PREVIEW： The Career of David Lynch： Part IV
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Summary
In this final episode of our series on David Lynch's Twin Peaks, we continue our exploration of his life and career with a look at the creator of one of the most famous television series of all time, Twin Peaks: The Rise of David Lynch.
Transcript
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Hello and welcome to the fourth and final part of our director series looking at the life and works of David Lynch.
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I'm your host Harry, joined today by Josh and special returning guest, friend of the show, Chloe, proper horror show.
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And in this episode we're going to cap off this full discussion from the past three parts by talking about
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probably the largest and most well-known bit of work that David Lynch ever did, Twin Peaks.
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Now, Josh and I have already had a full video about Twin Peaks,
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but it would be wrong to finish the series without another discussion on it,
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even if Josh and I are treading somewhat old ground for both of us.
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And Chloe can add her own thoughts, her own views and interpretations to add some variety.
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And also, I will be honest, I've not been able to rewatch the whole thing in time for this.
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i have i have watched like three or four times the whole way through uh but i did so that i
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could get a bit of a refresher and play a sort of devil's advocate for a particular theory that's
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very infamous among twin peaks fans i did re-watch the entire four and a half hour
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twin perfect twin peaks explained no really video which puts forward a very comprehensive
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and very controversial view about Twin Peaks that suggests that it can all be seen through
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one particular lens, which unlocks the door, acts as the key to the answer to everything
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the show does, which could be otherwise seen as obtuse, aimless, or confusing. I'm not entirely
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sure if I fully buy into it myself, but we'll get into a broader discussion of that as we go along.
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Along with Twin Peaks, we'll be talking about some of the extra work that he did, like his television adverts, his music videos, and some of the extra paintings and productions that he did, just so that we can have a more broad, rounded view of his entire career.
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and at the end of the last discussion we ended off talking about inland empire which was the last
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full feature film that he ever produced even though it wasn't really a feature film it's kind
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of a guerrilla production that later on got some studio funding there is an argument to be made
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that twin peaks the return the long-awaited final series and third series of twin peaks
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is not a television show but is instead a 18 hour long film and it's certainly that's the way that
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it was produced but before we get into that we'll need to rewind all the way before inland empire
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before mulholland drive even before lost highway to the beginning just after blue velvet when david
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lynch meets mark frost and they begin working on television program ideas together which eventually
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culminates in the production, the creation of Twin Peaks, which is the defining work
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of both of them. Would you like to add any of the story? You're always such a good storyteller,
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Chloe, so I thought I'd let you walk us through a little bit of it.
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You're too kind. I think it's very instructive to note that Lynch is coming out of something
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of a controversial triumph. He's got a good working relationship with Dino De Laurentiis,
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someone who believes in him and supports him, which is how he's able to get Blue Velvet off
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the ground. But after that, that ability to fund films that way sort of dries up.
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But luckily he's put on to this connection with Mark Frost over potentially adapting
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another project unlike kubrick who would find out his own work david lynch was being offered a lot
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and so had his choice that way and something he was offered was an adaptation of a book called
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goddess on the life of laura palmer sorry marilyn monroe same thing i wonder how i got those
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confused yeah funny thing is when you learn that oh okay he was going to do a work on marilyn monroe
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all of a sudden all of the stuff with the la trilogy and laura palmer as well you begin to
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realize that he's just riffing on themes of the marilyn monroe story as he sees it through all
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the rest of his work after being offered that very much so very much so uh so they were approaching
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that and that's what they were bouncing around but uh mark frost uh that you hear this a lot
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in the biography that that project didn't really go anywhere but the relationship with mark frost
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was much more promising they started bouncing ideas around and realized that there's something
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they are more interested in um and i think possibly we get a clue to some of the things
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that transmogrified into twin peaks when we consider some of lynch's other interests so
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we've mentioned previously billy wilder's movies uh double indemnity for lost highway
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Sunset Boulevard for Mulholland Drive. There's another old classic by a chap called Otto
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Preminger called Laura. And curiously enough, Laura, it's a wonderful film starring Vincent
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Price. It centers around a detective coming in to investigate a woman who isn't there.
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her portrait kind of looms over the film but she's a sort of long since dead or missing supposedly
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um the film goes off in a different direction from there but you're sort of following the
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tangles of her life and trying to piece where she went and i think we've got a clear influence
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for twin peaks there all these little that is basically the plot yeah all these things sort
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Just add a bit of FBI and weird woodland spirit creatures.
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I mean, we did say we'd try and cram this in the way
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have so many donuts that he was absolutely buzzing,
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They'd get used to coming to him with paper already.
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So what you're suggesting is that the success of David Lynch was actually the result of a lifelong caffeine and sugar rush.
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Look, if you're going to get hooked on a white powder in Hollywood, sugar is the one to go for.
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And he never wrote in any suspect scenes like a certain other white powder-fuelled man did in his works.
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Red Soons. Vague posting, Harry. I think the audience knows well enough who I'm referring to.
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So Frost and Lynch are working together. Frost is a bit of a TV veteran from, was it Hill Street
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Blues? Yes, that's right. He was a staff writer for them. That's right. And the two of them
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bouncing their ideas together go in this new direction towards Twin Peaks. And I think you've
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you described in the previous episode the sort of difference in focus. Would you also just like
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people talk about maybe where frost's focus was again that would be well first of all there is
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an extra little caveat which is in between before they get to the idea of twin peaks you can see
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where some of the other ideas start to form up that would become the the framework right so
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they have one saliva bubble which falls through uh because um i forget if that was because of
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they said that they were laughing their butts off
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So I can imagine that it was just a little bit of fun
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There was another idea about a strange island of evil
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with those monitors that check for seismic vibrations
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so they can get rid of the evil and you can see some of these ideas involvement of fbi agents
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starts to form and eventually they end up coming up with the idea of twin peaks based around ideas
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like the death of marilyn the row these other inspirations another big inspiration for it was
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called the fugitive the 1960s mystery detective drama where they're tracking down a one-armed man
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who is basically just copied and pasted into twin peaks as a reference at first but then becomes his
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own character where uh where that was about an ongoing mystery that took more than one episode
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to solve so you've got the inspiration for the kind of format that twin peaks goes for
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but yeah obviously david lynch goes very dreamy with everything when you can see him work without
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constraints like with something like a race ahead or inland empire bookending his feature film career
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you can see the narratives are very abstract they're almost all in the visuals there's some
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great character work but there's not necessarily a character arc that you're following through
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like mark frost is more way more straight down the line he is a tv staff writer first and foremost
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when he started and now he is a tv showrunner he knows how to work around the studios he knows how
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get things done. He knows how to work to a TV schedule and how to structure a TV script around
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the American formatting of 45 minute script with three or four five minute long ad breaks.
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You know, it is something kind of weird now when you see it on... When we watch them,
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we aren't getting those ad breaks, generally, depending how we watch. It's so weird how you
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can see it in the format well what it helps to do is provide structure and direction to a story
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one of the problems with the more recent like netflix style of just throw it all out there
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it's all available right there is that the pacing can be all over the place because these programs
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do not know how to fit their stories into a three four or five act structure so the television
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structure was a five act structure i believe where you'd have one act ad break second act ad break
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third act ad break fourth act no i think it was a four act structure sounds about right actually
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and what that did was it allowed you to have all of these little moments that you're ramping up to
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a little climax at the end of that act that comes down a little cliffhanger for the ad break that
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keeps you hooked and then back on you can still see that structure when you watch these programs
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even without the ads and things don't have those anymore which is why a lot of television tends to
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be a little bit aimless one of the big successes of the sopranos was the fact that the tv writers
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were working without the constraints of ad breaks because they were on hbo but every single one of
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those writers have been working 10 15 20 years in television as it existed up to that point so they
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still knew how to structure a strip a script to keep the viewer hooked on the story and this is a
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problem that befalls so so much of media is just conciseness not even necessarily media just the
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arts more generally in that I feel like there's a great value in saying all that needs to be said
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and no more and and maybe it's just my scientific training here speaking out that any additional
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superfluous words are just baggage and weigh it down but I think that when it comes to media
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it keeps the pace up particularly with with things like film and tv where if everything
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feels like it's important and has a purpose to the story you've got no space to drift off and
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start thinking about other things you know oh sorry i was watching i was meant to be watching
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this and i'm not been paying attention and i think that that sort of philosophy of having to
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condense things down is always very useful it's the same with music as well and i'm sure you've
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probably experienced this from one dream theater fan to another yes sometimes you can shorten things
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down sometimes a 42 minute piece of music hey that's one of their best actually listening to
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it recently it's just one of their longest it is their longest yeah but i think that um one of the
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things that i really appreciate frost brought to the table was that experience because i think
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what actually comes of it is a mitigation of what i see is lynch's tendency to indulge his ideas
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because he enjoys it which i can sympathize with but sometimes they overstay their welcome in his
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work yeah and that's what frost was as well as a writing partner and somebody else who brought
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loads of great ideas to the table he was a filter to put all of that through lynch has these ideas
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frost is the guy who helps him to forge it into something that's going to be palatable
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and work for the network and work for them we want to make sure that the audience is sticking
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around through the adverts and it's going to tune in every single week so you get these lovely
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cliffhangers the little mysteries pop up here and there you get all of these different branching
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storylines but they have enough meat on the bone to each of them that you're interested in you want
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to you still want to tag along with those one of the other problems with more recent television
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just while we're on the subject quickly with the whole Netflix thing as well so we mentioned in
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the last episode one of the reasons I think that Mulholland Drive failed as a pilot or didn't get
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picked up for a television show was the studio executives were worried that television audiences
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would only half watch things unlike a television unlike a film screen when you're in the theater
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and you sat there and you have to have your attention on the screen television can be on
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while you're doing other things so people were worried that if you set up all of these mysteries
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you're not going to be able to follow them all people aren't going to pay attention they're
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going to drop off and it's going to be a waste of money for everybody they still have a similar
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kind of problem even on netflix which is that they worry even though there's no ad breaks and
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people have huge televisions and home cinema screens nowadays you're going to be watching it
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half and half while you're on your phone this is another example of how pandering to ordinary
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people ruins good art yeah the most recent example of how this affects stuff i have not watched it
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past series three myself but i have heard some terrible things about the last series
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was stranger things i kept seeing clips come out of the fifth and last series of stranger things
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where every other scene was a character explaining the plot explaining the plot again here's what's
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happening and what we're doing here's what's happening and what we're doing and they would
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also do this thing though where they they would find some like visual indicator as well for the
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retards in the audience and they would go here's the thing that i'm doing and here's the thing that
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you're doing and here's how they're going to work together to do this other thing like every other
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scene and people were complaining about it a lot the reason they had to write it like that
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is because Netflix is expecting that the retard watching at home
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is on his phone, is not paying attention from scene to scene.
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So that's one of the ways in which the modern streaming service model
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not saying that Stranger Things would have been a masterpiece either way,
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I enjoyed the first series, thought the second series was a drop-off
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and kind of lost interest through the third series.
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but either way they're expect that that's how it affects it negatively because they have to format
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the entire show around the expectation that you're not paying proper attention i just got a pitch in
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here like i have a dark fascination with second screening and i like dissecting it like when i
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see you know when you watch an older movie either in the 50s or maybe mid 80s and you're like
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this was 3d that nonsense shot is there because this was for 3d a lot of show a lot of films from
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the mid 2000s as you get into like 2006 to 2009 kind of culminating and stuff like avatar yeah
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i love it when you can just sort of see we've all stopped it but you can tell there's like a
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vestigial indicator of 3d i like this the second screen stuff and i find it really darkly
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entertaining when you spot the moment that's why you explained what you're doing for the third time
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yeah or even um there's a sort of corollary of it corollary um you notice things put in purely
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to be a viral meme uh examples being like um in in megan i'm pickle rick pickle rick
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megan dancing is like hey or the wednesday dance it's like you put that in purely so it could take
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off on tiktok you jammed it in there etc sorry i'm darkly fascinated with it yeah i mean my favorite
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with the 3d one is when you're watching a film from that time and there would be a really out
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of place shot where it's a wide shot of some like chaos or something happening and maybe you're
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watching a horror film or something and somebody's running around and they go ah and they run straight
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to the camera they go ah straight into the camera and they like stop at the camera and scream at it
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there's only one person who can get away with that without making it 3d and his name is sam raimi
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yes only sam raimi is allowed to do those kinds of shots all right nobody else stop it
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speaking of directors yeah speaking of directors david lynch getting back to david lynch they're
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getting their money's worth here this is a multifaceted discussion and given that twin
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peaks is very very preoccupied with the nature and format and effects of television i think it
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is appropriate to have broader discussions on television itself twin peaks is a very very meta
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show not in the community sense where you have a character literally saying oh we're in a tv show
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isn't that weird and then just calling out the like three act or four act or five act structure
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whenever it happens and the character beats and stuff no it's a show that's aware of the context
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and time that it exists in and the format that it's using and it uses those conventions
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messes with those conventions twists your expectations to flip it on its head and tell
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a compelling story that way and to keep you hooked that way and that's one of the really
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good things about mark frost is lynch knows how to break the rules mark frost knows the rules
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so mark frost tells him the rules and helps david lynch to break them in just the right way and
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that was why it was a perfect collaboration for this absolutely i very much agree yeah
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yeah the a lot of schools of analysis this will focus on the sort of meta element and you can go
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very deep into that but yeah i think the original point that you were trying to make was me saying
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about the different approaches that they had towards the actual story as well so yeah i think
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there's two stories that twin peaks is telling uh one which is david lynch's story and one which
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is mark frost's story and the fact that the two of them mesh together in the way that they do is
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one of the things that makes it so beautiful i think that david lynch i do think that david lynch
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pays a lot more attention to just concrete linear storytelling than people give him credit for you
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can watch something like blue velvet and see no that's just a story that is just a story with a
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with some really interesting abstract stuff attached to it, but it is a story. He is still
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interested in telling a story, but he's also very interested in using a story and characters
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as a framework for abstract ideas, symbolism, and themes that he wants to convey to the audience
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so that he can express his feelings and his views on the world with them. Mark Frost seems much
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more interested in the mechanical nuts and bolts in universe of how this story works so for instance
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with a character like bob bob and mark frost may both have an sorry lynch and mark frost may both
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have an idea in their head of what albert says of bob as being the evil that exists within all of us
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right this abstract idea lynch is looking at it more towards the idea of it being the abstraction
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bob isn't necessarily real he's just a force for evil that can infect people mark frost is seeing
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that but he's also seeing him as a physical entity that exists within this world within this universe
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who causes havoc for his own motivations and reasons so some would say things just happen
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in Twin Peaks because they happen because David Lynch wanted them to happen I disagree entirely
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I think there's a logic underpinning everything I think there are rules that the character in the
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universe operate by but I think a lot of that has been put into the world by Mark Frost the
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interesting thing though is that building on that the film Fire Walk With Me adds a lot of lore and
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adds a lot of mystery and intrigue back into it and that was David Lynch working with Robert
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Engels who was a co-writer who had written a lot of episodes for the show as well while it was
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airing that also adds a lot of concrete mechanical stuff into how the world works which is then
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expanded and built on in the third series I think people were very surprised when they watched the
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third series how much of it relied on knowledge and understanding of the film they're expecting
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it to basically ignore that because it was such a critical flop it was actually more essential in
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many ways than the original two series to understanding the third series but that was
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built on by lynch without frost's involvement and then series three they come back together
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and create the thing so i think there's all of these different dynamics in play but to anybody
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who just says twin peaks is weird for the sake of it doesn't mean anything and things just happen
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because they happen that's just completely wrong and i would beg that they try and watch it with a
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more analytic and critical eye to understanding what's happening but then again
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given the simplicity of some of the symbolism that we've spoken out uh spoken about as we've
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been talking about this and how it flies over people's heads and how my own recent experiences
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talking about star wars prequels has revealed to me that a lot of grown men couldn't understand
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running in the background of the Star Wars prequel films,
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to be able to understand what's blindingly obvious
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And worst of all, people don't get the value of Jar Jar Binks,
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I know I'm in the right room with the right people after that.
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the Twin Peaks route it didn't work for me um I mean there's weird enough because I would say
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the first series is alongside like Blue Velvet and Elephant Man probably his most accessible
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avenue to get into his world you know the weird thing is I came in originally having watched
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uh Elephant Man and Dune and Blue Velvet ages and ages ago loved them and then I sort of
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bounced off Twin Peaks then came back in via Mulholland Drive absolutely loved it and that's
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where i started to think okay this is how you watch his films this is how you understand it
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and then having sort of got on that wavelength having learned to watch a film that way
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i could then go through twin peaks again and see what was going on and say
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right i see what he's doing here yeah the first time i i was just watching it the wrong way
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the audience can be wrong the funny thing is i didn't really know much about david lynch when i
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first engaged with his work and it was through twin peaks because my because of um some of my
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friends i was watching it when i was when i was still in school so the original series this was
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before even uh the return had come out and so i just thought it was a quirky show from the from
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the 90s um that was sort of daytime television but was actually good um because it has that sort
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of feeling of being like cheesy daytime television it definitely has all the soap opera it does yeah
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