Back to the Future Part II as Twin Peaks Cinema #18 - Disordered Stories (podcast) + Back to the Future capsule

Tomorrow is the sixth anniversary of the future - the day that Marty McFly stepped into the 2015 version of Hill Valley as envisioned by the creators of Back to the Future Part II in 1989. The same year that Lynch/Frost Productions descended upon the Seattle area to establish Twin Peaks, Robert Zemeckis released the ambitious sequel to his 1985 hit Back to the Future. After spending all of his time travel in 1955 for the original film, Marty zips back and forth across the space/time continuum in this follow-up. He rescues his own son from catastrophe, returns to an alternate version of '85 run by a distinctly Trumpian Biff Tanner and finally winds up returning to the site of the first movie: spying on past events while trying to retrieve an item from the future which could threaten his own present. Got that? If Peaks can be perplexing and maddening due to its ambiguity and surrealism, Part II poses the opposite challenge. Its intricate interplay of meta-narratives and sci-fi concepts may make you either giddy or dizzy depending on your mood. While Marty initially travels to the year that David Lynch would film The Return, and his return to the Potterville-like alt-'85 resonates with Cooper's and Carrie's nocturnal sojourn in the season three finale, it's the third part of Back to the Future Part II that connects with Twin Peaks most strongly: a hero attempts to both alter and maintain the past and a filmmaker returns to his own earlier work, incorporating new and old footage into a new context, presenting the familiar from a skewed perspective.

After exploring the film in its own right as well as its Peaks connections, this podcast also incorporates some bonus material from my Patreon archives: a two-minute quickie capsule review of the original Back to the Future, a clip from my video essay comparing different eras in the town, an early tease for this eventual recording, and some memorable listener feedback which, unusually, scorns rather than praises the subject matter. This episode kicks off a new themed mini-season: "Disordered Stories", in which chronologically skewed films echo, amplify, and contrast with Twin Peaks' own narrative games.

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LINKS FOR EPISODE 18

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)

update: links to podcasts have been fixed & ep. 14 coverage has now been opened to $1/month patrons

October features a few timely themes on my patron podcasts. I will be opening up my coverage of Twin Peaks' killer's reveal episode to all patrons on Halloween (not only an appropriately haunting holiday but also Frank Silva's and Michael J. Anderson's birthdays, and the day Fire Walk With Me's production concluded...). And that episode provides the springboard, on my other podcast, for a "Twin Peaks Reflections" discussion of some of the show's most compelling storylines, locations, and characters - including Laura Palmer herself. Also on my main monthly podcast, I'm celebrating - albeit a week later - the fifth anniversary of the "future" date in Back to the Future Part II: October 21, 2015. Even more prescient, that film includes a very Trumpian evolution for its prime villain which seems relevant less than a week before we learn the re-election prospects of President Biff Tannen. Of course, this wildly fun and clever eighties sequel is under discussion primarily as a surprising Twin Peaks tie-in. Before season three, the relationship was extremely tangential (though there are still a few points of contact to mention). After the final episodes aired, the two works seemed shockingly akin. Meanwhile, for top-tier patrons our voyage into the interdimensional travel and drug sting operations of mid-season two continues - as does the historical context of the Gulf War (and, for that matter, the Civil War) - in my latest episode of Lost in Twin Peaks...

Lost in Twin Peaks #21: S2E13 (Checkmate/"Episode 20")

Episode 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)

NOW AVAILABLE:

Lost in Twin Peaks #15 - Killer's Reveal/S2E7

(Lonely Souls/"Episode 14")

Podcast Line-Ups for...

Back to the Future: Welcome to Hill Valley (video)

update 10/20: The video is up!

The more things change...: A collage/catalog of Forrest Gump

I've always been obsessed with cataloging experiences, creating variations on a theme, and juxtaposing change and consistency against one another (as well as viewing characters changing against historical backdrops, and maturing from one age to another). As such, I can't help being endlessly fascinated by Forrest Gump. It is chock-full of repetitions, variations, catalogs: sometimes droll, sometimes somber, sometimes sentimental. Below I've included nine image-compilations as examples; if you want to see larger versions of these pictures, click on the image.

An Open Letter to Toontown

November 20, 2011

Toontown City Council, c/o Cloverfield Development Co.

Acme Avenue & Avery Alley

Toontown, CA 90@#!

Dear Toons,

Well, gang, I just watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit again, this time for an online series called "Fixing a Hole." (You remember holes, those convenient black discs you carry around in your pockets, portable escape hatches when you're in a pickle. Incidentally, how much those go for nowadays?). Anyway, the movie was a delight as always; though the climax is a bit drawn-out, the appearance of a one-dimensional Judge Doom, crushed and cackling like some maniacal cross between Johnny Paper and Johnny Rotten, is well worth the wait.

I dug that, and I laughed along with Roger, cringed for Baby Herman (somebody tell that middle-aged infant about Viagra, or better yet, don't), and marveled at Bob Hoskins' ability to play it straight even as he was acting against thin ai-  er, I mean, against real, live Toons who must have been rather intimidating “in the flesh.” And Jessica Rabbit. Oh Jessica Rabbit. With her in their extended family, it’s no wonder the fluffy-tailed little mammals are so eager to breed.

Remembering the Movies, Dec. 3 - 9

Every Friday, we look back at films released 10-100 years ago this week.

Visit Remembering the Movies to further peruse the past

This week, "Remembering the Movies" takes a walk on the wild side - surrealism, fantasy, and passionate affairs are all in the offing, as are deserted islands and dilapidated attics, exotic adventures and anthropomorphic westerns, the birth pangs of the "Felliniesque," the adolescent angst of Tim Burton, and the death rattle of the sixties counterculture. There are two personal recollections for films I saw in their initial run, two collections of screen-caps for short cartoons, and a fresh review of Flash Gordon, which I watched for the first time tonight. I have also excerpted a contentious contemporary argument between my favorite critic and my favorite documentary filmmakers (Point: filmmakers) about the hypnotic, hallucinatory and disturbing Gimme Shelter. See The Documentary Blog for the full back-and-forth. As always the black words are my own, the red, quotations.