August 2025 Patreon round-up including Advanced Script for Journey Through Twin Peaks narration & Twin Peaks Conversations podcast

Americana is the theme on Patreon this month as I continued, for the top patron tier, a conversation with David Lynch's American Dreamscape author Mike Miley begun in a public YouTube video (the whole discussion is gathered in a separate cross-post, so I don't have much more to say about it here) and also offered all patrons a script for my narration of an upcoming Journey Through Twin Peaks chapter titled "American Shadows". An experiment in a more wide-ranging essay style, I haven't yet decided exactly what the visual approach will be (or if it will fit in with the other chapters at all), but it allowed me to explore some ideas which have been percolating from a marathon re-viewing of the series as well as recent reading - not just Mike's book but The Shape of Things to Come by Greil Marcus - and many real-world reflections of Twin Peaks' darker side. The end of this piece transitions into a description of the future chapters which will constitute the concluding phase of my Journey videos, and whose scripts I also plan to share on Patreon in upcoming months. Stay tuned!

What are the August rewards?

April 2025 Patreon round-up: EXCLUSIVE - Breaking Bad season 2 viewing diary (second part) + Advanced narration audio (& bonus still image) for Journey Through Twin Peaks

A couple months ago, I shared the first half of this Breaking Bad season's viewing diary (the previous season was covered for the public many years ago). I intended to wait until June to finish the season but other plans fell through and I decided that last month's patron pick podcast (on Penda's Fen) was enough of an interruption. The time had come to conclude Walter White's journey through season two. As much as I enjoyed the first seven episodes, I was even more bowled over by the last six, from the introduction of one of TV's most memorable supporting characters (eventually a lead in his own spin-off) to the grand, novelistic season finale teased from the premiere's first moments. Above all, the fleshing out of Walt's immensely compromised ethos alongside his flinty focus (and the way these two qualities interact) impressed me deeply. I was also struck by the structure the show develops while pursuing its multifaceted storytelling strategy. There was certainly a lot to discuss in these overviews and in the process I stretched my two-paragraph-per-episode format to its limits. I'm not sure yet when I'll watch the next season - not to mention the two after that - but I hope to resume the series later this year. For now, I want to focus on Journey Through Twin Peaks and other video projects, which this month yielded a couple advances: the audio recording of my narration for the upcoming 37 as well as an image which will be used in that chapter (an "in memoriam" mosaic of actors who passed away before The Return). I also conducted my usual bimonthly patron poll to determine next months' podcast topic for the top tier - a close contention resulting in the first runoff poll in six months.

What are the April rewards?

Twin Peaks status update: My work on Journey Through Twin Peaks resumes tonight on the 35th anniversary of the pilot, along w/ the long final phases of Lost in Twin Peaks & The TWIN PEAKS Character Series

"In DARKNESS the sound of a meadowlark's song."

- opening line of the script for the Twin Peaks pilot

Between 9pm and 11pm on April 8, 1990, ABC first aired the pilot of Twin Peaks. In tribute, tonight during that same two-hour timespan I'm going to finally initiate behind-the-scenes work on new and ultimately conclusive stretches of my TWIN PEAKS Character Series, my Lost in Twin Peaks podcast, and last but not least my Journey Through Twin Peaks video essays. In the first case, I'll be cracking into the top ten characters by looking at the pilot script and beginning to fill out the "offscreen mentions" and "deleted scenes" categories for all of those characters at once. In the second case, I'll begin to re-edit my Patreon episodes for the second season premiere while adding a new introduction and other elements necessary for the eventual public release. And in the third case, well, mysteries are a good thing...so I'm not sure yet sure if I'll return to a draft of the narration I wrote last fall and tighten it up, or if I'll begin picking David Lynch weather reports to include as quick clips in chapter 37 (about the poignant years after the third season). Only now does it occur to me that the order I plan to work on these projects reflects the trajectory of the series itself, from pilot to post-Return - a fitting tribute indeed! Obviously these efforts will only represent a few footsteps onto a much larger terrain. Nonetheless, I wanted to share this progress with readers, listeners, and/or viewers after so many delays and detours. Speaking of which, in the midst of this work in the next couple hours I'll also probably take a moment to watch some Twin Peaks itself (not the pilot, actually, but the opening sequence of the second season premiere), part of a longer rewatch I began Monday night. May the Giant be with me...

Journey Through Twin Peaks update: 10th anniversary & working on chapter 37 now

A decade ago today on October 1, 2014, not long after midnight, I uploaded my first Journey Through Twin Peaks video essay to Vimeo: the half-hour Part 1 (composed of five chapters) titled "Harmony of the Dark Woods". The narration was rough, and in fact I soon re-uploaded a whole new audio track, recorded by listening to the original on headphones while repeating its words at a less peak-y volume (no pun intended). The following day on October 2, 2014, I uploaded each of those first five chapters separately to YouTube. And then just one day after that, on October 3, 2014, David Lynch and Mark Frost simultaneously tweeted "That gum you like is going to come back in style..." fueling speculation which Showtime promptly confirmed. Twin Peaks would return to TV with new episodes. Unknowingly, I'd thrown myself deeper into Peaks than ever before at the exact moment its relevance was being renewed.

Even after that exciting revelation, I could never suspect that I'd still be working on new Journey Through Twin Peaks ten years later. The limited event series eventually came and went in 2017 and, having finished the initial run of Journey videos within several months of that first one, I vowed to continue my own series and eventually released a two-hour Part 5 in 2020-21 (largely exploring the "in-between" years of the nineties, zeroes, and early teens alongside a broad strokes analysis of The Return). Year after year, I kept promising a final batch of chapters to be gathered in a Part 6 focused on dissecting the third season (largely by story section) but I became swamped in other projects - Peaks and otherwise - so here we are, ten years down the road with a conclusion still distant on the horizon. The bad news is that this process keeps stretching out and getting kicked down the road, but that's a long familiar phenomenon at this point. On the other hand...

The good news is a fresh development I can now confirm: over this past month I have resumed work on my video series for the first time since March 2021, cutting a "memoriam" montage which will close chapter 37, drafting the narration, and exploring videos to illustrate my subject - in this case, the years since the last pieces of Twin Peaks material, an era swirling with rumors, theories, abandoned projects, and unfortunate passings. The opening of Part 6 was actually already completed five years ago and published in 2020 before Part 5, as "Dark Dreams on the Radio". Continuing that theme, the full chapter will be titled "Fading Signals" in reference to Lynch's comment at a 2018 Q&A about how the Carrie Page character and the final scene of season three were "calling" to him but there were disturbances in that signal. There is obviously a meta quality to all of this, as after this passage of time I am reflecting on a passage of time following a show which is itself about the passage of time.

And how much more time will pass before it's public? Initially I harbored some hope of posting the chapter on this very anniversary but its format proved too complicated for imminent release. As such, even after the video is complete I'll probably wait to publish chapter 37 in 2025, closer to when subsequent chapters will also be ready. Ultimately, I would like - emphasis on like (no more promises, never again!) - to unveil the remaining chapters in three groups: the first eight around the spring of 2025, a couple more in 2026, and the final two during significant anniversaries around the end of summer in 2027. I also want to share the public version of the Lost in Twin Peaks second season podcast and the top thirty of my TWIN PEAKS Character Series during this broad timespan, along with some non-Peaks video essay projects. As always, you can follow the progress of these projects here; the big new development is that I'm no longer waiting to complete the others before resuming Journey Through Twin Peaks. Instead, I will be working on and sharing these videos alongside everything else.

Thanks for your patience and I hope you continue to enjoy the ride.

Here is where it all began on October 1, 2014...

September 2024 Patreon round-up: EXCLUSIVE - Films in Focus podcast #5: Safe + Advanced Script for Journey Through Twin Peaks narration

In July, my $5/month tier patrons chose a podcast subject which echoed the previous episode in May: two Jonathan Glazer films back-to-back. Now the bimonthly poll has chosen to bookend that directorial double feature with another auteurist pair. Following March's selection of Todd Haynes' latest film May December, the September episode rolls back three decades for Haynes' second film Safe (also starring Julianne Moore as a fragile housewife, albeit a more sympathetic character in this case). The portrait of Southern Californian woman collapsing under the weight of environmental illness, struggling to forge her own identity only to be sucked into a manipulative self-help cult, the movie was marketed inaccurately as some kind of sci-fi thriller, has been characterized unusually but not inaccurately as a horror movie, and resonates even more strongly in an age grappling with the aftermath of Covid-19 and the uneasy anticipation of a chemically induced apocalypse. From its first half delivered in Kubrickian wide shots of modernist interiors to its second half absorbed in loneliness- and desperation-inducing western exteriors, Safe provides a fascinating challenge to viewers. How much of this ailment is in Carol White's surroundings, and how much is in her own head? Along with this question, I explore the nineties film's relationship to the eighties it depicts, the influence of Douglas Sirk's fifties melodramas, the correspondences and differences with Jeanne Dielman, and several connections to Lynch works (although, surprisingly in retrospect, I don't mention Lost Highway which was shot the year Safe came out and also depicts a character's disintegration in two very distinct halves, one involving a modernist L.A. home while the other features a breakdown in the desert).

Meanwhile I shared with all patrons the script for my narration of an upcoming Journey Through Twin Peaks chapter. Tomorrow I'll discuss my shifting approach to this project (something I hinted at back in July, in this Patreon update I forgot to include in that month's cross-post, though I've gone back to add it now). For now, from the $1/month tier up, you can read a draft covering the post-Return period in all of its melancholically hopeful and disappointed flavor.

What are the September rewards?

2023 on Lost in the Movies: Finally the Characters, Pausing the Podcasts, and the Final Journey (status update)

Journey Through Twin Peaks will conclude in 2023 with the Part 6 video essays.

The TWIN PEAKS Character Series will finally resume next week (but may not conclude).

As for the season two episodes of the Lost in Twin Peaks podcast, well...

I'm approaching a crescendo for my online work after nine years of Twin Peaks and fifteen years more broadly. Where do things stand at the end of this year?

Spring Update: Schedule for 2022 & 2023 (video)

This is my prospective schedule for everything I'll publish in the next year and a half. As explained in the video below, the top priorities - aside from maintaining my four monthly podcasts (much of which will be based on pre-existing material) - are re-packaging my Lost in Twin Peaks podcast for Fire Walk With Me, The Return, and season two (in that order) and rebooting my TWIN PEAKS Character Series last seen in 2017. The "Unseen" series and miscellaneous work will be pursued only if the big stuff is going well. And it all leads toward resuming Journey Through Twin Peaks next summer, which means those videos will have to be my exclusive focus (in terms of behind the scenes work) by early 2023, hopefully even by late 2022.

Meanwhile, I continue to track my work on my backlog here (and in a new Twitter thread). Finishing this announcement today - plus recently bringing my Top Posts and picture gallery pages up to date - puts me in a spot where I'm a full month ahead on everything I'll publish on any platform. That means I can spend April building up a backlog for Lost in Twin Peaks and the character entries, to avoid falling behind as I so often have before. If I do get bogged down (certainly possible especially as a busy period of offline work will pick up soon), I'll stick to the priorities and give up some projects if I have to. But it feels like the year is off to a good start; the Olympic Series in particular was a nice way to build up some momentum after autumn burnout.

Thanks as always for your interest and support. This looks to be one of the most crucial periods in my site's history, perhaps the most important of all, as I reach the climax of a decade-long focus on Twin Peaks.

JOURNEY THROUGH TWIN PEAKS: Season 3 in pieces (a summer of mini-chapters from the chapter 36 video)

Since it will be a while until new Journey Through Twin Peaks chapters are ready (I am currently barely keeping up with my "Path back" schedule), I decided to upload my Journey video on season three in smaller, bite-size chunks, each between three and six minutes. My chronological coverage of "The Return" is already available as a full half hour on Vimeo and YouTube (where it is currently undergoing a dispute that will hopefully be resolved soon). It is also embedded within the larger Part 5 which wrapped up this winter. However, I wanted to give viewers the opportunity to linger over the different sections of Lynch's and Frost's winding narrative - in some cases, I isolated a span of episodes, in others a double that aired the same night, only half of a particularly dense episode.

Rather than dump these on the channel all at once, I shared them one by one on the fourth anniversaries of the episodes. When I had to delay the releases of the Part 8 videos, I pushed them back to the seventy-sixth anniversary of the first atomic testing on July 16 and the sixty-fifth anniversary of the fictional events in New Mexico, and I set the videos up as "premieres". This created a fun little occasion for each one, with people setting reminders, hopping in ahead of time, and/or joining a chat. This is something I'd like to do in the future as well, starting with the "Twin Peaks Conversations" I'll be uploading monthly on YouTube.

Here are all of the videos from this summer:

The Anti-Pilot (Parts 1 & 2)

From Cosmos to Carpet (Parts 3 & 4)

Your Weekly Peaks (Parts 5 - 8)

The Fire and the Fireman (Atomic Aftermath) - watch here if embed is unavailable

A Darkness in the Desert (New Mexico 1956) - watch here if embed is unavailable

Bittersweet Passage (Parts 9 - 13) - watch here if embed is unavailable

Forked Path (Parts 14 - 16) - watch here if embed is unavailable

The Two-Sided Finale (Parts 17 & 18) - watch here if embed is unavailable

You can also watch them on a single playlist.

The long return to Journey Through Twin Peaks: a behind-the-scenes essay (pt. 3 of 4)

The first part of this essay provides the context which my original 2014 - 15 video series JOURNEY THROUGH TWIN PEAKS grew out of and the second part details their process of creation. This third part focuses on the videos I published in 2020 - 21 which cover Twin Peaks' third season and the other work of the show's contributors. A fourth part of this essay will follow next year, after I've created more videos focused exclusively on season three.

Visit

Journey Through Twin Peaks Part 5 - "Over the Mountain Pass"

to view all videos discussed in this essay

In the summer of 2018, following a cousin's wedding near San Francisco, I flew north to visit another cousin in Seattle. During this visit, we took a day trip to the area where Twin Peaks was shot, my first visit to the small towns of North Bend and Snoqualmie, as well as a few locations closer to the city - or even in its very heart (did you know that the rustic Roadhouse is actually a theater embedded right in downtown Seattle?). I'd moved from California to New Hampshire a couple years earlier but while out west again I was struck by how much...bigger everything is there. Not just the massive trees which dwarf eastern timber, but also the large patches of uninhabited areas between cities as well as the very sprawl of those cities (Los Angeles obviously, but even smaller urban centers like Seattle feel more spread out, less clustered, than a metropolis like New York or Boston). Paradoxically, both the bulk of massive natural phenomena like redwoods or the Rockies and the preponderance of empty or less densely populated spaces contribute to this experience of bigness, vast both vertically and horizontally.

About a year and a half after this trip, I finally got to work on new chapters of Journey Through Twin Peaks (although the ideas behind them had been percolating for a long time). These sprawling, scattered, grand-scale videos, in process and end result, bear the same relationship to my earlier videos as the West Coast does to the East. The contrasts are endless and illuminating. Parts 1 - 4 of Journey, assembled in just over four months in the fall and winter of 2014 - 15, were acts of extreme concentration. Little else filtered into my consciousness aside from Twin Peaks and my devotion to illustrating its chronological journey, mostly using clips from the series or film even as I expanded and experimented with my palette in the latter chapters. Part 5 of Journey, the form that these 2020 - 21 videos would eventually be assembled into, took nearly a year, during which my attention was spread across many other projects too. This also happened to be perhaps the most eventful historical epoch of my entire life even if I (like most of the world) was isolated in my experience of it. Part 5 was itself quite jumbled - both in terms of chronology and subject matter - and on top of that it was created all out of order, with the "last" section completed and released nine months before what were supposed to be earlier passages. Part 5 also ended up being longer than any previous comparable unit, indeed half the runtime of the previous four parts combined (its largest component chapter was itself almost as long as Part 1), and far from limiting itself to Twin Peaks (though it leapt around all three seasons and Fire Walk With Me, along with spin-off materials) it incorporated clips from well over a hundred different source materials scoured from YouTube or via hunts down different avenues.

Yet out of this often bewildering and overwhelming process, I was able to craft something that feels very much of a piece with the earlier videos - an expansion that carries on their spirit - and when I wasn't exasperated with delays or juggling different inputs and outputs, I had a ball putting it together. An order eventually emerged from the swirling activity.

If the writing, preparation, and editing of Journey Through Twin Peaks Part 5 was a complicated and drawn-out endeavor, so was the lead-up to it. Though I'll try to keep myself focused on the period of these videos, an introduction is necessary to set the stage because five long years passed between finishing Part 4 and initiating Part 5, much longer than I expected.

I am now keeping track of my progress on various projects here.

This schedule has been cancelled. I will not be attempting an approach this ambitious again. In order to reach Journey Through Twin Peaks in a reasonable manner, I am only focusing on a handful of high-priority projects that were already begun, plus monthly commitments like Patreon rewards and minimal public podcasts.

The rest of this post remains as a record of what I hoped to accomplish in 2021 - 22.

CURRENT STATUS was Step 16 - while advancing/mixing many steps now - of 56

(21 full or partial steps before resuming work on Journey Through Twin Peaks)

as of October 28, WORKING ON...

 1 day ahead of schedule: closest deadline is October 28

(for Lost in Twin Peaks #4F - "S1E4 in the Weeds" public podcast in step 19)

Other deadlines are pushed aside as I prioritize a few projects 

+ this week: I've fallen behind on various weekly/monthly interruptions like covering new releases for my podcast or covering Olympics documentaries

(see bottom of this post for more details on interruptions)

INTRODUCTION

Over the years, I've created different "Path" schedules for ongoing projects including the Journey Through Twin Peaks video series (which you can view on YouTube and Vimeo). I've had varying degrees of success, often depending on an early head start. In this case I tried to frontload time-sensitive material. This page will be continually updated both up top and down below (in red font), to track my progress toward "Part 6" of Journey Through Twin Peaks (which will cover various themes and locations in the third season) - as well as several major endeavors along the way: monthly patron podcasts, more frequent public podcasts, video essays on Citizen Kane, a few final seasons of my Mad Men viewing diary, and a long-delayed update and conclusion for my written Twin Peaks character series begun in 2017.

You can also follow my progress on Twitter threads (I'm currently in this one) which will be active and linked here around the evening of May 7. This video discusses the completion of Journey Part 5, plans for Part 6, how I will tackle my backlog behind the scenes, and what will be published during that time:

My goal is to begin premiering new Journey Through Twin Peaks videos, once all of them have already been completed, around the fifth anniversary of season three's debut or, perhaps, finale (when my podcast coverage of the season concludes). I'd say "See you in 2022" but of course, as this schedule shows, I'll have plenty to share before then. Thanks for your support and appreciation, and I hope you enjoy the ride as well as the destination.

This schedule began on May 18, 2021...

THE STEPS ON THE PATH

Images from a return to Twin Peaks (2 of 2): Mark Frost, Other Collaborators, and The Return

The first collection features many other screenshots from Part 5

(corresponding to chapters 29-33 on YouTube)

This concludes my screenshot collection of all juxtapositions, superimpositions, explanatory titles, collage-like mosaics or other visual manipulations from my video essay series Journey Through Twin Peaks Part 5 - "Over the Mountain Pass". This process has escalated with each part - for Parts 1 and 2, a few screenshots were included alongside the videos; Part 3 featured many more, and by Part 4 there were so many screenshots I needed a whole separate post for them. By Part 5, I had to split this screenshot collection in two, and this round-up right here is over twice as long as the previous one. The Mark Frost section in particular is cluttered with original compositions, which is what happens when you need to visualize the work of someone whose output was frequently literary. As a result, that standalone video on YouTube (chapter 35) took months to create, far longer than any other individual entry in Journey (you can also watch chapter 34, about the original series collaborators, and chapter 36, a chronological journey through the third season, on YouTube). Hopefully this offers an enjoyable opportunity to pause and explore the various comparisons and illustrations on their own, separate from the whole.

Journey Through Twin Peaks: Part 5 - Over the Mountain Pass

A two-hour journey bringing us back to Twin Peaks

(available in eight individual chapters or as a two-volume video essay)

This is a follow-up to Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4 of Journey Through Twin Peaks; images related to Part 5 are featured in my first and upcoming (live in mid-March) second collection of screenshots.

Follow the path through Journey Through Twin Peaks to keep track of the upcoming Part 6

What's onscreen: a tale of two creators, David Lynch and Mark Frost, who were far apart fifteen years ago yet found themselves collaborating once again, on a revival of their most beloved work, within a decade. Although divided up into several different arrangements depending how you watch, this tale unfolds in four stories that coalesce into a fifth.

A TWIN PEAKS Character Series announcement & a clip from Journey Through Twin Peaks (status update)

Just a few days ago I discovered that a draft post had accidentally been published on this site. It announced, in great detail, the debut of a Revised TWIN PEAKS Character Series, laying out a schedule for 2021 and promising that the entire project - with entries on every major and many minor Peaks characters - was already complete and would go up on a guaranteed schedule throughout the year.

Oops.

This post was actually written several years ago and was never intended to be made public since the project it announced won't be ready until at least 2022. I'd simply scheduled it long ago and forgotten to revert to draft mode after deciding to put the work on hold. I apologize for this embarrassing confusion, especially given how confident the proclamations in the introduction were. While I never promoted the post (either on social media or on the front page or "blogroll" page of this site), it still garnered dozens of views, which means there are probably a handful of confused readers out there who were anticipating further material which never arrived (although I think another post or two may have gone up for a short period as well, even before I fixed the introductory piece which was up for the longest).

The good news is I'm almost exclusively focusing on my Mark Frost video essay at the moment, and it should finally be ready in a week or two. I won't predict this with full certainty (I originally thought the whole thing would take about a week, and it's dragged out over two months), but there isn't a whole lot left to do on this, the most ambitious and time-consuming standalone video I've ever assembled. Due to the wealth of source material and the need to illustrate nonvisual texts, it's been challenging on many different fronts - I look forward to finally sharing it with all of you. For now, here's a preview. This two-minute clip explores some of Frost's novels, highlighting how they relate to Twin Peaks. Next week I'll have my regularly scheduled public podcast up. I'm hoping that the new Journey chapter will be ready the week after that. Stay tuned.

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

The second collection, to be published here in March, will feature many other screenshots from Part 5

Here are screenshots of all the juxtapositions, superimpositions, titles, collage-like mosaics or other visual manipulations from the first half of my video essay series Journey Through Twin Peaks Part 5 - "Over the Mountain Pass". I included (far fewer) image highlights with the cross-posts for Parts 1, 2, and 3; for Part 4 I needed a whole separate post full of screenshots and now I obviously need double that for Part 5! I'll share the second half in a week or two (update: postponed by several months), depending on when I finish the last of these videos. You can see these images in their original video context in my cross-posts for chapters 29, 30, and 31-33. However, these images aren't simply teasers for the videos - I hope in this format, where they can be lingered over, they fuel new contemplation and enjoyment.

Though most of this line-up appears in the order of the videos, it begins with one of the most fun passages to create, in which I juxtapose Lynch's stylistic evolution over the course of his film career from 1977 to 2006 with the six Twin Peaks episodes he directed in 1990 and 1991. It's amazing how they serve as a microcosm of that larger pattern.

New path through Journey Through Twin Peaks

This schedule is NO LONGER ACTIVE and has been replaced by

"The Path back to Journey Through Twin Peaks"

as of May 2021

INTRODUCTION

So far, I've outlined two schedules to help me create new Journey Through Twin Peaks video essays - and to make the process transparent for curious followers. The first "path," which took me right up to the first new video in five years, was more successful than the second; intended to carry me to the last video, this summer's schedule was abandoned when steps fell completely out of order and I passed initial deadlines by months. For this third phase, I've tried to hew closer to that first approach, as I chart a nine-month outline that can guide me through the remaining thirteen or so videos as well as my obligations to patrons (monthly reward podcasts) and my desire to keep the site active while I focus on new videos that may not appear for months. The key is to create a backlog of work ahead of time, prioritizing time-sensitive obligations, so that once I return to the world of Journey Through Twin Peaks I can stay there as long as possible.

To pull this off, the new "path" has four parts: "catch-up" (unfinished work I fell behind on), "new runway" (creating an extensive backlog to keep up my public and patron routine through June 2021 - I have now decided to create a backlog through September instead), "video prep" (previously one step but now broken into several to reflect different components of my research), and finally "video focus." I also make note of possible, hopefully brief, interruptions along the way as well as a general timeframe I'd like to keep these steps within.

As before, I will continuously update this page to track my progress. This Twitter thread will follow along in even closer detail as I complete different components of each step.

THE STEPS ON THE PATH

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

update 10/7: The video is finally published

ORIGINAL INTRO & DAILY PROGRESS

Stay tuned and bookmark this post for more news and eventually, the next Journey Through Twin Peaks video chapter.

Consider this post both an announcement and a placeholder for the next, long-delayed "missing chapter" of my Twin Peaks video series - about the collaborators on the original series, it's provisionally titled "A Candle in Every Window" (playing on my memory of a quote from the Mark Frost introduction to the re-published Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, the I can't find the actual passage at present). I will update this post with my progress as I go (which I will also be keeping track of on Twitter) and I will cross-post the video here when I'm done.

Though I'm hesitant to proclaim deadlines given how often they get postponed, in this case I can make a commitment as well. All of my available "online project" free time will be devoted to this video from now on - I won't even tackle my monthly patron commitments until the video is uploaded on YouTube (another incentive to get it done by the last week of September if not sooner). [revision 9/18: unfortunately, I quickly discovered that I need to finish a Mark Frost book, thanks to a hard library due date, and complete one more public podcast which I overlooked, but after THAT, no distractions!] Updates begin, hopefully, as soon as tonight...

UPDATES ON THE PROGRESS OF CHAPTER 34:

* * *

September 18: re-wrote the narration after losing the file I recorded in July (this version is shorter, although still too long, and will require less cutting as I tighten the chapter during editing)

September 21: re-recorded the narration, catching up to where I was mid-summer

September 23: although not directly related to this video, I published a tie-in public podcast on films by Twin Peaks episode directors (listen to it here) - this was also the last obstacle in my path to focusing entirely on chapter 34 during my "online work" time

September 26: finally began editing the video - I will now use this post to track, day-by-day, how far this process has progressed so stay tuned and keep checking in

September 27: narration is cut down (some material may be saved for an eventual standalone video) and I've begun choosing clips for the introduction

September 28: continued choosing clips for the introduction - a montage of house/lights footage from different films by episode directors

September 29: finished intro montage and began designing "editors" mosaic sequence (displaying a clip from every original series episode on the same screen)

September 30: continued designing "editors" mosaic sequence (chose clips for each episode and began creating titles/freeze-frames etc

October 1: completed the "editors" mosaic sequence; here is a screenshot:

October 2: created opening of "directors" sequence with clips of directors' credits and juxtapositions with their Mad Men episodes

October 3: continued "directors" sequence with Mad Men episodes and some of their feature films

October 4: finished "directors" sequence including side-by-side montage of episodes and feature films (this was by far my longest day)

October 5: created quick "production designer/cinematographers/composer" sequence and began "writers" sequence - now all that remains is the Harley Peyton/Robert Engels part, which is about half the chapter but much less visually complex than other sequences, and I'll have all day today to work on it

October 6: created the majority of the Harley Peyton/Robert Engels writers sequence (although I spent too much time trying to figure out what clips had been used in past chapters through a more in-the-weeds approach than necessary) and I stopped working at the point where I would cross-reference other Engels work; also, worth noting there will be one coda after Engels is finished, addressing Frost in a way that transitions into the following chapter

Late Summer Update: Journey Through Twin Peaks + updates to Top Posts and the picture gallery

The short version is that hopefully I can finally publish the two missing chapters for my video essay series Journey Through Twin Peaks in September (I would love to have chapter 34 up by September 3, the third anniversary of Twin Peaks' third season finale, but that seems unlikely). After that, I am going to make a new "Path through Journey Through Twin Peaks" schedule which will be tighter and stricter and the Part 6 videos will probably premiere throughout the winter and maybe even next spring.

In other words, I'll finally focus on finishing Part 5 (the lead-up to season 3) as soon as my August Patreon posts are up, followed by a few months building a backlog of non-Journey content to keep this site active through the fall and winter, followed by an exclusive focus on Part 6 (different story areas of season 3) with plenty of breathing room to build up some momentum and a regular pace of publication.

Meanwhile, I want to let readers know that I've just updated a couple key pages on this site for the first time in a year and a half. Both are enjoyable ways to explore my work and, in the gallery's case, to linger over many striking images:

TOP POSTS

THE PICTURE GALLERY

Here's the longer version what's been going on and where I'm headed...

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

As a few projects take longer than expected, now seemed like a good moment to pause for a status update - and the requisite random Anna Karina picture that always goes with these posts. Early June was supposed to be reserved for some behind-the-scenes work before kicking off Part 6 of Journey, but not only is Part 5 unfinished, my side work hit unforeseen snags too. Mad Men was removed from Netflix literally the day before I planned to resume my viewing diary with season four, so I'm now awaiting physical discs in the mail. This is necessarily a slower process (yes, the site still offers that service; God help us when they don't). I'll now be working on these alongside my video essays instead of beforehand - so expect the first one in a few weeks rather than right away.

So where do we go from here? I mentioned this while cross-posting my Twin Peaks Unwrapped appearance last week, but I will be taking a new approach to my weekly schedule going forward, hopefully for years to come (with some exceptions in 2021, as noted below). Every week I'll publish at least one new entry - even if it's a simple announcement like this one - and, on rare occasions, I'll even publish as many as five between Monday and Friday. But different days will be reserved for different types of entries, with 8am the standard time. Here's what I have in mind  (click on images for past examples):

MONDAY

any TV viewing diary entry (*or Twin Peaks character series in January - May 2021) reserved for Monday

TUESDAY

latest round-up for any of my video essays published on YouTube or Vimeo reserved for Tuesday

WEDNESDAY

any written film review or general essay (*or Twin Peaks character series throughout all of 2021) reserved for Wednesday

THURSDAY

monthly, maybe eventually weekly, round-up of my own podcast (Patreon and coming-soon public episodes), plus guest appearances on other podcasts when applicable, reserved for Thursday

FRIDAY

RANDOM/BONUS entry (*including Twin Peaks character series in January - May 2021) reserved for Friday

You can check in on a given day depending on your interest or, as always, follow my "blogroll" page to keep track of my latest work of any type. Again, months could go by without, say, a particular TV viewing diary entry or video essay; for the most part, I won't be posting five times a week - more usually, I'll be sticking to one or two ongoing projects at a time. But keeping these days reserved for a particular type will keep these projects from bumping into each other and ideally offer readers some sense of routine to my ongoing work.

As the schedule indicates, I've been tinkering behind the scenes on my long-paused "TWIN PEAKS Character Series" (whose original incarnation was published in early 2017, and forced to halt because I couldn't reach the top twenty before the Showtime premiere). The new series will include entries for new characters, extend entries on old ones who reappeared, and update the ranking based on season three - as indicated, the plan is currently for it to run between the first and last week of 2021, with three entries almost every week through the end of May, and a single entry for each of the top thirty from June onward.

Of course, before I get there I need to focus on Journey Through Twin Peaks throughout 2020. As soon as I finish this month's Lost in Twin Peaks rewatch podcast episode for Patreon (covering the big climax of the Laura Palmer investigation), I'll be back to work on the two "missing" chapters - 34 and 35 - from that video series. One video will survey the broad sweep of collaborators like Harley Peyton, Bob Engels, and the various episode directors of the original series. The other video, which will probably be one of my longest chapters of all, will explore the work of Mark Frost and how it relates to Twin Peaks old and new.

Because I wanted to get some season three material up for the third anniversary on May 21, I raced ahead to chapter 36 - and ran straight into the brick wall of YouTube copyright police. The song "Wicked Game" was flagged at the end of the video, which was blocked for two days. It was restored after that (as the dispute remained pending), gathering views, likes, and great comments, and was then blocked again, forcing me to appeal and wait even longer for the situation to be resolved - probably mid-July at the earliest.

I've covered those snags here and here but at the moment, the most important update is that I've uploaded chapter 36 on Vimeo, the site I usually save for complete "Parts" (given that chapter 36, at nearly half an hour, is as long as chapters 1 - 5 combined, it's a worthy exception). You can watch and share it from here:

And now Vimeo also includes a compilation of chapters 31 - 33, my trilogy of videos on the evolving aesthetic of David Lynch and the nature of his collaboration with editor/partner Mary Sweeney, into a single standalone presentation titled "Dream Souls." (Due to repeated technical difficulties, I had to replace the initial video file but the correct version is now available.)

Thanks and see you with some fresh videos soon - hopefully by the end of the month.

Twin Peaks Unwrapped - 5th anniversary celebration

image by Robert Farkas

This week, the Twin Peaks Unwrapped podcast celebrates its fifth anniversary. When Ben and Bryon kicked off their endeavor in 2015, they used an introcast format with veteran Ben guiding novice Bryon through the series for the first time (and desperately trying to keep him from skipping too far ahead). Since then, they've expanded their approach to include segments on a variety of subjects, community rewatches of the original episodes, year-end round-ups, and even a book collecting old and new work alike. And of course, one of their specialties has been conversations with cast/crew and fellow fans - my own first appearance was very early, just after they'd spoken to Catherine Coulson (a humbling precedent) in what I believe was her last interview. Since then I've made numerous guest appearances, and now I've joined them again, just in the nick of time near the end of an hour-plus Zoom meet-up in which they discussed the series and laid out their own plans (the coronavirus disrupted their commitment to conclude the podcast in 2020). There were many guests beforehand, whom I'm looking forward to hearing myself. When I popped in, we talked about my Journey Through Twin Peaks videos (and behind-the-scenes character series work), our meet-up last fall, and the prospect of more Twin Peaks. I'm also psyched to join them soon for some key rewatches and (perhaps most of all) for another glorious/ridiculous "Twin Peaks madness" bracket game - this time for season three.

You can watch/listen here:

By the way, from now on rather than posting every Wednesday I will post on whatever day of the week my given entry aligns with. Monday, as was the case last fall, will be reserved for Mad Men viewing diaries (I'm just kicking off season four now); my latest video essay(s) will be shared on Tuesday; any random review will publish on Wednesday; and a podcast episode, including my monthly Patreon round-up, will be cross-posted on Thursday. I'll reserve Friday for anything else. Usually there will only be one, maybe two entries going up in a week - but there will always be at least one. And I'll schedule these for 8am most days but today I wasn't sure what time the Unwrapped video would go up, so this may be timed a little later.

JOURNEY THROUGH TWIN PEAKS: The Return (video)

MOST CURRENT UPDATE (7/12): After seven weeks of copyright dispute, including a long period during which the video was blocked, it's back up on YouTube.

For the third anniversary of the season three premiere, May 21, I've long planned to unveil my first video essay dealing directly with the Showtime series. This is to be a survey of "The Return"'s narrative chronologically, dealing more with the overall shape and viewer perceptions than the details of the plot (which would be saved for the thematically or geographically organized chapters of the forthcoming Part 6). The form this video itself takes, however, remains an open question: as I script the narration right now I'm realizing just how long this chapter could be - far too long for a single YouTube upload (even though I originally intended it to be my longest of those). I may have to turn this one "chapter" into an entire "Part," releasing each of the "mini-chapters" separately as, well, actual full-fledged chapters - in this case, only the section covering the two-hour premiere would go up tomorrow - this would also be helpful if I end up getting as bogged down in the editing process as I have in the scripting, since there would be less material to put together before the deadline. Or I'll stick to the original plan by cutting my narration way down, streamlining the presentation into a much more rapid take on the full season. The process has become so complicated that I even forgot to publish this update in time; for once, my ritualistic Wednesday site post is a half-hour late! Anyway, I'll see you tomorrow in some capacity so stay tuned. Meanwhile, if you missed them, you can check out my recent trilogy of chapters on the evolution of the Lynch aesthetic and particularly the "Mary Sweeney years" in which the director's and editor's collaboration coincided with a radical shift in style.

UPDATE (6/12) - While the video was blocked on YouTube, I cross-posted it to Vimeo, which I usually reserve for full parts rather than individual chapters:

UPDATE (5/27) - To make sure subscribers were aware that the video had gone up, I shared this video:

And this announcement video, with excerpts and an explanation, was posted when the chapter was initially withheld on Sunday. If you have any trouble viewing the full video over the next few weeks, you can see clips here:

I also published an earlier excerpt/teaser, with just the Parts 1 & 2 section, on the May 21 deadline when the rest of the chapter was not ready. This was deleted a few days later when I uploaded the full video.