Twin Peaks: Classic or Dud?

true, WAH doesn’t have the moebius strip reality/dream or doppelgänger structure of other films, but it does have the day to night, innocent’s descent to hell/ trip to oz thing (like blue velvet & twin peaks in its way).

also has, occasional lynch signature, the dreamlike (oft ecstatically, transcendentally) happy ending, dissonant after so much ugliness: FWWM’s angel, IE’s song & dance, BV (intentionally “fake” feeling, cf. bird), even MH (last flickering images of happy couple, and beautiful blue-haired lady)

edit to: dissonant after so much horror

BV's ecstatic happy ending is more reunion of mother & child than couple's suburban contentment

Ugh, that FilmComment article is horrible. So because Alvin seems really frightened by fire, it means he burned his grandchild years back? Oh, ok, I guess it really is 'hidden'. I kinda hate all that puzzlesolving that goes on with Lynch. That Mulholland Drive prob is a dream of an unsuccesful actress who has hired a contract killer, or that Lost Highway prob is the pulp fantasy from a man who has murdered his wife, that kinda takes away from my enjoyment of the film. It's too neat, too psychological. That's another reason I love Inland Empire, it doesn't seem to make psychologically sense, and instead seems fueled by the logic of stories eating each other.

^^^^ this otm

agree re Inland Empire

i also know of a really good essay on inland empire that explains it all

Bless Lynch for letting us run wild w meanings tho, I would hate for him to say "the red lamps symbolize THIS and the blue keys symbolize THIS". Can't blame critics or theorists doing what they are doing but Lynch's work is strong enough and genuinely weird enough to withstand analysis.

i also know of a really good essay on inland empire that explains it all

:) zing?

if not, curious to read it

haha, it was just a joke in response to the frederik hating my previous link so much.

i do know of a big explainer website, though, that goes waaaaaaaaaaaay too far in trying to find meaning in everything, is organized in a chaotic fashion, and resembles early 2000s internet in a pleasant way. http://xixax.com/halfborn/

Haha yes, sad to say I spent quite a while on that site!

IE was, for me, the film among Lynch's more difficult work that took the least amount of effort to 'get'. It's labyrinthine, for sure, but I was able to grasp his version of a through-line the first time I saw it.

i screwed a couple guys for drinks; no big deal. this one guy was kinda cute. fucker had a dick like a rhinoceros. he'd fuck the shit out of you, i tell you what. he'd buy me a couple of drinks after. we'd talk. he'd tell me about the town he grew up in, all the little girls he fucked. there was a chemical factory in this town, and he'd tell me it was putting so much shit in the air you couldn't think straight. it got to a lot of the people. there was a lot of crazy shit going on there-- people having weird dreams. seeing things that wasn't there. this one time, this one little girl--she was staring off at something one time--starts screaming. the people hanging round come to her and ask what's wrong. and, uh, she says she sees the end of the world. all fire and smoke and blood running. you know. like they say. the wailing and the gnashing of teeth.

Like a grown up version of Linda Manz in Days of Heaven.

i'm guessing Lynch asked for more money because he didn't want to do the series.

― poxy fülvous (abanana), Wednesday, April 8, 2015 1:43 AM (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's my theory too... that he was having second thoughts about the series (and the commitments it would entail), and made demands he knew showtime wouldn't meet as a means of backing out. but who knows!

seems crazy that he would go as far as he did, writing all the scripts and whatnot, then just be like "hmm, actually, i don't wanna do this" but, yeah, who knows wtf is going on here.

Yeah, I don't buy that at all. Dude's been trying to get this off the ground now and again since the show went off the air and has been officially working on it for over a year.

and i would think if it got down to it and he decided he didn't have it in him to direct the whole series, he'd at least produce or oversee it and not end it on what seemed like a very stormy note.

Mulholland Drive is the most 'lynch' film to me (and I also think it's my favorite). It hits every motif he flirts with in every other film and does it very well.

Lost Highway is a close second for "most Lynch" and it also hits those motifs and yet it kind of fails at it in comparison (and it's one of my least favorites)

xpost

yeah, it doesn't make a ton of sense, but this is david lynch we're talking about. but i admit i was extremely surprised that he was willing to do this in the first place.

Yeah, I was surprised that he was going to do this as well. I mean, when he decided to make the Twin Peaks movie, he already had the perfect chance to give the series the kind of closure it didn't get because of the cancellation, but instead he chose to do a prequel. So it felt like he had no interest in what happened to the characters after season 2 finale, but maybe that's changed as the years have rolled?

hope he does do it, or at least does some tv - a lot of his interviews about why he isnt making films anymore is about the decline in arthouse cinemas/audiences in the US since when he started, so im surprised he hasnt thought about doing TV. and i imagine someone comissioning at US tv networks would be up for doing something with him.

wild at heart is brilliant, my personal favourite of his films, and nic cage is absolutely perfect for lynch - wish they had worked together more. inland empire, wild at heart, blue velvet are his best films (gold). followed by mulholland drive, eraserhead (silver). and then fire walk with me and lost highway (bronze). lost highway i think would have been better if the soundtrack was different. elephant man and straight story i have to consider separately. i do like elephant man, and actually think its excellent, but theres something a bit muted about lynch doing 'normal' moviemaking. i dont want to talk about dune...

I like Dune a lot. He should make all the sequels.

I know there's a lot of talk about TV (particularly cable TV or even more particularly pay-cable TV) taking up the slack with the sort of "adult" programming that the film studios have largely abandoned, but I still don't see almost anything on TV close to what Lynch might be interested in doing, that is something close to avant-garde or even art-house TV ("Top of the Lake" might come closest). Twin Peaks remains pretty anomalous IMO, despite the whole "new Golden Age of TV drama" stuff.

and that said TP only occasionally lived up to it's more avant-garde promise, chiefly in the episodes directed by Lynch. which is why the prospect of a new season with him directing /all/ the episodes seemed so promising-but-unlikely, and why the prospect of a new season w/o him directing anything doesn't seem to appeal to anyone.

http://variety.com/2015/tv/news/twin-peaks-david-lynch-showtime-1201469031/

"The tussle over the budget emerged after Lynch and Frost turned in the nine scripts they co-wrote and it became clear that the cost of production would be significantly higher than the budgets outlined in the original deal. Sources said Showtime was willing to kick in more coin but asked for concessions in other areas, including the profit participation definitions for Lynch and Frost."

lol that's a p shitty move on Showtime's part - "you wanna do more, it comes out of your pocket"

this is why showtime has all those great shows that everyone's always talking about

The situation with the famously eccentric director has been complicated by what sources say was the fact that Lynch had not been in contact with his longtime lawyer, Tom Hansen of Hansen Jacobson, before announcing his decision to depart. He is not believed to be repped by an agent or manager at the moment.

haha this is crazy?! love this guy

he didn't let frost know about his decision beforehand either, it seems

poor mark frost. i imagine he's just holed up somewhere drinking heavily

nonetheless, article makes it p clear Showtime's the villain here imo

still want to know what's so expensive to shoot

yeah, no kidding. there must be tons of explosions and CGI sequences

idk, Showtime's position isn't that ridiculous. they made an agreement on a budget before they went off to write the scripts. can't expect them to just pony over significantly more without some sort of negotiations.

also Lynch storming off the project without talking to anyone else already tied to it is more unprofessional, less LOL-that-quirky-David imo.

obviously i love Lynch and hope to god this happens, just sayin'.

without numbers, one can't really know who's being ridiculous

this is why showtime has all those great shows that everyone's always talking about

― Karl Malone, Thursday, April 9, 2015 1:34 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

people talked about Homeland. I enjoyed Shameless for a bit.

Showtime is def cheaper than HBO, though, yeah

yeah maybe Lynch has secretly been wanting to do some sick CG work for years but just never had the opportunity to get it bankrolled.

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--jW4_1M5c--/18ter0ujkq5rdjpg.jpg

lol that's a p shitty move on Showtime's part - "you wanna do more, it comes out of your pocket"

― Οὖτις, Thursday, April 9, 2015 3:33 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's a totally standard practice in film and TV, for whatever that's worth.

and it isn't really out of their pocket in a literal sense, although stuff like that happens to: "you go over budget, it comes out of your salary." in this case showtime just wanted to negotiate for more of the residuals. i mean, i don't really think this is a who's-right-who's-wrong thing, it's just your normal tug of war over finance.

feel like if there was only a way for us to truly convey to mom and dad Showtime just how badly we need this ping pong table Twin Peaks season

and i can't help but think of ol' mark frost thinking, "this is my chance to come back! don't fuck it up, david!" it's not as though he's been doing a lot lately.

he's been writing books

what are those?

they're a set of printed pages bound between covers but that's not important right now

well played

that's actually how i meant the question

Watched Vertigo for the first time last night. It is a HUGE influence on Twin Peaks and while I'd seen parts of it before I hadn't seen it since watching all of Twin Peaks. James Stewart is basically Agent Cooper plus Frank Booth, a good-natured folksy do-gooder who is also a psychotic obsessive voyeur and abuser (and killer?) of women. Kim Novak portrays a stunning set of characters, switching everything including hair color at the halfway point. Sort of like Mulholland Drive, or the introduction of Laura's brunette cousin Maddy. I thought this scene in particular had a super strong Laura Palme vibe:

http://the.hitchcock.zone/files/gallery/org/3510.jpg