“Dune was a box-office bomb. It was also, as Lynch himself later put it, both a ‘failure’ and a ‘huge gigantic sadness’ in his life. It wasn’t just that Lynch had made a mistake in signing a contract that explicitly states he would not have Final Cut on the film. It’s that he knew–even as he signed it–that he was making a mistake.” (p. 45)
Scott Maslow analyzes the quirky reality of the 1990s seasons of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks on ABC. Lynch, fresh from his successes with Eraserhead and The Elephant Man, together with his partner Mark Frost, approached ABC with a project where a young girl is murdered and the investigation reveals the secrets of a small town. Twin Peaks premiered on ABC on April 8, 1990, and ran for two seasons until its cancellation in 1991. The show returned in 2017 for a third season on Showtime.
Lynch found out that making episodes for a TV Network was NOT like making a movie. Meddling by TV executives and censors caused problems. Lynch, who was also filming a movie, Wild at Heart, had to depend on other writers and directors to produce the Twin Peaks episodes. And, like Dune, Lynch slowly lost control of his original conception of Twin Peaks.
Scott Maslow follows the arc of initial success with Twin Peaks and the slow build-up of factors that doomed it. Twin Peaks–famous for its music–still has a loyal following decades after ABC cancelled it. Are you a fan of Twin Peaks? GRADE: A
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Foreword / Harley Peyton — viii
A woman in trouble — 1
Welcome to Twin Peaks — 19
A whole damn town — 45
Filled with secrets — 65
I promise, I will kill again — 83
When you see me again, it won’t be me — 99
And now, an ending — 121
The last seven days of Laura Palmer — 139
Is it happening again? — 167
It is happening again — 185
Gotta light? — 205
People are under a lot of stress — 219
What year is this? — 235
Acknowledgements — 251
Bibliography — 253
Index — 255
Up until we discovered who killed Laura Palmer (the first season), after that I lost interest. It had some genuinely spooky and bizarre moments, but I think the show just ran out of steam.
Deb, David Lynch lost control of TWIN PEAKS and the show drifted into the spooky and bizarre without any direction. On a smaller scale, a similar fate happened to THE X-FILES.
I really enjoyed Season One, but from then on it just seemed to be weird and quirky solely for the sake of being weird and quirky, and not as a coherent part of the plot. Too many cooks, and many of them never attended culinary school.
Jerry, TWIN PEAKS definitely had too many cooks who never attended culinary school. Weird and quirky wasn’t enough to hold an audience.
What Deb and Jerry said goes here too. Zero interest in the reboot.
Jeff, A PLACE BOTH WONDERFUL AND STRANGE shows what happens in TV episode development and filming. But, I’m guessing Artificial Intelligence will change this whole industry.
“Talents” of an AI sort have been grinding out TV and films throughout the media’s histories. No reason for them to stop now.
Todd, but now AI can replace human actors with AI ones. It will change everything!
Only very poorly (if better than previously) so far.
Megan loves Lynch. I wonder if she’s read this. He is very popular with crime writers.
Patti, David Lynch was a unique director. All of his movies are very different from each other. Megan has excellent taste with her David Lynch preference!
My brother is a big BLUE VELVET fan.
The one I can’t stand is ERASERHEAD. It gave me a massive headache.
Jeff, most David Lynch fans love the diversity of his films. Sadly, that didn’t translate into TWIN PEAKS.
I never watched twin peaks & don’t remember hearing that anyone else did. By
Maggie, there was a cult of TWIN PEAKS fans in the 1990s that still exists today.
I enjoyed the first season but got off the train by the second which seemed annoyingly self-indulgent. The show did change both television and its audience though, leading the way to overal smarter, better produced shows and making TV hip for a lot of people who previously didn’t watch much. Both the theatrical follow-up and Showtime series sermed like a slsp in the face of anyone who cared for the original. The book does sound like an interesting read.
Anyone else remember “On The Air?” It was the other Lynch/Frost show that followed “Twin Peaks” and was a broadly humorous series about the early days of network TV. ABC and viewers alike were baffled and only three of seven produced episodes ever aired although the entire series is on the Internet Archive. It plays a bit like the Coen brothers at their weirdest/dumbest.
Byron, I found out a lot about the production of TWIN PEAKS in A PLACE BOTH WONDERFUL AND STRANGE. Of course, the process is different today with the looming impact of Artificial Intelligence.
I watched ON THE AIR when it was broadcast, but don’t remember how I liked it…it was certainly broad. Thanks for the IA pointer.
Todd, David Lynch’s works are very distinctive…although all different.
Once the show introduced the Black Lodge component, it went swiftly downhill. Hard to believe that was 30+ years ago.
Fred, the Red Room was better than the Black Lodge.
Never watched it, but I think I’ve been to the town they used for its exteriors when I was deer hunting one year!
Bob, you certainly get around!