*A revised entry will be published separately in 2023 for an updated character series (which will be collected here). This is the original entry written before The Return.
The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys eighty-two characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91) and the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) as well as The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every weekday morning until the premiere of Showtime's new season of Twin Peaks on May 21, 2017. There will be spoilers for the original series and film.
Grouchy but gregarious, Carl is much more attuned to his surroundings than he would like to be.
Saturday, February 13, 1988
Despite the unambiguous warning scrawled on his door (“DO NOT EVER DISTURB BEFORE 9 AM……EVER”), Carl is awakened by a loud knock early this morning. Proprietor of the Fat Trout Trailer Park in Deer Meadow, he’s accustomed to demanding tenants - but the figures on his doorstep aren’t who he expected. He’s greeted by two FBI badges and a request to see the trailer of a recent murder victim, Teresa Banks. Carl shows Agents Chet Desmond and Sam Stanley around, sharing coffee and eventually warming up to their company…until an old woman holding an ice pack to her face approaches the trailer and then backs away without saying a word. Carl looks like he’s seen a ghost. That evening, Desmond returns to the trailer park and Carl shows him where Deputy Cliff Howard lives before departing with a tenant who wants hot water.
Wednesday, February 17, 1988
Carl shows another FBI agent, Dale Cooper, around the trailer park. Desmond has been missing since the previous Saturday and Carl was apparently the last to see him. Cooper doesn’t ask about Teresa’s or Howard’s trailer, instead staring at a vacant lot. Carl tells the agent that an old woman lived there with her grandson, and that they were the second family named Chalfont to take that spot. Then Carl and Cooper approach Desmond’s empty car, where someone has scrawled “Let’s Rock!” on the windshield.
Characters Carl interacts with onscreen…
Carl’s journey
In his short time with us, Carl develops from a hostile curmudgeon to
a likable, even comforting presence. Partly this is due to the
strangeness of his surroundings: the cryptic FBI investigation of
Teresa, the weird woman with the ice pack, the eerie Chalfont
coincidence and the vandalized car (with a message we may recognize
from the Red Room on the TV series). However crotchety, Carl begins to
seem like an anchor in this unsettling environment. And partly, of
course, this is due to the actor himself.
Actor: Harry Dean Stanton
Stanton is not only prolific – over two hundred credits on IMDb (not including
multiple episodes on the same series) – he’s enduring. His television
career began in 1954 (in 1956, he had a bit part in his first
big-screen feature, Alfred Hitchcock’s classic The Wrong Man) and
sixty-three years later he’s still working at a feverish pace with
four projects forthcoming this year, and another just completed. An
actor who can both embellish a film with a character part and carry it
as a lead, Stanton has appeared in everything from Cool Hand Luke to
The Godfather Part II to Alien to Red Dawn to Pretty in Pink to The
Last Temptation of Christ to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to The
Green Mile to The Avengers, as well as countless Westerns, not to
mention guest spots on shows as varied as Gunsmoke (playing eight
different characters), Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Bonanza, and Two and
a Half Men with a recurring role in thirty-nine episodes of Big Love. His most
celebrated character is probably Travis Henderson, the star of Wim Wenders’
Paris, Texas. That's the central role in one of the most acclaimed films of all time, yet Stanton also frequently takes uncredited cameos in work as varied as
Anger Management (“Blind Man”) and A Civil Action (“land watcher”). He
has also been one of Lynch’s most frequent collaborators, appearing in
The Cowboy and the Frenchman, Wild at Heart, Hotel Room, The Straight
Story, and Inland Empire. A World War II veteran who landed at
Okinawa, Stanton celebrated his ninetieth birthday last summer. He
really has gone places.
Episodes
Never appeared on TV series
Writers/Directors
Carl was written by David Lynch and Robert Engels, and directed by
Lynch. His most famous line – wait for it – was apparently conceived
on the set; according to Engels, “it was just a real cool thing that
happened … I’m sure it sprung from Harry’s and David’s friendship.”
Statistics
Carl is onscreen for roughly five minutes. He is in three scenes in
Fire Walk With Me, taking place on two different days. All of his
scenes take place in Fat Trout Trailer Park and he shares the most
screentime with Desmond.
Best Scene
Confronted with a mysterious visitor, Carl develops a thousand-yard
stare, then drags on his cigarette and clears his throat to haltingly
stutter…
Best Line
“Y…you see, I’ve already gone places. I, ah…I j-…uh I…I just wanna
stay where I am.”
(This is probably my favorite line in all of Twin Peaks, mostly because of how Stanton delivers it, though I always have trouble remembering if he says “gone” or “been.” Turns out it’s “gone,” like a turkey in the corn.)
(This is probably my favorite line in all of Twin Peaks, mostly because of how Stanton delivers it, though I always have trouble remembering if he says “gone” or “been.” Turns out it’s “gone,” like a turkey in the corn.)
Additional Observations
• Carl is one of several Fire Walk With Me characters/motifs that Frost mentions in The Secret History of Twin Peaks (Frost did not participate in the prequel, aside from a purely formal executive-producer credit; for years it was a sore subject, but he seems to have made his peace with its place in the canon). According to Frost, Carl was one of three children to disappear mysteriously in the woods in the late forties – this was the incident when the Log Lady got her tattoo. The book mentions Carl’s stewardship of Fat Trout, but suggests the trailer park is in Twin Peaks, not Deer Meadow. We’ll have to wait for the new series to discover the implications of that switcheroo.
• As I mentioned in the brief runner-up entry on the “wounded lady,” Christian Hartleban has an interesting theory about Carl’s reaction to her appearance. Does Carl fear going back to jail? Or, as Frost suggests, are the places he’s “gone” (and wants to avoid) more supernatural/extraterrestrial spaces? While these possibilities are intriguing, I prefer to leave Carl’s statement more vague than that, a metaphysical manifesto rather than a statement of noirish or sci-fi specificity. The meaning of that deeply-felt credo can, I suspect, only be felt, not articulated.
• Studying his credits on IMDb, I realized that the first role I ever saw Harry Dean Stanton in was Rip Van Winkle on Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre. I cherished those videotapes, renting them religiously from local stores until I’d seen them all and can still remember the preview (watch it here) that would appear on every cassette, proclaiming all the stars’ names to let me know they were important, Stanton ending the lineup with a bang.
•
SHOWTIME: Yes, Stanton is on the cast list for 2017. Hallelujah! I’m not sure there was an actor I was more delighted to hear about. Carl is a favorite and I’ve already heard a few whispers of what he was up to on set, so I’ll avoid any particular speculation. It’s not at all surprising that Lynch would bring back one of his favorite actors, and it’s truly a joy to observe that the once-maligned Fire Walk With Me is being cemented as an integral part of Twin Peaks. Besides (as if we needed further evidence), it’s a harbinger of quality. As Roger Ebert once stated as a veritable dictum (one he unfortunately didn’t consider in his pan of Fire Walk With Me), no movie featuring Harry Dean Stanton in a supporting role “can be altogether bad.”
Tomorrow: Einar Thorson
•
Last Week: "Dougie" Milford
No comments:
Post a Comment