Fall 2026 Project Update: Lost in Twin Peaks Season 2 current events episodes complete, storyline episodes underway

Every turn-of-the-season (this one is publishing at the exact minute of the autumnal equinox), I'm offering readers of this website an update on my three major unfinished projects: the Journey Through Twin Peaks video series (begun in 2014), the written TWIN PEAKS Character Series (begun in 2016), and the Lost in Twin Peaks podcast (begun in 2018). Work on a fourth project, the Mirrors of Kane video series (begun in 2016 but based on an essay written in 2011), concluded this past winter and was released over the summer.

At the conclusion of the season that starts tonight, we will be one year out from my pause on exclusive Patreon podcasts in order to focus all of my attention on long-brewing, long-term projects. That said, I've ended up diverting some attention to submitting articles to a local (New Hampshire) publication, The Laker, including columns on film whose digitally scanned editions I've been cross-posting here every month or so. Nonetheless, the bulk of my online work time has been centered on Lost in Twin Peaks - the Patreon podcast I am re-editing and smoothing out for public presentation - which is proving to be about as much of a beast as it always has been since I began this part of the process in 2021. More details on my ever-evolving and closely-tracked progress on that front follow below, along with the status of other projects (although these have not changed since the previous update on the first day of summer). More specific daily progress can be tracked on this constantly updated page).

Summer 2026 Project Update: Journey Through Twin Peaks "Americana" chapter & Lost in Twin Peaks Season 2 Premiere episode complete

Every turn-of-the-season (this one is publishing at the exact minute of the summer solstice), I'm offering readers of this website an update on my three major unfinished projects: the Journey Through Twin Peaks video series (begun in 2014), the written TWIN PEAKS Character Series (begun in 2016), and the Lost in Twin Peaks podcast (begun in 2018). Work on a fourth project, the Mirrors of Kane video series (begun in 2016 but based on an essay written in 2011), concluded this past winter and release is currently underway.

Since pausing my exclusive Patreon content in December, I've been focusing my personal online work time almost entirely on my long-term projects. There was, however, an interruption in June when I shared a round-up of the late critic Allan Fish's reviews for Wonders in the Dark. I'm also looking forward to a conversation on Twin Peaks and The Shining with Cameron Cloutier and John Thorne, hopefully in the near future. Other than responding to guest invitations like these, any public work I share in the coming year and a half or so should be limited to the publication of these four projects.

This past season (following my previous update on the first day of spring), I finished a chapter of Journey Through Twin Peaks that I'd begun during the winter. Then I moved onto Lost in Twin Peaks, completing one episode recently before shifting my approach to re-editing that podcast. More details on that, and each project, follow below - along with reminders of what's been published or finished behind-the-scenes (more specific daily progress can be tracked on this constantly updated page):

Spring 2026 Project Update: Mirrors of Kane complete, Journey Through Twin Peaks "Americana" chapter underway (+ new Patreon welcome video)

Every turn-of-the-season (this one is publishing at the exact minute of the vernal equinox), I'm offering readers of this website an update on my four major unfinished projects: the Journey Through Twin Peaks video series (begun in 2014), the written TWIN PEAKS Character Series (begun in 2016), the Lost in Twin Peaks podcast (begun in 2018), and the Mirrors of Kane video series (begun in 2016 but based on an essay written in 2011). In December, I stopped offering exclusive podcasts and reviews on Patreon so that I could focus as much attention as possible as these long-term goals, and I'm pleased to announce that progress has been made. I've entirely concluded my work on the Mirrors of Kane series; new chapters will be published on YouTube and Vimeo on Citizen Kane's eighty-fifth anniversary, May 1. I'm also chipping away at a particularly complex Journey Through Twin Peaks chapter on Twin Peaks' connections to American history and iconography. This should be finished within a week or two.

After that, I will focus on completing the public presentation of Lost in Twin Peaks' second season, followed by the top nine entries (based on screentime) for the TWIN PEAKS Character Series. I hope to wait until after those two projects are complete to focus exclusively on Journey Through Twin Peaks, but depending how bogged down I get on Lost in Twin Peaks this summer I may pause that work to research, outline, and write the narration for remaining Journey chapters. We'll see how it goes.

Here is a status update with more details, as well as a reminder of what's been published or finished behind-the-scenes, for each project (more specific daily progress can be tracked on this constantly updated page):

TWIN PEAKS CONVERSATIONS bonus podcast premieres tonight on Jane Austen's 250th birthday w/ Manners & Madness hosts Maya Adkins & Christian Cabrera (YouTube & extended PATREON)

An eccentric pairing has recently gained uncanny relevance for me - as well as for others. When I first heard of the Jane Austen/David Lynch podcast Manners & Madness, I found it to be a delightful conceit but did not rush to listen because I hadn't yet read any of Austen's novels nor even seen a movie based on one of those novels. However, once my girlfriend introduced me to Austen via Pride and Prejudice (the novel as well as the nineties BBC and zeroes cinematic adaptations), at the same time that I was initiating her into the Lynchverse, this odd combination of disparate artists suddenly piqued my interest. And, for reasons both salutary and sorrowful, the union of Lynch and Austen has now become more au courant than ever; both of them, one for her birth and the other for his death, are "having a moment" in 2025 pop culture. With Austen turning a ripe quarter-millennium today, this felt like the right time to chat with Maya Adkins and Christian Cabrera, the hosts of Manners & Madness for the past six years. There was so much to dig into with the filmmaker and novelist: the connections between the most famous characters in their works; the difference between Maya's longtime experience with Lynch and Austen vs. Christian's fresh-faced exploration of both; the distinctions between various Austen adaptations; the ways in which Lynch challengers viewers (and Austen challenges readers); and the favorite Lynch films, Austen novels, Austen adaptations, and Twin Peaks sections of both hosts - some of this explored, alongside deep dives into the recent miniseries Miss Austen and my first foray into Northanger Abbey, in the longer back section of the podcast on Patreon's $5/month tier.

PART 1 on YouTube premieres at 8pm EST

Listen to...

PART 2 on Patreon

(also premieres at 8pm EST)

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?

TWIN PEAKS CONVERSATIONS bonus podcast premieres tonight w/ David Lynch's American Dreamscape author Mike Miley (YouTube & extended PATREON)

Early this year when I stumbled across a YouTube trailer for an upcoming book titled David Lynch's American Dreamscape, full of clips that exhibited Lynch's keen eye for postwar American iconography and landscapes, I was intrigued. I already had my own plans to tackle Lynchian Americana in a Journey Through Twin Peaks video essay (which I will begin exploring in depth behind the scenes this month, having already outlined my ideas for this chapter), so this seemed right up my alley - and as soon as I discovered more about the book being promoted, the project felt even more resonant. Mike Miley, a New Orleans teacher who has previously analyzed game shows, developed this book from an initial series of essays comparing individual Lynch works to various novels and musical movements; intrigued by the ways this film director linked up with other forms of media, he subtitled the resultant study Music, Literature, Cinema. I'm always keen on drawing connections and Mike's efforts are some of the more imaginative I've encountered: Eraserhead and Fire Walk With Me with Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper and Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar; Blue Velvet with Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are; Mulholland Drive with The Day of the Locust and other Nathaniel West fiction; the third season of Twin Peaks, particularly Part 8, with Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing; Wild at Heart with the rise of rock 'n' roll as theorized by Greil Marcus; all of Twin Peaks with the teen tragedy ballad; Lost Highway with cover songs; The Straight Story with The Anthology of American Folk Music and Bob Dylan's The Basement Tapes; and Inland Empire with mixtapes. Drawing together the three threads, a coda parallels Lynch with David Foster Wallace and Lana Del Rey.

I had a great time juxtaposing images of these different works for the intro to the (otherwise mostly audio-only) video that resulted. It turns out that there are often visual as well as thematic rhymes between the works - or at least between their promotional materials, or the related images I found online to illustrate an idea. You can scroll down for screenshots of these as well as links to Mike's, my, and other's work which we ended up discussing alongside David Lynch's American Dreamscape. The first, public part of our discussion takes a broad view of Mike and his analysis: his first acquaintance with Lynch's filmography, his development of this project, and what he sees as its purpose. In the longer back section for the $5/month tier on Patreon, we dive into each of these sections in turn - with particular emphasis on those involving Fire Walk With Me - and I pose particular questions that occurred to me while reading. I was a great conversation and a fascinating book.

PART 1 on YouTube premieres at 8pm EST

Listen to...

PART 2 on Patreon

(also premieres at 8pm EST)

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...

January 2025 Patreon round-up: EXCLUSIVE - Films in Focus podcast #7: Evil Does Not Exist + TWIN PEAKS Character Series advance & David Lynch tribute

Patrons selected a quiet but intense Japanese film to kick off 2025. Evil Does Not Exist, Ryûsuke Hamaguchi's follow-up to the widely acclaimed Drive My Car, began production as something akin to a music video. As the work developed, Hamaguchi became captivated with telling the story of reserved small town residents threatened by a "glamping" resort site project. The film's ending is its most noteworthy and controversial aspect; as such, it naturally assumes a lot of the focus in my Films in Focus episode. But there are other fascinating elements at play too, including the personal struggles of the talent agents hired by a corporation to deceive the townspeople. As described by Matthew Smith, the patron who recommended this film, Evil Does Not Exist "shifts at times between a meditative look at living and working within nature, a process film about zoning disputes, a workplace hangout movie, and something less explicable than mythic." I found the experience at times frustrating but always fascinating, and it made for a great discussion. Meanwhile, I took the advances of my TWIN PEAKS Character Series all the way to the edge of the top ten.

And sadly, I had to pay tribute to David Lynch on the event of his passing away - something I did for the first time on Patreon (publicly, not just for patrons).

What are the January rewards?

The David Lynch Experience • group discussion w/ the Obnoxious and Anonymous podcast (& guests Joe Anthony, Ted Arn, Max Evry, Joey Pedras & Mandy Singleton)

(photo by Bonnie Schiffman)

Today would have been David Lynch's 79th birthday - the perfect time to share this tribute I recorded with fellow fans on Thursday night. After the sad news on January 16, I felt the need to talk to others - to articulate in common what we couldn't individually. Thankfully, Cameron Cloutier of Obnoxious and Anonymous, the channel that first hosted me over a decade ago, was able to oblige. He gathered several regulars and previous guests in addition to myself: collector Joe Anthony, festival aficionado Ted Arn, online commentators Joey Pedras and Mandy Singleton, and author Max Every (whose oral history of Dune I'd coincidentally discovered on a bookshelf a week ago). The last guest joined halfway through and brought with him lots of interesting anecdotes and questions about Lynch's most controversial film and its place in his larger body of work. Though we started off in a somber mood by the end of two hours we were all smiling, laughing, and leaning forward in our seats - buoyed by the memories and gratitude for these exciting years sharing the planet with David Lynch's dreams.

December 2024 Patreon round-up: EXCLUSIVE - 2024 American Generations Reflections + TWIN PEAKS Character Series advance & Twin Peaks Conversations podcast

In months when I'm not covering a particular film or TV show for the $5/month tier, I tend to use a group shot of Twin Peaks characters as my top image for a public round-up. These represent the $1/month tier advance entry from my TWIN PEAKS Character Series without giving away which particular character I've written about (since the ranking is supposed to be a surprise until the eventual public reveal). I go this route even when there's another $5/month reward to highlight, usually because that reward is a Twin Peaks Conversations episode which I've already highlighted in a separate cross-post. That was certainly the case this month when I spoke with John Thorne again, this time for his Devious Dreams book on Mulholland Drive; while part two is linked below I already promoted this discussion on this site a few weeks ago. However, there also happens to be a bonus $5/month reward this month: a long written piece in which I explore the year 2024 through several different generations as part of an ongoing project which will hopefully lead to a video essay in the distant future (this is the second year I've offered this bonus, as the video will span 2023 - 31 and I want to prepare the ground with contemporaneous assessments). Why not use an image associated with this subject atop December's round-up?

Well, frankly, I found most of those potential images to be less than enticing both aesthetically and politically. If I'm trying to get people excited for my Patreon work, it's probably best not to frontload either a generic demographic chart (whose generational definitions I probably don't even use myself) or some photo of Trump smirking with eighties celebrities and/or grifting YouTubers (then again, politics always makes for the best clickbait so maybe I've shot my SEO in the foot). None of this is to say the piece isn't worth reading. It was certainly satisfying to write everything down, and hopefully others find my musings insightful and relatable, and not too heavy on generalizations...pardon the quasi-pun. Still, I figured we'd all be better off with a perplexed Gordon Cole and the gang leading the way this time.

What are the December rewards?

TWIN PEAKS CONVERSATIONS bonus podcast on Mulholland Drive premieres tonight w/ Devious Dreams author John Thorne (YouTube & extended PATREON)

For John Thorne, Mulholland Drive has not only been a vital experience in its own right but also -forgive the expression - a key to David Lynch's other work, particularly Twin Peaks. Many of John's theories and interpretations of Peaks borrow from a structure Lynch most notably deployed to tie two worlds together: the characters and stories conceived for an ABC TV pilot (the first two-thirds of Mulholland Drive, with some subtle but significant changes) and the more time-constrained but also thematically and stylistically grander possibilities of a theatrically-released feature film (sealed by the final third of Mulholland Drive, shot a year and a half after the other material). Not only does Mulholland inform John's notions of dreaming and identity shifts in Peaks, it also feeds his fascination with process - the outside conditions that, well, condition Lynch's creative responses. We began to dwell on this subject in our previous discussion (itself following Twin Peaks Conversations episodes in 2021 and 2022). Since then, John wrote and published the absorbing and deeply compelling Devious Dreams: Reimagining David Lynch's Twin Peaks (which includes history of the production, analysis of the pilot and film, and original interviews with the central cast). Naturally, we had to schedule a reunion to focus on this new book.

The resulting episode premieres exactly twelve hours from this announcement and runs nearly four hours in total, with about an hour and a half public on YouTube and the remaining two and half hours for the $5/month tier on Patreon. We explore many rabbit holes, including what a Mulholland Drive series might have looked like (and how that phenomenon would compare to Twin Peaks), what was in the closed ending Lynch shot for the pilot even before expanding it into a film, the significance of the man behind Winkie's Diner, how John's exposure to a version of the pilot before the 2001 Mulholland Drive premiere shaped his perspective, and the way that the film's release (nearly a decade into Wrapped in Plastic's run) changed John's work on the magazine. And that's just in the first part of the conversation!

PART 1 on YouTube premieres at 8pm EST

Listen to...

PART 2 on Patreon

(also premieres at 8pm EST)

November 2024 Patreon round-up: EXCLUSIVE - Films in Focus podcast #6: Trenque Lauquen + TWIN PEAKS Character Series advance

In the docket since January, the film Trenque Lauquen was finally chosen by patrons as the subject for my Films in Focus podcast in November for the $5/month tier. A fusion of historical romance, whimsical sci-fi, missing person mystery, and contemplative landscape cinema, this four-hour, twelve-chapter 2022 work from the Argentine director Laura Citarella (and the collaborative collective she's a part of, El Pompero Cine) tells the many stories of botanist Laura (Laura Paredes), who disappears without explanation in the sleepy provincial town of Trenque Lauquen. Two men who were romantically involved with her, Ezequiel "Chico" (Ezequiel Pierro) and Rafa (Rafael Spregelburd), search for her across the countryside. Eventually we learn about the two personal investigations she was absorbed in: the first a series of romantic letters exchanged via books between a school official and a wealthy landowner, and the second a creature/person/alligator (?) discovered on the banks of the town pond and cared for by Dr. Elisa Esperanza (Elisa Carricajo), whose lifestyle Laura becomes slowly absorbed into. A body found on the edge of a body of water? A mysterious woman named Laura whom many love but no one quite understands? A community which, depending on who observes it, seems like a small town, rural outpost, or small city? Obviously Twin Peaks is a major reference point here. Additionally, the film is also a portrait of older millennials entering middle age without having quite settled on their identity or purpose in life and maybe even an inadvertent prediction of the cinematic and cultural erasure unleashed by the chaotic near-future president Javier Milei. There is much to discuss and I had a great time diving in...

What are the November rewards?

belated October 2024 Patreon round-up including TWIN PEAKS Character Series advance & Twin Peaks Conversations podcast

Finally, another character entry has been advanced on Patreon. I missed the monthly cutoff for a number of reasons include an initial mistake about who should be next on the list, unnecessary absorption in a future archival round-up, birthday gatherings and other offline plans, and of course the culmination of a presidential election which landed with a thudding sense of deja vu (not only did Trump win again, I was in the same place during the same span of hours, and had even been working on the same project eight years apart). As in 2020, I'll limit my commentary to a link; here's what I had to say over the course of Election Night and the next morning (click on a given tweet for any replies, including my own follow-ups; I could not figure out how to link to retweets this time). Anyway, the $5/month tier exclusive has already been prominently featured on this site since it was part of a Twin Peaks Conversations episode; elsewhere on Patreon I ran a poll and a runoff to select the next podcast topic, coming soon.

There, at least, the voting was productive.

What are the October rewards?

TWIN PEAKS CONVERSATIONS bonus podcast w/ John Thorne: the "lost episode" (YouTube & extended PATREON)

In the spring of 2023, as I was wrapping up my regular monthly Twin Peaks Conversations schedule, I recorded a "bonus" that I planned to use later, maybe as the last episode in this podcast, with my most recurring guest: John Thorne, publisher of Wrapped in Plastic in the nineties and zeroes and later a blogger, podcaster, editor of a new Twin Peaks magazine, and eventually author of several books. In our previous Twin Peaks Conversations we first touched base on Halloween 2021 (coincidentally, three years to the day before this latest episode) as he was writing a new book about Twin Peaks' third season and then we spoke again after he published that book as Ominous Whoosh in 2022. This discussion was supposed to be something of an epilogue in that trilogy, reflecting on the passage of years since Twin Peaks: The Return in light of a David Lynch retrospective John attended in Dallas. And while the two-part episode (a half hour on YouTube, another hour-plus for the $5/month tier on Patreon) does serve that purpose, it was also unknowingly a gateway into a whole new project for John. In the year and a half since we recorded this chat, he's written and published a book on Mulholland Drive called Devious Dreams, and Lynch's 2001 film is already a focus in the Patreon part of this episode, hinting at the book to come. This past winter, I thought I'd lost this whole recording but fortunately I was able to restore it months ago and now I can present this "lost episode" not just as a worthwhile piece in its own right but also a teaser for the next Twin Peaks Conversations episode, scheduled for December, in which John and I will discuss the book Devious Dreams in great detail.

PART 1 on YouTube

Listen to...

PART 2 on Patreon

Like my December conversation with Rob King and my April/May conversation with Cameron Cloutier and Josh Eisenstadt, this is a bonus episode of the Twin Peaks Conversations podcast, which ended its monthly run halfway through 2023. Bonuses will continue at least as long as I'm working on the three big Twin Peaks projects (Journey Through Twin Peaks videos, the written character series, and the second season of the Lost in Twin Peaks podcast) over the next few years.

Purchase John's new book Devious Dreams: Reimagining David Lynch's Mulholland Drive

Purchase John's earlier books Ominous Whoosh: A Wandering Mind Returns to Twin Peaks & The Essential Wrapped in Plastic: Pathways to Twin Peaks

Prior to our Twin Peaks Conversations episodes, I spoke to John over three print interviews in 2014 (about Wrapped in Plastic, The Missing Pieces, and the announcement of The Return), again when he published his 2016 book, and then over four Patreon podcasts in 2019 (first, second, third, and fourth).

Listen to his podcast In Our House Now

Check out back issues of his more recent magazine The Blue Rose

Haunted by Seriality: The Formal Uncanny of Mulholland Drive by Jason Mittell (Just TV)

My SEVEN AMERICAN GENERATIONS presentation

Images come from Devious Dreams is John Thorne's New Book About Mulholland Drive by Steven Miller (Twin Peaks Blog)

Gadgets and Symbols in Twin Peaks (and our lives) • group discussion on objects & much more w/ the "Twin Peaks Grammar" Artists Love Twin Peaks podcast (+ guests Colin, Alison Ivy, Heather Jones, Tommy Jones, Steven Miller & Josh Minton)

Sometimes Anthony, the host of the "Twin Peaks Grammar" YouTube channel, provides an ornate, intense structure for our discussions and sometimes he takes a looser approach to see what bubbles up. This conversation heads in the latter direction - providing some visual reminders of various objects through three seasons and a film but letting the conversation flow where we want to go: not just toward analysis of tokens like the Owl Cave ring but also the process of tracking down props, the ways in which the show's iconography brings fans together, theories of who dreams this narrative, and how this may or may not relate to Carl Jung. Following quickly on the heels of the last group chat just a few weeks ago, this recording includes several of the same participants - Alison, Tommy, myself - along with some new or returning guests. Twin Peaks Blog author and location/prop hunter extraordinaire Steven offers insight into the real-life objects of the show and Dreamer's Diary podcast host Tommy is joined by his wife and co-host Heather. Colin returns to rep the Creamed Corn and the Universe podcast, where I've had several exchanges with him alongside appearances on this channel and my own podcast; likewise Josh and I have spoken across a couple different podcasts. Like last time, I joined late but on this occasion I stuck around until the end for some more deep dives down various rabbit holes with both Anthony and Tommy. (At which point I reference my montage integrating Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern in Blue Velvet and The Return, as well as the film/book A Dangerous Method - here's my review of that one.)

In addition to that video, Anthony also posted this episode in audio form on the Artists Love Twin Peaks feed.

Update 2026: The audio-only version is not currently available on Apple Podcasts, though it may be on other platforms.

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?

What happened in Room 315? • group discussion on the opening of Twin Peaks season 2 premiere w/ the "Twin Peaks Grammar" Artists Love Twin Peaks podcast (+ guests John Bernardy, Andrew Cook, Alison Ivy, Tommy Jones, Patrick Mahan & afterwards Brian Liddicoat)

The slow waiter, the giant (or fireman?), the missing ring, the owls who aren't what they seem...the first scene of Twin Peaks' second season in 1990 is full of mysteries and in this group discussion led by Anthony of the "Twin Peaks Grammar" YouTube channel, we dig into many of them. My time was limited, but I was able to join for an hour of the sprawling two and a half hour episode. The previous conversation, on the end of Part 18, followed a rigorous structure; this one by contrast is more freewheeling, dipping into the media personae of the actors onscreen, the question of whether this scene is a dream (and if so, whose?), and what relationship this slice of mythology bears to others in the larger Twin Peaks saga. This was my first time speaking with Dreamer's Diary podcast host Tommy, while Alison and Talking Backwards podcast host Patrick had participated in previous group chats (another guest, Brian, joined after I left). In addition to these collective discussions, I spoke to John about his podcast Blue Rose Task Force several years ago, and I've had many exchanges with Andrew. Together we wander and wonder in this Lynchian/Frostian terrain; to paraphrase the guiding spirit of this scene: where have we gone?

In addition to that video, Anthony is also posting this episode in audio form on the Artists Love Twin Peaks feed.

Update 2026: The audio-only version is not currently available on Apple Podcasts, though it may be on other platforms.

belated July 2024 Patreon round-up: EXCLUSIVE - Films in Focus podcast #4: Birth + TWIN PEAKS Character Series advance

Following my episode on The Zone of Interest a couple months ago, patrons chose Jonathan Glazer's earlier Birth as a follow-up. A film whose key moments unfold in close-ups, Birth is as intimate as Zone is distanced. The unusual storytelling mastery exhibited by Glazer in his later work (including Under the Skin, which I've also covered on a past podcast) hadn't quite taken hold yet in his second movie. The tale of a widow (Nicole Kidman) who's told by an intense ten-year-old (Cameron Bright) - a decade after her husband's death - that he is the reincarnation of her lost love, Birth struggles to strike a balance between its troubling premise and the more poetic, allegorical realm it often seeks to inhabit. The strongest moments in the narrative are those that subvert this abstraction with down-to-earth specificity, but I found it hard to get past the discomfort engendered by that central creative choice. This is the first time in a while that I've dug into a work that, by and large, didn't work for me (even as it completely held my interest), which makes for a fascinating as well as frustrating engagement. Given that its reputation really rebounded after a controversial premiere, I'm keen to hear what others think of Birth and its place in Glazer's body of work (including his debut Sexy Beast, which I've not yet seen). As Walker White - the patron who initially suggested this topic - put it in his comment following my coverage, "I agree that the potential for a really successful movie is in here, but it's muddled. Either way, kind of more fun to think about after than to watch. Funny, with Sexy Beast I feel it's the opposite: fun to watch but not as much to go back over later."

While the $5/month tier contemplated Birth's protagonist, who dances between pitiable and predatory, I shared another TWIN PEAKS Character Series entry with all tiers, covering someone who very much does the same. This is one of the richest figures in the whole series and I'd long anticipated applying the prism of my uniform approach to the unique slipperiness of the character's spirit.

What are the July rewards?

belated June 2024 Patreon round-up: EXCLUSIVE - Conversation on The Boy and the Heron & Godzilla Minus One w/ Max Clark + TWIN PEAKS Character Series advance

Two Japanese World War II-era fantasy films from 2023 involving dangerous creatures crown my $5/month tier rewards for June - and they're covered in an unusual way. At this point I'm leaving podcasts for patron's picks every other month and Twin Peaks topics more sporadically than that, so I when I spoke about Hayao Miyazaki's The Boy and the Heron and Takashi Yamazaki's Godzilla Minus One with my friend and previous guest Max Clark (who got me to see both of these films), I decided to edit and present our extensive, two-hour-plus discussion in text form. In addition to exploring how The Boy and the Heron both emerges and differs from previous Miyazaki films (in the past I've covered Spirited Away in prose and podcast), we learn how Studio Ghibli Park in Japan crystallizes the auteur's vision, tease out the film's most-likely-accidental but still intriguing reflections on AI, investigate how the fanciful story reflects the behind-the-scenes Ghibli personalities, and reflect on why the friendship between the characters Mahito and Himi is so affecting. For Godzilla Minus One, which I saw initially in its brief black-and-white cinematic presentation, we dig into the intricacies of the fluid creature design and compare this latest entry - and its monster - to Hideaki Anno's Shin Godzilla (which I've discussed alongside the original and Americanized fifties Gojira/Godzilla in capsule form before; elsewhere I recorded capsules on the 2014 Godzilla and the original King Kong vs. Godzilla). And we get into many other subjects in relation to both films, including Japan's experience in the war and postwar periods. For even more from Max and I, you can check out our podcast episode on Blade Runner 2049 several years ago.

And open to all patrons is an advance entry on another beloved Twin Peaks character, alongside a few quick updates on what else I have been or will be working on this summer...

What are the June rewards?

The Impossible Life of Robert Jacoby, 1927/31/40 - 1969/86? • discussion w/ Creamed Corn and the Universe podcast

Visit/download the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or other platforms

My past two appearances on Creamed Corn and the Universe, at host Colin's suggestion, have covered two of the most obscure characters in the Twin Peaks universe in very different ways and for very different reasons. Yet both provide a rich field for discussion. Following my episode on Ronette's angel - who is about the most purely "David Lynch" that a character can be - I'm back to talk about Robert Jacoby, a quintessential Mark Frost creation. Robert is equally fascinating and frustrating for me. Given by obsession with chronology I can't help but be driven crazy by the inconsistencies exhibited by Dr. Lawrence Jacoby's brother, a reporter for the Twin Peaks Gazette (later the Twin Peaks Post), as featured in The Secret History of Twin Peaks. Within single articles, indeed within single paragraphs, the character himself completely contradicts his age and the order of events in his own life. Is this just sloppiness on the author's part, or is there some larger thematic thread to draw here? Can both be true? As Colin and I talked, we found ourselves more and more enmeshed in a reading which tied the character to a larger theme of avoidance and deception (self- and otherwise). This conversation is a great example of discovering a thesis in the process of hashing out the details. I hope you have as much fun listening to this as I did recording it.