What would a Season 4 be about?

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Rhodes
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Re: What would a Season 4 be about?

Post by Rhodes »

Mordeen wrote:I'm not giving IE any more of my time. I watched it with someone involved and got the whole painful analysis of it scene by scene. A movie that was about 3hrs long took 6 to analyze and I still hated it for its improvised absurdity. Yet another "Hollywood Devours Women" film that he didn't need to make. My opinion.

- Mordeen
Another film he didn't need to make? So you didn't like MD either?

If so, I don't understand how you can call yourself a Lynch-fan (as you did yesterday). Those two movies are the ones that differentiate him the most from any other director. They are the prototypical examples and endstages of his vision and his approach to storytelling.

Dislking IE to me personally, is incomprehensible, but in that case there is the aspect of the digital camera. But disliking IE AND MD excludes you from the category of Lynch-fans. You're still entitled to your opinion of course. But you're not a Lynch-fan.

When you don't like Wild of Heart or The Straight Story or The Elephant Man, that's a different story. They are also a part of who Lynch is, but they could also have been filmed by other directors. They are not anti-Lynch movies, but they are not the most representative of who he is as a film-maker.
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mtwentz
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Re: What would a Season 4 be about?

Post by mtwentz »

You can be a fan of any director but not like all their works.
F*&^ you Gene Kelly
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Mordeen
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Re: What would a Season 4 be about?

Post by Mordeen »

Hahah slow down, cowboy. You assumed I didn't like Mulholland Drive and then had your rant of judgment toward me.

I loved Mulholland Drive. Because it exists, I felt Inland Empire was a waste of his creativity and wished he had made something else on different subject matter.

You can be dumbfounded that people don't like Inland Empire, and quite a few Lynch fans don't. Disliking some of his work doesn't make you a non-fan. I don't subscribe to the idea that if you're a fan of somebody you have to love everything they do. I actually think that is absurd. I'm a huge Slayer fan. They have a couple really atrocious albums that I won't listen to. By your definition, should I just throw them all away and stop listening to them because I don't appreciate them as much as I should?

Sheesh.

My favorite quote in the world: "You're entitled to your opinion, but..."

Nice chatting with you, but if you have more angst toward my opinions let's take it into PM so we don't clutter up this thread with tension and off-topic bickering.

- Mordeen
Moving Through Time. . .
bosguy1981
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Re: What would a Season 4 be about?

Post by bosguy1981 »

If there is a fourth season (or Showtime film or whatever else), my personal predictions are:

- Lynch will write it by himself, without Mark Frost this time.
- Cast members from old Twin Peaks (aside from Kyle, Sheryl Lee, and a couple others) will have minor appearances, if they're shown at all.
- Audrey will NOT have a large role. Fenn will not have a large role in anything Lynch does again in the future after his problems working with her during season 3. (I know, I know, "it all worked out in the end with Sherilyn in season 3" but still).
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TwinsPeak
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Re: What would a Season 4 be about?

Post by TwinsPeak »

Frost would be involved....
"Wanting something to be different will not make it so." "Explaining a different rule is not complaining for months. A lie will never be true." - Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes.
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eyeboogers
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Re: What would a Season 4 be about?

Post by eyeboogers »

[quote="bosguy1981"]If there is a fourth season (or Showtime film or whatever else), my personal predictions are:

- Lynch will write it by himself, without Mark Frost this time.
/quote]

No Frost no Peaks.
LateReg
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Re: What would a Season 4 be about?

Post by LateReg »

A few things, most of which I've said before.

But first, I just want to say how much I love Jerry Horne's idea that Cooper entered into Laura's dream in Part 18. I had never heard that before, but it totally fits with the theory of her mother's voice calling to her, and her waking up in bed the morning she should have died. Also, Reindeer's thoughts on how Season 4 could be are uncanny and seem right to me.

Things I've probably said before:

1. I've always been a big fan of INLAND EMPIRE. It is the most extreme and free use of digital in "mainstream" narrative cinema and therefore must be held in high regard. I know that it's a harsh film and not everyone's cup of tea; see Mordeen's opinion on it, for example. What bothers me is the fact that across the internet, in random articles about Lynch, the film is more or less viewed as some experimental misfire that nobody cared about. That's simply a fallacy, regardless of personal taste. The thing barely had a release yet placed highly on year-end polls (Film Comment, Indiewire, Cahiers) as well as decade-end polls. It also scored five votes in Sight and Sound's 2012 edition of the Best Films of All Time. This doesn't apply to Mordeen's comments at all, btw. That's just a general overview of how I feel INLAND EMPIRE is misunderstood by the larger community.

That said, I waver on where I rank it in Lynch's filmography. I usually rank it 4th, behind Eraserhead, as those remarkably (used to) bookend his career and show an artist at his most uncompromised. But I went through a five year phase in which I suddenly preferred Lost Highway, Fire Walk With Me, The Straight Story and The Elephant Man to it. But, and here's all I really wanted to say, after watching The Return and then revisiting Lynch's films, the two that I had the best experience with were those that sit alongside The Return as what are his purest works: INLAND EMPIRE and Eraserhead. After absorbing the slower pacing and narrative structure of The Return, I had arguably my greatest viewing of INLAND EMPIRE; Lynch's latest film always ends up clarifying his previous, just as the previous always ends up guiding you through the next. I've always thought of it as Lynch's "corrective" to Mulholland Drive, wherein he creates something purely based on feeling rather than something that sleuths could simply solve and be done with. And for the record I think it's about a lot more than a woman being devoured by Hollywood, though that is certainly a large part of it and what has also made so many people think of it as a retread of Mulholland Drive. Even granting that it has some of the same story, it has totally fresh grooves, imo.


2. I would agree with people who say that The Return is not as scary as some of Lynch's other works. It only occasionally taps into the heightened viscera of his scariest films, such as the first hour of Lost Highway, the end of Mulholland Drive or portions of INLAND EMPIRE, and it certainly doesn't equal the final hour of Fire Walk With Me, which I've said is a nearly impossible task since that accounts for some of the most intense pure horror cinema in history. But, there are caveats. The Return maintains a sustained feeling of dread for 18 hours, while at the same time being about so much more than dread. There is more sheer humanity in it than in any of Lynch's other avant-garde films; ie, The Return possesses all the humanism of The Elephant Man or The Straight Story. That doesn't mean that he still couldn't have made "poo flow" better during the scarier moments, of course. But I will say that the examples that MT listed are all wonderfully effective moments, if not quite at the level of what we've come to expect. I think The Return is better "art" rather than better horror, and that emphasis on the art is a tradeoff.

All that said, the entirety of Part 18 is pure unease on a level that both feels different and possibly surpasses anything Lynch has previously conjured. He does more with less than he's ever worked with, and that's why it's so effective. As far as individual moments, that sex scene is the scariest I've ever seen. And the one place I disagree with everyone about Lynch never equaling the poo-flow moments of his previous works - and I'm surprised no one else has brought this up - is in the final 20 seconds of the series. The atmosphere aided by the way the wind is subtly blowing through Laura's hair, Cooper stumbling about, Laura gearing her face up for her scream and then unleashing it...sure, that's a subtler brand of horror and the intensity of it doesn't last very long, but it is in my opinion the single most chilling and lingering moment of Lynch's career.


3. Neither here nor there but kind of bouncing off those two points and other things said throughout Dugpa, but I find it interesting that there has always been less gushing praise on Dugpa for The Return than almost anywhere else I look. Sure, almost all of those who are still here truly love it, and with a thing like The Return you want to absorb every corner of it and that takes time and it's hard to compare to 2-hour films and there's no point making concrete declarations, but there's very few here who seem to consider that it just may be Lynch's greatest work, as evidenced in a few posts on this thread alone. I just find that kind of interesting, both because of the way it has been received in other pockets of the 'net as well as from my own personal experience with it. I just think it's a deeper and more layered, more philosophically and politically powerful, truer and more original, more ambitious and simply more a-r-t than pretty much anything made in recent history, and serves an actual historical purpose, coming at the time it does as film and TV continue to merge and all that that entails and implies for the future. I think it's a towering achievement, a career summation and culmination, that is impossible not to at least consider putting at the top of Lynch's filmography.

And all that said, I do sometimes worry about a Season 4 coming out. Oh, I want it, and I want it bad. Whether its more streamlined and visceral and immediately pleasurable, whether its better at certain things but less ambitious overall, that's all good with me, and I'd love for it to somehow be "better," or to win fans that The Return lost. But what I totally irrationally worry about is that a new season will somehow lessen the impact (the feeling of time slipping away, actors aging and passing away, the theme of being unable to ever truly return, etc.) and overall importance of The Return, which right now seems like both the most unlikely (a once in a lifetime event, pulled off in unexpected fashion to surpass the hype) and the most important thing to happen in years (since Sopranos?) in terms of the advancement of the art form (artistic freedom, personal expression, experimentation, etc.) and also through the convoluted means in which it is predicated on fighting nostalgic impulses in the corporate age of the remake/sequel. Will all of this within and surrounding The Return feel as special or ring as true in the event of a Season 4? I suppose if they went through with it they'd be acutely aware of what needs to be done, and my worrying is even more senseless than it appears.
Last edited by LateReg on Fri Feb 15, 2019 11:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
Agent Earle
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Re: What would a Season 4 be about?

Post by Agent Earle »

There's simply no way of telling if this will be as impactful and influential as The Sopranos were this soon. I'd say at least a decade must pass after the airing to be able to make such a judgement. And when you look at how quickly it was put away - if not downright forgotten - in the mainstream since it went off the air, things are not looking encouraging in this regard - if anything, I'd say the general attitude towards TP has been the one of cooling off, not heating up. No-one, apart from the diehards (and I count us, the original fans turned naysayers by S 3, among the diehards :) ), seems to care anymore.
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Re: What would a Season 4 be about?

Post by LateReg »

Agent Earle wrote:There's simply no way of telling if this will be as impactful and influential as The Sopranos were this soon. I'd say at least a decade must pass after the airing to be able to make such a judgement. And when you look at how quickly it was put away - if not downright forgotten - in the mainstream since it went off the air, things are not looking encouraging in this regard - if anything, I'd say the general attitude towards TP has been the one of cooling off, not heating up. No-one, apart from the diehards (and I count us, the original fans turned naysayers by S 3, among the diehards :) ), seems to care anymore.
I agree with the first half of what you said, though that's not quite what I meant. I never used the word influence, which indeed comes later. By "impact," I mean the impact of The Return on the viewer; I mean the story's impact, the themes, etc. I did use the word "importance," by which I mean how important it feels in how it was made and the fact that it aired. If no one follows it or nothing changes, I would still consider it just as important because it represents a new level of artistic freedom and experimentation in dramatic television while shaking up the formula of Prestige TV at a time when it most needs to be shaken up. I don't think its importance, hypothetical, practical or otherwise, in those regards can be overstated.

As for the second part, I also got the sense after The Return ended that it all too quickly went away from the conversation. But that's the way things are nowadays. Even something as popular as Stranger Things seems like an afterthought other than some of the merchandising; Season 2 was barely ever talked about after everybody watched it the first week it aired. In general, I think this is all very disappointing and part of the culture at large. Too much content. Very few things - Game of Thrones, for example - are continuously talked about. So I agree with your impression but I don't think it's necessarily true. Every day new reviews keep posting on Letterboxd, and they're mostly not from diehard Twin Peaks fans, but rather cinephiles. That's where I think The Return is continuing to live and breathe. Maybe that's not the mainstream, but never once have I considered the mainstream in my analysis of The Return, or as a necessity of something proving to be important. I've accepted that The Return is not mainstream, nor is it the original series, which I believe had more mainstream success before going through its own period of only belonging to the diehards. I just think The Return, like so many important films, will be important to other filmmakers, their artforms and critics/scholars rather than the industry at large. I think it means a lot to a lot of people who care about film, but those aren't necessarily the masses.
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Re: What would a Season 4 be about?

Post by Agent Earle »

Fair enough. I have no objections with your writing. I'm only curious, why do you think is it that the present time is ripe for the formula of the so-called Prestige TV to be shaken up, as you put it?
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Re: What would a Season 4 be about?

Post by LateReg »

Agent Earle wrote:Fair enough. I have no objections with your writing. I'm only curious, why do you think is it that the present time is ripe for the formula of the so-called Prestige TV to be shaken up, as you put it?
Thanks for reading and considering it!

Shoot, man. That's a long story and I've been writing a lot about it for my own purposes, and the basis of it has a lot to do with why I value The Return. In other words, my thoughts regarding the decline of Prestige TV began BEFORE watching The Return. Simply put, I started to get very bored by the samey qualities of nearly all dramatic TV. This is just my opinion, but I feel it very truthfully. For the record, I think of Twin Peaks in its entirety as the bookends of Prestige TV, the Alpha and Omega. Twin Peaks set everything up, while The Return strikes me as a reaction to everything that it helped build and now delights in tearing down. Though there are some holdovers, I consider the era of Prestige TV to essentially be over; it has simply become regular TV at this point.

The slightly longer but still short-ish version is that I believe, like many have, that TV was on the verge of potentially overtaking film. Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, etc, in the first half of the 2000s. That was a remarkable period of artistic growth for cinematic TV. And then HBO gave up the crown to AMC: Mad Men and Breaking Bad in the late 2000s. And then somewhere along the way FX became the network to beat, while all three networks as well as others continued to put out remarkable programming. But at a certain point I think Prestige TV (or Peak TV, or The Golden Age) became very comfortable existing at a higher level than TV was accustomed to (and I think TV critics did as well, as they were just happy that the medium they love was being taken seriously). And I think that comfort level has reached an all time high in the past few years. I feel as though TV was always chasing film, which is literally a more mature artform. And I feel that after a while, TV that felt like film just started to emulate other TV that felt like film, resulting in a copy of a copy of a copy. I think most modern TV - which I recognize is considered a writers' medium even as much of it now strives to be deemed cinematic - is content to emulate a certain look and style of film rather than forging its own path, while disregarding film's penchant for experimentation, emphasis on tone and primarily visual storytelling where ideas are embedded within the pauses. This therefore results in a lot of TV that looks the same, moves the same, and feels the same. Before The Return aired, I longed for a program that focused on having a genuine visual aesthetic, and I realized that was why I preferred Hannibal to most of the programs of the past ten years, and why watching Mr. Robot was such a delight even if I didn't care/couldn't follow its storyline. I enjoyed the rise of the Limited Series, but they started showing diminishing returns as well; perhaps the Limited Series more closely resembled film than any other TV form before it, which in some perverse way is what may have eventually damned its potential. Netflix series almost always suffer from bloat, and they're rarely profound; their animated series Bojack and Big Mouth are clear exceptions that come to mind, but animation is generally a wilder and freer form than drama. All these things kind of dovetail and influence one another and everybody seems to be making the same really good TV show - albeit with a different storyline and characters - because that's what works and it feels prestigious but really it's a very basic form of filmmaking.

So basically over the past few years, as Breaking Bad and Mad Men came to an end, and as The Americans felt like the last show of the Prestige era and Game of Thrones increased its status as the most popular series of its time and more and more puzzlebox narratives emerged at the expense of actual depth, I just really felt the diminishing returns of a slightly shifting landscape growing more formulaic. The big case in point is that in 2018, there was more scripted TV than ever before, and yet the consensus states that the year was also TV's weakest in recent memory. Specifically, there was more GOOD TV than ever before, but less GREAT TV than we've grown accustomed to. And yet, on Metacritic's tally of year-end lists, Killing Eve somehow beats both Atlanta and The Americans. If Killing Eve is either the best show of the year or the show that most critics cite as such, then I think TV is in trouble and still stuck in some infantile stage that was somehow enabled by its successes. And I say this as someone who watched Killing Eve twice and thinks its probably the most purely entertaining show of the year and recognizes some of its value as pointedly feminist entertainment.

And I'm well aware that you can say the same thing about the film industry, and I see the damning formula there as well, and sadly not only in Blockbusters. But you still have a plethora of superior art, indie and foreign films infiltrating the near-mainstream. Plus, I can probably think of ten films this year that might be masterpieces, but only a few series.

Anyway, sorry if I've rambled way off topic.
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kitty666cats
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Re: What would a Season 4 be about?

Post by kitty666cats »

I'm kinda surprised so many people find parts of Twin Peaks scary. None of the seasons scared me, there's 1 scene in FWWM that jump scared me (BOB behind the dresser), but besides that I've never felt "scared". My first viewing of TP ever, the only thing that remotely came close to scaring me was the apparition of BOB at the Hayward house climbing over the couch towards Maddy :shock:

Now, "unsettled"? That's a whole other story :lol:

So yeah, the only things that have given me feelings of fear were the brilliant work of Frank Silva. Such a gentle-seeming man, turned into one of the freakiest characters in TV history. Must be the fashion crime of double denim! (kidding, heh)
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Re: What would a Season 4 be about?

Post by Agent Earle »

LateReg wrote: Anyway, sorry if I've rambled way off topic.
NOT AT ALL, I find stuff such as this fascinating to read, especially if it's written as well as yours just now. TV products have been preocuppying me for the past five years, after approximately two decades of avoiding them as I just couldn't get into anything long-form without hopelessly comparing it to TP - that's how infected I was with the TP virus (needless to say anything I tried fell well short in comparison with it). In all these years I spent "in the desert", so to speak, the only TV products I watched in their entirety were Northern Exposure, The Sopranos, von Trier's The Kingdom, British sitcom You Rang, M'Lord and Aussie sitcom Mother and Son (loved them all). But since 2014 or so, after reading Brett Martin's stellar book about the modern Golden Age of TV titled Difficult Men, I embarked on the odyssey of catching up with all of the shows referenced in various places as constituting the so-called prestige TV. During this time, I've seen The Wire, The Shield, Breaking Bad, Six Feet Under, Oz, Fargo, Boardwalk Empire, Deadwood, and I'm currently on the third season of Game of Thrones. Needless to say I'm flabbergasted what with the amount of quality material and I've completely dropped out of movie watching - charms of continuing narratives have swallowed me whole. As I watch, I try to read everything about the evolution of television, the process of creating a long-term narrative, and the genesis of the above mentioned series that I can get my hands on. I also love exchanging views on the phenomenon with fellow viewers - that's why your remark about the crisis of modern TV has caught my eye. You certainly make some very thought-provoking points!

P.S.: So you'd recommend The Americans, would you? I've heard a number of good things about that show. Also Bojack Horseman, which is also on my to-view list. God, I'm desperate that there's only so much hours in the day, and one also has to lead a kind of life besides watching the telly! :D
Last edited by Agent Earle on Fri Feb 15, 2019 5:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What would a Season 4 be about?

Post by Agent Earle »

kitty666cats wrote:I'm kinda surprised so many people find parts of Twin Peaks scary. None of the seasons scared me, there's 1 scene in FWWM that jump scared me (BOB behind the dresser), but besides that I've never felt "scared". My first viewing of TP ever, the only thing that remotely came close to scaring me was the apparition of BOB at the Hayward house climbing over the couch towards Maddy :shock:

Now, "unsettled"? That's a whole other story :lol:

So yeah, the only things that have given me feelings of fear were the brilliant work of Frank Silva. Such a gentle-seeming man, turned into one of the freakiest characters in TV history. Must be the fashion crime of double denim! (kidding, heh)

Come on, you're saying Maddie's murder didn't scare you?! Man, that's the very fabric nightmares are made of!.. To this day, I shudder to even think of it.
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Re: What would a Season 4 be about?

Post by mtwentz »

For some reason I wasn't scared back in 1990 but the Maddie death scene scares the heck out of me 28 years later.
F*&^ you Gene Kelly
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