Interview with Brad Dukes, author of Reflections

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Auggeo
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Re: Interview with Brad Dukes, author of Reflections

Post by Auggeo »

Fernanda wrote:There is an excellent report on the shooting of Fire Walk With Me in Greg Olson's book "Beautiful Dark".

http://books.google.com.br/books?id=Gps ... &q&f=false

The film was not booed during the gala screening at Cannes. It only happened during the screenings for the international press which is not so rare (they even booed Fellini's The Voice of the Moon.) Just look at what he had to sit through during the press conference that year. He still managed to give good answers.

http://books.google.com.br/books?id=ZGk ... 92&f=false

Q: What character in Twin Peaks is closest to you?
A: I don't know... Gordon Cole.

Q: I don't think you're deaf.
A: No, but sometimes, like this gentleman said back here, I pretend I'm deaf.

"If we didn't want to upset anyone, we would make films about sewing. But even that could be dangerous."

http://www.vulture.com/2014/10/david-cr ... tival.html

A tangent here. That year, you guys got a lot of grief for giving the Palme to the Dardenne brothers, if I remember correctly, and for giving awards to Bruno Dumont, whom nobody had heard of at the time. History has proven you guys pretty right.

I think about Castro’s words. He said, “History will absolve me.” I don’t know if that’ll work for Castro, but I think it works for me and for my jury. Of course, the Dardennes ended up winning the Palme again. The actors we gave awards to have won other awards, and so it was — it’s the politics. Part of it is the journalists. They like to present themselves of having an inside track on what’s happening with the jury, and they even have everyday "who’s gone up or down in the stakes," "who’s gonna win the Palme," and so on, but they’re totally guessing because they actually have no contact with the jury whatsoever, and everybody’s very strict about that. So they’re just making it up. That year, they had decided that Pedro Almodóvar's film, All About My Mother, was for sure going to win the Palme, and then suddenly, this little film that no one had ever heard of, Rosetta, was the last film that played in the festival, so a lot of the journalists actually didn’t go see it, suddenly won. It really wrong-footed them. It made them crazy.

But we were not playing politics. We were just responding very directly to the movies in a very honest way and discussing them in a very open, honest way. We were told by our jury — God, my mind has really gone — that the vote for Rosetta was the fastest vote in the history of the Palme because everybody said, "Yes, Rosetta’s the one." Every single member of our jury. No one had another one that they were proposing instead. So, once again, there was no politics. They wanted to pretend that I forced the jury into this decision in order to tweak the nose of other contemporaries of mine, like Pedro and Jim Jarmusch and John Sayles and others who had films there, but it wasn’t me. I only had one vote, you know? So there was a real disconnect between what was actually going on and what was happening in the press, but that’s Cannes. It always is very, very political, and not only are the French very political, but French cinema politics is even more convoluted and arcane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_nepsbQXaA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypGSgPCL-F8

Hi Fernanda (are you portuguese/brazilian, by any chance? you share my maids name)

Thanks for sharing that info. Gathering from that press, a lot of french journalists did enjoy watching FWWM.
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Re: Interview with Brad Dukes, author of Reflections

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Hi Fernanda (are you portuguese/brazilian, by any chance? you share my maids name)

Thanks for sharing that info. Gathering from that press, a lot of french journalists did enjoy watching FWWM.
Brazilian. But that's not my name, it's my sister's.
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Auggeo
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Re: Interview with Brad Dukes, author of Reflections

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Interesting article, Fernanda. By any chance, do you have any brazilian info about FWWM? Any article, review from 92?
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Re: Interview with Brad Dukes, author of Reflections

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http://www.contracampo.com.br/16/4vezeslynch.htm

I also want to add that Brad's book is a great read.
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Re: Interview with Brad Dukes, author of Reflections

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I finished this uber-excellent book just yesterday and WOW... :D As many have said it's simply amazing, as a long time Peaker and one that has seen it many many times and written about it even more times sometimes I feel that I already know everything there is to know about TP (you know the feeling), but Brad, your book proves me oh so wrong... It's been a delightful read... Congratulations! :D
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Re: Interview with Brad Dukes, author of Reflections

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Gordon wrote:I finished this uber-excellent book just yesterday and WOW... :D As many have said it's simply amazing, as a long time Peaker and one that has seen it many many times and written about it even more times sometimes I feel that I already know everything there is to know about TP (you know the feeling), but Brad, your book proves me oh so wrong... It's been a delightful read... Congratulations! :D
I'm actually about to re-read the book today, while researching season 2 for a project I'm working on. Can't wait!
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Re: Interview with Brad Dukes, author of Reflections

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Gordon wrote:I finished this uber-excellent book just yesterday and WOW... :D As many have said it's simply amazing, as a long time Peaker and one that has seen it many many times and written about it even more times sometimes I feel that I already know everything there is to know about TP (you know the feeling), but Brad, your book proves me oh so wrong... It's been a delightful read... Congratulations! :D
Thank you Gordon! Makes me very happy to hear that. "Always a pleasure."
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Re: Interview with Brad Dukes, author of Reflections

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Just finished the book myself. Great reading - thanks Brad :-)
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Re: Interview with Brad Dukes, author of Reflections

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Yup, add my voice to the chorus of praises -- read the book several weeks ago after my last TP marathon and found it fascinating. I loved finally getting some deep insight into the troubles of mid-late Season 2. But my favorite part may have actually been just the description of filming the pilot episode, and how (almost literally) enchanted everyone involved was by the location and the process. Beautiful stuff.

Now we just need an in-depth interview with Lynch about the entire series and which plots/episodes he oversaw or approved of in S2 and which ones he didn't... ;)
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Re: Interview with Brad Dukes, author of Reflections

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David Locke wrote:Yup, add my voice to the chorus of praises -- read the book several weeks ago after my last TP marathon and found it fascinating. I loved finally getting some deep insight into the troubles of mid-late Season 2. But my favorite part may have actually been just the description of filming the pilot episode, and how (almost literally) enchanted everyone involved was by the location and the process. Beautiful stuff.

Now we just need an in-depth interview with Lynch about the entire series and which plots/episodes he oversaw or approved of in S2 and which ones he didn't... ;)
Yeah, now that we're getting a new season and have seen the deleted scenes, THAT is my Twin Peaks holy grail (as long as it includes discussion of how/when the killer was chosen, how the process of deciding to reveal the killer took place, etc). But it's the most impossible grail of all...
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Re: Interview with Brad Dukes, author of Reflections

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I do not like his (admitted) anti-FWWM bias. He is a coffee-and-pie fan only. I think to fully appreciate the show you have to be a coffee-and-pie AND a black lodge fan.
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Re: Interview with Brad Dukes, author of Reflections

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4815162342 wrote:I do not like his (admitted) anti-FWWM bias. He is a coffee-and-pie fan only. I think to fully appreciate the show you have to be a coffee-and-pie AND a black lodge fan.
Well, to be fair, the chapter on Maddy's murder is excellent and very much taps into the dark undercurrent. Sheryl Lee's quote in particular is very sobering and thought-provoking. I do agree with you that FWWM is absolutely essential to Twin Peaks; I'd even go so far as to make the controversial claim that the series needs the film more than the film needs the series. However, it's exclusion is excusable, if still regrettable, in an oral history moreso than a critical analysis. In part because the production process/circumstance was quite different. Though I would definitely welcome more in future editions.

Brad mentioned elsewhere on this thread that the blu-ray has won him over (at least a little bit) to FWWM so maybe in a future book he will dive into that more. That said, I also think it would be much harder to do it justice in an oral history without Lynch's participation (as opposed to the series). I'm hoping perhaps that will be possible after the success of this book, and the fact that Lynch is now officially returning to Twin Peaks (maybe the tentativeness of his return was partly why he held back with Reflections). Not that he'd be especially forthcoming but you would need his voice in the mix to recount the making of that film. Don't know what Brad has planned but I would imagine that the 2016 thing has somewhat changed his plans to wind down his Twin Peaks focus!
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Re: Interview with Brad Dukes, author of Reflections

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I think it is totally absurd to judge anyone's appreciation of the show. The coffee and pie/black lodge fan thing is nonsense. I can guarantee you that from the most casual fan to the most hardcore fan, one enjoys some things about Twin Peaks more than others. In my eyes, the tv series and the film are two separate entities made by different groups of people.

Also, I am definitely not "anti-FWWM." There are some great moments and performances that I love. Aesthetically, there are some things I downright detest. So what if I have bipolar feelings about the movie. I never intended to, nor have I ever said this book was at all about the film.

I'd also like to point out that (IMO) FWWM really didnt get a respectable home video release until this summer in regards to color timing and sound design, which I feel are quite significant to the world of TP. Even seeing The Missing Pieces changed my feelings a bit about the movie. My opinions are not static.
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Re: Interview with Brad Dukes, author of Reflections

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Brad D wrote:Even seeing The Missing Pieces changed my feelings a bit about the movie.
This was huge for me, personally. Not so much in terms of the film specifically as the relationship between the film and the TV series. I think when I spoke to you in July, I agreed with you that the film and series were basically different entities. It was only after watching the deleted scenes that a firm link was fully established in my mind. Or rather, they became linked for me in a way that didn't exclusively involve FWWM repudiating the show, like a snake shedding its skin.
In my eyes, the tv series and the film are two separate entities made by different groups of people.
This I would have to respectfully disagree with. Or rather, I agree, but only with the proviso that by the same token, the pilot, the first season, and the second season (and even different parts of the second season) were also separate entities from one another. I'd say at bare minimum there were three distinct phases of production: the pilot, shot on location, more like a movie than a series, with Lynch & Frost in sync; the series, shot in Van Nuys in a more conventional TV pattern, with Lynch & Frost in varying degrees of collaboration and separation (think of it like the Beatles recording the White Album at times); and the film, shot again on location without Frost's participation.

I think in some ways the pilot and feature have more in common with each other than the pilot does with the mid-late second season, the location being only the most obvious example. Certainly this is true in terms of cast and crew - not just Lee, Wise, and Zabriskie, but Ron Garcia behind the camera (along with other crew members who had been present in the pilot but not taken part in the series). There are many conscious callbacks in the film to the pilot, things that had been forgotten over the course of the series. And BOTH pilot and feature are emphatically and near-exclusively built around Laura Palmer's death in a way that no other episode is (even #14).

People talk about Fire Walk With Me being very different in spirit from the series, but the pilot is also much darker and more grim than most of the subsequent episodes (although Cooper does lighten the tone considerably when he finally arrives). It's also much more realistic in texture and tempo than even the very next episode, much like Fire Walk With Me: more like a piece of cinema than television, if that makes sense. Granted, there are many sharp differences between pilot and feature as well. The biggest differences are aesthetic - but this criterion opens up a whole new can of worms, because Episode 29 is arguably more in tune with FWWM than the pilot (over the two years of Twin Peaks the show, Lynch had become a radically different filmmaker).

For many, the big hitch seems to be Frost's disengagement from the film. But consider that the series is already full of sequences, episodes, even entire stretches of episodes, in which either Lynch or Frost (or both!) play little to no role. I have a hunch that the last three or four episodes of season one are as much Mark Frost's Twin Peaks as Fire Walk With Me is David Lynch's (if necessary, someone with more knowledge of the production process than I can correct me!). Certainly the Black Lodge sequence in the finale is almost entirely David Lynch's invention, and few would question its place as a part of the show.

Furthermore, it's problematic to say Frost had no role in the movie because he did, indirectly. Lynch is working with many of the elements Frost (along with others on the Twin Peaks staff) invented: the idea of the Black Lodge as having a real-world presence, a "fallen"/flawed Cooper, Bob as an inhabiting spirit, heck even the knowledge of Laura's killer which is something he resisted revealing. Sure, he puts his own spin on these devices but he doesn't ignore them: for all its pure Lynchisms, Fire Walk With Me remains a result of the Lynch/Frost collaboration. Put another way: the answers may be Lynch's, but the questions are Lynch/Frost's (and often just Frost's).

One of the things that fascinates me about Twin Peaks is how fluid it is, how it evolved and transformed over time so that parts of it seem to have absolutely nothing to do with other parts and yet they all belong to the same bewildering entity. Of course I don't think everything is equal, but I have come to the conclusion that everything is equally and inescapably Twin Peaks, the good, the bad, and the ugly. In that sense, the pilot through Fire Walk With Me is all the same journey. Heck, I'd throw in the spin-off books too (despite their continuity hiccups) but I should probably save that argument for another day. ;)
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Re: Interview with Brad Dukes, author of Reflections

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For the record, I detest the second half of the second season and still think FWWM is a self indulgent mess -yet with wonderful moments (and I've seen it probably twenty times) -yet the show, town and characters are still my favorite thing in the world, and obvious crazy obsessed fan.

Brad's book was documenting the cast, crew, and other's reflections on the rise and fall of a lightning in a bottle television series. FWWM was not part of that and the time, and I think the book keeps to the essence of that time.
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