*Link to Phillip Gerard (TWIN PEAKS Character Series #53)

Visit the TWIN PEAKS Character Series directory for all entries as they are published or re-introduced.

For reasons explained in greater detail beneath this link, I'm keeping this original entry limited to seasons one and two plus Fire Walk With Me/The Missing Pieces - nothing from The Return. (That will be reserved for an upcoming entry on all of the spirits, which includes a component for MIKE independently of Phillip Gerard). Even within those limits, this is one of the longest entries so far with extensive "additional notes" on the unusual development of the character(s). There is of course one other unfortunate update I would make to this entry written six years ago, in this case to the actor bio: Al Strobel, the actor who so memorably plays Gerard, was one of 2022's many Twin Peaks casualties. Onscreen and off, he greatly enriched this community.

Phillip Gerard (TWIN PEAKS Character Series #53)

+ A note on Gerard vs. MIKE

This entry provides a dilemma. In the original character series of 2017, prior to the third season, I separated the one-armed man into two different studies. In the "Phillip Gerard" entry I discussed all of his scenes from the perspective of an ordinary person who was at times independent of, and at other times consumed by, a spiritual presence named MIKE. In the "Spirits of Twin Peaks" omnibus I specifically focused on the question of who MIKE was, counting for screentime only those at least partly incorporeal moments in Cooper's dream or in the Red Room at the end of Fire Walk With Me - even though these are factored into the Gerard entry too. The overlap honestly feels like a bit of an oversight in retrospect; that said, since I'm not revising Phillip Gerard to include season three material, I'm leaving that aspect intact too.

The decision of where to place the new material was a difficult one. On one hand, the character is credited in season three - just as he was in the original series and Fire Walk With Me - as "Phillip Gerard." On the other hand, this time (unlike in the original) we only ever see the one-armed man in the spirit world - the Red Room and convenience store-adjacent locations - from which he occasionally broadcasts messages into the human world that only Cooper can see or hear. There is no longer any sense that he has a presence in physical reality. I've heard interesting arguments that this character is not the grand spirit MIKE but actually ordinary Gerard himself, who has died and gone to Twin Peaks heaven (or hell?) to play a spirit guide role much like Laura. Nonetheless, since my previous rule was that Gerard refers to the real world presence and MIKE to the one we see removed from that body (even if he looks the same), I'm sticking with that definition and will reserve all of this new material for the updated "Spirits" entry.

At any rate, Monday's character will be much more clear-cut although her revised entry is almost as completely rooted in the old material as Gerard's. In this case, the only update will be not for The Return, but for The Final Dossier. See you after the weekend for that one.

Candie (as well as Sandie and Mandie) (TWIN PEAKS Character Series #54)

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys one hundred ten characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91 on ABC and 2017 on Showtime as The Return), the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), and The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday although patrons will have immediate access to each entry a month before it goes public. There will be spoilers.

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Candie, the most called-upon member of a trio including Sandie and Mandie, is dazzled by the world around her if rather disengaged from the immediate needs of her bosses.

Carrie Page (TWIN PEAKS Character Series #55)

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys one hundred ten characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91 on ABC and 2017 on Showtime as The Return), the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), and The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday although patrons will have immediate access to each entry a month before it goes public. There will be spoilers.

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Things aren't going well for Carrie in Odessa and they don't get much better when she takes a ride with an FBI man to Twin Peaks.

*Links to Jean Renault // Mayor Dwayne Milford // Lana Budding Milford (TWIN PEAKS Character Series #58 // #57 // #56)

Visit the TWIN PEAKS Character Series directory for all entries as they are published or re-introduced.

Canadian drug lord Jean Renault, Twin Peaks' distracted Mayor Milford, and the Mayor's sister-in-law-turned-girlfriend Lana are all characters anchored in the show's troubled mid-season two episodes although the Mayor is introduced in the pilot, Jean shows up early in season two, and the Mayor/Lana romance extends into that season's final stretch. None of course appear in The Return which is why I've left their entries from early 2017 intact and available below. (One key update to the bio of Michael Parks, who played Jean Renault: he passed away mere months after the piece was published.) Despite their absence from the third season, Lana at least does make an appearance in Mark Frost's post-Return novel The Final Dossier. I chose not to revise my old study because the material mostly overlaps with what Frost already wrote about her in The Secret History of Twin Peaks (including an expanded passage on her relationship to Donald Trump, who remains unnamed but even more clearly identified). The main difference is that this time Frost clarifies The Secret History's assertion that Lana won Miss Twin Peaks - apparently she was awarded the title when the comatose Annie could not perform her duties - and traces further romantic adventures up to another marriage that lasted until the husband - also wealthy and aged - died in 2008.

Monday's subject, on the other hand, will have no such upward trajectory. She'll be one of the more unusual entries on this list, since most viewers would probably identify her as another character altogether, but more on that then...

Jean Renault (TWIN PEAKS Character Series #58)

Mayor Dwayne Milford (TWIN PEAKS Character Series #57)

Lana Budding Milford (TWIN PEAKS Character Series #56)

Sonny Jim Jones (TWIN PEAKS Character Series #59)

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys one hundred ten characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91 on ABC and 2017 on Showtime as The Return), the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), and The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday although patrons will have immediate access to each entry a month before it goes public. There will be spoilers.

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A boy in search of a good dad (even one he has to take care of himself), Sonny Jim is delighted by the turn his own father has taken.

Charlie (TWIN PEAKS Character Series #60)

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys one hundred ten characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91 on ABC and 2017 on Showtime as The Return), the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), and The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday although patrons will have immediate access to each entry a month before it goes public. There will be spoilers.

•

Charlie watches and responds to Audrey's exasperation with the sense that he's a helpless observer, but does he actually hold the key to her destination? Who is he, anyway?

*Link to Ronette Pulaski (TWIN PEAKS Character Series #61)

Visit the TWIN PEAKS Character Series directory for all entries as they are published or re-introduced.

The last paragraph of my 2017 entry on Ronette, and particularly its last line ("it wouldn't be Twin Peaks without her"), operates on the premise that the character would return in The Return. Some would argue that, in fact, she did. But I've decided to separate "American Girl" - the mysterious backwards-recorded figure Phoebe Augustine plays in the Purple World Tower of Part 3 - from the Ronette we met in the original series and prequel film. While it's possible that Ronette herself ended up in another dimension (either having died in the human world or divided herself spiritually and psychologically between different realms as many characters do), for our purposes her story really ends when she shudders at the memory of Laura's death in the season two finale. Therefore, I've kept my original piece intact rather than modifying it - despite some discrepancies sprinkled throughout. These aren't just based on the assumption that the character's story wasn't over, but also on the absence of characters with less screentime but even more direct involvement in key plot points than Ronette. For example, I write, "she is the first character in these studies to show us BOB" which was still true in early 2017. Now, however, Freddie pops up earlier in the line-up than Ronette and doesn't only "show us" BOB, he (sort of) defeats him. Unfortunately, the addition of Return characters does, in some cases, destroy the subtle worldbuilding of the old character rankings, in which the spiritual and Laura-centric aspects of the story were slowly unveiled as you climbed the ladder of entries. The third season is much more willing to distribute supernatural events and major narrative developments among minor characters than was original Twin Peaks.

In that sense, Ronette was a major exception to the old rules - a seemingly incidental, functional figure who took on increasing importance as the Secret Diary novel, the second season, and Fire Walk With Me rolled around. As such, her relatively low-ranking entry turned out to be much longer and in-depth than many which followed; the "journey" section alone runs four paragraphs. It's one of my favorites of the series and hopefully, despite those aforementioned inconsistencies, still holds up today.

Ronette Pulaski (TWIN PEAKS Character Series #61)

Before moving on to the next entry, one addendum is in order for Ronette. I went ahead and updated the recent Ernie and Vivian entries because those characters do appear in Mark Frost's novel The Final Dossier. As a matter of fact, so does Ronette - but the point of her inclusion is to indicate what doesn't change in her story. Tammy informs us that even in the alternate timeline where Laura is not taken the train car, Ronette still is - and she still escapes and still ends up in the hospital; the only difference in her storyline from the original series is that when she recovers, she informs the police that Laura "wandered off into the woods" before anything happened. The implications of this will be discussed in more detail when we reach the Leland entry but it didn't seem worth creating a whole new post.

Speaking of alternate realities (and Final Dossier complications), the next character in this series is quite tricky to pin down. Does he exist in the same world as other characters? Is he even a separate being from the character he shares the most screentime with? The story treats him - at least for most of his screentime - as if he is a distinct character, so we'll follow suit, even as we ask, "What story is that...?"

Blue Velvet as Twin Peaks Cinema #23 - The Lynchverse (podcast)

This cross-post was scheduled and ready for 8am this morning, but accidentally remained in draft mode. Better late than never.

My three-month "Lynchverse" theme concludes (sort of) with the biggest topic of all: connections between Twin Peaks and the film that led directly to the pilot, Blue Velvet. This nearly ninety-minute episode, easily the longest I've released for Twin Peaks Cinema, serves as a companion to two episodes on my Lost in the Movies feed: the standalone Blue Velvet review from a couple years ago and this month's entry on Blue Velvet Revisited, a striking documentary about the film's production. (Incidentally, the above illustration is from a Wrapped in Plastic magazine cover designed by Craig Miller.) In this case there's so much ground to cover that I break the podcast into different sections, followed here by timecode for easy access...

COMPARISONS (7:06)

CONTRASTS (18:00)

FLUID PSYCHODRAMATIC CONNECTIONS (24:24)

CHARACTERS (40:58)

SETTING (52:54)

MOTIFS & MINOR CHARACTERS W/ CONNECTIONS TO DELETED SCENES (1:01:05)

+ BONUS: COMPARISON TO "JEAN FRAMING COOPER" STORYLINE (1:07:45)

+ BONUS: CRITERION SUPPLEMENTS INCLUDING MORE ON DELETED SCENES (1:16:33)

The links between these two iconic works begin behind the scenes with Blue Velvet's launch of so many collaborations with Lynch, often lifelong (RIP Angelo Badalamenti). And of course the world onscreen - a small town with dark secrets beneath the surface - is what lent itself so well to the surreal soap treatment suggested to Lynch and Mark Frost a few years later. But these close ties also make the differences between the works that much more fascinating - a sprawling TV series leaning toward a more rural aesthetic vs. a contained feature (albeit cut down from a much larger template) that evokes an urban milieu more often than one might expect. Aesthetically, narratively, and otherwise, Blue Velvet serves as a key passage between the intense focus of Lynch's earlier films like Eraserhead (last month's Twin Peaks Cinema subject) and his later films - which I'll be covering soon on this podcast, as part of a new theme overlapping with this one.

Subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts

You can also listen on Pinecast and Spotify

(and most places podcasts are found)

LINKS FOR EPISODE 23

The Singer (TWIN PEAKS Character Series #62)

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys one hundred ten characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91 on ABC and 2017 on Showtime as The Return), the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), and The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday although patrons will have immediate access to each entry a month before it goes public. There will be spoilers.

• indicates passages added or revised since 2017, if you want to skip directly to fresh material; this is a revision of an earlier piece written before the third season.

In a town that buries so much of its truth, the Singer's voice provides a chorus that not only comments on the emotion of Twin Peaks but gives it form.

Freddie Sykes (TWIN PEAKS Character Series #63)

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys one hundred ten characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91 on ABC and 2017 on Showtime as The Return), the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), and The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday although patrons will have immediate access to each entry a month before it goes public. There will be spoilers.

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Brought to Twin Peaks by a spiritual intervention, the unlikely Freddie and his green glove are destined to play a key role in a battle between worlds.

February 2023 Patreon round-up including 3 TWIN PEAKS Character Series advances

The actual calendar month of February was quite busy on my Patreon, but that was largely due to the last regular episode of my $1/month tier podcast...which was actually a belated January reward. As such, I included it in the previous round-up. This one will be shorter: focused just on the rewards associated with February, whose contents are more mysterious and so can be described in less detail...

*Link to Jacques Renault (TWIN PEAKS Character Series #64)

Visit the TWIN PEAKS Character Series directory for all entries as they are published or re-introduced.

From Ernie Niles a couple days ago, we pivot to Jacques Renault. Both men are involved with the drug trade and get captured by Agent Cooper (who has little respect for either of them) although Jacques is a more devious and committed criminal. Like Ernie, Jacques' screentime is limited to the original series but unlike Ernie, he doesn't appear in The Final Dossier so there's no reason to update the entry I wrote before The Return in 2017. That piece, linked below, is one of the longer low-ranking studies, given Jacques' prodigious "offscreen" section. He's referenced in close to a dozen episodes that he himself does not appear in and in the handful of episodes that do feature him directly, he's also discussed by other characters. Jacques' deep involvement in Laura Palmer's life and the subsequent murder case offers a lot to cover here; I've also long been fascinated by the way Jacques belongs equally to both Lynch and Frost in a way few other characters do. Walter Olkewicz, as hinted at the end of this entry, did in fact return for the third season albeit playing a new Renault: cousin Jean-Michel (discussed in my runners-up post in January), who reveals that the Roadhouse has been in the family for generations. Olkewicz passed away in 2021 and did not otherwise act in the past couple decades, so this marked his final screen credit.

Jacques Renault (TWIN PEAKS Character Series #64)

After three baddies in a row this week, Monday will shift gears for a guy so good he was recruited to take part in a cosmic battle against the dark spirits of Twin Peaks. Not much commonality with Jacques there although the two do speak with over-the-top non-American accents...

Ernie Niles (TWIN PEAKS Character Series #65)

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys one hundred ten characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91 on ABC and 2017 on Showtime as The Return), the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), and The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday although patrons will have immediate access to each entry a month before it goes public. There will be spoilers.

• indicates passages added or revised since 2017, if you want to skip directly to fresh material; this is a revision of an earlier piece written before the third season.

Ernie is a nervous, lying coward who stumbles into the center of a criminal conspiracy.

Deputy Chad Broxford (TWIN PEAKS Character Series #66)

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys one hundred ten characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91 on ABC and 2017 on Showtime as The Return), the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), and The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday although patrons will have immediate access to each entry a month before it goes public. There will be spoilers.

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A collection of every cruel, crude, and repulsive tendency, Chad exhibits the rot of modern Twin Peaks.

TWIN PEAKS CONVERSATIONS #19 w/ "Twin Peaks Grammar" (YouTube & extended PATREON)

A new presence in the Twin Peaks community both as a commentator and a viewer (he only discovered the series, all at once, in 2020), Anthony has adopted the account name "Twin Peaks Grammar" across Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram (on podcast platforms, he hosts audio versions of his videos with the name Artists Love Twin Peaks). He diagrams sentences - from Peaks itself as well as texts by its analysts - to explore what the words refer to, and he takes a similar approach to his conversations with authors and filmmakers. Describing himself as a point guard (I've also compared him to a conductor), Anthony is modest about his own observations, but his inquisitive, dialectical nature yields many insights. Accordingly, after a more conventional start in which I explore his background and interests, much of this podcast - one of my longest episodes, with nearly two hours reserved for patrons - consists of Anthony asking me questions. This takes the form of both a lightning round (I timed myself with a stopwatch to keep under a minute) and a much more open-ended approach in which my answers turned into monologues on topics like the state of cinema, the evolution of an obsession, and why I became so absorbed in Peaks at the particular moment of 2014. We also maintain a back-and-forth on perennial subjects like Diane, tulpas, and what Mr. C means for Cooper. First, though, how did Anthony immerse himself in the series and what led him to his particular lens? Here is the public kickoff to our discussion, already over an hour...

PART 1 on YouTube

For the $5/month tier, the Patreon back "half" is actually another hour and fifty minutes. This is where the approach gets more experimental and wide-ranging, starting with the quick rundown of questions about the series, turning back into an inquiry of Anthony with some conversational flow between us, and then ending as I ponder the bigger shape of my engagement with Twin Peaks.

Listen to...

PART 2 on Patreon

Listen to his podcast Artists Love Twin Peaks

TP Grammar on YouTube

...interviewing Robert Kersz (Frame Into Focus), Cameron Cloutier (Queen of Hearts) (w/ follow-up), Jeremiah Beaver (Take the Ring), John Thorne (Ominous Whoosh) & John Bernardy (Blue Rose Task Force) w/ John Thorne (videos)

Follow him on Twitter & Instagram

My video essay Take This Baby and Deliver It to Death

My first review of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

Sam Colby and Tracey Barberato (TWIN PEAKS Character Series #67)

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys one hundred ten characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91 on ABC and 2017 on Showtime as The Return), the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), and The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday although patrons will have immediate access to each entry a month before it goes public. There will be spoilers.

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Sam and Tracey are as curious about the glass box as they are attracted to one another, and both interests combine to provide their undoing.

Blue Velvet Revisited (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #51)

When David Lynch descended on a midsize North Carolina city to shoot his distinctive, out-of-time tribute to - and/or subversion of - small town Americana, he meticulously determined what we'd see and how we'd see it. Blue Velvet strains the eighties zeitgeist through a filter of fifties nostalgia and Lynch's own particular aesthetic tastes but a West German documentarian was there on location to capture the process of the director's creativity - and also the raw material of the world around the 1985 production. Watching this documentary for the first time a couple years ago (this review was recorded immediately afterwards), I was completely taken with this contrast - a peek into the world as it was when I was a toddler - as well as by Peter Braatz's moody, meditative, avant-garde take on this footage, so striking yet distinct from Lynch himself. Originally dubbed No Frank in Lumberton when it was assembled as an even more experimental program for German TV, the Super 8 footage was re-born when Braatz was inspired by music from the group Cult With No Name and decided to mix black-and-white still photos, aestheticized titles, and voice tracks into a new assembly. The result was much more widely distributed than the original when it was released for the thirtieth anniversary of Blue Velvet. This podcast provides the perfect complement to my upcoming episode on connections between Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks on the Twin Peaks Cinema feed (scheduled for March 15; this cross-post link will be active the next morning). It also can be listened to as a sequel to my earlier Lost in the Movies podcast on Blue Velvet as a standalone film.

Subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts

You can also listen on Pinecast and Spotify

(and most places podcasts are found)

"Hutch" and Chantal Hutchens (TWIN PEAKS Character Series #68)

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series surveys one hundred ten characters from the series Twin Peaks (1990-91 on ABC and 2017 on Showtime as The Return), the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992), and The Missing Pieces (2014), a collection of deleted scenes from that film. A new character study will appear every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday although patrons will have immediate access to each entry a month before it goes public. There will be spoilers.

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Loyal to their boss and affectionate toward one another, Hutch and Chantal are casually ruthless - even potentially sadistic - toward everyone outside that circle of three.