Drink full: The TWIN PEAKS 2017 spoiler thread, part 2

awesome

AMA with Mark Frost starts in 10mins (10am PST/1pm EST):

https://www.reddit.com/r/twinpeaks/

Apparently in a recent interview he was asked about the possibility of more and said "no comment" - surprised at how much ppl involved are hinting at a continuation

From what I've seen on twitter the ama is mostly short, boring answers to every last question asked by people who hate having to use their imagination. They should retitle the thread "the final dossier vol 2"

I'm diving into the last 3 episodes tomorrow. Can't wait, eps 14 & 15 have been amazing.

Oh man 16-18 is a trip

So the Final Dossier is worth a read. It's terribly 'and then this happened, then this happened', but if you want to 'make sense' out of the Return, it will do that for you.

has a couple of kind of knowing winks that were fun too ('i won't bore you' with the details of the evelyn marsh story; a roll of the eyes as 'the cockney with the green glove')

So the Final Dossier is worth a read. It's terribly 'and then this happened, then this happened', but if you want to 'make sense' out of the Return, it will do that for you.

very very otm

yeah i regret pre-ordering it, the book has been sitting on my shelf since i got it because everyone i know that read it said it explained everything to point that it ruined the mystery of the show

I think of Frost / Lynch the same way as Clarke / Kubrick for 2001. The writer feels he has the definitive take on the narrative and thematic content, but the director's work far surpasses it in terms of meaning and resonance.

Palahniuk/Fincher

lol sorry, couldn't resist

Kinda don't understand why you guys are so disappointed that the Frost book is apparently exactly what everyone expected it to be.

it is and isn't?

the first was this fake esoteric document, government redacted affair. the capstone final dossier book is gossipy narration in the style of the margin notes of the first, with very few asides

I guess I should keep my trap shut until I actually read the thing (just got it in the mail yesterday, immediately flipped open to the autopsy report of a character whose fate had been left ambiguous, kinda get what you guys are talking about).

For all its faults the secret history was clearly a labour of love, frost pulling in all sorts of hobbyhorses & telling the story he wanted to tell (nobody was clamouring for the exploits of Doug Milford), filling the book with little puzzles; the final dossier is so obviously tossed-off in comparison, a dutiful half-arsed tying up of loose ends. The contents page may as well be a checklist. Had to lol at frost RTing all the ppl who were like "I devoured the book in one sitting!" as if it isn't like 50 pages long and as substantial as a Rice Krispie.

It's insultingly low-energy for the price - a large percentage of the very low page count is black pages & as I said above the experience of reading it is often about the same as reading his Reddit ama. A stupid amount of space is given over to a torturous attempt to explain away some of the continuity fuckups of the first book, like the different names & backstories of annie & Norma; funny thing is if he'd just left it a lot of ppl would have assumed he was doing something much cleverer & more interesting than he was! Bending over backwards to find a mundane (if very very dumb) explanation is essentially an admission that he fucked up & is trying to fix it (a lot of the apologia for the 2nd season reads like this as well). It's actually a good illustration of how twin peaks is best when it works against this impulse to make everything fit. Another major eyeroll is TP saying of Audrey "I think I heard she might be in a mental institution or something" - remember that lynch wrote all of that plotline by himself so this is frost having to figure out what's going on like the rest of us, and his best guess is literally as good as anyone's. Charlie is her accountant, yep, good one dude, keep the mystery alive lol

There is some stuff I like: jerry's forest speakers are the kind of fun little detail that I could see being done in the series, and I like the annie gag mainly because it seems designed to wind up the people who genuinely think that the question "how's annie?" was itself a mystery that needed to be solved & the main cliffhanger of s2

I enjoyed it. It's an hour read, not worth the money, but when it comes down in price it's worth it. As for it's effects, I find this idea of the 'canon' very odd. You're free to accept it or not.

Canon schmanon! I like that there are all these different versions of twin peaks that openly contradict each other, I just think this latest version is particularly dull and I'm happy to dismiss it out of hand. It's just v nothingy; pure bathos, no magic. A couple of nice passages but for the most part Tammy's disquisitions are as bland as her reportage - the most the book approaches being fun are the couple of times he slips into the voice of a character who actually has one (log lady, Albert).

I like the annie gag mainly because it seems designed to wind up the people who genuinely think that the question "how's annie?" was itself a mystery that needed to be solved & the main cliffhanger of s2

looking forward to reading this part, even though i think the scene in the missing pieces is the perfect way for her character to exit the world of twin peaks

It's basically a macabre dadjoke but I lold

Oh man both the scenes graham filmed for fwwm give me goosebumps; lynch really knew how to make good use of the character (such as it is) & her glassy stare

The differing approaches of Lynch and Frost to the same basic material is a good illustration of how a narrative artist's style is dictated by where they decide to stop (e.g. editing a scene, deciding what constitutes an ending, etc.).

"it explained everything to point that it ruined the mystery of the show" well, maybe it does, or maybe it just supports all the thoughts most people already had about the show.

I'm not saying I love it, I'm just saying I didn't hate it as much as I thought I would.

,the one thing I think is consistently weird is that both frost and lynch maintain that they just didn't even really think about Annie while writing the return. Like, really? The character never once came up? c'mon

they just assumed her character was... fine where they left it

Nothing has ruined or could ruin the show imo

Re annie, they clearly thought about her enough that her message to Laura got a slight return in the return, just as lynch always said it would if the series ever continued. I believe that they're not that interested in her as a character tho and that her storyline was complete

xp exactly

I will abstain from reading these books even though I'm curious because my memory of my experience of The Return is quite simply, perfect, and I want to continue to enjoy it on those terms.

this is really great so far https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/david-lynchs-late-style/

artforum had a good review of the Return (by dennis lim, author of the recently published "David Lynch"), but it's behind a paywall

I thought of the return ito "late style" a bit during its run, it came up briefly on the Diane podcast recently too - will read the larb thing later for sure

Really haven't read much on the series apart from the Bocko recaps & both rennebaum pieces, don't think I'll ever really wade into the cottage industry of fan analysis (that 25 years later site for example, never clicked on it but I think it must publish at least one article a day)

xp wish I'd known, is it in the current issue? always looking for an excuse to buy a big ol' magazine to flip through

yep, current issue. it also has an unintentionally hilarious feature on the future of VR and art

I'd be skeptical but the art/experimental space is a decent barometer for reading where mainstream stuff will be in a half dozen years

tons of AR stuff in art spaces seven or eight years ago

this is really great so far https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/david-lynchs-late-style/

― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson)

this was excellent, thanks!

Final Dossier is such a joyless piece of shit, whytf didn't I trust my instinct and not read it.

i've also been kinda nervous to share this but i wrote about og twin peaks, fwwm, the return, vertigo, and zulawski's possession a few months ago. mild spoilers for possession which is a movie i don't think you can really spoil: http://www.brightwalldarkroom.com/2017/09/27/im-not-me/

I thought I linked that in here at some point? it's so great!!

Hi all, it was quite an experience watching the last three episodes on a gray, rainy afternoon the other day. Still processing everything but I loved the tone that the finale struck, and it's definitely stayed with me.

I haven't quite finished the thread but have been enjoying going through it during a lot of music-related downtime over the last few days (waiting to soundcheck, bouncing down stems, etc).

Random banal thought - watching that old SNL parody that was posted upthread, it's weirdly prescient about some of the themes of The Return (Cooper not being able to leave Laura's murder alone after the end of the story, or the audience not being able to do so, his methods creating more problems than they're solving, etc).!

Good point! Also the Las Vegas mention

Oh yeah totally

Man, I have to say that waggish piece posted upthread is very compelling. I read it before bed and it infiltrated my dreams.

Along these lines although much more minor, I don't see any good reason at all to think the drunk in the jail cell is billy

It's extra-textual, but I'm like 99% certain that my closed captions credited his dialogue as "Billy".

he may as well be Billy really. why not I say.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaxyTPpPrhE

i hope there's 3 hours of that on the boxset

my review copy should be arriving on monday :)

I got mine just now. I haven't rewatched any of it so I'm looking forward to that.

mine theoretically arrives tomorrow, fingers crossed

Mine too, I'm psyched to watch the bts features so will prob jump straight to that although the urge to rewatch in bluray quality will be strong. Cool as it is to see lynch at work I'm hoping for some oddities as well (also ymmv but eg every time lynch calls dern "tidbit" I cringe my way to an early grave)

needs soup-making tutorial