The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - PREVIEW： The Career of David Lynch： Part IV

00:00:00.200 Hello and welcome to the fourth and final part of our director series looking at the life and works of David Lynch.

00:00:08.120 I'm your host Harry, joined today by Josh and special returning guest, friend of the show, Chloe, proper horror show.

00:00:15.960 And in this episode we're going to cap off this full discussion from the past three parts by talking about

00:00:22.680 probably the largest and most well-known bit of work that David Lynch ever did, Twin Peaks.

00:00:29.080 Now, Josh and I have already had a full video about Twin Peaks,

00:00:31.740 but it would be wrong to finish the series without another discussion on it,

00:00:35.720 even if Josh and I are treading somewhat old ground for both of us.

00:00:38.720 But we'll try and spin it up for you a bit.

00:00:42.060 And Chloe can add her own thoughts, her own views and interpretations to add some variety.

00:00:47.560 And also, I will be honest, I've not been able to rewatch the whole thing in time for this.

00:00:53.360 You don't need to. It's up here and in here.

00:00:55.860 i have i have watched like three or four times the whole way through uh but i did so that i

00:01:02.840 could get a bit of a refresher and play a sort of devil's advocate for a particular theory that's

00:01:08.200 very infamous among twin peaks fans i did re-watch the entire four and a half hour

00:01:14.280 twin perfect twin peaks explained no really video which puts forward a very comprehensive

00:01:22.040 and very controversial view about Twin Peaks that suggests that it can all be seen through

00:01:29.880 one particular lens, which unlocks the door, acts as the key to the answer to everything

00:01:36.020 the show does, which could be otherwise seen as obtuse, aimless, or confusing. I'm not entirely

00:01:42.420 sure if I fully buy into it myself, but we'll get into a broader discussion of that as we go along.

00:01:48.320 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.

00:02:05.060 Thank you again for joining me, both of you.

00:02:07.540 You're welcome.

00:02:08.040 and at the end of the last discussion we ended off talking about inland empire which was the last

00:02:13.760 full feature film that he ever produced even though it wasn't really a feature film it's kind

00:02:19.820 of a guerrilla production that later on got some studio funding there is an argument to be made

00:02:24.900 that twin peaks the return the long-awaited final series and third series of twin peaks

00:02:31.000 is not a television show but is instead a 18 hour long film and it's certainly that's the way that

00:02:38.040 it was produced but before we get into that we'll need to rewind all the way before inland empire

00:02:43.780 before mulholland drive even before lost highway to the beginning just after blue velvet when david

00:02:50.960 lynch meets mark frost and they begin working on television program ideas together which eventually

00:02:57.540 culminates in the production, the creation of Twin Peaks, which is the defining work

00:03:04.020 of both of them. Would you like to add any of the story? You're always such a good storyteller,

00:03:09.780 Chloe, so I thought I'd let you walk us through a little bit of it.

00:03:14.340 You're too kind. I think it's very instructive to note that Lynch is coming out of something

00:03:23.700 of a controversial triumph. He's got a good working relationship with Dino De Laurentiis,

00:03:29.140 someone who believes in him and supports him, which is how he's able to get Blue Velvet off

00:03:37.620 the ground. But after that, that ability to fund films that way sort of dries up.

00:03:45.860 But luckily he's put on to this connection with Mark Frost over potentially adapting

00:03:51.620 another project unlike kubrick who would find out his own work david lynch was being offered a lot

00:03:59.040 and so had his choice that way and something he was offered was an adaptation of a book called

00:04:04.660 goddess on the life of laura palmer sorry marilyn monroe same thing i wonder how i got those

00:04:11.200 confused yeah funny thing is when you learn that oh okay he was going to do a work on marilyn monroe

00:04:16.660 all of a sudden all of the stuff with the la trilogy and laura palmer as well you begin to

00:04:23.800 realize that he's just riffing on themes of the marilyn monroe story as he sees it through all

00:04:29.640 the rest of his work after being offered that very much so very much so uh so they were approaching

00:04:35.780 that and that's what they were bouncing around but uh mark frost uh that you hear this a lot

00:04:41.220 in the biography that that project didn't really go anywhere but the relationship with mark frost

00:04:46.180 was much more promising they started bouncing ideas around and realized that there's something

00:04:51.560 they are more interested in um and i think possibly we get a clue to some of the things

00:04:58.260 that transmogrified into twin peaks when we consider some of lynch's other interests so

00:05:04.400 we've mentioned previously billy wilder's movies uh double indemnity for lost highway

00:05:10.060 Sunset Boulevard for Mulholland Drive. There's another old classic by a chap called Otto

00:05:18.080 Preminger called Laura. And curiously enough, Laura, it's a wonderful film starring Vincent

00:05:26.420 Price. It centers around a detective coming in to investigate a woman who isn't there.

00:05:34.320 her portrait kind of looms over the film but she's a sort of long since dead or missing supposedly

00:05:41.900 um the film goes off in a different direction from there but you're sort of following the

00:05:47.860 tangles of her life and trying to piece where she went and i think we've got a clear influence

00:05:54.360 for twin peaks there all these little that is basically the plot yeah all these things sort

00:05:59.020 That's basically the plot of Twin Peaks.

00:06:01.340 Just add a bit of FBI and weird woodland spirit creatures.

00:06:04.900 Lots of coffee and pie.

00:06:07.340 Lots of pure evil mixed with pure good.

00:06:09.700 I mean, we did say we'd try and cram this in the way

00:06:12.320 that David Lynch loves to write,

00:06:14.240 as he would go to Bob's Big Boy Diner,

00:06:16.820 have six cups of coffee loaded up with sugar,

00:06:20.700 have so many donuts that he was absolutely buzzing,

00:06:23.140 and then get creative ideas.

00:06:24.660 They'd get used to coming to him with paper already.

00:06:27.020 So what you're suggesting is that the success of David Lynch was actually the result of a lifelong caffeine and sugar rush.

00:06:38.580 Yeah, pretty much, pretty much.

00:06:40.360 Look, if you're going to get hooked on a white powder in Hollywood, sugar is the one to go for.

00:06:44.700 That's true.

00:06:45.520 Yeah, it works better. 0.78

00:06:46.640 And he never wrote in any suspect scenes like a certain other white powder-fuelled man did in his works. 0.87

00:06:55.500 No royal figures. 1.00

00:06:57.020 Red Soons. Vague posting, Harry. I think the audience knows well enough who I'm referring to.

00:07:03.580 So Frost and Lynch are working together. Frost is a bit of a TV veteran from, was it Hill Street

00:07:08.460 Blues? Yes, that's right. He was a staff writer for them. That's right. And the two of them

00:07:14.060 bouncing their ideas together go in this new direction towards Twin Peaks. And I think you've

00:07:21.180 you described in the previous episode the sort of difference in focus. Would you also just like

00:07:25.740 people talk about maybe where frost's focus was again that would be well first of all there is

00:07:31.620 an extra little caveat which is in between before they get to the idea of twin peaks you can see

00:07:39.680 where some of the other ideas start to form up that would become the the framework right so

00:07:45.240 they have one saliva bubble which falls through uh because um i forget if that was because of

00:07:53.220 De Laurentiis

00:07:57.360 but either way

00:07:59.160 one saliva bubble falls through

00:08:01.600 and they have this other idea

00:08:03.680 what a sentence

00:08:04.720 pardon?

00:08:06.300 what a sentence

00:08:07.460 one saliva bubble falls through

00:08:09.820 that was a strange idea

00:08:12.100 where it was supposed to be

00:08:13.120 let me read

00:08:15.160 one saliva bubble

00:08:16.180 they don't mention what it's supposed to be

00:08:18.620 in this little section that I found here

00:08:20.820 they said that they were laughing their butts off

00:08:23.160 the entire time they were writing it together.

00:08:25.500 So I can imagine that it was just a little bit of fun

00:08:28.020 that they were going to go through.

00:08:29.540 There was another idea about a strange island of evil

00:08:33.400 that gets sucked under the ocean

00:08:37.000 and some of the inhabitants of the island

00:08:39.240 were still out and about.

00:08:41.740 So two FBI agents have to go around

00:08:44.580 with those monitors that check for seismic vibrations

00:08:49.260 or whatever they are

00:08:50.140 and try and track them down that way

00:08:52.600 so they can get rid of the evil and you can see some of these ideas involvement of fbi agents

00:08:58.520 starts to form and eventually they end up coming up with the idea of twin peaks based around ideas

00:09:04.720 like the death of marilyn the row these other inspirations another big inspiration for it was

00:09:09.220 called the fugitive the 1960s mystery detective drama where they're tracking down a one-armed man

00:09:17.440 who is basically just copied and pasted into twin peaks as a reference at first but then becomes his

00:09:23.860 own character where uh where that was about an ongoing mystery that took more than one episode

00:09:30.420 to solve so you've got the inspiration for the kind of format that twin peaks goes for

00:09:34.320 but yeah obviously david lynch goes very dreamy with everything when you can see him work without

00:09:39.840 constraints like with something like a race ahead or inland empire bookending his feature film career

00:09:45.400 you can see the narratives are very abstract they're almost all in the visuals there's some

00:09:51.840 great character work but there's not necessarily a character arc that you're following through

00:09:57.540 like mark frost is more way more straight down the line he is a tv staff writer first and foremost

00:10:04.960 when he started and now he is a tv showrunner he knows how to work around the studios he knows how

00:10:10.960 get things done. He knows how to work to a TV schedule and how to structure a TV script around

00:10:16.640 the American formatting of 45 minute script with three or four five minute long ad breaks.

00:10:25.520 You know, it is something kind of weird now when you see it on... When we watch them,

00:10:30.720 we aren't getting those ad breaks, generally, depending how we watch. It's so weird how you

00:10:36.160 can see it in the format well what it helps to do is provide structure and direction to a story

00:10:43.380 one of the problems with the more recent like netflix style of just throw it all out there

00:10:48.960 it's all available right there is that the pacing can be all over the place because these programs

00:10:54.200 do not know how to fit their stories into a three four or five act structure so the television

00:10:59.420 structure was a five act structure i believe where you'd have one act ad break second act ad break

00:11:05.920 third act ad break fourth act no i think it was a four act structure sounds about right actually

00:11:10.900 and what that did was it allowed you to have all of these little moments that you're ramping up to

00:11:16.500 a little climax at the end of that act that comes down a little cliffhanger for the ad break that

00:11:21.920 keeps you hooked and then back on you can still see that structure when you watch these programs

00:11:26.340 even without the ads and things don't have those anymore which is why a lot of television tends to

00:11:32.340 be a little bit aimless one of the big successes of the sopranos was the fact that the tv writers

00:11:38.780 were working without the constraints of ad breaks because they were on hbo but every single one of

00:11:44.200 those writers have been working 10 15 20 years in television as it existed up to that point so they

00:11:50.680 still knew how to structure a strip a script to keep the viewer hooked on the story and this is a

00:11:57.120 problem that befalls so so much of media is just conciseness not even necessarily media just the

00:12:03.680 arts more generally in that I feel like there's a great value in saying all that needs to be said

00:12:10.420 and no more and and maybe it's just my scientific training here speaking out that any additional

00:12:18.080 superfluous words are just baggage and weigh it down but I think that when it comes to media

00:12:24.560 it keeps the pace up particularly with with things like film and tv where if everything

00:12:31.200 feels like it's important and has a purpose to the story you've got no space to drift off and

00:12:36.460 start thinking about other things you know oh sorry i was watching i was meant to be watching

00:12:40.760 this and i'm not been paying attention and i think that that sort of philosophy of having to

00:12:47.160 condense things down is always very useful it's the same with music as well and i'm sure you've

00:12:52.920 probably experienced this from one dream theater fan to another yes sometimes you can shorten things

00:12:58.500 down sometimes a 42 minute piece of music hey that's one of their best actually listening to

00:13:04.960 it recently it's just one of their longest it is their longest yeah but i think that um one of the

00:13:13.040 things that i really appreciate frost brought to the table was that experience because i think

00:13:18.040 what actually comes of it is a mitigation of what i see is lynch's tendency to indulge his ideas

00:13:26.680 because he enjoys it which i can sympathize with but sometimes they overstay their welcome in his

00:13:33.380 work yeah and that's what frost was as well as a writing partner and somebody else who brought

00:13:39.820 loads of great ideas to the table he was a filter to put all of that through lynch has these ideas

00:13:46.940 frost is the guy who helps him to forge it into something that's going to be palatable

00:13:51.260 and work for the network and work for them we want to make sure that the audience is sticking

00:13:56.460 around through the adverts and it's going to tune in every single week so you get these lovely

00:14:01.200 cliffhangers the little mysteries pop up here and there you get all of these different branching

00:14:06.760 storylines but they have enough meat on the bone to each of them that you're interested in you want

00:14:12.100 to you still want to tag along with those one of the other problems with more recent television

00:14:16.520 just while we're on the subject quickly with the whole Netflix thing as well so we mentioned in

00:14:20.700 the last episode one of the reasons I think that Mulholland Drive failed as a pilot or didn't get

00:14:27.400 picked up for a television show was the studio executives were worried that television audiences

00:14:32.840 would only half watch things unlike a television unlike a film screen when you're in the theater

00:14:38.060 and you sat there and you have to have your attention on the screen television can be on

00:14:41.860 while you're doing other things so people were worried that if you set up all of these mysteries

00:14:46.620 you're not going to be able to follow them all people aren't going to pay attention they're

00:14:49.200 going to drop off and it's going to be a waste of money for everybody they still have a similar

00:14:53.600 kind of problem even on netflix which is that they worry even though there's no ad breaks and

00:15:01.620 people have huge televisions and home cinema screens nowadays you're going to be watching it

00:15:06.660 half and half while you're on your phone this is another example of how pandering to ordinary

00:15:11.620 people ruins good art yeah the most recent example of how this affects stuff i have not watched it

00:15:19.160 past series three myself but i have heard some terrible things about the last series

00:15:23.120 was stranger things i kept seeing clips come out of the fifth and last series of stranger things

00:15:29.680 where every other scene was a character explaining the plot explaining the plot again here's what's

00:15:36.980 happening and what we're doing here's what's happening and what we're doing and they would

00:15:39.540 also do this thing though where they they would find some like visual indicator as well for the 0.79

00:15:43.900 retards in the audience and they would go here's the thing that i'm doing and here's the thing that 0.89

00:15:47.940 you're doing and here's how they're going to work together to do this other thing like every other 0.97

00:15:51.480 scene and people were complaining about it a lot the reason they had to write it like that 0.97

00:15:55.600 is because Netflix is expecting that the retard watching at home 0.96

00:15:59.140 is on his phone, is not paying attention from scene to scene. 0.97

00:16:03.580 So we'll need a refresher every single scene.

00:16:07.280 So that's one of the ways in which the modern streaming service model

00:16:12.520 that we use right now,

00:16:14.300 not saying that Stranger Things would have been a masterpiece either way,

00:16:17.360 but...

00:16:17.620 I still quite enjoyed it, actually.

00:16:18.760 I enjoyed it to the end.

00:16:19.940 I enjoyed the first series, thought the second series was a drop-off

00:16:23.380 and kind of lost interest through the third series.

00:16:25.180 but either way they're expect that that's how it affects it negatively because they have to format

00:16:31.480 the entire show around the expectation that you're not paying proper attention i just got a pitch in

00:16:36.920 here like i have a dark fascination with second screening and i like dissecting it like when i

00:16:42.880 see you know when you watch an older movie either in the 50s or maybe mid 80s and you're like

00:16:48.320 this was 3d that nonsense shot is there because this was for 3d a lot of show a lot of films from

00:16:56.240 the mid 2000s as you get into like 2006 to 2009 kind of culminating and stuff like avatar yeah

00:17:04.160 i love it when you can just sort of see we've all stopped it but you can tell there's like a

00:17:09.360 vestigial indicator of 3d i like this the second screen stuff and i find it really darkly

00:17:17.680 entertaining when you spot the moment that's why you explained what you're doing for the third time

00:17:21.840 yeah or even um there's a sort of corollary of it corollary um you notice things put in purely

00:17:31.700 to be a viral meme uh examples being like um in in megan i'm pickle rick pickle rick

00:17:41.000 megan dancing is like hey or the wednesday dance it's like you put that in purely so it could take

00:17:48.940 off on tiktok you jammed it in there etc sorry i'm darkly fascinated with it yeah i mean my favorite

00:17:56.720 with the 3d one is when you're watching a film from that time and there would be a really out

00:18:01.020 of place shot where it's a wide shot of some like chaos or something happening and maybe you're

00:18:06.340 watching a horror film or something and somebody's running around and they go ah and they run straight

00:18:10.980 to the camera they go ah straight into the camera and they like stop at the camera and scream at it

00:18:16.140 there's only one person who can get away with that without making it 3d and his name is sam raimi

00:18:22.820 yes only sam raimi is allowed to do those kinds of shots all right nobody else stop it

00:18:30.040 speaking of directors yeah speaking of directors david lynch getting back to david lynch they're

00:18:36.000 getting their money's worth here this is a multifaceted discussion and given that twin

00:18:40.220 peaks is very very preoccupied with the nature and format and effects of television i think it

00:18:46.480 is appropriate to have broader discussions on television itself twin peaks is a very very meta

00:18:52.680 show not in the community sense where you have a character literally saying oh we're in a tv show

00:18:58.900 isn't that weird and then just calling out the like three act or four act or five act structure

00:19:03.500 whenever it happens and the character beats and stuff no it's a show that's aware of the context

00:19:09.180 and time that it exists in and the format that it's using and it uses those conventions

00:19:15.520 messes with those conventions twists your expectations to flip it on its head and tell

00:19:21.880 a compelling story that way and to keep you hooked that way and that's one of the really

00:19:26.320 good things about mark frost is lynch knows how to break the rules mark frost knows the rules

00:19:31.500 so mark frost tells him the rules and helps david lynch to break them in just the right way and

00:19:38.480 that was why it was a perfect collaboration for this absolutely i very much agree yeah

00:19:42.880 yeah the a lot of schools of analysis this will focus on the sort of meta element and you can go

00:19:50.940 very deep into that but yeah i think the original point that you were trying to make was me saying

00:19:56.300 about the different approaches that they had towards the actual story as well so yeah i think

00:20:01.260 there's two stories that twin peaks is telling uh one which is david lynch's story and one which

00:20:06.720 is mark frost's story and the fact that the two of them mesh together in the way that they do is

00:20:11.460 one of the things that makes it so beautiful i think that david lynch i do think that david lynch

00:20:17.660 pays a lot more attention to just concrete linear storytelling than people give him credit for you

00:20:23.200 can watch something like blue velvet and see no that's just a story that is just a story with a

00:20:27.660 with some really interesting abstract stuff attached to it, but it is a story. He is still

00:20:31.920 interested in telling a story, but he's also very interested in using a story and characters

00:20:36.780 as a framework for abstract ideas, symbolism, and themes that he wants to convey to the audience

00:20:44.320 so that he can express his feelings and his views on the world with them. Mark Frost seems much

00:20:52.480 more interested in the mechanical nuts and bolts in universe of how this story works so for instance

00:20:59.860 with a character like bob bob and mark frost may both have an sorry lynch and mark frost may both

00:21:09.300 have an idea in their head of what albert says of bob as being the evil that exists within all of us

00:21:16.980 right this abstract idea lynch is looking at it more towards the idea of it being the abstraction

00:21:24.540 bob isn't necessarily real he's just a force for evil that can infect people mark frost is seeing

00:21:31.340 that but he's also seeing him as a physical entity that exists within this world within this universe

00:21:37.440 who causes havoc for his own motivations and reasons so some would say things just happen

00:21:43.920 in Twin Peaks because they happen because David Lynch wanted them to happen I disagree entirely

00:21:49.000 I think there's a logic underpinning everything I think there are rules that the character in the

00:21:53.680 universe operate by but I think a lot of that has been put into the world by Mark Frost the

00:22:02.080 interesting thing though is that building on that the film Fire Walk With Me adds a lot of lore and

00:22:10.360 adds a lot of mystery and intrigue back into it and that was David Lynch working with Robert

00:22:18.040 Engels who was a co-writer who had written a lot of episodes for the show as well while it was

00:22:23.000 airing that also adds a lot of concrete mechanical stuff into how the world works which is then

00:22:28.820 expanded and built on in the third series I think people were very surprised when they watched the

00:22:34.280 third series how much of it relied on knowledge and understanding of the film they're expecting

00:22:39.100 it to basically ignore that because it was such a critical flop it was actually more essential in

00:22:45.080 many ways than the original two series to understanding the third series but that was

00:22:51.620 built on by lynch without frost's involvement and then series three they come back together

00:22:56.580 and create the thing so i think there's all of these different dynamics in play but to anybody

00:23:01.340 who just says twin peaks is weird for the sake of it doesn't mean anything and things just happen

00:23:04.840 because they happen that's just completely wrong and i would beg that they try and watch it with a

00:23:09.240 more analytic and critical eye to understanding what's happening but then again

00:23:13.300 given the simplicity of some of the symbolism that we've spoken out uh spoken about as we've

00:23:19.320 been talking about this and how it flies over people's heads and how my own recent experiences

00:23:24.700 talking about star wars prequels has revealed to me that a lot of grown men couldn't understand

00:23:29.920 the very, very simple political intrigue plots

00:23:33.760 running in the background of the Star Wars prequel films,

00:23:36.480 I lose faith in people's ability

00:23:40.100 to be able to understand what's blindingly obvious

00:23:43.180 to them when on the screen.

00:23:43.440 And worst of all, people don't get the value of Jar Jar Binks,

00:23:46.700 which I think...

00:23:47.600 He's the key to everything.

00:23:48.180 He's the key to all of this.

00:23:50.560 I know I'm in the right room with the right people after that.

00:23:53.400 Yes.

00:23:54.180 Yeah.

00:23:54.820 You know, I'm going to put my hands up. 1.00

00:23:56.940 I was that idiot. 1.00

00:23:58.160 I was that person who watched 1.00

00:24:00.620 Season 1

00:24:02.140 I don't know if I got all the way through

00:24:04.420 Season 1 of Twin Peaks

00:24:06.080 Series 1 is the one that most

00:24:08.360 Even normies get into

00:24:10.260 I know, I just thought

00:24:11.700 Lynch is messing with me

00:24:13.900 Sub normie, opinion discarded

00:24:17.000 Look, there are many routes

00:24:18.900 Into Lynch

00:24:20.000 Many ways you can enter

00:24:22.260 At least three

00:24:23.260 And I attempted

00:24:26.480 the Twin Peaks route it didn't work for me um I mean there's weird enough because I would say

00:24:32.520 the first series is alongside like Blue Velvet and Elephant Man probably his most accessible

00:24:37.880 avenue to get into his world you know the weird thing is I came in originally having watched

00:24:42.360 uh Elephant Man and Dune and Blue Velvet ages and ages ago loved them and then I sort of

00:24:49.640 bounced off Twin Peaks then came back in via Mulholland Drive absolutely loved it and that's

00:24:55.560 where i started to think okay this is how you watch his films this is how you understand it

00:25:01.480 and then having sort of got on that wavelength having learned to watch a film that way

00:25:07.120 i could then go through twin peaks again and see what was going on and say

00:25:11.040 right i see what he's doing here yeah the first time i i was just watching it the wrong way

00:25:18.600 the audience can be wrong the funny thing is i didn't really know much about david lynch when i

00:25:23.600 first engaged with his work and it was through twin peaks because my because of um some of my

00:25:29.580 friends i was watching it when i was when i was still in school so the original series this was

00:25:35.760 before even uh the return had come out and so i just thought it was a quirky show from the from

00:25:44.400 the 90s um that was sort of daytime television but was actually good um because it has that sort

00:25:51.640 of feeling of being like cheesy daytime television it definitely has all the soap opera it does yeah

00:25:57.320 if you would like to see the full version of this premium video please head over to

00:26:01.280 lotus eaters.com and subscribe to gain full access to all of our premium content

The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - April 16, 2026

PREVIEW： The Career of David Lynch： Part IV

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript