Mad Men season 3 viewing diary concludes • "Unseen" popular films series 2013 - 14 • Bernie 2020 campaign commentary on patron podcast • resuming and finishing "Montage", "Cinepoem", "3 1/2 Minute Review", and "Side by Side' video essay series (includes Wind in the Willows bonus and Return of the Secaucus Seven/Big Chill comparison) • resuming Journey Through Twin Peaks after 5 years: season 3, the "in-between" years, David Lynch's collaboration with Mary Sweeney, original series collaborators (plus patron/public "Twin Peaks Cinema" podcasts on Sweeney and episode directors) • Twin Peaks "killer's reveal" podcasts including Twin Peaks Unwrapped guest spot (plus another episode ranking) and continuing Lost in Twin Peaks and "Twin Peaks Reflections" for patrons • public podcast launches with Ethan Hawke series • Left of the Movies podcast on climactic class violence in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Irishman, Joker, and Parasite
Chapter 35: Dawn of a New Frontier (September 2019 - March 2020)
JANUARY
Although I'll dive more extensively into the work of Twin Peaks episode directors within a month, for now I focus on three-time director Tim Hunter's quirky eighties teen drama, whose ties to Peaks are numerous and obvious (starting with a body on the shore)
A drugged mother's mind wanders through surreal dreamscapes while her body undergoes the pangs of birth
An eighteenth-century bureaucrat languishes in colonial Argentina, haunted by a mysterious bandit; both the novel's author and the film's director experienced their own tumultuous traumas around or after its making
"The British are coming!" is the rallying cry of Mad Men's mid-season until a grisly, darkly comical shock alters the nature of this corporate invasion
A teen drama from the early zeroes, now seventeen years in the past, provokes meditations on the passage of time and the subtle shifting of eras, as well as the film's marvelous use of place
In another cleverly-structured episode, we discover what led Don, Betty, and Peggy to where we first find them - an unsigned contract, some cheerful but untrustworthy hitchhikers, and two propositions from older men
Before a returned Star Wars could scratch the cultural itch, this supposedly minor Marvel space opera became an unexpected smash
Don and Betty travel to Rome in the era of Fellini and Antonioni, earning their chic moment on the Via Veneto
Greta Gerwig's acclaimed directorial "debut" spurs thoughts about her own career and the 2002/2003 moment depicted onscreen
FEBRUARY
The civil rights movement and the Rockefeller presidential campaign provide a backdrop for Don's and Betty's growing strain
My most massive episode - by about a nine-hour long shot - is divided into six chapters and another five bonus mini-episodes covering everything from deep-dive conversations about Peaks mythology to a feature film each from the entire Peaks directorial staff, from the violent climaxes of four hot new 2019 films to dozens of political topics from the past year, and finally my case for Bernie Sanders as he surges to the forefront for the Democratic presidential nomination
Don's affection for a local teacher leads to a long drive with her misfit brother
In my final Unseen entry during this period, the early teens tech craze yields a vision of the future that leaves me, in a good way, wanting much more (especially about the ethical, even spiritual implications of an artificial intelligence love affair)
As Roger relives a youthful fling, Don and Betty reach a moment of truth fueled by Betty's discovery of Don's biggest secret
Agnès Varda's seventies work study - a nonfiction peek into a series of shops on a Parisian avenue - makes for an interesting comparison to Louis Malle's Place de la République, another French documentary of the same era
Finally, the moment we've all been waiting for, directed by prestigious guest filmmaker Barbet Schroeder: the JFK assassination
Lynch editor and longtime collaborator Mary Sweeney, who originated The Straight Story as writer/producer, makes her directorial debut with another Midwestern small-town slice of life forming an interesting comparison piece with Twin Peaks - perhaps even more so with The Return
MARCH
Following a frequently dark and dramatic season, Mad Men leaves us with a bouncy Billy Wilder-esque caper as Draper's merry band conspires to both save and abandon Sterling Cooper; meanwhile, a marriage reaches its own long-awaited crossroads
A Mark Frost-directed political thriller proves timely for both the 2020 campaign and the release of a Frost interview book, as I release my final podcasts before the era of new Journey Through Twin Peaks begins (along with, well, other things)
Chapter 36: The Audiovisual Runway (March - June 2020)
After years of over-optimistic projections, I finally promise a continuation of my popular series - along with other ongoing work in a YouTube update
Serving as one bookend for a month of videos, I score images from La Strada, Nights of Cabiria, and La Dolce Vita with the haunting Tim Buckley version of "Song to the Siren"
Pairing Krzysztof Kieślowski's The Double Life of Veronique with Amy Winehouse's "Valerie ('68 version)" to explore the intersections of Irene Jacob's two roles and put a cap on my five-year, five-video Montage series
Another long-paused video cycle - my 3 1 /2 Minute Review series covering fantasy or sci-fi subjects - concludes with this Rankin-Bass animated film; there's so much to explore that I even spun off a second video, twice as long, encompassing Kenneth Grahame's book itself, several other adaptations, and eclectic pop culture connections
For the first time, my Cinepoem series weaves together two poems in a single video (alongside dozens of film clips and music ranging from distorted post-punk to modern opera): on the subject of the Civil War, Walt Whitman's "A March in the Ranks..." offers a very particular ground-level perspective while Herman Melville's "The Apparition" embraces the abstracted big picture
The Cinepoem cycle concludes with one of its simplest entries, perhaps my favorite, gently complementing the mood of Augusta Theodosia Drane's poem about fleeting yet eternal spiritual transcendence - I also compile all of the five entries into a single video that can play as a loop
Just as the aging baby boomers make their voices heard in order to stop a former sixties radical (backed by a younger generation), I examine two very similar yet very different boomer reunion classics through culture, philosophy, and politics; Lawrence's Kasdan's yuppies of the mid-eighties make an interesting contrast with John Sayles' more earthy bunch in the late seventies
APRIL
Two Federico Fellini-directed classics touch at certain points and diverge at others in an audiovisual essay finishing off my Side by Side series (for now) and mirroring, this time with narration, the spring's kickoff video
Finally, serving as both a musical bookend to the past four weeks (now set to This Mortal Coil's version of "Song to the Siren") and a gateway into Journey Through Twin Peaks, I share a spooky non-narrated montage exploring Agent Cooper's duality, the character of Diane, and connections to their more innocent doppelgangers in David Lynch's Blue Velvet three decades earlier...
At long last, my chapter "The Dance Resumes" picks up the journey in 2006 when Twin Peaks appeared to be at its lowest cultural ebb, exploring how it began its long, steady comeback
Having finally begun to publish my new video series, I chart a road map for how to continue and complete the process, balancing this project with several others demanding my attention
After exclusive weeks of video, a prose essay on Don Bluth's animated celebration of Jewish immigration takes in the film's historical context as well as its tone and texture
Divided into three parts, my longest patron podcast since January finally embraces one of Peaks' most obvious film connections, a 1944 noir, and also reflects on 2020's already grim political outcomes - as well as the path forward for a populist left...while Lost in Twin Peaks approaches the show's dark heart with the killer's reveal
MAY
The lead-up to season 3 continues by exploring the warm, cozy, melancholy world of the nineties/zeroes fandom, the many manifestations of the original series' influence on TV, and the creators' preparations for their revival (this cross-post also offers a video update on difficulties with my Anna Karina YouTube montage)
Originally intended as a single chapter, this subject ballooned into three separate YouTube videos documenting the eerie aesthetic similarity of Lynch's six Peaks episodes alongside his ten feature films, the sensibility and style of his editor/companion Sweeney both before and after their decade-plus collaboration, and the ups and downs of Lynch's trips to the Cannes Film Festival over the years...among many other goodies
Postponing a couple intermediary videos to make sure I could reach this goal around the third anniversary of the third season's, this chapter contains mini-chapters of its own, guiding us through the entire Showtime season chronologically via six episodic groupings: "The Anti-Pilot," "From Cosmos to Carpet," "Your Weekly Peaks," "The Fire and the Fireman," "A Darkness in the Desert," "Bittersweet Passage," "Forked Path," and "The Two-Sided Finale"
One more rare prose review, discussing Golden Age Hollywood's immersion in interwar Germany, starring the luminous Margaret Sullavan and drafted by F. Scott Fitzgerald
JUNE
Another obvious Peaks connection is forged with the twisty, dual-identity Hitchcock classic in one of my longest "Twin Peaks Cinema" segments (the podcast also surveys much of my past work on Vertigo)
A panel of Zoom guests joined by the Unwrapped hosts to mark a half-decade of their podcast; I pop in near the end to humor the idea that Lynch could continue the series (among other subjects)
Chapter 37: Lost and Found in Forty Weeks (June 2020 - March 2021)
Introducing my new schedule going forward: Monday for viewing diaries, Tuesday for videos, Wednesday for essays, Thursday for podcasts, Friday for random posts - plus I compile my Lynch/Sweeney videos into a single standalone essay
The fifties melodrama which fueled Twin Peaks' creation (at least from ABC's perspective) harbors Peaks connections ranging from subject matter to personnel; meanwhile I visit my archive to discuss a Fellini classic
JULY
With hundreds of hours of patron material already in the can, it's time to start sharing individual film discussions with a wider audience
Screenshots from Walt Disney's vision of the shop, the town, Pleasure Island, and the sea...think of these locales as proto-Disneylands
An Ethan Hawke series begins with young Gen Xers romancing in "end of history" era Vienna
Wrapping up the podcast episode rankings by tackling the most recent Peaks, resulting in some stunning upsets
Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, and Richard Linklater reunite along with the two fictional lovers in Bush-era Paris
AUGUST
Agent Cooper's childhood favorite film presents a less complicated FBI portrait than Peaks as well as an emphasis on patriarchal domesticity to juxtapose against Fire Walk With Me - and in a rare exception to my months-long pause in political podcasting, I pay tribute to a powerful left-wing voice shockingly silenced
Now middle-aged parents, the couple reminisce and bicker on a Grecian island as this mini-series within the Ethan Hawke series concludes
With not just initial but subsequent Journey deadlines missed, it's time for some housekeeping
Unfolding in remote lockdown due to coronavirus, the 2020 Democratic convention encourages me to share a film about the much more volatile '68 event (whose protests do parallel events elsewhere, earlier this spring and summer), initiating a new podcast on political cinema
SEPTEMBER
The name "Gordon Cole" is only one part of what Billy Wilder's macabre film about film shares with Peaks, although it has even more in common with another Lynch work
Leaving behind the Before trilogy, but not director Linklater, the Ethan Hawke series explores a relatively recent movie that already feels like the end of another era
I lay down a marker, track progress, and finally deliver my long-delayed video on writers Harley Peyton and Robert Engels, the various episode directors (including clips from feature films by each), the team of editors, and other contributors whom I'd been unable to address in the thirty-three earlier chapters
To accompany my video essay, "Twin Peaks Cinema" goes public with film capsules (and Peaks connections) for the season one team: Duwayne Dunham, Tina Rathborne, Lesli Linka Glatter, and Caleb Deschanel
OCTOBER
After a disorganized summer in which I lost the spring's video momentum, I designed a more stable schedule going forward
Revisiting nineties sci-fi with all sorts of ethical and dramatic questions, for the Ethan Hawke series
Juxtaposing the identity-swapping western desert surrealism of Lynch and Altman, alongside essays on earlier and later work from the idiosyncratic auteur
The earliest entry in the Ethan Hawke series sees his character slowly emerge from a broad ensemble
A delightful last-minute inspiration led to this zany sci-fi comedy as a companion piece to Peaks' timey-wimey finale - two directors revisiting earlier work inside their own follow-ups - while the killer's reveal grounds this month's character/location/storyline "Reflections"
NOVEMBER
Following an (extended) election distraction, I adjust my Journey goalposts albeit not, as it would turn out, much more realistically
Although Denzel Washington's character is obviously the central focus of this film, the Ethan Hawke series digs into the complicated psychology of its protagonist as well
Given how politically fraught 2020 turned out to be, a brand new coda is added just ten months after originally recording these reviews for patrons
Returning to this podcast's community rewatch for the first time since the season one finale, I join a discussion of the killer's (killers'?) motivations, the press/fan reaction to the episode's stunning violence, and our own initial impressions
DECEMBER
While working on the very slow-going Frost chapter of Journey, I share his follow-up to Peaks, now in a post- rather than pre-election environment
One of my few first-time viewings for this series connects a seventies anime exploitation fairy tale to Fire Walk With Me and The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer in particular: all avant-garde, supernatural explorations of sexual trauma (plus an archive review of another film about witchcraft and persecution)
My Ethan Hawke series ends by sharing first impressions of my favorite of his films, alongside listener feedback teasing out Catholic as well as Protestant elements in the character's theology
While still plugging away at the last missing video from Journey Through Twin Peaks Part 5, I collected screenshots of every manipulated image in chapters 29 through 33
Ending a tumultuous year with a study of two fractured narratives presented by Kurosawa and Lynch - do they question the very premise of "the truth," or ask us to look at it more deeply?
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