December 2024 Patreon round-up: EXCLUSIVE - 2024 American Generations Reflections + TWIN PEAKS Character Series advance & Twin Peaks Conversations podcast

In months when I'm not covering a particular film or TV show for the $5/month tier, I tend to use a group shot of Twin Peaks characters as my top image for a public round-up. These represent the $1/month tier advance entry from my TWIN PEAKS Character Series without giving away which particular character I've written about (since the ranking is supposed to be a surprise until the eventual public reveal). I go this route even when there's another $5/month reward to highlight, usually because that reward is a Twin Peaks Conversations episode which I've already highlighted in a separate cross-post. That was certainly the case this month when I spoke with John Thorne again, this time for his Devious Dreams book on Mulholland Drive; while part two is linked below I already promoted this discussion on this site a few weeks ago. However, there also happens to be a bonus $5/month reward this month: a long written piece in which I explore the year 2024 through several different generations as part of an ongoing project which will hopefully lead to a video essay in the distant future (this is the second year I've offered this bonus, as the video will span 2023 - 31 and I want to prepare the ground with contemporaneous assessments). Why not use an image associated with this subject atop December's round-up?

Well, frankly, I found most of those potential images to be less than enticing both aesthetically and politically. If I'm trying to get people excited for my Patreon work, it's probably best not to frontload either a generic demographic chart (whose generational definitions I probably don't even use myself) or some photo of Trump smirking with eighties celebrities and/or grifting YouTubers (then again, politics always makes for the best clickbait so maybe I've shot my SEO in the foot). None of this is to say the piece isn't worth reading. It was certainly satisfying to write everything down, and hopefully others find my musings insightful and relatable, and not too heavy on generalizations...pardon the quasi-pun. Still, I figured we'd all be better off with a perplexed Gordon Cole and the gang leading the way this time.

What are the December rewards?

TWIN PEAKS CONVERSATIONS bonus podcast on Mulholland Drive premieres tonight w/ Devious Dreams author John Thorne (YouTube & extended PATREON)

For John Thorne, Mulholland Drive has not only been a vital experience in its own right but also -forgive the expression - a key to David Lynch's other work, particularly Twin Peaks. Many of John's theories and interpretations of Peaks borrow from a structure Lynch most notably deployed to tie two worlds together: the characters and stories conceived for an ABC TV pilot (the first two-thirds of Mulholland Drive, with some subtle but significant changes) and the more time-constrained but also thematically and stylistically grander possibilities of a theatrically-released feature film (sealed by the final third of Mulholland Drive, shot a year and a half after the other material). Not only does Mulholland inform John's notions of dreaming and identity shifts in Peaks, it also feeds his fascination with process - the outside conditions that, well, condition Lynch's creative responses. We began to dwell on this subject in our previous discussion (itself following Twin Peaks Conversations episodes in 2021 and 2022). Since then, John wrote and published the absorbing and deeply compelling Devious Dreams: Reimagining David Lynch's Twin Peaks (which includes history of the production, analysis of the pilot and film, and original interviews with the central cast). Naturally, we had to schedule a reunion to focus on this new book.

The resulting episode premieres exactly twelve hours from this announcement and runs nearly four hours in total, with about an hour and a half public on YouTube and the remaining two and half hours for the $5/month tier on Patreon. We explore many rabbit holes, including what a Mulholland Drive series might have looked like (and how that phenomenon would compare to Twin Peaks), what was in the closed ending Lynch shot for the pilot even before expanding it into a film, the significance of the man behind Winkie's Diner, how John's exposure to a version of the pilot before the 2001 Mulholland Drive premiere shaped his perspective, and the way that the film's release (nearly a decade into Wrapped in Plastic's run) changed John's work on the magazine. And that's just in the first part of the conversation!

PART 1 on YouTube premieres at 8pm EST

Listen to...

PART 2 on Patreon

(also premieres at 8pm EST)