For months, I'd been planning to debut a series of video essays around this time (my first released since 2017), leading up to the premiere of new Journey Through Twin Peaks on the thirtieth anniversary of the original series pilot. It was not, of course, part of the plan for these long-anticipated deadlines to coincide with the abrupt collapse of a presidential campaign and the simultaneous plunge into a pandemic and economic crisis as everyone withdrew, seemingly overnight, into protective lockdown. All of which lent a surreal tinge to this work for me; I was thankful for projects to occupy my mind, even if they occasionally, eerily touched upon current events (despite originating as far back as 2018).
Focusing just on my non-Twin Peaks videos which served as a "runway" before taking off into Journey, subjects include a side-by-side comparison of black-and-white Fellinis, an exploration on the many manifestations of The Wind in the Willows and its rich tangential detours, a grimly appropriate meditation on wartime hospitalization, and an unfortunately timely adaptation of my old essay on a couple baby boomer case studies; from the Twin Peaks videos, I am particularly proud of a series of chapters on the long collaboration between David Lynch and his editor Mary Sweeney (resulting in one of the richest stretches of his career).
However, my highlight for this period has to be its culmination, a destination within a destination and a deadline among deadlines: my longest-ever YouTube video essay JOURNEY THROUGH TWIN PEAKS: The Return (video debuts tomorrow), finally covering season three after years of anticipation (in a fitting microcosm of the times, a disputed claim caused its availability to flicker on and off the platform for weeks, before the block was finally released).
MARCH
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
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)...
Next: Lost and Found in Forty Weeks (June 2020 - March 2021)
(in which I launch a public podcast while taking forever to finish two long-delayed, unusually ambitious Journey Through Twin Peaks videos)
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(in which I launch a public podcast while taking forever to finish two long-delayed, unusually ambitious Journey Through Twin Peaks videos)
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