointing the finger at Leland isn't really answer at all."

[immediately following the previous statement and Lynch's non-response, Rodley seems to be attempting to pin him down again.]

LYNCH: "It's not an answer. That was the whole point. Mark Frost and I had this idea. The way we pitched this thing was as a murder mystery but that murder mystery was to eventually become the background story." ... etc.

[Lynch continues for two paragraphs, talking about how he wishes the network hadn't forced him and Frost to reveal the killer. Again, he essentially avoids the point Rodley was making, changing the subject to being about wanting to avoid answers, rather than the specificities of this particular "answer." Very meta.]

*

RODLEY: "Perhaps the problem was that by concentrating on Laura Palmer's last seven days, the movie reminded people that at the centre of Twin Peaks was a story of incest and filicide."

[Again, not a question but a statement/suggestion. This time Lynch will respond with surprising frankness:]

LYNCH: "Maybe so. Incest is troubling to a lot of people because they're probably, you know, doing it at home! (laughs) And it's not a pleasant thing, you know. Laura's one of many people. It's her take on that. That's what it was all about - the loneliness, shame, guilt, confusion and devastation of the victim of incest. It also dealt with the torment of the father - the war in him."

[it's interesting to me that Lynch voluntarily brings up Leland this time, when Rodley didn't even ask about him. Again, the language is ambiguous. "The torment *of* the father" - is Leland simply a victim of Bob? "The war *in* him" - or is he battling different sides of himself? Incidentally, the whole "victim of incest" line is pretty much the most specific statement I've ever heard Lynch offer on the broader social implications of his work, a subject he usually avoids like the plague. It's perhaps worth pointing out that comparing Lynch's statements to FWWM with other directors' statements about their own work, he is maddeningly cryptic and evasive, and perhaps even irresponsible. But comparing Lynch's statements on FWWM with his statements on HIS other films, he is quite forthcoming and willing to place it in a larger context in a way he usually is not willing to do. It's a matter of perspective, I suppose. Lynch in general is not someone who likes to discuss meaning. And yet he may be more willing to discuss meaning in relation to this film than any other.]

pabosher · May 30, 2015

Something that's related to all of this, but I don't know if it's been discussed yet (and yes I know it's not FWWM specifically) - Donna sees Bob creeping towards her, right? Or is that Maddy? Why doesn't he take her that time?

Twin Peaks Rewatch 31: Fire Walk With Me

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