Lost in the Movies: THE ARCHIVE Chapter 37: Lost and Found in Forty Weeks (June 2020 - March 2021)

THE ARCHIVE Chapter 37: Lost and Found in Forty Weeks (June 2020 - March 2021)


Following an unusually productive spring, my pace slowed down over the summer, fall, and winter of the Great Pandemic, as I published one post a week during a period which last exactly nine months. My plans to launch Part 6 of Journey Through Twin Peaks fell by the wayside as two "missing chapters" - on Peaks co-creator Mark Frost and the original series collaborators - swallowed half a year; meanwhile I kept up with monthly patron podcasts (at least until those too fell behind in the last stretch) and offered periodic updates on my activity. My most frequent work at this time was something brand new after a dozen years of online activity: a public Lost in the Movies podcast uploaded every other week, short solo episodes repackaging film discussions I'd recorded for patrons in 2018 - 19.

Subjects include that kaleidoscopic video essay on writers, directors, editors, and other contributors to Twin Peaks, another small town soap opera comparison to Twin Peaks on my "Twin Peaks Cinema" patron podcast (this time to Peyton Place, the film whose TV spin-off was a direct antecedent to Peaks), a comparison of two Dickens adaptations an ocean and over a century apart, a public podcast surveying different Lost in Twin Peaks clips as a sneak peek of my patron work, and a group discussion of the most crucial episode in Twin Peaks - the killer's reveal.

My highlight, Journey Through Twin Peaks: Part 5 - Over the Mountain Pass, encompasses many entries from earlier periods as I round up all the videos created out of order and at uneven intervals over the past year but it also provides a platform for my most ambitious single video essay, a grand twenty-three minute voyage across Mark Frost's literature, television, and cinema - encompassing everything from Jazz Age golf footage to eighties cop drama clips to illustrations of nineteenth-century adventures - produced from dozens of sources after months of editing and years of research.

JUNE

End of Spring update (including new schedule, works in progress & Journey Through Twin Peaks on Vimeo)
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

June 2020 Patreon podcasts: LOST IN TWIN PEAKS #17 - Season 2 Episode 9 and LOST IN THE MOVIES #68 - Twin Peaks Cinema: Peyton Place (+ Twin Peaks Reflections: Harold, Nancy, Harold's house, the woods, Harold and the diary/The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, La Dolce Vita & more)
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

Launching a public podcast - introductory episode
With hundreds of hours of patron material already in the can, it's time to start sharing individual film discussions with a wider audience

Four Worlds in Pinocchio: a visual tribute
Screenshots from Walt Disney's vision of the shop, the town, Pleasure Island, and the sea...think of these locales as proto-Disneylands

Before Sunrise (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #1)
An Ethan Hawke series begins with young Gen Xers romancing in "end of history" era Vienna

Twin Peaks Unwrapped - Season 3 Madness (w/ Josh Minton)
Wrapping up the podcast episode rankings by tackling the most recent Peaks, resulting in some stunning upsets

Before Sunset (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #2)
Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, and Richard Linklater reunite along with the two fictional lovers in Bush-era Paris 

AUGUST

July 2020 Patreon podcasts: LOST IN TWIN PEAKS #18 - Season 2 Episode 10 and LOST IN THE MOVIES #69 - Twin Peaks cinema: The FBI Story (+ remembering Michael Brooks, Twin Peaks Reflections: Louie, Jonathan, Double R Diner, Hap's Diner, Lucy's pregnancy/Part 4, Fire in the Sky, The Double Life of Veronique & more)
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

Before Midnight (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #3)
Now middle-aged parents, the couple reminisce and bicker on a Grecian island as this mini-series within the Ethan Hawke series concludes

Late Summer Update: Journey Through Twin Peaks + updates to Top Posts and the picture gallery
With not just initial but subsequent Journey deadlines missed, it's time for some housekeeping

Medium Cool (LEFT OF THE MOVIES podcast #1/LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #4)
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

August 2020 Patreon podcasts: LOST IN TWIN PEAKS #19 - Season 2 Episode 11 and LOST IN THE MOVIES #70 - Twin Peaks cinema: Sunset Boulevard (+ new schedule for Journey Through Twin Peaks/other projects, Twin Peaks Reflections: Lodwick, Sternwood, One Eyed Jack's, Partyland, Hank's criminal activities/Part 10 & more)
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

Boyhood (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #5)
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

JOURNEY THROUGH TWIN PEAKS: Original series collaborators (video debuts this month)
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

Films by Twin Peaks episode directors - Halloweentown, Zelly & Me, Now and Then, The Escape Artist (TWIN PEAKS CINEMA podcast #1/LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #6)
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

New path through Journey Through Twin Peaks
After a disorganized summer in which I lost the spring's video momentum, I designed a more stable schedule going forward

Gattaca (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #7)
Revisiting nineties sci-fi with all sorts of ethical and dramatic questions, for the Ethan Hawke series

September 2020 Patreon podcasts: LOST IN TWIN PEAKS #20 - Season 2 Episode 12 and LOST IN THE MOVIES #71 - Twin Peaks Cinema: 3 Women (+ Archive reading on Robert Altman: The Long Goodbye, Gosford Park, Tanner '88, Twin Peaks Reflections: Leo, Shelly, Ben, Johnson house, Town hall, Cooper and Audrey/Wild at Heart & more)
Juxtaposing the identity-swapping western desert surrealism of Lynch and Altman, alongside essays on earlier and later work from the idiosyncratic auteur

Dead Poets Society (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #8)
The earliest entry in the Ethan Hawke series sees his character slowly emerge from a broad ensemble

October 2020 Patreon podcasts: LOST IN THE TWIN PEAKS #21 - Season 2 Episode 13 and LOST IN THE MOVIES #72 - Twin Peaks Cinema: Back to the Future Part II (+ Laura Palmer & other Twin Peaks Reflections: The Singer, Maddy, Palmer house, Roadhouse, Palmer family breakdown/Season 3 Part 2, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump, other Robert Zemeckis films & more)
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

A Week on Hold: status update
Following an (extended) election distraction, I adjust my Journey goalposts albeit not, as it would turn out, much more realistically

Training Day (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #9) ... + a quick election/Journey Through Twin Peaks status update
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

Class violence in 4 films: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Irishman, Joker, Parasite (LEFT OF THE MOVIES podcast #2/LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #10)
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

Moving near the edge at night... • discussing the killer's reveal episode w/ Twin Peaks Unwrapped (+ John Thorne & Josh Minton)
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

Mark Frost's Storyville (TWIN PEAKS CINEMA podcast #2/LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #11)
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

November 2020 Patreon podcasts: LOST IN TWIN PEAKS #22 - Season 2 Episode 14 and LOST IN THE MOVIES #73 - Twin Peaks Cinema: Belladonna of Sadness (+ Twin Peaks Reflections: Norma, Vivian, Ernie, Red Diamond City Motel, Golf course, MT Wentz/The Final Dossier, The Devil's Bride & more)
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)

First Reformed (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #12)
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

Images from a return to Twin Peaks (1 of 2): The In-Between Years and a Detour into Lynchland
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

December 2020 Patreon podcasts: LOST IN TWIN PEAKS #23 - Season 2 Episode 15 and LOST IN THE MOVIES #74 - Twin Peaks Cinema: Rashomon (+ Twin Peaks Reflections: Leland, Albert, Donna, Twin Peaks & Deer Meadow sheriff stations, One-Armed Man/Season 3 Part 17 & more)
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?

JANUARY

A Tale of Two Expectations (visual tribute)
Direct parallels between David Lean's faithful forties British adaptation and Alfonso Cuaron's nineties American re-telling, a coda to the Ethan Hakwe series in images rather than audio

Spirited Away (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #13)
Miyazaki's gentle yet abundant anime masterpiece kicks off a fresh season of random subjects for my public podcast

A TWIN PEAKS Character Series announcement & a clip from Journey Through Twin Peaks (status update)
After accidentally posting entries from a not-nearly-ready Twin Peaks side project, a correction was in order with a teaser from upcoming videos as compensation

River's Edge (TWIN PEAKS CINEMA podcast #2/LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #14)
A teenage girl's corpse found alongside a body of water ties Tim Hunter's most famous film directly to the series he'd later direct, although his portrait of amoral adolescents is much more firmly anchored in the early Gen X zeitgeist, overseen by aging Silent Gen eccentric Dennis Hopper...

FEBRUARY

January 2021 Patreon podcasts: LOST IN TWIN PEAKS #24 - Season 2 Episode 16 and LOST IN THE MOVIES #75 - Twin Peaks Cinema: Rebel Without a Cause (+ Twin Peaks Reflections: Hardy, Mountie, Harry's cabin, high school, Super Nadine/Dune & more)
Hopper can also be found among the original disenchanted teen ensemble in this fifties classic, whose sensitive, brooding adolescent aesthetic is in some ways much closer to Lynch's vision for Peaks

Upstream Color (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #15)
Knowing little about this avant-garde sci-fi going in, I decided to record my immediate thoughts before taking a break to research different theories, then returning to share those too

Journey Through Twin Peaks: Part 5 - Over the Mountain Pass
Picking up from the previous four parts by tracing the path to season three, my full presentation of this passage was finally ready after wrapping "Chapter 35 - The Bookhouse Boy (Mark Frost's Fiction and Nonfiction)" which I'd been editing consistently since November and shared for the first time as part of this line-up

LOST IN TWIN PEAKS: Teaser for Patreon podcast (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #16)
On "Twin Peaks Day" (the anniversary of when Agent Cooper arrived in town in 1989) I offer the public its first glimpse of what I've been up to on my patron podcast for two years with eight different clips covering episodes ranging from the pilot to the 2017 finale

MARCH

The Lobster (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #17)
A wry surreal "romantic comedy" (sort of?) in which relationships are either forbidden or enforced, with animal transformations as the consequence for breaking the rules

Images from a return to Twin Peaks (2 of 2): Mark Frost, Other Collaborators, and The Return
Although covering material from just three Journey Through Twin Peaks chapters, this screenshot collection is far bigger than any previous round-up: the latter half of Part 5 contains an unprecedented range of manipulated visuals

Start of Spring update
Forty weeks/nine months later, to the day, I decide to bookend this period by observing my (mostly) caught-up backlog and cautiously anticipating what lies over the horizon

Next: The Juggler's Dilemma (March - September 2021)
(in which I lay out an ambitious plan for the coming year, but barely keep up with the new schedule after immersing myself in Mad Men)


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