Why The Missing Pieces are essential to Twin Peaks

[LostInTheMovies]

I've written & posted my review of The Missing Pieces, discussing their impact and also why I believe they should be viewed between the series and Fire Walk With Me:

http://thedancingimage.blogspot.com/201 ... ieces.html

Do you agree?

[james]

Enjoyed reading your review of the Missing Pieces, thankyou very much!

I would have enjoyed reading your analysis of the 'above the convenience store' scene - I think there's a great deal to talk about there. I've posted about the Jumping Man etc in the analysis of the missing pieces thread.

[LostInTheMovies]

Enjoyed reading your review of the Missing Pieces, thankyou very much!

I would have enjoyed reading your analysis of the 'above the convenience store' scene - I think there's a great deal to talk about there. I've posted about the Jumping Man etc in the analysis of the missing pieces thread.

Thanks!

There's a great deal to appreciate in the convenience store, surely, though I haven't figured out quite how to talk about it yet...plus I need to see the scene a few more times to take it all in (my blu-ray access is limited now, unfortunately - watching the release the day it came out proved to be unusually complex). Enjoying your contributions on the other thread.

[piero]

Good reading! Thanks for sharing.

[LostInTheMovies]

Good reading! Thanks for sharing.

You're welcome! Glad you enjoyed it.

[underthefan]

That's an excellent article and I loved reading it! Especially the discussion about the long-take masters and how that differed from the film and the series. I actually loved watching these long takes, as I'm so sick of typical feature editing today, which is about two seconds per shot. I also really loved Lynch using these masters for moments we know from the film, making us experience them in a different light/angle/perspective. Thank you for standing up for FWWM in such a well-developed and intelligent way. I often feel the film is treated like a bastard child when it actually is the essential piece of the Twin Peaks universe, and so are these scenes. They were worth the wait.

[underthefan]

And YES on Moira Kelly as a better fit for the character than LFB! Finally someone admits it!

[LostInTheMovies]

I also really loved Lynch using these masters for moments we know from the film, making us experience them in a different light/angle/perspective.

^This. It's such an unusual thing to do, and in the (understandable) hype over the deleted footage, I think at times we're overlooking the power of the expanded stuff.

As for Kelly and Boyle...I'm actually not a Boyle-hater and I like many of her moments on the show, especially when she's commiserating with Harold, distraught over James' thing for Maddy (especially Lynch's close-up of her during the "Just You" song), and nearly molested/murdered by a crazed dancing Leland (also, those sizzling early scenes with Sherilyn Fenn; despite their offscreen hatred they had a good chemistry). But I think the characterization of Donna on the show is often confused and I don't totally buy Lara Flynn Boyle as the "good girl" type. Kelly's portrait of Donna makes more sense as a yin to Laura's yang; whatever one thinks of the show, as written for the film, Donna makes WAY more sense played by Moira Kelly than by LFB.

Audrey, on the other hand, could never have been recast.

Thanks for the kind words about the article. If Fire Walk With Me is the bastard child of Twin Peaks than it is, in great literary tradition, the bastard that tells us so much more about the parent than the "legitimate" children ever could.

[underthefan]

If Fire Walk With Me is the bastard child of Twin Peaks than it is, in great literary tradition, the bastard that tells us so much more about the parent than the "legitimate" children ever could.

This is so true and so well said! I find people who hate FWWM most often do so because it cuts to the dark core of what Twin Peaks is really about, which is child abuse, incest and filicide. And, just like Twin Peaks citizens, many TP fans would much rather stick to their donuts, coffee, cherry pies and supernatural beings than face the ugly truth. It's a much easier pill to swallow.

By the way, if you have any other FWWM articles on your blog, please post the links - I would love to read them!

[LostInTheMovies]

By the way, if you have any other FWWM articles on your blog, please post the links - I would love to read them!

Careful what you ask for!

At this point, I've covered FWWM more than any other movie on my blog, even though I went 5 years without writing anything about Lynch (most of the pieces are from this past year, a couple from when I first saw it in 2008).

My first review, which is actually a mixed one even though I found the film extremely powerful and accomplished. Oddly enough, though I disagree with some of its conclusions, this remains my favorite thing I wrote about the show or film just because it comes straight from the gut:
http://thedancingimage.blogspot.com/200 ... me_09.html

A day later, I was already concluding that the film had to be some kind of flawed masterpiece to have such a strong effect on me. I looked up the critical reaction at the time and was astonished at how savage it was and wrote this in response:
http://thedancingimage.blogspot.com/200 ... th-me.html

5 1/2 years later, I had a 4-part discussion with Tony Dayoub on the film and its legacy (you can see some of his comments under the preceding pieces, which is actually how we met):
http://www.tobecontd.com/twin-peaks-fire-walk-with-me

Around this time, and partly to prepare for the conversation, I began researching the history of the show & film. I ended up gathering 125 excerpts from Twin Peaks commentary over the years, and posted them chronologically as a kind of guide to what went wrong with it, and how it was eventually re-assessed:
http://thedancingimage.blogspot.com/201 ... ry-on.html

I also did a video essay at this time examining how Lynch dealt with the subjects of evil, violence, and abuse in his first 6 films & Twin Peaks. No narration, just juxtaposition/weaving of clips/audio to make the point which is hopefully clear enough (if not, the following written retrospective lays out my view pretty explicitly). This is probably my favorite piece from the "David Lynch Month" I did in June:
http://thedancingimage.blogspot.com/201 ... eath.htmll

Following that, I offered a retrospective of Lynch's work. This includes, about halfway down, a 6-paragraph review of Fire Walk With Me in which I looked at some elements I hadn't really discussed before (including "why the angels" and FWWM's structural similarity to La Dolce Vita, which I hope to devote a longer post to in the future);
http://thedancingimage.blogspot.com/201 ... lynch.html

Part 2 of the retrospective scans Lynch's career and examines the thematic, narrative, and stylistic evolution of his work (Fire Walk With Me played a central role in all three transformations):
http://thedancingimage.blogspot.com/201 ... lynch.html

And finally I participated in a podcast a month ago in which Cameron Cloutier and I discussed the film and its relationship to the show:
http://thedancingimage.blogspot.com/201 ... s-and.html

If that ain't enough, I also did an episode guide for the show Twin Peaks, gathered in this directory along with all the references (brief mentions, images, and video clips) I've made to Peaks over the years:
http://thedancingimage.blogspot.com/201 ... at-20.html

Bet you're sorry you asked, haha...

As for upcoming stuff, I have an interview with Brad Dukes (author of Reflections) going up next week, and one with John Thorne (publisher of Wrapped in Plastic) a month after that (the first part, discussing his formation of the magazine and his articles about Deer Meadow being a dream, and Laura's ring providing a character arc, is already complete but I'm planning to talk again with him in late August about his reaction to The Missing Pieces). I will also be doing a post on the best scenes in Twin Peaks NOT directed by David Lynch (since I've already discussed the ones he did direct so many times), a video essay on Thorne's two big essays, hopefully a structural/thematic comparison of La Dolce Vita & Fire Walk With Me, and then I will wind the year up with an in-depth exploration of Sheryl Lee's performance in Fire Walk With Me (also glancing at her work before, especially on the show, and after), which is probably my favorite element of the movie and yet one that I've only touched on briefly. And I think I have room for a couple more Peaks posts in the interim (I'm trying to do 2 a month, out of the 4 I usually do, through the end of 2014) - one will probably be a review of The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer and I'm not sure what the other one will be.

I had also planned to do a comprehensive Twin Peaks overview, summarizing all my thoughts and discoveries about the series and film in one single piece but I've decided to wait on that till the 25th anniversary next spring. Reason being, another Twin Peaks book is coming out in February which I'd like to read first.

[underthefan]

Thank you, Lost! Looking forward to a lot of reading!