LOST IN TWIN PEAKS: Teaser for Patreon podcast (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #16)

Yesterday was February 24, the day in 1989 that FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper arrived in Twin Peaks, Washington to investigate the murder of popular local teenager Laura Palmer. Most if not all who listen to this podcast or visit this site will already be quite familiar with this David Lynch/Mark Frost show - your enthusiasm for Twin Peaks is probably how you found me in the first place. In the off-chance it isn't and you aren't, stick around (at least for a little bit): this episode and the larger podcast it samples and promotes are meant for first-time as well as veteran viewers. Since 2019, I've been covering Peaks episodes as part of my monthly podcast Lost in Twin Peaks (and as early as 2018 I covered episodes of the third season, retroactively incorporated into this project) which eschews spoilers until a separate section at the end of each entry while still offering a deep, deep dive into all aspects of the show. In this teaser, my longest episode for this public podcast, I play clips ranging from about three to six minutes from those patron episodes and invite you to hear more.

The samples include the following subjects: the podcast's regular format; Donna and James as secondary leads, the opening credits, and the first indications of the Laura Palmer investigation in the pilot; the strange distance Peaks travels in its first season alone, and the scene/act structure of that season's finale; the writing and shooting of the episode that resolves the mystery; what the episode concluding the investigation tells us about the characters of Cooper and Laura and the town of Twin Peaks; the development of the Lodge mythology in season two; the historical context of the period when the show went on hiatus and was nearly cancelled; and my thoughts on the very last moments of season three.

And there are hours more where that came from...

This cross-post was accidentally kept in draft mode for 2 days, it was supposed to go up on Thursday.

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LINKS FOR EPISODE 16

Navigate all Lost in Twin Peaks episodes

MY RECENT WORK

New on Vimeo

Journey Through Twin Peaks Part 5A - Over the Mountain Pass (first half)

Journey Through Twin Peaks Part 5B - Over the Mountain Pass (second half)

New on the site

Journey Through Twin Peaks Part 5 - Over the Mountain Pass

(all videos & description)

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.

Upstream Color (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #15)

In an unusual approach, I discussed this film - an avant-garde sci-fi(ish) drama from the early teens which seems to be following a semi-hidden mythology - without reading up on its background or the interpretive theories that emerged. Then I paused the recording halfway through, read a bit more, and returned to discuss what I'd found. Pigs, parasitical worms, musical composition, gods, creators, and scammers all swirl around a confused couple drawn to one another for reasons they can't quite explain. Rather than straightforwardly establish the rules of the universe he's set in motion, Shane Carruths allows us to wander inside of it, trying to figure out the mechanics for ourselves. I found the work intriguing, exasperating, and surprisingly amusing (despite its serious tone) given the absurdity inherent in the premise. Along with the film, this podcast mentions my recent completion of Journey Through Twin Peaks Part 5; since I'm still exporting the full video(s) for Vimeo and planning to officially cross-post that and the other chapters on Tuesday, this is actually the first mention on this site of that benchmark. So make sure you check out the link below, if you haven't already, to watch my video essay on Mark Frost - my most ambitious undertaking yet.

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LINKS FOR EPISODE 15

Skywhales

(animated film I compared to Upstream Color)

FAQ: Upstream Color

by Forest Wickman (Slate)

The 'Upstream Color' Cheat Sheet: 10 Things That Might Help You Understand Shane Carruth's Beguiling Sci Fi Epic (SPOILERS)

by Eric Kohn (Indiewire)

Everything you were afraid to ask about "Upstream Color"

by Daniel D'Addario (Salon)

MY RECENT WORK

New on YouTube

The Bookhouse Boy: Mark Frost's Fiction and Nonfiction (Journey Through Twin Peaks Chapter 35)

New on Patreon

(for $1/month)

Episode 75 - Twin Peaks Cinema: Rebel Without a Cause (+ Twin Peaks Reflections: Hardy, Mountie, Harry's cabin, high school, Super Nadine/Dune, In a Lonely Place & more)

January 2021 Patreon podcasts: LOST IN TWIN PEAKS #24 - Season 2 Episode 16 and LOST IN THE MOVIES #75 - Twin Peaks Cinema: Rebel Without a Cause (+ Twin Peaks Reflections: Hardy, Mountie, Harry's cabin, high school, Super Nadine/Dune & more)

My main podcast episode this month kicks off with an update on Journey Through Twin Peaks explaining why, yet again, I'm offering a more pared-down episode (since the Mark Frost video is taking up most of my time) but also why I can reasonably expect the long-delayed chapter to finally go up soon. In fact, today is the sixth anniversary of when I finished presenting the first Journey series in 2015, and it seems likely that I'll finish my work right on that mark (the exporting will probably take so long that I'm not expecting to upload until tomorrow; still, keep your eyes on my YouTube channel or Twitter feed...).

In another surprise last-minute pick, "Twin Peaks Cinema" focuses on the iconic James Dean classic, whose most obvious influence on Twin Peaks is the moody motorcyclist James Hurley, although its impact can be felt in more subtle ways too. My archive reading highlights another Nicholas Ray-directed fifties film set in Los Angeles and starring a soon-to-be-deceased mythic legend, while "Twin Peaks Reflections" settles on some minor characters, brief but evocative locations, and the pairing of one of the wackiest comic subplots with one of Lynch's more humorless films.

My newest Lost in Twin Peaks episode this month (between $1 and $5/month patrons, I'm bracketing the midseason) is an unexpected two-parter. There's a lot of plot to digest before Josie ends up in that drawer pull, but I also dig deep into the C.O.O.P. campaign to bring the show back (as well as the subsequent political career of one of its founders) and contemporaneous events like the release of The Silence of the Lambs and the breakthrough of Tonya Harding. There is a mini-history podcast inside every Twin Peaks episode recap!

Lost in Twin Peaks #24A - S2E16, Part 1 (The Condemned Woman/"Episode 23")

Lost in Twin Peaks #24B - S2E16, Part 2 (The Condemned Woman/"Episode 23")

NOW AVAILABLE: Lost in Twin Peaks #18 ("Dispute Between Brothers") open to all patrons

Lost in the Movies patron edition #75: Twin Peaks Cinema - Rebel Without a Cause (+ Twin Peaks Reflections: Hardy, Mountie, Harry's cabin, high school, Super Nadine/Dune, In a Lonely Place & more)

Podcast Line-Ups for...

River's Edge (TWIN PEAKS CINEMA podcast #3/LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #14)

Several months ago, I shared my first "Twin Peaks Cinema" episode, exploring four films by directors of Twin Peaks episodes. The theme continues here with work by Tim Hunter (who directed three episodes), but this time - as I did for co-creator Mark Frost's Storyville - I set aside a full segment for one film; while the previous titles had intriguing whispers of Twin Peaks about them, River's Edge - starring Lynch actors like Dennis Hopper and Crispin Glover - is more deeply tied to the series that followed it four years later. The 1986 film even has the same exact hook as the TV pilot: a teenage girl's dead body appears on the shore of a small town, serving as a narrative gateway to meet eccentric characters, a totem around which the community confronts long-lingering traumas, and a haunting presence for her own friends consumed by an eerie mix of guilt and fascination - although in River's Edge the grief that saturates Lynch's work is far more muted. Indeed, the killer is revealed right away in this film (he's the one who freely shows everyone else the body), and the point is how little everyone seems to care rather than how much. If Twin Peaks roots itself in an out-of-time fifties sensibility, River's Edge is very much an eighties film, catching the already jaded Generation X on the cusp of their rise to cultural centrality.

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LINKS FOR EPISODE 14

Crispin Glover on Letterman - 1st Appearance - Full clip, good quality / Crispin Glover on Letterman, 8/21/87 (video)

'River's Edge' Not Quite As He Recalls: Commentary by Glenn F. Bunting (Los Angeles Times) - the reporter of the actual murder case that inspired the film criticizes River's Edge

PODCAST: The Signal Watch PodCast 032: "Twin Peaks" ('90) & "River's Edge" ('86) - High School Movies 03 - w/ Maxwell & Ryan

(discovered while researching but did not listen until after recording)

MY RECENT WORK

New on the site

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

New on Vimeo

Chapter 35 Preview

New on Patreon

(for $1/month)

Lost in Twin Peaks #18: S2E10 (Dispute Between Brothers/"Episode 17")

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.

Spirited Away (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #13)

The whimsical, sometimes unnerving but still soothing mood of Spirited Away feels like a good way to kick off 2021 as my podcast returns from its holiday break...plus it was Hayao Miyazaki's eightieth birthday last week. With the Ethan Hawke series over, I will now be discussing random films every couple weeks, with Lost in the Movies continuing to be interspersed with Twin Peaks Cinema and Left of the Movies entries every three months; the details are discussed on this episode. In the fall I will take a new approach, beginning to open up Lost in Twin Peaks on a daily/weekly basis (the long patron episodes will be divided up into more bite-size segments) and spinning Twin Peaks Cinema and Left of the Movies into their own monthly feeds. I also hope to start covering a new release every month, and I already have a theme in mind for the non-new release Lost in the Movies episodes throughout 2022 (think of which film celebrates its forty-fifth anniversary that year for a clue - no, not Eraserhead, although I do plan to release an episode on that '77 classic this year). As for Miyazaki's masterpiece, this is a shorter review than usual - a light meditation on the themes and atmosphere of the movie (another review, based on my first-time viewing, is linked below). I hope this encourages you to send in your own thoughts on Spirited Away, so that I can share them in future episodes.

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LINKS FOR EPISODE 12

Spirited Away (2008 essay), by Joel Bocko (Lost in the Movies)

MY RECENT WORK

New on the site

A Tale of Two Expectations: visual tribute to Great Expectations & images from a return to Twin Peaks (1 of 2): The In-Between Years and a Detour into Lynchland

New on Patreon

(for $1/month)

Episode 74: Twin Peaks cinema - Rashomon (+ Twin Peaks Reflections: Leland, Albert, Donna, Twin Peaks and Deer Meadow sheriff's stations, The One-Armed Man/Season 3 Part 17 & more)

(for $5/month)

Lost in Twin Peaks #23: S2E15 (Slaves and Masters/"Episode 22") & Lost in Twin Peaks #24: S2E16 (The Condemned Woman/"Episode 23"), Part 1 & Part 2

A Tale of Two Expectations (visual tribute)

A visual tribute to David Lean's Great Expectations (1946) & Alfonso Cuaron's Great Expectations (1998)

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

UPDATE 1/2: The "Twin Peaks Cinema: RASHOMON" episode of Lost in the Movies was just published.

As the Lost in Twin Peaks podcast reaches the infamous Diane Keaton episode, there's a lot to discuss both onscreen (many people, including myself, have much to say about Keaton's unusual approach to the series) and off. The height of the Gulf War leads to one of my longer "historical context" sections taking a detour not just through 1991's war on the Arabian peninsula but also America's ambivalent relationship to the conflict between the Provisional IRA and the British government. That's for the top tier; for $1/month patrons, six months behind, I'm finally unveiling my coverage of the episode where Laura's killer is captured. That podcast is split into two parts and was opened up on the first day of the month, to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the episode's airing in 1990. On the other end of the month, my main monthly episode of Lost in the Movies (patron edition) is not quite ready for New Year's Eve though it should be available sometime this weekend; watch this space...

There's been a diverse array of "Twin Peaks Cinema" selections this year, and this month is no exception, switching gears from a surreal Robert Altman slice of New Hollywood to a blockbuster time travel comedy to an anime art/exploitation musical to, now, an iconic classic of world art cinema. On the other hand there's some continuity between last month's and this month's films: both Belladonna of Sadness and Rashomon are conceptually bold Japanese films set in medieval times, depicting sexual violence with a tinge of the supernatural (one of several commonalities with Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me in particular). Akira Kurosawa's international breakthrough is most famous for presenting multiple viewpoints on the same event, and in that sense it also anticipates the work of David Lynch; in an archive reading of a review from nearly a decade ago, I lay out how its scenario may be less "who's to say" than its reputation generally holds. Elsewhere in the podcast I cover characters, locations, and storylines tied to the conclusion of Twin Peaks' Laura Palmer arc; the long-promised film capsules, podcast recommendations, political reflections, and feedback readings will have to wait until January since my work on the most ambitious Journey Through Twin Peaks chapter yet has taken me right up to this month's deadline (and a bit past, in the case of this main podcast). See you in 2021.

NOW AVAILABLE: Lost in Twin Peaks #17 - S2E9 (Arbitrary Law/"Episode 16")

Lost in Twin Peaks #23: S2E15 (Slaves and Masters/"Episode 22")

Lost in the Movies patron edition #74: Twin Peaks Cinema - Rashomon (+ Twin Peaks Reflections: Leland, Albert, Donna, Twin Peaks & Deer Meadow sheriff stations, One Armed Man/Season 3 Part 17 & more)

Podcast Line-Ups for...

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.

First Reformed (LOST IN THE MOVIES podcast #12)

My Ethan Hawke retrospective ends here after eight films - and this is both the most recent and easily my favorite of the bunch. The wintry, spare nature of Paul Schrader's vision might suggest this is a minimalist movie but that description doesn't nearly suffice for a work of art so achingly bursting with ideas, moods, and strange yet familiar associations. Most of that will have to be saved for later analyses; I can only barely scratch the surface in a short podcast review. This is essentially a preliminary reaction to an extraordinary movie...First Reformed, the vivid, crazy, gorgeous 2017 story of a Protestant pastor's crisis of faith (in the world rather than his religion) is a subject I hope to write, create videos, and otherwise talk about for years to come. But I wanted to record my first reaction, a few months after a single viewing. Listeners wrote in when I originally shared this on my patron podcast, and I've included their feedback at the end of this public episode. I see this as the beginning of a discussion, and hope anyone reading this who has thoughts and feelings about this film - and how could you not? - will send them my way. Let's keep that discussion going.

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You can also listen on Pinecast and Spotify

This will probably be the last public podcast of the year although I may, but probably won't, produce a bonus episode around New Year's. A new season beginning on January 13 - to be collected from random reviews rather than a thematic grouping (I'll save another of those for next fall).

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

In a radical departure from the cheeky, if at times apocalyptic, fun of Back to the Future Part II last month, November's "Twin Peaks Cinema" hones in on the dark psychological and avant-garde experimental aspects of Twin Peaks. When I selected it based purely on the Turner Classic Movies description, I was completely unfamiliar with Belladonna of Sadness, an explicit Japanenese mytho-psychodrama anime from the early seventies. The film tells the tragic story of a young peasant woman in France who survives a traumatic gang rape at the lord's castle, and the subsequent demonic visitations of a phallic creature who may be her own Id or Satan himself, in order to become a witch with healing powers. Full of psychedelic imagery and music evoking both earlier and later productions like Faust, Yellow Submarine, End of Evangelion, and The Witch, the film's biggest tie-in to Twin Peaks turned out to be literary, evoking Laura's struggles with BOB on the pages of Jennifer Lynch's Secret Diary.

Although I use the witch theme to connect to the archive reading of my Devil's Bride review, elsewhere the podcast tackles some relatively lighter fare - Norma Jennings' fraught relationship with her stepfather and (step?)mother, as well as how Mark Frost's later books further complicate this dynamic. In the Twin Peaks Reflections location studies, Twin Peaks' golf course and the Red Diamond City Motel (although I forgot to include that enticing "city" in the recording!) provide dual lens through which to view Leland's troubled consciousness, a theme I explore more deeply in another of this month's podcasts - my episode 15 coverage for Lost in Twin Peaks, opened to all patrons on the thirtieth anniversary of its airing. Meanwhile, the spear's tip of that rewatch (for $5/month patrons) advances to episode 21, which includes reflections not just on the troubled midseason material but also random tangents such as the American public's reaction to the ongoing Gulf War, a German left-wing terrorist group's idiomatic influence, and an abandoned cop show starring Rowdy Roddy Piper and Jesse Ventura. It's always fun to see where a particular episode leads us...

Lost in the Movies patron edition #73: Twin Peaks Cinema - Belladonna of Sadness (+ Twin Peaks Reflections: Norma, Vivian, Ernie, Red Diamond City Motel, Golf course, MT Wentz/The Final Dossier, The Devil's Bride & more)

NOW AVAILABLE: Lost in Twin Peaks #16 - S2E8 (Drive With a Dead Girl/"Episode 15")

Lost in Twin Peaks #22: S2E14 (Double Play/"Episode 21")

Podcast Line-Ups for...