Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Poetry

Through the darkness of future past
The magician longs to see
One chants out between two worlds:
Fire walk with me

It has been a little over a week since Twin Peaks ended. Ended? I'm almost halfway through re-watching the new series by now, and while certain things do make more sense after having seen where this is all going, it remains clear that all things will not be made clear.

I've been thinking a lot about what to make of, or, honestly, how to even think about what I saw over the 18 episodes of this resurrected series. It gave me my favorite hour of television ever — the bleak, inscrutable, horrifying, surreal episode eight, "Gotta light?" — and delivered more good episodes of Twin Peaks than the entire run of the original series. It opened up the world in a way that allowed us to ask a million more questions about what's "really" going on, what's behind the veil in the Twin Peaks Universe, and over the 18 episodes, answered about 35 of those questions. There are bad jokes, goofy happenings and characters, seemingly pointless scenes that go on for a long, long time, and scenes of miserable violence and suffering. WHAT'S IT ALL MEAN?? That's what it seems like everybody wants to know. And I kind of want to know, too.

But does it have to mean something? Really?

For me, now, the question "What the hell did I just watch?" has changed, and given way to "What the hell did I just feel?" And I think that's maybe the place I was supposed to get to.

It occurred to me that Twin Peaks at least this incarnation (much less-so the original series) is poetry. Many, many years ago I made peace with poetry by no longer requiring of myself as a reader that I "understand" it. It became far, far more important to me that I feel it. And that was enough.

This is the water, this is the well.
Drink full and descend.
The horse is the white of the eyes and dark within.

I love e.e. cummings with a burning passion. It's fine if you don't. The first time I read "anyone lived in a pretty how town," as a child...maybe a teenager but maybe not...it brought tears to my eyes. Actual, oh-God-don't-let-anybody-see tears. In high school, when I saw that we were going to study that poem in English class, I was thrilled. And then we "broke it down" and "analyzed" it, and it robbed the poem of its magic. I mean, in that moment. Nothing can rob it of its magic, but it was a grind. Ok, yes, "Anyone" and "Noone" stand in for people's names, sure. And why is it a "how town"? Because people are busy, I guess? I mean, look. Sure. You can pick it apart, you can ask why "floating" comes before "many," you can unpack how many times the same dream metaphor is used for death. You may hit the egg with a hammer to see what's inside, but you won't have an egg anymore.

Sometimes it is enough to intuit, and to feel, and to put the analytical away. Why, in your dream, might you be terrified of a jug of milk on a counter? No reason, except you know you should be terrified of it. It doesn't matter if they really met last year at Marienbad. It is enough to wonder.

So that's where I'm at with Twin Peaks, and thank you, thank you to the executives at Showtime who gave us this artwork. I don't know that they got what they needed out of the business part of this show, but I feel like we have been given a gift. I don't love everything about it, but the fact that it exists in the world gives me joy, and ties me up in knots, and makes me ask questions I so, so rarely get to ask while watching TV.

Why is Monica Bellucci a dream detective? Because that scene is magic. Why is Phillip Jeffries a tea kettle? Because David Bowie died and his character had to be something. What happened to Becky? Or Audrey? Or, hell, Laura Palmer? Savage men do terrible things, and these cycles should stop, but often don't. If there was a message to these 18 episodes, I think it was that. But Dale Cooper is always, I think, the best of us. That part of us that wants to always fight against these corrosive, destructive cycles, even if we do not win. Even if we cannot, ultimately, win.

And that, for me, is enough. Even if I'm wrong.

Posted by Vance K — cult film reviewer and co-editor of nerds of a feather, flock together since 2012, Emmy-winning producer, and singer of loud folk songs.

Checking in on Twin Peaks, or, Chillin' in the Black Lodge

​Not sure if you've heard, but Twin Peaks is back.

I was too young to watch the original run of the show, but I remember the phenomenon. "Who killed Laura Palmer?" was the question everybody was asking in 1990. As it turned out, David Lynch and Mark Frost had never intended to answer that question, but the network made them when ratings started to slip in Season 2. Once the question was answered, the show got pretty bad, actually. Ask David Lynch.

I've now watched the original series twice. I love David Lynch. As a former Surrealist myself, or, someone who played a Surrealist in real life (it's complicated), I think Lynch has come closer than anybody since Luis Buñuel to capturing the mechanics of dreaming on film. So my favorite pieces of the original series were the Black Lodge visits, and the weird, paranormal stuff. Disappearing giants and film run backwards and one-armed men. Great stuff. The teen romance and weird soap opera machinations and insurance fraud? Less so.

So the original series had about 18 great episodes out of the run of 30. And Fire Walk with Me is a little uneven, but still chilling and disturbing. So what would a return to Twin Peaks for 18 new episodes bring after 25 years? The good? The bad? The both?

Five episodes in (no spoilers here, promise), I'm still more curious than hooked, but I have to say that David Lynch doesn't disappoint when it comes to delivering the David Lynch goods. There's a lot more Black Lodge, and hints at other inter-dimensional places, too. Premium cable allows for a lot more sudden, bloody David Lynch violence that's familiar from his film work but absent from the original show. There are other Lynch signatures, too, like long, awkward stillnesses and silence, jarring sound design, oddballs, and confounding mysteries. Knowing that Lynch and Frost never intended to wrap up the Laura Palmer mystery, I'm not convinced we're going to see many of these new mysteries actually resolve. But that's probably ok, too. What the hell is up with the Cowboy in Mulholland Dr.? I don't know. Doesn't change how much I like the movie.

What makes me deeply happy is that the guy who made Eraserhead from 1972 to 1977, getting about a shot a day, using real umbilical cords (among other human and animal viscera) as props, definitely made this show. That's really a hell of a thing. All those Lynch signatures I mentioned above, and the pattern on the floor of the Black Lodge, come to that, are all on display in Lynch's first film. That he has evolved as an artist and storyteller, without compromising his idiosyncrasies, and while somehow simultaneously finding a way to make mainstream entertainment is probably unprecedented, and, as a fan, it's a wonderful thing to see and experience.

The canvas Lynch is painting on in the new Twin Peaks is vast. We've been to both Washingtons, a Dakota, Vegas, and at least two nearby dimensions. We don't know what connects all these places, but if you're on the fence about tuning in (I know, nobody "tunes in" anymore), or if the total media saturation leading up to the premiere didn't get you to sign up for Showtime, I have to recommend taking the ride. No promises where it ends will give you closure, but it's definitely worth investigating.

Finally, since it's been stuck in my head for at least a week now, I leave you with the Lady in the Radiator song.

Posted by Vance K — cult film reviewer and co-editor of nerds of a feather, flock together since 2012, Emmy-winning producer, and musician.

Cult Films 101: The David Lynch

Welcome back to Cult Films 101, where we are continuing our discussion about the three main types of cult films. Last week, we discussed the Guilty Pleasure -- films that are objectively bad, but nevertheless have something worthwhile that redeems them or makes them entertaining. This week, we will discuss the second type of cult film, the David Lynch, films that take an unconventional approach to narrative or subject matter.

This week, we'll be screening Joel and Ethan Cohen's 1998 film The Big Lebowski.

When we think of cult movies, many times we think only about films that are "gloriously bad" or "so-bad-they're good." The image of Edward D. Wood, Jr. comes to mind. The other side of the coin, however, has a picture of David Lynch on it. See, films made by folks like David Lynch are far from incompetent, like our Guilty Pleasures. They are in fact staggeringly accomplished in their execution. It takes an uncommon control of filmmaking tools and vernacular to be able to tell an utterly idiosyncratic story in a way that makes it comprehensible to a mass audience.

In the Black Lodge, you will probably see midgets, and they may dance.
But they'll definitely talk backwards. So you just need to deal.

For those of you who have watched the entire run of Twin Peaks (and for those of you who have not, what are you waiting for?), consider for a moment that the final episode, in which Agent Dale Cooper visits the Black Lodge with all of its midgets, backwards talking, and general level of Dali-esque insanity, aired in prime time on a major American network before most people had cable. Stop and really think about that. This is clearly a piece of art that is in total control of its mode of expression, and is not at all for everybody.

That brings us to this week's film, The Big Lebowski, which has spawned a festival, several books, a spike in the sale of White Russians (the drinks, not the humans), and at least one religion. In this film, which appropriately tanked at the box office (an unwritten rule of cult films), the Coen Brothers essentially remake the 1946 Humphrey Bogart/Lauren Bacall movie The Big Sleep, except with pornographers, Vietnam vets, feminist artists, cowboy narrators, bowling, pedophiles, In N Out Burger, and 20+ years of insider Hollywood stories. What about this doesn't spell "Box Office Goldmine"?

Clearly, we have strayed off the beaten path, here. But to put all of this stuff in a pot and make a gumbo that doesn't just immediately make you ill, the Coen Brothers required total command of their filmmaking faculties. They subsequently tried more straightforward remakes, like The Ladykillers and True Grit, which were substantially less effective films, so this is no mean feat they pulled off. What they were able to accomplish was to use Hollywood studio money to tell an extremely personal story (i.e., one that they found interesting with no assurance anyone else would), that eventually found an audience with which it could resonate.

And resonate, it did. The Big Lebowski is a David Lynch par excellence, and here are three keys to its success:

1. It was made by competent, professional filmmakers, who
2. Possess a clear and idiosyncratic vision, and
3. Did not set out to make a cult film.

That last one is key. People love cult films, and sometimes they try to make them. This is usually a mistake. If you set out to make a cult film, you are almost inevitably doomed to fail, because:

1. You don't know what you're doing, and
2. You're spending your own money, and
3. You're far more likely to make a Guilty Pleasure than a David Lynch, even if you're successful

These are problems. But fear not, next week we will discuss the kinds of films young filmmakers may hope to accomplish, given their own limited means.