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Twin Peaks

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Jami Ferrina
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« Reply #90 on: November 13, 2007, 10:36:03 pm »


Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is a 1992 movie directed by David Lynch. The movie title is sometimes given as Fire Walk With Me. In some countries, it was released as Twin Peaks: The Movie. The film can be viewed as both prologue and epilogue to the cult television series Twin Peaks (1990–91), created by Lynch and Mark Frost. It tells of the investigation into the murder of Teresa Banks and the last seven days in the life of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), a popular high school student in the small Washington town of Twin Peaks. These two connected murders were the central mysteries of the television series. Thus the film is often called a prequel, but it is not intended to be viewed before the series and also has sequel qualities. Most of the television cast returned for the film, with the notable exceptions of Lara Flynn Boyle who declined to return as Laura’s best friend Donna Hayward (she was replaced by Moira Kelly), and Sherilyn Fenn due to scheduling conflicts. Also, Kyle MacLachlan, who starred as Special Agent Dale Cooper in the TV series, was reluctant to return so his presence in the film is smaller than originally planned.

Fire Walk With Me was greeted at the Cannes Film Festival with booing from the audience and met with almost unanimously negative reviews. The film fared poorly in the United States, partially because it was released almost a year after the television series was canceled (due to a sharp ratings decline in the second season) and partially due to its incomprehensibility to the uninitiated. Many people, especially critics, found the film stylish but bewildering. The film also disappointed many devotees of the TV series due to its darker tone, lack of humor and absence of resolution to the series’ cliff-hanger ending.

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« Reply #91 on: November 13, 2007, 10:37:23 pm »

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« Reply #92 on: November 13, 2007, 10:40:16 pm »


The film begins with Gordon Cole calling Agent Chester Desmond about the mysterious murder of Teresa Banks. He then is introduced to his new partner, Sam Stanley. They then receive clues fom Lil the dancer. The murder is coded as a "Blue Rose Case". They go to the sheriff's department where the body of Teresa Banks is kept in the morgue. Agent Desmond forces them to let Chester and Stanley see the body; as they inspect it, they realize that her ring is missing. Stanley realizes that there is a letter "T" placed under her fingernail. The two go to the diner where she worked, and discover the clue that Teresa's left arm has been weird lately. Later, the two go to Fat Trout Trailer Park where Teresa stayed, and the owner Carl helps Chester and Sam find the trailer. Suddenly, he becomes bewildered by an electric pole. Teresa Bank's body is sent back to Portland, and as Agent Desmond he returns to the trailer park, a beeping noise is heard. He looks under the Chalfont/Tremond trailer, picks up Teresa's ring, and vanishes.

Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, Agent Dale Cooper informs Gordon about the dream he saw where long lost Agent Phillip Jeffries re-appears. As Cooper looks at a security camera, Agent Jeffries appears out of nowhere, like in Cooper's dream. Agent Jeffries insanely tells Gordon that he was in a nightmare. While he explains all those things, we see images of the Man From Another Place, BOB and Mrs. Chalfont and her grandson in a room. As the Black Lodge appears, they go in. As Jeffries is explaining, he disappears into thin air. Due to Chester's disappearance, Cooper is sent to investigate. He goes to the trailer park to find a missing trailer (owned by Mrs. Chalfont and her grandson), seeing the words "Let's Rock" (words said by the Man From Another Place in the 25 years later dream from the series) on Chester's car's windshield. The clues to Teresa Banks' murder lead to a dead end.

One year later in Twin Peaks, Laura Palmer and Donna Hayward go to school, where Laura does drugs and makes out with James Hurley. After school, Laura talks with Donna about the difference between Bobby Briggs and James Hurley. As Laura takes out her secret diary, she realizes that there are pages missing. She goes to Harold Smith's house, and tells him about the torn out pages, saying that BOB did it and getting mad at Harold for not believing in BOB. Laura decides to let Harold hold on to her secret diary. Meanwhile, Agent Cooper tells Agent Rosenfield that he believes the killer will strike again.

On her Meals on Wheels round, Laura sees Mrs. Chalfont and her grandson. Mrs Chalfont gives Laura a painting and informs Laura that the "man behind the mask" is in Laura's room. Laura lets Shelly deliver the Meals on Wheels and returns home, where she seems to be alone, but as she goes inside her room she sees BOB. As she goes outside, Leland, her father, comes out. Laura refuses the facts. When the Palmer family is about to eat, Leland starts insanely complain that Laura didn't wash her hands and about the necklace she got from James. About to go to bed, she hangs the painting she got from Mrs. Chalfont.

She dreams about Cooper entering the Black Lodge and the Man From Another Place telling Cooper that he sounds like a beeping noise (the noise heard when Chester Desmond entered the Trailer Park). He shows Cooper the ring that Teresa Banks had, and Cooper tells Laura not to take the ring. She wakes up to find a bloody Annie Blackburn next to her in bed. She tells her that Cooper is trapped in the Black Lodge and he can't get out. She then disappears and Laura finds the ring in her hand. She then re-awakes. Meanwhile, Bobby, Leo and Jacques Renault are talking about drug scores.

Laura is ready to go to the Bang Bang Bar and Donna wants to come, but Laura doesn't let her. As Laura is about to go in, she encounters the Log Lady and she tells her something mysterious. Inside the bar, Jacques introduces Laura to two rednecks. They're about to go to One Eyed Jack to have sex, but Donna appears and wants to come too; impressed by her kiss, they let her. At One Eyed Jack's, Laura has sex then discusses Teresa Banks's murder with Ronette Pulaski. Laura witnesses Donna have sex then takes her home. The next morning, Donna wakes up and Laura tells Donna that she doesn't want her to become like Laura.

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« Reply #93 on: November 13, 2007, 10:43:59 pm »



Leland arrives as Leland and takes Laura home. But suddenly Phillip Gerard, A.K.A Mike, approaches Leland and Laura and the familiar beeping sound is heard. Mike shouts madly at Leland, accusing him of stealing his "corn" and he shows Laura Teresa's ring. Traumatized by the confrontation, Leland pulls into a gas station parking lot to gather his wits. He then recalls his affair with Teresa and murdering her. Laura finally realizes that the ring she saw was the same one from her dream. The next night, Laura and Bobby take some **** in the woods and Jacques sends a drug messenger carrying an enormous amount of ****. The messenger takes out a gun, but Bobby shoots him in return. Laura starts laughing, angering Bobby.

The morning after, James is worried about Laura taking too many drugs, but since Leland is watching, she has to go. That night, BOB comes through Laura's window and starts raping her. She asks him who he is and it seems to be Leland. Laura becomes scared of Leland and tells him to stay away. Due to the effect of the drugs, Laura can't concentrate at school. Later, Bobby wants to have sex with Laura, but she refuses and he finally realizes that Laura was using him to get the ****. The angel in her painting disappears.

James and Laura go to the woods and start to make out, but she tells James the Laura he knows is gone. She asks him to just leave her near the woods. Laura meets Ronette, Jacques and Leo and they have sex with each other in a cabin; Leland watches them from outside. Jacques wants to have harder sex and he ties Laura up. After he is done with her, he goes outside, where Leland attacks him. Leo then emerges, sees Jacques lying unconscious and bloody, and flees the scene in panic. Leland then takes both Laura and Ronette to the train car.

Meanwhile, Mike, the one armed man realizes that BOB/Leland is about to kill again and chases after him. BOB/Leland takes a mirror says he will kill Laura if he won't let him inside her. An angel appears in front of Ronette and she tries to escape. As Mike opens the train car door, Ronette tries to escape, but Leland beats her and she falls outside; in the process, Mike drops Teresa's ring. When BOB realizes that he can't enter Laura anymore, he stabs her to death.

As Laura's body is drifting away, BOB/Leland enters the Black Lodge. Mike and the Man From Another Place are there. They tell BOB that they want their Garmonbozia (the corn Mike was talking about earlier during the road rage). BOB returns it as blood. As Laura's body is found, she enters the Black Lodge. She realizes that Cooper is by her side and her angel is guarding her.

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« Reply #94 on: November 13, 2007, 10:48:52 pm »



Sheryl Lee as Laura Palmer, Ray Wise as Leland Palmer and Grace Zabriskie as Sarah Palmer.


Twin Peaks had only been cancelled for a month when it was announced that David Lynch would be making a movie with French company CIBY-2000 financing what would be the first film of a three-picture deal. However, on July 11, 1991, Ken Scherer, CEO of Lynch/Frost productions, announced that the film was not going to be made because series star Kyle MacLachlan did not want to reprise his role of Special Agent Dale Cooper. A month later, MacLachlan had changed his mind and the film was back on albeit without series regulars Lara Flynn Boyle and Sherilyn Fenn due to scheduling conflicts. In a 1995 interview, Fenn revealed that the real reason she didn’t do the film was that she "was extremely disappointed in the way the second season got off track. As far as Fire Walk With Me, it was something that I chose not to be a part of." Fenn’s character was cut from the script and Boyle was recast with Moira Kelly. Even though MacLachlan agreed to be in the film, he only wanted a smaller role, forcing Lynch and co-writer Robert Engels to re-write the screenplay so that Agent Chester Desmond investigated the murder of Theresa Banks and not Agent Cooper as originally planned. MacLachlan also resented what had happened during the second season of the show. "David and Mark were only around for the first season...I think we all felt a little abandoned. So I was fairly resentful when the film, Fire Walk With Me, came around." He ended up only working five days on the movie. The relationship between Lynch and Mark Frost had become strained during the second season and after the series ended, he went on to direct his own movie, Storyville, and was unable to collaborate with Lynch on Fire Walk With Me.

Lynch decided to make a Twin Peaks movie because, as he said in an interview, "I couldn’t get myself to leave the world of Twin Peaks. I was in love with the character of Laura Palmer and her contradictions: radiant on the surface but dying inside. I wanted to see her live, move and talk." Actress Sheryl Lee also echoed these sentiments. "I never got to be Laura alive, just in flashbacks, it allowed me to come full circle with the character." According to Lynch, the movie was 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." Filming began on September 5, 1991 in Snoqualmie, Washington and lasted until October of the same year, with four weeks dedicated to locations in Washington, and another four weeks of interiors and additional locations in Los Angeles.

When shooting went over schedule in Seattle, Laura's death in the train car had to be shot in L.A. on soundstage during the last day of shooting, October 31.


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« Reply #95 on: November 13, 2007, 10:52:40 pm »


Fire Walk With Me was greeted at the Cannes Film Festival with booing from the audience and met with almost unanimously negative reviews. Even the CIBY-2000 party at Cannes did not go well. According to Lynch, Francis Bouygues (then head of CIBY) was not well liked in France and this only added to the film’s demise at the festival. The film flopped in the United States, partially because it was released almost a year after the television series was cancelled (due to a sharp ratings decline in the second season) and partially due to its incomprehensibility to the uninitiated. Many people, especially critics, found the film stylish but bewildering. Janet Maslin in her review for the New York Times wrote, "Mr. Lynch’s taste for brain-dead grotesque has lost its novelty." Fellow Times film critic Vincent Canby concurred, "It's not the worst movie ever made; it just seems to be." In his review for Variety magazine, Todd McCarthy said, "that Laura Palmer, after all the talk, is not a very interesting or compelling character and long before the climax has become a tiresome teenager." The film also disappointed many devotees of the TV series due to its darker tone, lack of humor and absence of resolution to the series’ cliff-hanger ending.

U.S. distributor New Line Cinema released the film in America on August 28, 1992 with no advanced press screenings which did not endear it with critics. However, Kim Newman gave the film one of its rare positive reviews in Sight & Sound magazine. "The film’s many moments of horror...demonstrate just how tidy, conventional and domesticated the generic horror movie of the 1980s and 1990s has become." In its opening weekend, Fire Walk With Me grossed a total of $1,813,559 in 691 theaters. As of April 3, 2007, the film has grossed a total of $4,160,851 in North America.

According to the film’s cinematographer, Ron Garcia, the film was very popular in Japan -- in particular, with women, as Martha Nochimson wrote in her book on Lynch's movies, "He surmises that the enthusiasm of the Japanese women comes from a gratification of seeing in Laura some acknowledgment of their suffering in a repressive society." In retrospect, Lynch felt bad that the film "did no business and that a lot of people hate the film. I really like the film. But it had a lot of baggage with it." The film’s editor Mary Sweeney said, "They so badly wanted it to be like the T.V. show, and it wasn’t. It was a David Lynch feature. And people were very angry about it. They felt betrayed." Lee is very proud of the film, saying, "I have had many people, victims of incest, approach me since the film was released, so glad that it had been made because it helped them to release a lot."

After Fire Walk with Me was released, Lynch reportedly planned a second prequel, possibly utilizing footage edited out of the first movie. However, in a 2001 interview he said that the Twin Peaks franchise is “dead as a doornail.”

Fire Walk With Me holds a 59 percent "fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes.

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« Reply #96 on: November 13, 2007, 10:54:33 pm »

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« Reply #97 on: November 13, 2007, 10:55:26 pm »



Director David Lynch originally shot about five hours of footage that was subsequently cut down to two hours and fifteen minutes. This missing footage is wanted by many Twin Peaks fans. The footage nearly appeared on New Line's Special Edition DVD in 2002 but was nixed over budget and running time concerns. In 2002, a French company called MK2 began negotiations with Lynch to include the missing scenes, properly edited and scored, in an upcoming Special Edition DVD. This has yet to appear. Most of the deleted scenes feature additional characters from the television series who ultimately did not appear in the finished film.

Recently, dvdrama.com reported that French distributor company MK2 is in final negotiations with Lynch about a new two-disc Special Edition that would include 17 deleted scenes hand-picked by the director himself. Tentatively scheduled for release date on October 17th, 2007, once again, MK2 has delayed the release of the deleted scenes and will re-release another bare bones edition of Fire Walk With Me. It is undetermined as to whether MK2 will go forward with a DVD release including deleted scenes at this time.
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« Reply #98 on: November 13, 2007, 11:04:16 pm »

halloffame david lynch, weird on top...
 

From Eraserhead to Blue Velvet to Mulholland [Drive],

what he really wants to do is to dissect...
[/i]



Words: David Hughes  // Portrait: Alaister Thain
 
The way David Lynch`s mind works is God`s own private mystery. Interviewing the man Mel Brooks once (accurately) described as "Jimmy Stewart from Mars" is like driving on a lost highway at night, somewhere in the American West, when suddenly you pull up into a gas station where instead of pumps you find a jukebox, a dwarf and a column of fire. You are just about to remark upon this to the pump attendant, who is unwisely smoking as he siphons petrol out of your car, when he suddenly anounces, in a voice too loud for this earth, "You know, I`ve really been getting into snooker!" David Lynch has always been a mass of contradictions.
A polite, well-spoken and mild-mannered 'Gee, whizz' Eagle Scout from Missoula, Montana, Lynch somehow transmuted an idyllic childhood of blue skies, green lawns and white picket fences into the kind of art which doesn`t just turn heads, but stomaches as well. From early works like The Amputee, The Grandmother and Eraserhead, through Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and smallscreen phenomenon Twin Peaks, Lynch`s oeuvre is filled with indelible images, unforgettable characters and disturbing elements, best exemplified by the line the late Pauline Kael overheard from someone who had just seen Blue Velvet: "Maybe I`m sick, but I want to see that again."

Meeting David Lynch, in the suitably Lynchian city of Prague - Franz Kafka`s hometown - certainly fulfills expectations. His improbably quiffed grey hair looks like it has been slept in by three different people, his tie-less shirt is customarily buttoned to the neck.("I don`t like wind on my collarbone, " he explains of the fashion trend he set in the `70s), and his voice is pure Gordon Cole, the shouty FBI chief Lynch played in Twin Peaks. Unlike most Empire Hall of Fame candidates, Lynch arrives five hours early for our interview, informing most of Prague that. "WE COULD DO THE INTERVIEW NOW IF YOU WANT, BUT WE HAVE TO DO IT IN THE BAR. `CAUSE I`M A SMOKER, SEE?" Indeed, during the next two-and-a-half hours of short sentences and long silences, Lynch will smoke his way through most of a pack of American Spirits, pausing only to nibble a cheese sandwich - cherry pie not being indigenous to the Czech capital - and slug back - what else? - a cup of damn fine coffee.

It has been difficult for David Lynch to make films. The making of his first feature, Eraserhead, stretched over four years, plagued by a variety of problems, most of which had to do with money. The making of his latest feature, Mulholland Drive, took almost as long, but or entirely different reasons - it began as a pilot for a TV series, was hated and shelved by the same network that found success with Twin Peaks, then bough and revived by Canal Plus, and finally finished off as a feature which won Lynch the Best Director prize at this year`s Cannes Film Festival. The problem tends to be that, despite being acclaimed as one of America`s most stylish and avant-garde directors, Lynch has never enjoyed commercial success anywhere but the small screen. Eraserhead was an underground success with a strong (though often retrospective) critical response; The Elephant Man and Blue Velvet received multiple Academy Award nominations, but were only modestly successful; the critically-reviled Wild at Heart found an audience in some territories and won Lynch the coveted Plame d`Or in Cannes; Lynch`s other films - including Dune, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Lost Highway and the lovable The Straight Story - were flops.

His films have also courted controversy. Both Eraserhead and Blue Velvet were dismissed as 'sick' by some critics, the latter earning a knee-jerk reaction from feminists who object to the characterisation of Dorothy (unflinchingly played by Lynch`s then girlfriend, Isabella Rossellini) as a masochist; the quart-into-a-pint-pot  adaptation of Dune outraged the book`s legion of fans, a fate which also befell the Twin Peaks movie; Wild at Heart was rendered more mild by censors; Lost Highway was described as exploitative in many quarters - and if the lesbian scenes in Mulholland Drive don`t attract the same criticism, the film`s dreamlogic and abstract denouement may well prove to be its undoing, notwithstanding its growing critical reputation. Although Dune was a disappointment, Lynch was most hurt by the accusations of misogyny. "People have an idea that Dorothy was Everywoman, instead of just being Dorothy," he has said. "If it`s just Dorothy, and it`s her story - which it is to me - then everything is fine. If Dorothy is Everywoman, it doesn`t make any sense... It`s completely false, and they`d be right to be upset. When you start talking about 'women' versus 'a woman', then you`re getting into this area of generalisation, and you can`t win. There is no generalisation. There`s a billion different stories and possibilities."

You once said that Eraserhead was perfect. Do you still feel that way?

No, it was just that day. I might`ve been very relaxed, and it was a long time ago, and it just struck me as, y`know, perfect. Nothing is perfect. You can shoot for it - you`ve gotta shoot for it - but there`s no such thing as a perfect film.

Stanley Kubrick screened Eraserhead for the cast and crew of The Shining, because that was the mood he wanted to achieve. Are you a Kubrick fan?

I love The Shining. If I see it on TV, no matter what else is on, I have to watch it. It just gets better and better. And yet, when it cameout, it didn`t make that  much of a noise. But that`s the way it always was with Kubrick`s stuff. It`s pretty amazing how they grow. But I like everything he`s done. I love Barry Lyndon - it`s a great, great film.

There`s a rumour you once considered remaking Lolita, with John Hurt or Anthony Hopkins as Humbert Humbert.

Total baloney. Why remake a perfect film? One of my all-time favourites? a classic? Nobody can touch it. When [Adrian Lyne] did it, it was a joke. I refused to see it.

Anthony Hopkins has admitted he gave you a hard time on The Elephant Man, because he thought you were unsure of yourself.

(Ninety-second pause) I would never say anything about those kinds of things.

With The Elephant Man and The Straight Story, was it more important for you to capture the essence of the true story than the literal truth of the story?

Oh, yeah. It`s true of any true story. The essence is the stuff, and the essence holds the little micro-particles that dictate the action and the thing that drives it. You`ve got to be true to the essence of it.

Was that true of your stalled Marilyn Monroe project, Goddess, based on Anthony Summer`s book?

I don`t know what would have happened if  had directed that. But when we said to the people in the studio who we thought killed her, they didn`t want any part of it. It was an interesting thing to think about, but nobody knows. Well, a couple of people know.

In effect, though, you and Mark Frost 'stole from the corpse' with Twin Peaks - the beautiful girl with a dark side...

Well, it`s a phenomenon that`s not just Marilyn Monroe - there`s a lot of girls like that, it`s human nature. But I think that whatever it was about Twin Peaks and Marilyn Monroe, that was a thing, you know, that - speaking for me - I was real interested in.

You acted in Dune and Twin Peaks, but you haven`t done much lately. Why is that?

Twin Peaks is my best work [as an actor]. It wasn`t gonna be a character at all, but there`s a scene where Kyle - Agent Cooper - talks to his boss, and the character was born because I needed to have him to talk to somebody, so I did the voice that he talked to, and I talked loud `cause sometimes I talk loud on the phone, so it just happened like that. And then it became a character. It was really fun. And also the mood on the set of Twin Peaks - at least from my point of view; I wasn`t there when others were working - was so fantastic, so there was a lot of experimenting and a lot of goodwill, a great working atmosphere.

You fell out with Kyle MacLachlan over his and the Twin Peaks` cast sense of abandonment during the second series, which is why Chris Isaak took the principle role in Fire Walk With Me.

(pauses to smoke entire cigarette) Kyle is a good guy, and I wouldn`t like to say anything about that. Kyle`s my neighbour, he`s a really great person, but, you know, when you`re in a TV show, the first year is golden, and the second year, things get strange, and Twin Peaks was no exception.

Were you disappointed you couldn`t have more of Dale Cooper in Fire Walk With Me?

I love restrictions, and I believe in fate. So, what he did worked out just fine.

Are you pleased that Fire Walk With Me, almost universally panned on its release - except, notably, by Empire - is enjoying a critical reappraisal?

Yes, because I love that film, and I say now that The Straight Story is my most experimental movie, but up `til then, Fire Walk With Me was my most experimental fim, and some of the things, you know, sequences... There`s such a magic to just the word  'sequence', I`m not kidding ya. There`s something about the word 'sequence', it`s what I`m fixated on now. And it`s just the whole power of everything.

Could you explain that a little better?

No.

Critics are notoriously fickle, but were you surprised Peaks fans didn`t like the movie?

Not really. There was a shift going on, and who knows all the reasons, but it was just in the air. It was unfortunate, but... And also, it was a dark film, and it was too much in people`s faces and didn`t have the humour of Twin Peaks. It was what it was supposed to be, but it wasn`t what people wanted. It was supposed to be stand-alone, but also the last week of Laura Palmer`s life. All those things had been established, but they could be pleasant on one level to experience, but on another level, not.

Would you ever go back to Twin Peaks?

No. Uh-uh. It`s as dead as a doornail.

Did you get the sense - after the triple-threat of Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and Twin Peaks - that whatever you made next, the critics would slate?

When you go up, you gotta go down, and I think it happens to everybody.

How do you feel when your films are 'gutted' by the censors? Wild at Heart was cut, as was Blue Velvet...

Those were cuts I didn`t wanna make. They told me if I didn`t want an X I had to take out one hitfrom Frank onto Dorothy. And now you see the beginning of it, Jeffrey in the closet looking out and you hear it, and it`s way worse than it was because your mind kicks in.

But didn`t you cut Wild at Heart yourself after people left the test screenings?

We had three test screenings of Wild at Heart, and only when I cut one tiny part did people stay in the theatre. Well, a lot of people stayed, but about half left, usually. I`ve been very lucky on every film except Dune, that what you see is the director´s cut - except for censorship, I`ve never had to make any changes that I didn`t wanna make.

Do the external forces acting on your work - release dates, studios - frustrate you?

(pauses to order and drink third cup of coffee) See, there`s the doughnut and there`s the hole. The doughnut is the film. The hole is all the things you`re talking about, so they say, "Keep your eye on the doughnut, not the hole." And the doughnut is so much better than the hole, so it`s not that hard to do. There`s never any outside force that keeps you from making the film the way it wants to be. If there is, you should stop. You always think you`re gonna get it into Cannes, but if [it`s] at the expense o fthe film, then you`ll hurt the film and kill yourself.

You found it hard to get backing for another film after Blue Velvet, unable to get either One Saliva Bubble or Ronnie Rocket off the ground.

Yeah. Blue Velvet made money, but it wasn`t the kind of film that had studios calling [me] to do somethin for them. And I was with Dino [De Laurentiis], he bankrolled One Saliva Bubble, and we were gonna shoot it (with Steve Martin and Martin Short). We scouted locations, then Dino`s company went bankrupt.

 One Saliva Bubble was one of many comedy projects you never made. Can you tell me about the others?

With The Lemurians, it was the idea that Lemuria sunk, like Atlantis, and the essence of Lemuria began to leak because Jacques Cousteau bumped something on his explorations and caused a leakage of "essence of Lemuria". And this essence worked its way and did certain things. It was a comedy and pretty absurd, but it never got anywhere. But it made us laugh. The Dream Of The Bovine was for the comedy channel. [Robert Engels] and I wrote three episodes, and then sort of realised that it was a feature, but in re-writes it got off-track. And then I re-read some parts of the original, and there`s defiitely something there, but it needs a lot of work. It should be very bad quality, whatever it is. Extremely bad quality. Which is not hard to do.

Are you frustrated at not being able to make comedies, at least so far?

I really have a respect for comedy. People have said comedy is like mathematics: two and two is four; this and this; you gotta get a laugh. And it`s really difficult, and yet comedies are throwaway things.

You`re a big fan of Jacques Tati, but what contemporary comedy have you enjoyed?

Something About Mary - all the dog bits. I like that. And I like the guy with the crutches who tried to get his keys - that physical gag, I thought that was really, really good, the timing of what he did, and the little sound effect they put in there. I thought he did a really good job.

Lee Evans.

Is that his name? He`s really good. And I liked the dog stuff a lot.

What other films have you liked recently?

I haven`t seen that much. I`m not really a film buff, I like to work on my own stuff. Not that something doesn`t exist that I would really like - I just haven`t seen it.

Well, let`s talk about Mulholland Drive. When they shelved the pilot, did ABC simply not 'get' what you were trying to do?

They hated it. They hated the story, the acting. They thought it was too slow, that`s for sure. Basically they hated verything about it.

You started writing it with Joyce Eliason, who scripted The Last Don...

Right. I started, though, way before that, when it was gonna be kind of a spin-off of Twin Peaks, but it didn`t go anywhere. And just the words 'Mulholland Drive' always got something going, but I never knew what, so all the times it started to go, it never really went, until this last thing. And then it wasnothing but trouble with ABC, and it was just more fuel for the [theory] that a thing is not finished until it`s finished.. It wants to be a certain way, and you don`t know all the twists and turns in a road that are coming up - you just drive dow the road and, you know, pay attention.

Like Mulholland Drive itself - the road and the film. Did you predict that the outcome of the whole ABC/shelved pilot fiasco would be a happy one, an award in Cannes and a strong critical response?

When you`re in the middle of something, it`s not impossible to let go of [it], but it`s an injury if you don`t finish something, and part of your mind is always going back to it if it`s not finished. So I don`t know whether it was being hopeful, or I had a feeling, but many people involved in the project had feelings that it wasn`t gonna die. Then it got revived and almost died, and revived and died many, many times. Because of the nature of it, I don`t know how to say it, but it would be like there`s a key to something - your brain kind of kicks in to finish something, and you don`t know how it`s going to end. It`s pretty interesting how the mind can go to work, and ideas come in. It`s a real interesting experience.

The only explanation you ever gave for Lost Highway was that it is a "psychogenic fugue". Would you care to elaborate on that a little?

No. I think it`s [a] beautiful [phrase], even if it didn`t mean anything. It has music and it has a certain force and dreamlike quality. I think they call it a "psychogenic fugue" because it goes from one thing, segues to another, and then I think it comes back again. And so it is [in] Lost Highway.

Is it necessary that you understand seomething if you`re going to film it?

No, not one bit. The reverse is true. My understanding of Wild at Heart, the book... Again, it was a lot like The Elephant Man - the essence was Sailor and Lula, and many things were one line, or one paragraph, or one thing that shot a bunch of studio stuff into me that got expanded. Some things were dropped, but it`s like they triggered [other] things. But then at a certain point you have to go and make it your own.

Your first two features were in black and white, and rumour has it you initially considered shooting Lost Highway in monochrome, to heighten the film noir sensibility.

No.Some films are black and white films and some films are colour films. They tell you pretty much straightaway. I love black and white, but Lost Highway wouldn`t work in black and white, just like The Elephant Man wouldn`t work in colour.

You know your ad for PlayStation 2 is black and white...

No it`s not.

Yes it is. You filmed it in colour, but it was only shown in black and white.

Really?

Really. How do you feel about that?

I do not feel good. It`s supposed to be in colour. You see, there`s a total disregard... Once they have it, they do what they want. And if that happened in film, then I`d have to quit making films.

There are university courses taught, and academic texts published, about the deeper meanings of Twin Peaks and Lost Highway. Why do you think that is?

Human beings are detectives, and mysteries are magnets, and once you discover something, the mystery`s over. And I think that some knowing is completely fulfilling, but most knowing you`re just onto the next thing, and it`s done. It`s like me; I wanna know where things go, but we can all maybe get to maybe a different place, but a very satisfying place. And you`re not very sure of the place, but it`s still very lively.

 

// Mulholland Drive will be released in January 2002, and reviewed in the February 2002 issue. The Complete Lynch by David Hughes is currently available to buy, priced 15.99 pounds.     
 
http://www.davidlynch.de/empire2001.html
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« Reply #99 on: November 13, 2007, 11:10:46 pm »

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992)
August 29, 1992
Review/Film; One Long Last Gasp For Laura Palmer


By VINCENT CANBY
Published: August 29, 1992


Everything about David Lynch's "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me" is a deception. It's not the worst movie ever made; it just seems to be. Its 134 minutes induce a state of simulated brain death, an effect as easily attained in half the time by staring at the blinking lights on a Christmas tree.


The film, which opened yesterday, was put together for hard-core fans of the "Twin Peaks" television series, that is, for people so crackers over the show that they will pretend they don't know who killed Laura Palmer. Most others, including those who don't care, won't go to see the movie anyway.

Having already told the story of Laura Palmer's decline and fall in flashbacks, Mr. Lynch and Robert Engels, who collaborated with him on the screenplay, now elect to tell the same story more or less chronologically. Some characters from the television series appear in the film. Many do not. There are also a lot of new characters. The presence of some may be justified by the fact that they are phantoms, though of whose mind is never clear.

The awful truth about "Fire Walk With Me" is that Mr. Lynch is again plumbing the modest depths of the same kind of surrealism that looked fresher and funnier in his first film, "Eraserhead." Characters are introduced and disappear for no special reason, not even mystical. It seems more likely that actors of the caliber of Kieffer Sutherland and David Bowie could spend only a limited amount of time on the picture, and that Mr. Lynch accommodated them and himself by introducing into the script intimations of the occult. He can't get off the hook that easily.

At one point he would certify his surrealist credentials by showing a quick image of a white horse standing patiently in Laura Palmer's living room. This could be a quote from something by Luis Bunuel, but it would make as much sense inserted into a segment of "Golden Girls."

The director's imagination is on hold in "Fire Walk With Me." The film starts off with the murder of Teresa Banks (Pamela Gidley), a young woman whose death foretells the fate of Laura Palmer, the beautiful high-school student who, as played Sheryl Lee, looks to be approaching her mid-30's. Poor ****-sniffing Laura never learned how to just say no.

At the film's beginning, Mr. Lynch makes a large cameo appearance as a F.B.I. agent who shouts a lot because he's deaf, and who sees in the death of Teresa Banks intimations of civilization's mortality. He assigns to the case two oddball agents, played by Mr. Sutherland and Chris Isaak, who vanish early on, to be replaced by good old Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), who seems to be visiting this movie on his day off from the production of another.

Harry Dean Stanton comes on a couple of times as the bewildered manager of the Fat Trout Motor Court, not far from the town of Twin Peaks. Most of the movie is occupied by showing Laura's increasing hysteria as she tries to score more ****, to pacify her various boyfriends and to make sense of obscene daymares involving her dad (Ray Wise).

Because of the director's repeated use of long, lingering lap-dissolves, in which the images of one scene remain on the screen beneath the images of the succeeding scene, the film appears to be an undifferentiated mess of story lines and hallucinations. There's no reason to care which is which. Even Mr. Lynch's eccentric touches become boring. The jokes are stillborn.

"Fire Walk With Me" glazes the eyes and the mind. Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me

Directed by David Lynch; written by Mr. Lynch and Robert Engels; director of photography, Ron Garcia; edited by Mary Sweeney; music by Angelo Badalamenti; production designer, Patricia Norris; produced by Gregg Fienberg; released by New Line Cinema. Running time: 134 minutes. This film is rated R. Laura Palmer . . . Sheryl Lee Leland Palmer . . . Ray Wise Special Agent Dale Cooper . . . Kyle MacLachlan Special Agent Chester Desmond . . . Chris Isaak Donna Hayward . . . Moira Kelly Carl Rodd . . . Harry Dean Stanton Phillip Jeffries . . . David Bowie "Fire Walk With Me," which has been rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian), has partial nudity, sexual situations and vulgar language.
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« Reply #100 on: November 13, 2007, 11:13:58 pm »

The Fire Walkers of Twin Peaks
When David Lynch´s bizarre TV show leaped to the big screen, these actors survived the transition.


By Anthony C. Ferrante

Through the darkness of futures past,
the magician longs to see
Once chance out,
between two worlds,
fire walk with me.


Those word echoed from television screens in 1990 and directly preceded the introduction of BOB (Frank Silva), Twin Peaks´ mysterious woodland entity, who was one of the many metaphysical links to the death of homecoming queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). And, like any upstanding incarnation of evil, BOB has become ingrained in America´s consciousness. With long, stringy hair and stubbly beard, BOB freaked out audiences with his maniacal grin and subtle way of working his seeds of depravity into the kindest of hearts.

If every demon has his day, then BOB`s has arrived this year. No longer is his presence confined to the small screen: he´s competing in the big leagues now that David Lynch´s TV sensation has become Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, a theatrical prequel to the beloved cult series currently in release from New Line Cinema.

"The thing I love about playing BOB is that it´s primal therapy," says Frank Silva, the man behind the maniac. "You would think that after doing all those horrible things, you´d be shaking and all wrapped up in it, but it was the total opposite for me. It was like going into the playpen. And I would feel so relaxed and so calm after getting all that crap out and having an excuse - that´s the best way of doing something.

"One of the ideas for this movie´s trailer was to have the camera crawling around the ground in the forest," Silva continues. "Finally, it comes upon something you can´t quite figure out. You kind of see a jean jacket and then a back and this hair. Then the camera quickly moves over the shoulder, looking down at this hand scraping out Laura in the ground. Finally, the camera tracks off into the trees with the wind."

Fire Walk With Me begins a year and a week before Laura Palmer´s vicious murder, when the body of Theresa Banks is found floating in Washington´s Wind River. Enter straight-laced agent Chester Desmond (Chris Isaak), who´s assigned to the case and discovers that enigmas are only in the eye of the beholder. "I consider myself the lead character, but no one else did," says rocker and part-time actor Isaak, whose other credits include a cameo appearance in Silence of the Lambs and a big part in the 1978 Japanese sci-fi epic Message from Space.

But fans don´t have to worry that agent Cooper has been replaced. Agent Desmond is just one of many FBI operatives making the Peaks rounds this time out. There are the traditional mainstays of Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), agent Albert Rosenfeld (Miguel Ferrer) and bureau chief Gordon Cole (Lynch himself), with backup from such new faces as Kiefer Sutherland´s agent Sam Stanley and David Bowie´s apparent time-traveling agent Phillip Jeffries.

"Everybody else has the quirks," admits Isaak, who tends to be a little hard on his own acting abilities. "There´s a scene Kiefer and I did with Harry Dean Stanton playing a trailer park owner. Harry had worked himself up and was crying. Real tears were running down his face, and that really brings you to attention when you´re doing a scene. For me the uninitiated, it was like, 'Wow, what´s he doing? He´s acting, Chris, as opposed to you, who´s reading his lines like a cardboard cut-out.'"

With all this FBI action floating around, only the bare essentials are left for the rest of the Peaks regulars. Jumping forward a year later, the film uncovers all of the juicy sexual deploits and entanglements with the dark side that eventually led to Laura Palmer´s untimely demise. And as this is a motion picture and not TV, the new Peaks pushes much further than the series ever dared.

"It would be fair to say that this is a no-holds-barred version of the mess of a young girl can get into in high school, which seems like a safe and secure position in life," says Grace (Servants of Twilight) Zabriskie, who portrays Laura´s psychic mom, Sarah. Returning to play the character was particularly intriguing for Zabriskie, since she got a chance to explore a different side of Sarah - a part which existed in the time-frame before the TV show began.

"Basically, I had to show what a normal life was before tragedy struck," explains Zabriskie. "On the show, my character became sort of a study in denial and repression. It´s about the fact that when things are really going wrong in a family no one wants to admit it, which causes a lot of strange behaviour."

In addition to Lee as Laura, other returning actors include James Marshall as her rebel girlfriend James Hurley and Ray Wise as her father, Leland. Moira Kelly replaces Lara Flynn Boyle (who had prior acting commitments) as Donna Hayward, Laura´s best friend.

"When you´ve already had a good actress in a role and nobody really complains about the replacement - that´s amazing," notes Zabriskie of Kelly´s work. "It´s a different Donna," adds Silva. "The only way for another actor to step into an established role is probably what Moira did: to go in and tackle it in a whole different style and give a totally different interpretation."

As for the rest of the Peaks regulars, suspiciously absent are Sherilyn (Meridian) Fenn as Audrey Horne and Richard Beymer  as her father, Benjamin - though rumour has it they shot a brief scene together which apparently did not make the final cut. "Many of the cast were disappointed that they had little or, in many cases, nothing to do," Zabriskie says. "There were just so many cast members that obviously not all of them could be in the movie."

One of the reasons behind a few of these glaring omissions could be standard theatrical restrictions. As with all of his projects, Lynch shot so much footage on Fire Walk With Me that the first edit was nearly five hours long. When the film was released, it had been trimmed considerably, a process which has left out such key regulars as Harry Goaz, who played the slightly slow-witted Deputy Andy. It´s been hinted, though, that some of the excised footage may find its way into a special expanded video edition next year.

"I really can´t comment very much about the movie, only because I don´t know too much about it," says Goaz. "I did not come on until very late in filming, and I only had a couple of scenes, so I wasn´t too privy to what was going on at the set." Still, he feels that this new Peaks has the potential to be "as outrageous as Wild at Heart, because as a feature film it can show as much sex, violence and nudity as the MPAA will allow.

"There was a joke going around the set calling the movie Caligula 2, and I begged David to let me do something in the ****," says Goaz. "Andy would´ve been great naked."

Since Twin Peaks has always been a place of secrets and mystery, the same rules apply, to some extent, to how much the principals want to reveal about the film itself. "I like not talking about it," says Zabriskie. "It´s easy to keep it secret when you feel you have really great stuff. I guess it would be a terrible thing if you felt nothing happened, and you still couldn´t talk about it. It´s sort of fun, because you know people would be able to discover it."

Even if the short-lived series scared viewers off because they couldn´t get into its strange characters or alternate planes of existence. Silva feels that Fire Walk With Me will be used as an enlightening tool for both fans and the uninitiated. "The movie stands on its own, and you don´t have to have followed the television series to understand the film," he notes. "There are definitely more supernatural elements."

Working on the feature became an enlightening experience for Silva as well, since he discovered that his birthday and that of Michael Anderson, who plays the little person from another place in Cooper´s dream sequences, are on the same day: Halloween. "David had no idea, and when he found out he called CNN, and we did a press conference," laughs Silva.

But last Halloween was charged with more than birthday coincidences. Since shooting went over schedule in Seattle, Laura´s death sequence in the train car off of Avenue 37 couldn´t be shot. So once they were back in Los Angeles, the crew had to film it on a soundstage during the last day of shooting: October 31.

"Five days after Halloween, in Seattle, they found the body of a girl off of Avenue 37 up towards the river, and the weird thing about it was that her name was Theresa Briggs," Silva reveals. "Theresa Banks is the first girl who gets killed, and Bobby Briggs was one of the characters in the show. And when they did an autopsy, they discovered the murder had taken place five days earlier on Halloween night, the same night we were shooting the killing of Laura Palmer on the set in LA. It was really weird stuff. Art imitates life. Life imitates art."

Oddly enough, Silva had never intended for BOB to become the icon of terror that he is today - it was a classic Lynchian accident. During shooting of Peaks´ pilot episode, Silva was working behind the scenes as propmaster. One day, while he was crouched behind Laura Palmer´s bed, Lynch caught the image and decided to make it work to his advantage.

"He said, 'You better get out of there or you´re going to be on camera,' and I think all of a sudden a blood vessel burst in his head," recalls Silva. "So there´s that shot of me at the foot of her bed, and that´s how it all started."

As for the future of Twin Peaks, Silva notes that there is a rumor that Fire Walk With Me is the first in a package of three Peaks theatrical features.

"These prequels will help people understand the supernatural thing," says Silva, adding that he´s sworn to secrecy about any directions that potential sequels might take. But despite the show´s failure in prime time, its video shelf life may be stronger than anticipated. It´s had an immensely popular afterlife on cassette, where the first seven episodes and the season premiere have sold extremely well. On top of that, Twin Peaks is a cultural phenomenon in Europe and Japan: Fire Walk With Me debuted in the latter country with the second largest opening weekend, right behind Terminator 2.

"People are fascinated by this particular slice of American pie," says Catherine Coulson, a veteran of Lynch´s Eraserhead who plays Margaret the Log Lady in both the TV and film versions. "It´s pretty fascinating, because it´s a world they know exists, but we´ve never seen it before on television or in movie theaters. It´s done well in the foreign countries because it´s captured the imaginations of people who must think they´re finding out about life in a small town in the United States.

"I know that David really loves the world of Twin Peaks and would probably keep returning if there´s a continued demand," Coulson continues. "It had its life on television, and that was a very vital one. And now David has this chance to do more, so we´ll see what happens and hope it leads to more films."

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« Reply #101 on: November 13, 2007, 11:15:56 pm »

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« Reply #102 on: November 13, 2007, 11:21:38 pm »

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« Reply #103 on: November 13, 2007, 11:23:40 pm »

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« Reply #104 on: November 13, 2007, 11:25:05 pm »

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