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.

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?

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.

August 2024 Patreon round-up: EXCLUSIVE - Conversation on Killers of the Flower Moon w/ Tyler MacDonald

Having already covered four of the big films of 2023 on Patreon, I'm finally catching up with the fifth and final title in that line-up. Barbie and Oppenheimer as well as The Boy and the Heron and Godzilla Minus One were discussed in pairs, but Killers of the Flower Moon receives undivided attention in August's reward for the $5/month tier (all patron tiers were also presented with an advance work-in-progress this month). In this quasi-western from Martin Scorsese, returning World War I veteran Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) marries Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone) while taking direction from William Hale (Robert DeNiro), an apparently benevolent but in fact deeply sinister Oklahoma rancher with murderous designs on the oil-driven fortunes of the local Osage tribe - including Ernest's own wife. As with the Japanese subjects discussed a couple months ago, I've conducted (and transcribed) a conversation, in this case with my cousin Tyler MacDonald (a first-time guest, though his brother Riley joined me to cover The Lighthouse last year). Together, we dig into the rich story, style, and history of Killers, including its origin as a nonfiction book (adapted for the screen to focus more on the romantic relationship of a murderer and his would-be victim), its place in Scorsese's gangland- and religion-focused filmography, parallels between the film's portrait of a vicious backwater social ecosystem and the political realities of the present, questions about the intricate and often elliptical conspiracy at the center of the plot, and the film's relationship to American mythologies (especially those that Scorsese grew up with, as someone born just a decade and a half after the film's events but making this movie nearly a century later). Having explored Scorsese's work extensively in the past (all Scorsese-labeled posts including this one are gathered here with further links included on Patreon), I looked forward to catching up with the octogenarian auteur's latest output, and Killers of the Flower Moon did not disappoint.

What are the exclusive August rewards?

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.

"The European Version": 'The Twin Peaks Pilot's Alternate Ending podcast for Wonders in the Dark (+ new archive images & 6-month check-in on project progress)

In its eighth year of celebrating unusual works which can be found for free online, the Allan Fish Online Film Festival is featuring a re-presented bonus from my Lost in Twin Peaks podcast, discussing the "European version" alternate closed ending of the pilot for which Bob, Mike, the Red Room, and some other mythological elements were first invented. Right now, you can read my introduction, watch the ending itself, and take part in any further discussion all on Wonders in the Dark (unfortunately the podcast player won't work on WordPress so I couldn't include it alongside the intro - you have to either listen to it embedded above or follow the links to other platforms like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Pinecast).

Eighth Annual Allan Fish Online Film Festival, Day #9:
Twin Peaks Pilot Alternate Ending ("The European Version") - a podcast

This fifteen-minute survey of this material and its creation was originally featured in my coverage of S2E3 (i.e. "episode 2"), the episode in which this ending was re-cut as a dream sequence.

I've also done some maintenance on this site by tweaking a few images for my Archive, including the top one (another abstracted Agent Cooper portrait) as well as chapters 3, 15, and 16 to make them better pop and/or match the spirit of each chapter title. And finally, on Twitter I offered a subthread explaining why my progress on long-term projects can be simultaneously described as slow and promising.