David Lynch should not get away by declaring TP as a "dream"

[The Jumping Man]

Quite an influx of new people with 10 posts or less. We must take them seriously.

[Jasper]

On Twin Peaks:

“It’s a real place. All the characters are real. And the place is real.”

—David Lynch (April 2013, Festival International du Film Policier de Beaune)

[Castledoque]

Sounds too much like an excuse for sloppy art, which IE definitely was.
And I'm not trying to start a debate here, but it's seems strange to me how someone with a good pair of eyes could not see the cinematic inferiority of both IE and TPS3 in comparison to Lynch's previous works. And as TPS3 shows, the issue is not the project's budget.

And yet for me Inland Empire was never sloppy in the way TP S3 was. Sure in IE there was the digital camera and the uneven photography and the script improvisations. However there were no abandoned storylines. Most of the scenes were turning around the same themes. We even had a basic concept of a love triangle that ends up in murder and we actually got all the possible variations of who the killer and the victim is, in a way no stone was left unturned.

On the other hand, TP S3 is expertly made, but most of the storylines go nowhere or everywhere. IE went to the end of its road, TP went... where? Do we even know? People claim to love the ending for entirely conflicting and mutually exclusive reasons (Cooper failed/Cooper succeeded/there is no Cooper/this is a dream/this is purgatory/the timeline has been messed up/this is an alternate timeline, etc). If the ending can be anything, then it ends up being nothing.

[MysteryMan14]

It's kind of funny that many people take Lynch's art literally. He put in Fwwm and TR sentences about a dream and the dreamer and a bunch of people are bitching that all evens in TP didnt happen At all. Lynch moved between reality and dreams all the time during his carieer but It doesnt mean that he wiped out all the TP mythology. It would have been too simple and cheap.

[Framed_Angel]

On Twin Peaks:“It’s a real place. All the characters are real. And the place is real.”—David Lynch (April 2013, Festival International du Film Policier de Beaune)

So that seals the deal? A quote, from whichever unstated context 4 years ago, pronounced so definitively by an artist whose approach to film involves leaving much open to interpretation -- I'd take that about as literally as Cooper's "One Hundred Per-cent!" Also, Frost who co-created TP may not have felt the same way keeping in mind it was a joint endeavor from both of those wizards.

I wondered if the dream theory (y'all who are acting like this is not a thing viably available to consider in the ending moments of S3, quit that. It's disingenuous as heck) -- isn't in fact what we've seen in the ending of Wizard of Oz. Now I realize Lynch likes the movie. In it, we see Judy garland waking up at the end telling her family and farmhands "and you, and you and you were there!" with 'there' being in her dream or what she concluded was her dream.

So I haven't read the book, did Baum end his original story of Oz that same way?
Since he continued to write of Dorothy's other adventures in faraway places like Oz then I'm thinking you could stick that in there among examples of dual realities. Dorothy was dreaming, *and* she was in a magical place nothing at all like 'home.' Sort of both.

Unlike TP:TR however, the Oz tales tie up their stories with some resolution and maintain continuum

[referendum]

David Lynch should not get away by declaring TP as a "dream"

he hasn't done. You have.
So, you know, as is the way of things, you are not getting away with it.

[firefly2193]

Viewer misinterprets show. Viewer gets furious at their own misinterpretation.

[Mr. Reindeer]

So I haven't read the book, did Baum end his original story of Oz that same way?

Nope! Purely an invention of the filmmakers. As a childhood reader of the LFB (no relation) books, I've always disliked the movie ending and the way it unnecessarily kills the magic (I know, I know, blasphemy). The rest of the movie is aces tho'.

[IcedOver]

I also reject the whole "it was a dream" thing. If anything, as others have said, he's using that as a metaphor for storytelling. The quote "we are like the dreamer" was misused, though, because it's not something that invites the question "Who is the dreamer?". I am not familiar with the Upanishads, but just looking it up, the other half of that quote was about the spider weaving his web and living in it. It's not about a literal nighttime dream, but the way you construct your life and reality, perhaps referring strictly to subjective reality.

[Manwith]

Twin Peaks is only a dream in the sense of "Life is but a dream." You don't have to be so literal about it.

[Manwith]

On Twin Peaks:

“It’s a real place. All the characters are real. And the place is real.”

—David Lynch (April 2013, Festival International du Film Policier de Beaune)

He's lying though. It's just a tv show.

[Cipher]

I also reject the whole "it was a dream" thing. If anything, as others have said, he's using that as a metaphor for storytelling. The quote "we are like the dreamer" was misused, though, because it's not something that invites the question "Who is the dreamer?". I am not familiar with the Upanishads, but just looking it up, the other half of that quote was about the spider weaving his web and living in it. [b{It's not about a literal nighttime dream, but the way you construct your life and reality, perhaps referring strictly to subjective reality.[/b]

Yes, yes!

And Twin Peaks, at least since Fire Walk With Me, has always been about subjective reality -- the internality of Laura's experience gets written onto a cosmic mythology. And in turn is written back onto.

[AgentEcho]

Good Lord, Lynch did not declare TP as a dream. I guess the internet must have just discovered David Lynch, so maybe these kinds of thoughts shouldn't surprise me.

[Voided]

I still feel there is some ambiguity. I think generally, most interpretations would consider the story of Twin Peaks as real, but I do think the dream angle is there if you want it to be. I don't see anything wrong with this, and for me it broadens the appeal and the mystery.
I've yet to rewatch the final episodes, but it did occur to me that Richard could be a disturbed man who has delusions of being an FBI agent and is obsessed with a waitress etc. Obviously there are lots of questions about this: How does he know how to fight? Why is there a white horse both outside Judy's and in Carrie's house? Why would the names Chalfont/Tremond become known after the dreaming has taken place?
So, in general I don't think we're supposed to see it this way, but I do think it adds something emotionally poignant to the story if we consider it as one possible reality. After all, Richard/Dale does act differently....almost like a balance/synthesis of both Coopers. The original Cooper is too good to be true and the bad Cooper is extremely dark, so Richard is a more balanced, realistic depiction of a human being.

[Mystery Roach]

I'm pretty sure Lynch would see the place and characters as real even if they only existed in a dream reality, and in fact I doubt he even makes much of a distinction, because to him cinema itself is both a dream and reality.