World of Blue - Archived Forum 2007-2022

He was all set to direct the Season 2 premiere until Lynch decided to do it himself. Would it have improved the ratings significantly? Would it have mattered given the ratings were already okay at that time? How different would the episode have been? What if he had directed a later episode - would the publicity have given the show a boost? Overall, what do you think a Spielberg-helmed episode of Twin Peaks would have looked like?

Background:
https://welcometotwinpeaks.com/news/steven-spielberg/

Hollywood legend Steven Spielberg, shortly before he would go on to direct Jurassic Park, Hook and Schindler’s List, was such a big fan of Twin Peaks he wanted and was about to direct the season two premiere of the show. This fantastic piece of trivia was revealed in Brad D thorough interview with Harley Peyton, one of the television show’s producers and screenwriters:

Brad D (BD): So after the first season, Twin Peaks was just this gigantic pop-art phenomenon. Just how crazy of a feeling was it to be involved in the middle of it?

Harley Peyton (HP): It’s funny, that was just one of those things, where after the first season a lot of crazy things happened, like me and Mark sitting at Steven Spielberg’s house convincing him to do the opener for the second season. That was all ready to go.

BD: Wow! Are you serious?

Steven Spielberg wanted to direct the Twin Peaks season two premiere

HP: Yeah, this is a long story, but my first wife is and was Kate Capshaw’s best friend so I knew Steven pretty well and he was a huge fan of the show – watched it every week, I mean a huge fan. Because we were friendly we talked about it a lot and he said to me in passing how fun it would be to direct an episode so I went to Mark over the summer and said, “This probably is not a bad way to kick off the second season, right?”

So we sat down with him and had this very long meeting about the second season and Steven just said “I want it to be as weird as possible, it’ll be so much fun” so whether or not he would have even done it – we’ll never really know, but when Mark told David he didn’t even hesitate saying, “No, no, I think I’ll direct the first one. Maybe he can direct later in the season” – which he obviously didn’t.

So instead of a Spielberg episode, we got the David Lynch directed “May The Giant Be With You”

I've thought about this from time to time. The "weird as possible" comments always made me think it might have been excessive in not such a good or necessarily natural way... but curious to imagine how Spielberg would have sat in with the house style/TV tone. Of course he did start out in TV and knew full well about having to adapt for (literally) the small screen but his highly cinematic leanings always seem to come through (I think it's his Columbo episode that opened with an audacious sequence on a zoom lens?) In short I think the episode would have been very busy!

Amazing topic idea. Now that you think of it, it is sort of odd they didn't just offer a later episode to Spielberg, because they did so with Keaton and Udi Edel.

Piggybacking off the "weird as possible" quote, I think it would have resembled Keaton's episode, which many have highlighted as having many visual fluorishes which exist only to be visual fluorishes. I'm sure he would have done as fine a job as the other infrequent episode directors, but I can't imagine he would have given as much challenge and distinctly "TP" power to the scenes with the Giant and the Traincar.

Steven Spielberg directed two episodes of Amazing Stories - "Ghost Train" and "The Mission" a few years earlier.

The senor drool cup stuff woulda been tighter. Major Briggs telling Bobby about his dream mighta been up his alley.

Overdone.

- Mordeen

He would have added an annoying child which the giant would have scorned, until he learned to love him and accept his role as a parent.

As to why Spielberg didn't direct a later episode, I think he wanted to direct a big event one - such as the premiere. He may also have been a bit miffed Lynch stepped in instead of him. Or he simply didn't have the time. Diane Keaton was relatively new to directing then, so I'm sure she was happy to direct any episode. But my feeling is Spielberg would have wanted a bigger one, plus by the time his schedule might have freed up again, the premiere and the killer reveal ones were both aired, the ratings were down and the tide was turning against Peaks. All or some of these reasons are probably why he never directed a later episode, and it wasn't like Lynch was going to let him helm the finale either.

baxter wrote: ↑Tue May 25, 2021 9:34 pm He would have added an annoying child which the giant would have scorned, until he learned to love him and accept his role as a parent.

Haha, this is the correct answer.