David Lynch, legendary director of films such as Mulholland Drive, Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart, passed away this month.
His death stopped me in my tracks. The fact that it was announced on my birthday (and not a very good one in any sense) didn’t help. But, considering David Lynch had been pivotal in my path to becoming a TV writer, it was very David Lynch-like.
Although I’d watched many of his movies as a teen, it was Lynch’s foray into television that resonated with me most. Twin Peaks, the series he co-created and directed, left a deep impression that is still with me today.
Twin Peaks hits the small screen like an exchange student from outer space.
When the series was broadcast in 1990, I was completely mesmerised by how kooky it was and yet simultaneously menacing. It was like nothing else I’d seen before. Throwing out the rule book on what constituted a TV show in the 1980s and all the genre, character and plot restrictions that entailed, Twin Peaks ushered in what we now call The Golden Age of Television.
A murder-mystery set in a small town, the show is an exploration not only of who murdered Laura Palmer, a 17-year-old high-school student, but also of the dark underbelly of the human condition. Many of the characters are odd and eccentric, or surprising in that they have a complexity that defied the common TV stereotypes of the time.
But we should also remember that doing a show on TV back in those days was not the cool thing it is today. It was a brave move on Lynch’s part, especially in light of his reputation as being an “auteur”. Television was cinema’s poor cousin, dismissed as an art form and considered low-brow entertainment for the masses.
Fun Facts about the creation of Twin Peaks
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➡️ Creators David Lynch and Mark Frost pitched the concept for the show in a 10 minute-meeting with ABC network’s Head of Drama, Chad Hofmann. He asked them to write a pilot episode.
➡️ Bob Iger (an exec at ABC at the time) was a fan of the pilot but could only persuade the rest of the execs of its merits when it was shown to a more diverse, younger group of people who liked it.
➡️ During filming, Lynch often incorporated on-set “accidents” into the final cut. For example, when set decorator Frank Silva (who was also an actor) was accidently filmed in the mirror of Laura’s bedroom, Lynch kept it as part of the story and cast him as the killer BOB, Laura’s tormentor.
➡️ Similarly, when filming the scene of Agent Cooper first examining Laura’s body, the fluorescent light above the table started flickering on and off. Lynch decided to use the take as he liked the disconcerting effect it created.
➡️ Upon airing, the show quickly grew a cult following and was critically acclaimed. Tom Shales of The Washington Post wrote:
Twin Peaks isn’t just a visit to another town; it’s a visit to another planet. Maybe it will go down in history as a brief and brave experiment. But as can be said of few other TV shows in the near or immediate future: This You Gotta See."
Rewatching Twin Peaks 35 years later
Thirty-five years (!) on, I was curious to rewatch the pilot episode to see if it still cast its spell over middle-aged me and glean what I could from the master filmmaker David Lynch and his co-writer Mark Frost.
Firstly, the show stands up; it doesn’t feel at all dated.
Secondly, it’s noteworthy just how much David Lynch’s themes, off-beat characters and situations, as well as a tendency to cross genres, have clearly influenced generations of story makers (including myself). Ambitious artistic vision and a desire to go against the tide can shape creators at a young age.
Also interesting is how differently the pilot impacted me as a middle-aged mother of teenagers as opposed to watching it as a teen myself. I remember being swept away with the quirkiness of the world and underlying dark humour. It was clear that Twin Peaks was no Murder, She Wrote, but the disturbing elements it hinted at made it all the more spellbinding.
This time round though, as the mother of a 17-year-old, the pilot hit me on a whole other level. Not just as a parent, but as a fully-fledged adult who reads the news, there are moments in the episode that were deeply uncomfortable to watch. I make an exception for shows with artistic integrity like Twin Peaks, but nowadays, I usually give series that hinge upon the murder and rape of women a wide berth.
Pacing & audience engagement
The trauma of finding Laura Palmer murdered and how the news impacts certain characters in the town is given time to play out. It’s not at all minimized, which is often the tendency today in the rush to get through story and keep viewers engaged.
Rather than expecting the audience to make the right assumption about characters' feelings and glossing over it, the sequence showing how Laura’s death is received by friends and family takes up a lot of space. The news slowly ripples across town almost in real time; Lynch is in no rush to hit these beats and move on. There is something very visceral in experiencing these scenes and sharing in the sense of loss. As a result, we become deeply invested in these characters very quickly.
A sense of unease & mystery
The small town is such an effective location for TV series, especially in the murder-mystery genre. It’s a place where everyone is connected and yet everyone has something to hide; that’s going to lead to some complicated and compelling scenarios (we’ve explored the small-town set-up in more detail here).
Atmosphere is a given, as is the overarching question of the series: who killed Laura Palmer? But, like all great pilot episodes, there’s also a multitude of questions released into the wild to which the audience hopes they’ll eventually receive answers.
Here are just some of the questions posed in the pilot:
What’s the beef between the ex-owner and new owner of the Mill?
What’s with the dodgy business deals of Leland Palmer and his boss?
Who’s sleeping with who on the sly?
What does James know?
What else was Laura keeping from Bobby?
Was she taking cocaine?
What does that key in her diary open?
What does the letter “R” mean under Laura Palmer’s fingernail?
Will the girl found roaming the train tracks remember something?
Is Shelley going to be okay now that her trucker husband is suddenly home?
Twin Peaks changed TV forever. It not only raised the bar in terms of cinematography, but also skewed audience expectations on what TV could deliver story-wise and blew limitations on genre out of the water.
Thanks, David Lynch and Mark Frost, and all the favourable decisions that allowed Twin Peaks to pop up on our screens thirty-five years ago, serving as an inspiration to millions of budding writers, filmmakers and creatives.
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