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...
Update 10/24: The podcast has been published and the Pinecast link has been updated (twice, since the first update was still incorrect!)
Autumn is always the perfect time to revisit Dead Poets Society, although its New England prep school seasons extend into winter (both literally and figuratively). Is the movie a sensitive evocation of a time and place, a thoughtful reflection on the restlessness of the human soul, or a shallow celebration of unquestioned self-indulgence? How does its late fifties setting both anticipate, onscreen, and reflect, offscreen, the social changes which would follow? Is it true that the world is too complicated to be reduced to good versus evil, or is that supposedly wise view itself naïve? And how does David Lynch link up to all of this? My Ethan Hawke series continues with one of his earliest roles, and this time I have some additional listener feedback and bonus material to incorporate. Apologies for the slightly late release (see the original introduction below) but hopefully you enjoy these reflections now that they are up.
Although it's important for me to establish a routine by publishing a new podcast every couple weeks, right now it's even more important to follow the path I laid out for Journey Through Twin Peaks and contemporaneous projects over the next few months...even if that temporarily pushes back some deadlines. Right now that means a focus on putting the finishing touches on one of this month's patron podcasts before assembling my Dead Poets Society episode for the public show, even though the latter would be much easier to put together. I don't want to fall back into the quicksand of multiple ongoing commitments at once; I chose a certain order and I'm going to stick to it.
So for now, watch this space...the episode will be up soon, probably by Friday at the latest and this cross-post will be updated to reflect that.
update 10/16: the Lost in Twin Peaks episode has been published
For the first and hopefully only time, I needed to postpone my monthly patron rewards. For four months, I'd been promising a new Journey Through Twin Peaks chapter only to run into obstacles and obligations and in mid-September it was time to finally make that video an absolute priority. Several weeks later, I debuted Chapter 34: A Candle in Every Window (about the original series collaborators) and could at last catch up with these new podcasts. One is up and the other will be soon, as I continue my trek into mid-second season of Twin Peaks and have a surprisingly fun time applying my fairly rigorous format to its silliness. I also spent a little longer than usual on "Twin Peaks Reflections" in my main podcast, unsurprising given the importance of the three characters under discussion this month. And speaking of three...
Robert Altman's 3 Women, released just weeks after Eraserhead, initially came to mind as a possible "Twin Peaks Cinema" entry mostly on the basis of its title, which I've humored stealing for an upcoming Journey chapter on Sarah, Diane, and "Judy" (or perhaps Audrey or Carrie, among other characters). I'd noticed that season three is, for both Lynch and Twin Peaks more generally, an unusually male-centric narrative...the most notable female characters almost appear to inhabit some parallel story we only glimpse sideways throughout. That gendered aspect is present in Altman's strange seventies surrealist tale as well (although there the title characters are very much at the forefront). And other elements rise into view as I consider 3 Women in light of Peaks old and new. After my observations on that particular movie, I read over an hour of Altman material previously included on this site, including essays on three favorites. One of those re-readings has already inspired me to dive deeper into Altman's most explicitly political work when (if?) this current election season ends.
When I decided to re-watch several Ethan Hawke films for my podcast, I don't think Gattaca was originally on my radar. However, hearing fans rave about it on another show reminded me of how I'd enjoyed it as a teenager back in the late nineties/early zeroes; I gave it another viewing and I'm glad I did. The sci-fi film presents future dystopia in a fashion I often find the most compelling (consider it the Brave New World rather than 1984 approach): as a sleek, functional, in many ways highly appealing society which nonetheless entrenches fundamental injustice. At the same time, has the movie's essentially meritocratic message aged as well as its critique of genetic elitism? All that and more are discussed in my latest episode.
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.
For over a year, I've been publishing "Twin Peaks Cinema" podcasts on my Patreon, and now it's time to begin sharing them publicly. I decided to start with capsules on four features by Twin Peaks season one directors Duwayne Dunham, Tina Rathborne, Lesli Linka Glatter, and Caleb Deschanel. Their work is discussed both on its own terms and in light of not just Twin Peaks more broadly but their own specific episodes of the series. Often, oddly enough, the greatest links are found not in their visual style (although there's some of that) but in the screenplays they didn't even write! As Cooper once said, "when two events occur simultaneously pertaining to the same object of inquiry, we must always pay strict attention."
This is an opportune moment for this episode since my long-planned Journey Through Twin Peaks chapter covering this particular topic should finally see the light of day in the next week or two - plus one of the films' holiday spirit is relevant as the weather changes, the leaves fall, and the last day of October approaches (though of course this isn't going to be much of a year for trick-or-treating). Although the films were grouped chronologically - based on the directors' first visits to Twin Peaks - they all share a common theme, centering children as their protagonists. For whatever reason, the world as seen by adolescents and preteens, in all its excitement, melancholy, and confusion, provided a great gateway into that small town in the woods.
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, though 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
Is 2014 only or already six years ago? Boyhood chronicles a coming-of-age unfolding over a decade, leading up to the tail end of the Obama era (when the last of the millennials entered college). Given everything that's happened since then, the film's hopeful ending feels like a time capsule. When I recorded this review in 2019 I decided to combine my earlier essay, written when Boyhood was brand new, with further reflections as the movie's present receded into the past. This episode also continues my Ethan Hawke podcast series; although he's a supporting player in the movie, this role rhymes with his work in the Before trilogy (likewise directed by Richard Linklater), which also chronicles a character's journey in real time.
I originally planned to cover the surreal Robert Altman film 3 Women on my patron podcast this month, but at the last minute I was reminded that August 2020 is the seventieth anniversary of Sunset Boulevard's premiere. So I switched gears and drove into the heart of the midcentury American film industry. The Billy Wilder classic has some surface (and deeper) ties to Twin Peaks as well as other David Lynch films and I enjoyed digging into it for the first time in twelve years. My 2008 review of the film as part of a Hollywood-on-Hollywood series, one of my favorite essays, is also incorporated into the Opening the Archive reading series. I also cover several characters, locations and storylines on both sides of the law, and spend a lot of time laying out my plans for the fall, winter, and spring with an emphasis on how I hope to get back into the rhythm of Journey Through Twin Peaks after a summer of delays. And my Lost in Twin Peaks rewatch dives into the thick of mid-season two, dissecting where the show went right and wrong...
A week after the Democratic Party's presidential convention (and the week of the Republican event) seemed like a good time to kick off my Left of the Movies podcast with Medium Cool. Haskell Wexler's fiction/nonfiction hybrid stars Robert Forster and documents the notorious 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. What a contrast with the locked-down, frequently prerecorded virtual gathering which aired last week, although in other ways - particularly the violent protester/police confrontation in the streets outside the hall - the film's events resonate quite well with 2020. For now, this side project, a study of political movies from the past century-plus of cinema, is still a part of the Lost in the Movies feed but some time in 2021 it will get its own listing and move to a monthly rather than every-other-month schedule).
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:
First Vienna, then Paris, now a Grecian island. First nineties, then zeroes, now the teens. First twentysomething, then thirtysomething, now fortysomething. And first meeting, then reuniting, then struggling to stay together. The Before trilogy comes to a close as I review the third and (so far?) final film in Richard Linklater's series, part of a longer overview of Ethan Hawke I'm publishing this year. At the end of this podcast I preview my first "Left of the Movies" entry (eventually to be spun off into its own program) covering Medium Cool which captured another tumultuous summer's Democratic presidential convention back in 1968.
