Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me - Classic or Dud [spoilers]

'dave' was grebt. c'mon! that was the most worthless appearance by a rock star ina movie evah! there is something to that.

I haven't seen Dune, though, from what I've heard it's even worse.

Nah, it has its moments. Certainly more than Fire Walk With Me. And the set design is pure eye candy.

As Tuomas said it was unnecessary and incoherent. I didn't find LP trying to escape her doom affecting. The film detracted from the show to no good end - maybe all the stuff that ended up on the cutting floor would have given it more structure and elements of why I loved the show (the black humor for one) Reminded me too mcuh of the downward slide in Season 2.

http://www.naturallycurly.com/celebs/madchenamick.jpg

I like it hugely, and I was a big fan of the series. It works on the level that Laura Palmers' death polarised the town. After it Twin Peaks became focused and aware of itself, prior to that it was a mess of contradicitons and backs turned. I take the message of the series and film together to be something along the lines of "it takes a horrible and extreme event to expose latent evil". Or something. The soapyness of the series and the "waaaaaaa! mummy!"ness of the film get this across really well.

Apparently there is as much footage on the editing suite floor as ended up in the final cut. Most of the series' actors filmed scenes for it, you can get the shooting draft of the script here:-

http://inflow.org/scripts/fwwm.html

I was so glad the film was made, Laura Palmer was the most interesting character in the whole series, despite being absent. I don't think many pieces of art have broached the subject of how the victims of sexual violence deal with it, it's a bold story which suits its surreal structure and tone. The whole thing feels desperate and insane and mirrors Laura's psyche perfectly.

So the best scenes for me are the ones that show people desperately trying to keep up appearances in the midst of this utter insanity, the madman tailing Leland and Laura and screaming at them or Cooper's play with the CCTV.

The more I watched the film, the more I wanted Lynch to take on a Clive Barker book at some point. The little man / giant stuff fits into Barker so well, these things are neither Gods, aliens or whatever, they're just something other, so much like the beings in "Weaveworld" or "The Great and Secret Show". Lynch does "Weaveworld". Now there'd be a film. And a budget.

Um, yeah. Classic, classic, classic.

Major props to using Ligeti's Requia at the end sequence, which is still scary as hell.

People laughing at serious bits in films, especially films you really like, is very aggrevating to me. With Lynch, he was very inspired by 50s American melodramas, and a line like "Why are there people like Frank?" obviously is naive and bland, but it's also direct and sincere, and certainly the situation she's referring to is as upsetting as can be imagined. People are just laughing because they're uncomfortable... but I'd rather they be uncomfortable in silence.

Neither have I, though I did pick up the DVD cheap a few weeks back, so one day I'll actually watch the darn thing...

If you read the original shooting script you will see that much that seems "inexplicable" in the final cut is indeed explicated, in a quite turgid manner. For example David Bowie's appearance. I'm torn between wishing the entire script made it into the film (it would've been more than three hours long) and being glad it didn't. I get the feeling that the cut as it exists is not completely due to the studio imposing a two-hour running time on Lynch's company. I suspect that Lynch was tired of the overexplicit nature of the original screenplay and did something of a cut-and-paste to achieve the requisite level of incoherence.

Anyways. Jacques Rivette on this film:

I don't own a television, which is why I couldn't share Serge Daney's passion for TV series. And I took a long time to appreciate Lynch. In fact, I didn't really start until Blue Velvet (1986). With Isabella Rossellini's apartment, Lynch succeeded in creating the creepiest set in the history of cinema. And Twin Peaks, the Film is the craziest film in the history of cinema. I have no idea what happened, I have no idea what I saw, all I know is that I left the theater floating six feet above the ground. Only the first part of Lost Highway (1996) is as great. After which you get the idea, and by the last section I was one step ahead of the film, although it remained a powerful experience right up to the end.

And Jonathan Rosenbaum (who much admires Rivette) on this film:

The 1992 prequel to David Lynch and Mark Frost's famous but short-lived TV series, this deals with the events leading up to the murder of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) in a Pacific northwest town that suggests a somewhat funnier and kinkier version of Peyton Place. It has its moments, but not many, and generally speaking it runs neck and neck with Dune as the least successful and least interesting Lynch feature. The material, not much different from Jennifer Lynch's spin-off book The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, involves a lot of heavy breathing about the evil that lurks in supposedly innocent small towns, with various intimations about sexual abuse. The surrealist conceits work better here than the orgies, and both suggest that Lynch was badly in need of both a rest and a change of pace. With Kyle MacLachlan as caffeine-addicted FBI agent Dale Cooper, Harry Dean Stanton, David Bowie, Chris Isaak, Moira Kelly, Ray Wise, and other weird types--though not, alas, Sherilyn Fenn, Russ Tamblyn, Richard Beymer, Joan Chen, Piper Laurie, Jack Nance, and others from the TV series. Robert Engels wrote the script with Lynch. 135 min.

I'm more with Rivette. I enjoy the film, tremendously at times. I couldn't disagree more with Rosenbaum about it and Dune being uninteresting. Unsuccessful, perhaps, but the failings of these films shed about as much light on Lynch's peculiarities of style as the more "successful" films like Mulholland Drive or Blue Velvet (the former being my least favorite Lynch feature, the latter being my favorite).

So, um, maybe classic, maybe dud.

This reminds me of an afternoon when I dozed off while listening to It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. In my half-sleeping delerium I remember thinking to myself, "What a lovely, sweet record...."

any reports from the boxset people? i'm a jerk and a half but if the BTS stuff is good (and why wouldn't it be, since built to spill were once capable of transcendence on a good night, although i've also seen them on a night where i almost fell asleep - indie dad joke) i definitely want to track down the good bits on this here internet

They played a great set at the Road House

i feel like Twin Peaks would be a MAJOR market for Built to Spill

RIP Pamela Gidley (Teresa Banks). Small role, but she gave a really striking performance

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/pamela-gidley-dies-twin-peaks-141938829.html

glad to see a lot of places picking the news up, she was a very good actor and an equally decent person.

Watched this for I guess the 3rd time tonight, this time with my kids — we just finished the first two seasons (skipping most of the back half of season 2, except for the final episode). There were points in the movie where I wondered if it was too much for them, they're 16 and 12, but they're pretty invested in seeing the whole Twin Peaks universe. They were definitely scared and upset by stuff in the movie that is scary and upsetting, but they were also just kind of mesmerized by the whole thing. It is a trip. Really the darkest single thing he's ever done.

Also, I knew its reputation had improved over the years, but it's pretty striking to look at Metacritic — reviews range from 100 to 0, in an almost perfect reverse chronological order. https://www.metacritic.com/movie/twin-peaks-fire-walk-with-me/critic-reviews

I really want to watch TP with my kid, but she’s 11 and it is not yet time. Maddy’s death would be Too Much. Maybe another year or two. It will be a while before she can handle FWWM though. I saw it totally alone in a theater when I was 16 and it stunned me.

Every time I see it I like it more and i’m glad its reputation has turned around. Is it Lynch’s scariest movie? The evil in it feels real in a way that he usually doesn’t manage or try for.

It's pretty scary! And in really visceral and upsetting ways. My kids like horror movies and have seen Halloween, Friday the 13th, The Thing, Scream. But none of those feel like FWWM, the conventions of the genres and the stories give more distance. FWWM forces you to feel Laura's desperation and horror, it doesn't give you much distance.

A dad rapes and kills his daughter, the main character of the show/movie--it's definitely the darkest thing he's done. Cow OTM about the evil being "real" in a way that Inland Empire or even Mulholland Drive isn't.

R.I.P. Jacques Renault. I hope they put "I am as blank as a fart" on his headstone.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2021/04/07/walter-olkewicz-dies-twin-peaks-actor-starred-jacques-renault/7133539002/

Watching this for the first time since seeing The Return three times, which kinda reset my brain on how to understand time and suchlike. Harry Dean Stanton is surely a different character? They both run (different) trailer parks but are very different in personality. Dammit I had other more important thoughts I forget, something about seperating the young Lynch kid (Tremond? grandchild or something) from the Jumping Man, but what I've mainly learnt these years is to not concentrate on any sort of plot, it's all thematically and visually connected, I suppose that big spurious blog you were all praising might agree but fuck all nonsense except Lynch nonsense. If he draws 6 from his jar tomorrow I think the universe will have aligned

I'd never heard this song til the other day and didn't know that what I thought of as just an oddball Twin Peaks line — immortalized by Laura's "gobble gobble" — was a reference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2yd3DRhAI0

Which in turn comes from this: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5758/

Another fan edit hits the net (where to find it is in the YT comments). I never thought that FWWM was something that needed to be fixed, but I appreciate the fantasy baseball parallel universes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oQjOmNponk

more details here: https://fanedit.org/twin-peaks-the-missing-season/

I don't mind people doing these things but them using the word "missing" for it is like nails down a blackboard for me

I used to feel the same way about "The Missing Manual" series of computer books lol

tbf half of the source material is called "The Missing Pieces"

Ha - I did forget that. Maybe that wasn't David Lynch's choice, like "The Return" wasn't.

Blank Check podcast covered this in new episode so I rewatched this afternoon

I still find it agonizingly emotional but I also love it for how much Lynch cares about Laura.

The scene where Bobby shoots Mike & Laura keeps laughing is so endearing, her reactions always feel so real & believable, like there are moments where she reminds you that she’s still a teenager despite everything & it just cuts to the quick. Same when she’s loaded & on the phone w James towards the end & keeps talking into the wrong part of the phone

And the movie just underscores why I hate James, his “sweet , sensitive” needy ass just leaves her in the fucking woods

Shoutout to Lynch for turning a cheap ceiling fan into a signifier of abject terror

As a trauma chronicle it’s pretty much unparalleled

Have you read the Secret Diary Of?

I love it. I wish Cooper was in place of Desmond, but it doesn't bother me.

James is great in the pilot and he works well enough in The Return. For the most part his character is dullsville.

xpost yes! i was given it as a 17th birthday gift when it was published, thats how in the bag i was for the show lol

fgti's post on the MD thread made me recall...

I remember watching FWWM on the original theatrical release and the Pink Room scene in particular being so absolutely dizzying and soul-rattling at the same time.

Musically: the bowed bass, spiderland drums, woozy slide guitar.

It was such a mind-bending glimpse into that specific world that only Lynch could capture.

https://i.imgur.com/M70jEo2.png

Watched it on a big screen for the first time properly the other night. On its own, and especially as disentangled from what the show had become over the two previous years, I kept thinking about how it was weirdly like a pre-echo of Andor, all the quirk firmly to the side and increasingly harrowing.

I first saw FWWM on VHS in the early 00s and I hated, hated, hated it. Loathed it. The theatrical cut spends the bulk of its time just playing-out "the way that Laura died" and like, I already pieced together what happened there, thanks. I don't need to see the incest, I'm fine, thanks for asking.

I hated it so much that I used to spitefully mock the film's script, saying "I am the muffin" at apropos times.

So yeah, like, watching the Blue Rose cut, feeling like I had it all wrong. Gorgeous world-building scenes at the Palmer house-- "cigarette! cigarette!" "BRING ME MY AXE"; the origin of the muffin analogy at the Hayward house, including one of my favourite exchanges in the entire Twin Peaks universe*. When I read aloud to my boyfriend the chronology of which scenes made the Theatrical Cut and which scenes were Missing Pieces, we both were shocked-- "all the best scenes in the film were cut??"

*

"Why is it you can't smoke in your home, I'm a doctor and don't allow smoking in my home, and I let you smoke in my home?"

"Because you love me so much?"

"Heh-heh. I do love you, you little smoking whippersnapper."

"I want you to know that I put seven whole huckleberries in each muffin."

Have never seen this and recently watched the first two seasons. Should I start with the Blue Rose cut? (If I start with the theatrical cut might be years before I get back to a fan edit.)

No. Watch the theatrical release and then The Missing Pieces.

How easy is it to get hold of The Missing Pieces? (I'm in a similar position to Lukas - currently working my way through the second season and I've got the DVD of FWWM sitting waiting for me afterwards).

I believe they are on yt, which is where i watched them some time ago. I haven't fully checked this but if another ilxor can clarify

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLswgFs_bu87Pc-O_TGYhtAu7yEdPQRkk4

I had no idea about the Controversies part of The Man From Another Place's wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_J._Anderson

Big naysayer, here, regarding the Theatrical Cut. Watch Blue Rose first imo

How easy is it to get hold of The Missing Pieces?

Also it’s on several of the TP box sets, e.g. From Z to A and The Entire Mystery box of S1/S2/FWWM.

If you have Mubi and a VPN, it's on French Mubi

Anyone want to break the theatrical cut vs Blue Rose tie?

Go with theatrical.

blue rose

theatrical

Blue rose

Which box set or combo of boxes? A-Z or Entire Mystery?

If you just want everything in one purchase, A-Z.

The "Entire" Mystery actually lived up to its name but obviously that changed several years later, but if get that, you just need to get The Return separately and you're good.

The Entire Mystery has audio lag issues and glitches that seem to affect some sets and not others. It could be that they are not friendly with some players? It is especially bad on the Missing Pieces. When I rewatched the first two seasons recently, several of my discs would seize up and not move forward, as though they were scratched badly but the discs are spotless. We had to rent 5 or 6 episodes from Amazon to complete our watch.

The Z To A set uses the same files, if one lags on your player the other likely will. Criterion’s FWWM is good.

watching again and in terms of the credits it's pretty funny the actor playing the woodsman is in the main cast credits but not frank silva, walter olkewicz, etc.

When I replayed my Entire Mystery recently it was so bad I assumed my player was on the way out so bought a new one. Which, of course, didn't improve things.

(This was ok though, because it was my excuse to move up to 4K and finally start watching the UHDs I have.)

So there's no way to know which blu-ray set is a bad batch before buying it?

No. There are two different issues, the audio lag and skipping (or getting stuck). I don't know if they're related. The first time I watched my set it had lag but no getting stuck. Or maybe it got stuck once. I assume the discs are degrading in some way. So maybe the later set (Z to A) is a little safer?

Or you can just wait for an inevitable 4k release.

Z to A already has two 4K discs - seems unlikely they would reauthor the whole lot for a very marginal gain