Lost in the Movies: Poetry Becomes Prose in Fire Walk With Me (Fire Walk With Me conversation w/ Tony Dayoub - Part 2 of 4)

Poetry Becomes Prose in Fire Walk With Me (Fire Walk With Me conversation w/ Tony Dayoub - Part 2 of 4)


This is the second entry in my four-part correspondence with Tony Dayoub of Cinema Viewfinder. We are discussing Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me on the film conversation site To Be (Cont'd). [That site has since gone inactive, but my pieces are available in full on this site and Tony has re-published his on his own site as well - links to all are collected here.]

Last week I contributed my first entry, "Twin Peaks is Dead - Long Live Laura Palmer!".

Poetry Becomes Prose in Fire Walk With Me
by Tony Dayoub

Joel,

I was not one of those fans who felt that the show quickly “descended into camp,” as you put it, with the resolution of who killed Laura Palmer. Like Special Agent Dale B. Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), I was so in love with the town and its denizens that I relished any tangent from the relatively straight line David Lynch and Mark Frost had so far led us along. Remember, Lynch and Frost had never meant to resolve the mystery, hoping instead to use it as a backdrop for spinning off other storylines, like a traditional soap. Sometimes, these tangents went nowhere, or at least nowhere of interest–most notoriously in the very noirish storyline where James Hurley (James Marshall) is seduced by a femme fatale and set up for her husband’s murder. Other times, I was as delighted as the show intended viewers to be, no matter how silly the subplot (yes, I admit that I adored the inane romance between Lana and Mayor Milford). Staunch supporter that I was, I enjoyed how sprawling and diffuse the show’s mythology had grown–Black and White Lodges, Bookhouses, dwarves, giants, owls and all.

Read the rest of "Poetry Becomes Prose in Fire Walk With Me" on Cinema Viewfinder, where Tony published it after To Be Cont'd went inactive.]


Next - Part 3, my response: "Back Door to the Black Lodge"

No comments:

Search This Blog