Would Showtime Edit Original Series for Twin Peaks 2016

[Ajax Rules]

Where can I find this chart, Jasper?

[Jasper]

Where can I find this chart, Jasper?

Here you are. It's very blunt, sorting episodes into three categories. Obviously there's quality variation within each category, but it's meant to reflect general views, and anything more nuanced would be more personal, and a lot messier.

By the way, while it's always been a dream of mine to edit the rough portion of season two following Leland's death, I don't know if I need an official version. I think that would be quite a bit of work, and I doubt David and Mark need more on their plates right now. As for events prior to Leland's death, I would leave it be, even as a fan project. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's close enough, and I absolutely would never in a million years edit any episode that David Lynch directed. Nevertheless, I'd certainly like to see a skilled editor take a stab at editing the rough patch. For me it will probably always remain a fantasy, as I don't possess the required skills.

[Ajax Rules]

By the way, while it's always been a dream of mine to edit the rough portion of season two following Leland's death, I don't know if I need an official version. I think that would be quite a bit of work, and I doubt David and Mark need more on their plates right now. As for events prior to Leland's death, I would leave it be, even as a fan project. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's close enough, and I absolutely would never in a million years edit any episode that David Lynch directed. Nevertheless, I'd certainly like to see a skilled editor take a stab at editing the rough patch. For me it will probably always remain a fantasy, as I don't possess the required skills.

This sums up my position, almost perfectly! (Although I do not think it would be that much work. Lynch/Frost could give detailed guidlines, let others do the actual work, and check the resulting product. I think that a week of invesment might suffice. A week for Lynch and Frost, that is. The actual work of course would take longer, but that is irrelevant). And I also believe that they should have this on their plate. There is so much briliant material in S2! But when you mix the best wine with water, all is wasted. It should be top priority to let S2 flourish.

Thanks for your chart/survival guide. It would be so simpel. Re-edit episodes 10-21 into two episodes. Wrap some plots up and work on a smooth transition to episode 22!

[LostInTheMovies]

By the way, while it's always been a dream of mine to edit the rough portion of season two following Leland's death, I don't know if I need an official version. I think that would be quite a bit of work, and I doubt David and Mark need more on their plates right now. As for events prior to Leland's death, I would leave it be, even as a fan project. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's close enough, and I absolutely would never in a million years edit any episode that David Lynch directed. Nevertheless, I'd certainly like to see a skilled editor take a stab at editing the rough patch. For me it will probably always remain a fantasy, as I don't possess the required skills.

This sums up my position, almost perfectly! (Although I do not think it would be that much work. Lynch/Frost could give detailed guidlines, let others do the actual work, and check the resulting product. I think that a week of invesment might suffice. A week for Lynch and Frost, that is. The actual work of course would take longer, but that is irrelevant). And I also believe that they should have this on their plate. There is so much briliant material in S2! But when you mix the best wine with water, all is wasted. It should be top priority to let S2 flourish.

Thanks for your chart/survival guide. It would be so simpel. Re-edit episodes 10-21 into two episodes. Wrap some plots up and work on a smooth transition to episode 22!

As a thought experiment though, what do we do with the major narrative arcs of the mid-season, particularly:

-Cooper being kicked out of the FBI (even if this material is cut, why would he be wearing flannel in certain scenes?)
-Josie's wrap up, which is mostly tiresome and convoluted, but does tie up who shot Cooper and dispense with a major character? Does Cooper just walk in on her in the bedroom without any buildup?

I think Ajax mentioned the idea that the events are still "canon" we just don't see them. In that sense, I suppose, unexplained details (like the flannel, or Truman learning the truth about Josie) could be glossed over, though how it would play dramatically remains to be seen.

On the other hand, some deft editing (particularly if it excised almost every scene with Coop in flannel) could make it seem like the events of 17-28 take place over two days. If that's too much of a rush for certain storylines (Coop & Annie falling in love happens quickly enough already, to make their whirlwind courtship last 24 hours would be breaking credulity) then one could pull a trick from ep. 17 and open the NEW ep. 17 with "Two Weeks Later." Annie is already in town, Cooper has fallen in love (though we have to involve their early-courtship scene at the diner with Gordon Cole), and any stray good scenes from the mid-season stretch (probably just Hawk's White/Black Lodge a smattering of Maj. Briggs interrogations, and the introduction of Windom Earle) could be inserted as if they are taking place on the afternoon or morning of the day Cooper goes rowing with Annie. That would obviously be the trickier approach (it's easier just to abandon the one-day-at-a-time trick) but it could work too.

Personally I'm kind of compelled by the challenge (though as noted I prefer the "official" s2 to remain flawed and honest to what happened). Tackling this idea would be fun, but I wouldn't really want to share it publicly. I'm already having trouble enough with my fair-use video essays. :/

[dugpa]

Interesting old thread on Season 2 Fan Edit http://www.dugpa.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2128#p24747


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[Ross]

I wonder if Showtime will show the original series in its correct aspect ratio, or if they will crop off the top and bottom to fit the widescreen?

[Jasper]

I wonder if Showtime will show the original series in its correct aspect ratio, or if they will crop off the top and bottom to fit the widescreen?

I think it's almost certain that it will be shown in its original aspect ratio without cropping, as that's simply how the shots were framed for aesthetics and to communicate information. Despite his love of having as big of an image as possible, I have a tough time imagining Lynch approving of the work being altered, especially in a way that removes parts of it (though I could see him being OK with expanding the image like the X-Files did, which isn't an option in this case).

I'll say that it was certainly interesting to see Q2's widescreen cropping in his Northwest Passage fanedit. It might be interesting to see the entire series given that sort of treatment.

[Ross]

I wonder if Showtime will show the original series in its correct aspect ratio, or if they will crop off the top and bottom to fit the widescreen?

I think it's almost certain that it will be shown in its original aspect ratio without cropping, as that's simply how the shots were framed for aesthetics and to communicate information. Despite his love of having as big of an image as possible, I have a tough time imagining Lynch approving of the work being altered, especially in a way that removes parts of it (though I could see him being OK with expanding the image like the X-Files did, which isn't an option in this case).

That's my assumption as well. Just wasn't sure is Showtime ever shows non-widescreen programs.

[N. Needleman]

Delurking to say I think it's impossible to really appreciate Twin Peaks if you outright dismiss Mark Frost or 2/3rds of the series that was not largely the product of David Lynch. It was a group effort, and at its center it was the merging of two key minds.

This is being too simplistic about it as well but I look at it as Lynch had the dream logic and matter, while Frost masterminded much of the architecture and language to house it. This is of course not the whole picture, either, as they both had ideas, bounced them off each other, each came up with characters, stories, dialogue, whatever. But it was a perfect circle, and from that circle came the essence of the show and its art. Its genesis was never, could never be one man.

I am a massive David Lynch fan first and foremost and I adore his films, even Inland Empire which can be difficult to penetrate. I would be thrilled if TP had returned even without Mark Frost, but I think it would be very different. I think FWWM is incredible, but it is very different - and it is all, every inch of it, still built on the architecture and mythology both Lynch and Frost created. Much of what we see of the red room and its forces in FWWM, I think has its foundation in Frost and the other writers' work in Season 2 (Peyton and Engels get too much stick these days, IMO).

Twin Peaks is what it is. It's not revisable or reprogrammable. We can't go back and rewrite the messy bits to try and make it perfect formica, and we can't x somebody out to try and fit it into a narrow auteurist box. (I agree there's too much criticism that tries to chase that thesis.) Feigning otherwise leads you down the road of the George Lucas Special Edition.

[Jerry Horne]

Twin Peaks is what it is. It's not revisable or reprogrammable. We can't go back and rewrite the messy bits to try and make it perfect formica, and we can't x somebody out to try and fit it into a narrow auteurist box. (I agree there's too much criticism that tries to chase that thesis.) Feigning otherwise leads you down the road of the George Lucas Special Edition.

Agree 1000%.

[LostInTheMovies]

Delurking to say

Well, hope you stay delurked as this was an excellent post.

and it is all, every inch of it, still built on the architecture and mythology both Lynch and Frost created.

Great point and I totally agree. While it can be approached as a Lynch film and appreciated purely on that level, it is ALSO deeply tied to the fundamentals of the TV series, including many elements that had their genesis more in Frost than Lynch.

Much of what we see of the red room and its forces in FWWM, I think has its foundation in Frost and the other writers' work in Season 2 (Peyton and Engels get too much stick these days, IMO).

This is a tricky point. I think, strictly speaking, "what we see" is very much Lynch's doing. Almost all of the actual iconography has been traced to Lynch, I think: the room itself, but also the Little Man, Bob, the One-Armed Man, the Giant, the creamed corn (though the Tremonts themselves may have been Peyton's contribution, and I like to think Frost came up with Senor Drool-Cup since there is a similarly senile and aggravating room-service waiter in one of his episodes of Hill Street Blues).

BUT I think Frost is primarily responsible for the IDEAS that tie those images to a larger mythology and spiritual ethos. Again, the architecture you speak of. I have a video coming up on this very subject and for the past month I have been researching the impact of Theosophy on the show. What's amazing is that Lynch himself - both in the series finale and Fire Walk With Me - remains remarkably faithful to ideas Frost brought to the table. In fact, I'd argue, his version of the finale is actually a better fulfillment of the Dweller on the Threshold concept that the original teleplay.

Also recently was able to read The List of 7 and watch The Believers (although I'm not sure how much of that was adapted straight from the novel vs. Frost's own idea) and they offer fascinating parallels to Peaks. To my mind, Frost's greatest contributions to Twin Peaks were the spiritual test applying to Cooper; the incorporation of a larger mythological framework; and the conception of Twin Peaks as this sprawling, interlocked web of relationships and storylines. My biggest reservation about Frost's perspective is that Laura was clearly not as important a figure to him as to Lynch, and I think the narrative needs to be anchored in her story, even while branching off to explore the broad tapestry of the town. That said, even if it was offered for the wrong reasons and followed up in the wrong way, the actual decision to reveal Laura's killer was correct in my humble opinion.

Twin Peaks is what it is. It's not revisable or reprogrammable. We can't go back and rewrite the messy bits to try and make it perfect formica, and we can't x somebody out to try and fit it into a narrow auteurist box. (I agree there's too much criticism that tries to chase that thesis.) Feigning otherwise leads you down the road of the George Lucas Special Edition.

Yes, these types of things always get tricky. On the one hand, you have the excessive revisionism of, say, the Special Editions, on the other the depersonalized nature of the new Lucas-free Star Wars (how easily many SW fans can hate the creator while loving the creation baffles me). Twin Peaks strikes a happy balance for me in that it recognizes blemishes or detours along the path but finds a way to incorporate rather than simply reject or erase them. It belongs to the creators without them thinking they can retroactively control it.

[cinemartin]

Personally, I find the talk of reediting season 2 more cringeworthy than adding the "May The Giant Be With You" titles. I find all the second guessing of Lynch's creative thought processes in this vein to betray a lack of understanding about Lynch's work from the time period - 1988 to 1992, the years of Twin Peaks. Years that are bookended by The Cowboy and the Frenchman and On The Air. I wonder how one would reedit One The Air? That was certainly more Lynch than Frost. It would do well to remember that immediately preceding Twin Peaks was One Saliva Bubble, and most of the scorn I'm seeing lately by some regarding Season 2 is of the comedic goings on in Twin Peaks during that time. Would we be editing out the hospital food bit from the second season opener in the potential reedit? That was almost certainly a Lynch creation.

Also, the talk of Lynch not working well with collaborators is completely false - Lost Highway was written with Barry Gifford, Straight Story with Sweeny, and Inland Empire was truly a collaboration with Laura Dern, in my opinion. As for Mulholland Drive, the greatest collaborator for that was ABC itself. If we truly want Lynch's unfiltered creativity and original vision, then we wouldn't even have the movie - it would have aired as a pilot, much different from the final film as we have it. Who's to say that one is better than the other? I'm glad we have the film but maybe we can reedit that to, to bring it more in line with what Lynch was originally thinking.

To me, Twin Peaks failed because they creators didn't factor in the law of opposites. They were shocked that it had such an astronomically fast rise and didn't count on the fall being that quick. They took their time after solving the murder, never dreaming that they could be cancelled in half a season. Twin Peaks was never a fast show; it moved at its own pace and speed. I love the second season as it is - there's just no way a television audience wanted to see it (by audience, I mean "majority"). They attempted a slow pace where we would spend time with characters we all love (or at least, that was the hope). I believe they knew what they were doing - we can see that from when they dropped Windom Earle's name in the second episode of Season 2. It was a long, and in my opinion, brilliant reveal to a major character for the future of Twin Peaks. The problem for the audience at the time - it was too long. The real thing to look at it, I think, is that David Lynch, the painter and filmmaker, tried his hand at episodic TV and couldn't pull it off as successfully as audiences would have liked. We have to remember that creation isn't just who is making what with whom, but also when. There is time allotted to create and if it doesn't come together in that time, hey - on to the next thing. I think Lynch knows this more than anybody.

I liken it to an analogy of suddenly David Lynch is going to ride a bicycle upside down for 30 seconds and cross a finish line through a ribbon. He does it and everyone loves it. Someone says, "Hey Lynch, how about trying that for 10 minutes?" He says, "Ok, I'll give it a shot," and rides upside down for 4, falls off the bike but does a somersault after hitting the ground and lands on his feet, gets back on the bike and rides across the finish line. Some people claim it was a failed experiment and others admit that maybe it wasn't what they were expecting, but they like it anyway. The 25 years later, someone wants to reedit it so he doesn't fall off the bike, still somehow does the somersault, doesn't get back on the bike, but still crosses the finish line. Just seems like a waste of time to me. Why not just watch Mulholland Drive instead? David Lynch is a filmmaker, not an upside down bicycle rider.

I do find discussions of studio interference and certain plots (i.e., Cooper and Audrey's romantic affair) very interesting, but I feel like questions of authorial intent to be very presumptuous, especially regarding Lynch, who is so non-communicative on the whole thing. If one finds parts of Season 2 to be worse than anything Lynch has done, how does one feel about the pilot for the On The Air?

[N. Needleman]

I also find it really presumptuous to be making all sorts of leaps about Lynch and Frost and what we would supposedly know about them better than the men themselves. Case in point: Putting all of the deleted footage from FWWM back into the film on the assumption Lynch wanted it back in. Unless I am very misinformed, what I've always heard is that Lynch cut FWWM to his own specifications, choosing to cut all of the Missing Pieces deleted material out. He never wanted to put it back in and still doesn't, AFAIK. The film that exists is the one he has chosen. I believe he was extremely hesitant to even release the deleted scenes for years.

Another thing we do know for certain is that Lynch and Frost want to work together, they made this choice twice now and their collaboration bore out TP. I think MD is a masterpiece. Frost may or may not have liked it - I think that interview was a long time ago, he hadn't seen it and who knows what their relationship was like at the time - but I'm not really interested in that. As a fan I'm only concerned with him and TP. A lot of the cast doesn't care for FWWM and I'm not asking for them to be drummed out of the production for insufficient fealty. Today Lynch and Frost are supposedly very close.

Remaking TP to some new specs after the fact is just not possible. If someone finds the show fatally compromised by way of collaboration that's their prerogative, but it's a notion I find it difficult to discuss the show's future around.

[LostInTheMovies]

I do find discussions of studio interference and certain plots (i.e., Cooper and Audrey's romantic affair) very interesting, but I feel like questions of authorial intent to be very presumptuous, especially regarding Lynch, who is so non-communicative on the whole thing. If one finds parts of Season 2 to be worse than anything Lynch has done, how does one feel about the pilot for the On The Air?

Interesting points but I think that based on the interviews and scholarship we have (including Brad's book), it's fairly clear that both Lynch and Frost were relatively hands-off in the middle of season 2. I suppose it's possible that Harley Peyton is misremembering, but what would be the benefit of that for him? He ends up taking credit for episodes people don't like instead of saying "they [Lynch/Frost] made me do it." As to why Lynch/Frost chose that particular moment to disengage, I dunno...maybe Frost needed a break after the intensity of wrapping up the murder mystery arc while with Lynch, who doesn't typically work on things that don't light his fire, was probably disillusioned by the end of what was the most intriguing aspect of the show to him. Later he rationalized this as "I was off working on Wild at Heart" during season 2 but that is chronologically impossible!

[cinemartin]

Yeah, but that just goes along with me saying Lynch wasn't really built for TV. He's a man of mercurial and varied interests and the grueling schedule of network TV doesn't really jive with that. He is also a Hollywood player, despite a lot of people building him up as an incorruptible artist (I'm not saying he's not, btw). It's true Wild At Heart was screening at Cannes while the first season was airing, but Lynch/Frost were diversifying at that point too, bringing other projects to the table, like American Chronicles and On The Air. I think it's possible that Lynch and Frost could have kept an eye on Twin Peaks, which was already a success, but left the day to day to the younger Peyton and Engles while they set up these other projects. Let's not forget that they were both the heads of a VERY successful production company suddenly. By all accounts, these guys loved these characters and maybe when they're pitched "Hey guys, we think Ben Horne should now think he's Robert E Lee", Lynch and Frost think that's hilarious and don't see any reason why the public wouldn't think so too. After it fails miserably, it's easy to look back on it and say, "Oh, we made a mistake" or even go so far as to say, "Gee, I don't remember that at all. I think I was blocking Cage and Dern in the hotel room that day".