Mark Frost's Contributions to TP:TR (Speculation)

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Re: Mark Frost's Contributions to TP:TR (Speculation)

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Yeah, I guess that just wouldn’t be exciting or god forbid, fan service. This isn’t a documentary about real life... it’s heightened drama, that finds truth in those heightened situations. Audrey works in a hair salon because she has good hair and was fashionable? Ugh, I never thought that was the essence of Audrey.... those things just kinda effortless happened for her. I understand how the second season just out of control due to the nature of week to week television planning.... but geesh, years of writing and the chance to map something out... I get it that this is Lynch and Frost’s creation, but their vision is so far off the mark for some of these characters than I would have ever predicted. Audrey was always such an easy home run character, it boggles the mind they struggled. I would think drafting a return to Peaks any framework would be initially what to do with Coooer, what to do with Audrey, and how the Palmers fit in.... and the rest just falls into place.
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Re: Mark Frost's Contributions to TP:TR (Speculation)

Post by laughingpinecone »

It's normal to wish the best for our fave character and see them as the third protagonist of the show and for them to somehow have superpowers that make them proactive and successful in a show that is very pointedly not about "getting what one wants" or even accomplishments in general. Heck, I had similar daydreams for Harry. Pretending that our priorities and fantasies be the show's priorities is silly, though.
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Re: Mark Frost's Contributions to TP:TR (Speculation)

Post by BGate »

Maybe it was a really nice hair salon.
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Re: Mark Frost's Contributions to TP:TR (Speculation)

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Laughing, I think objectively it was more than a wish. I just took it for granted that starting out, Frost and Lynch would be thinking what to do with Coooer, Audrey and Truman... (even if I hated those three) and then also how to continue to have Laura and the Palmers remain a central external mystery. Thinking okay, how do we top the rock throw, the cherry stem, etc. Something silly would be hoping they give Piper Laurie a key story line, realistically I knew that wouldn’t happen. So as objectively speaking, I just meant I was truly baffled by some of their frame work.
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Re: Mark Frost's Contributions to TP:TR (Speculation)

Post by Hester Prynne »

I've put my post in the "spoiler" caption because of Final Dossier references.
Spoiler:
The criticism is not based on pet characters or certain fans' priorities or "fantasies." It's about a writer that has demonstrated his ability to create dizzying labyrinths of engaging mysteries and characters showing an astounding lack of imagination with not just Audrey's character, but a number of the original (now older) female characters from the show's first run - they are all broken, insane, or had/have an addiction to alcohol or drugs, and all have had some kind of tragic, downward spiral - Donna, Audrey, Annie, Sarah Palmer (but I guess her excuse is that she was possessed by an evil frog bug - that isn't "silly" at all). Even characters like Diane and Frank Truman's wife from TR fit into this trope. M. Frost himself agreed that the part rescripted for Audrey by DKL was better than what they had originally planned, so I think there is merit in people's reactions to Audrey's backstory that can't just be explained away as being unreasonable fan expectations or simply wanting the best for a favorite character.

Sorry to be so harsh towards Frost in my remarks. I enjoyed Season 3 and all the mysteries it brought with it, even with some of the criticisms that I listed above, but I feel like the spoilers coming out on FD have deflated quite a bit of that experience for me, and I can't reconcile how the same man that contributed to Catherine Martell's creation wrote what he did for Audrey's backstory and some of the other characters.
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Re: Mark Frost's Contributions to TP:TR (Speculation)

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Hester Prynne wrote:I've put my post in the "spoiler" caption because of Final Dossier references.
Spoiler:
The criticism is not based on pet characters or certain fans' priorities or "fantasies." It's about a writer that has demonstrated his ability to create dizzying labyrinths of engaging mysteries and characters showing an astounding lack of imagination with not just Audrey's character, but a number of the original (now older) female characters from the show's first run - they are all broken, insane, or had/have an addiction to alcohol or drugs, and all have had some kind of tragic, downward spiral - Donna, Audrey, Annie, Sarah Palmer (but I guess her excuse is that she was possessed by an evil frog bug - that isn't "silly" at all). Even characters like Diane and Frank Truman's wife from TR fit into this trope. M. Frost himself agreed that the part rescripted for Audrey by DKL was better than what they had originally planned, so I think there is merit in people's reactions to Audrey's backstory that can't just be explained away as being unreasonable fan expectations or simply wanting the best for a favorite character.

Sorry to be so harsh towards Frost in my remarks. I enjoyed Season 3 and all the mysteries it brought with it, even with some of the criticisms that I listed above, but I feel like the spoilers coming out on FD have deflated quite a bit of that experience for me, and I can't reconcile how the same man that contributed to Catherine Martell's creation wrote what he did for Audrey's backstory and some of the other characters.
Why make it about gender? Are the male character's any different (in general)? Cooper, Truman, Hank, Leo, James, Pete, Benjamin Horne, Ed (until now). Near universal tragedies. That isn't a flaw on the writer's part. That is an aspect of aging, and what comes with that, that they clearly wanted to address.
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Re: Mark Frost's Contributions to TP:TR (Speculation)

Post by bowisneski »

Great interview with Mark in Variety.


EDIT:
There's also apparently an interview with Mark in Empire, but I can't find any reference to it anywhere except in this Screenrant article which quotes the following
“Cooper feels some sense of duty to undertake this last quest for Laura. He’s driven by it, and goes to great lengths to pursue it. And he encounters truly mortal danger, not just physically, but perhaps metaphysically. There are echoes of classic mythological themes. It’s Orpheus descending into the Underworld. You are playing with deep, profound, mysterious forces that will have unintended consequences. In the old mythology, as a mortal, to cross into the realm of what was thought of as the gods’, meant you risked everything. That’s what we’re seeing happen here.”
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Re: Mark Frost's Contributions to TP:TR (Speculation)

Post by Mr. Reindeer »

i think the following quote goes a ways to supporting my theory that a lot of the themes that people have viewed as pessimistic or misanthropic came from Mark:
Well, I think that that just reflects your feeling about how life goes for people. I concentrated [in “The Final Dossier”] mostly on people from Twin Peaks, not necessarily the newer characters. You want to round out an entire picture of the town. And I mean, how many people do get a happy ending? It’s not a huge percentage across a broad population. Yeah, that’s life.
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Re: Mark Frost's Contributions to TP:TR (Speculation)

Post by LateReg »

Audrey Horne wrote:Laughing, I think objectively it was more than a wish. I just took it for granted that starting out, Frost and Lynch would be thinking what to do with Coooer, Audrey and Truman... (even if I hated those three) and then also how to continue to have Laura and the Palmers remain a central external mystery. Thinking okay, how do we top the rock throw, the cherry stem, etc. Something silly would be hoping they give Piper Laurie a key story line, realistically I knew that wouldn’t happen. So as objectively speaking, I just meant I was truly baffled by some of their frame work.
I get what you're saying, but I simply can't relate to that. The best thing they could have done is what they did, imo: Practically eaves-drop us into these characters lives 25 years later, not to highlight any quirks of the characters or force any cool moments or force them into the central narrative, but to just check in with them as though we were passing through the town 25 years later. I don't think trying to top the rock throw or the cherry stem was at all necessary, and the lack of focus on that is what sets this show apart for me. What they did with the characters seems truthful.

That said, I now finally understand why Fenn would prefer what she performed to what she was originally given. On paper, the hair salon does sound like a mediocre idea; however, in the course of the show, it might have felt right. Regardless, I'm glad for what we got instead. But I'm also someone who doesn't view Audrey as the 2nd or 3rd main character. She's simply equal to most of the rest, no more, no less, and I'm so glad they avoided any kind of narrative in which she plays a role in finding Cooper, a man she knew for just a few weeks. That would make sense only in TV revival terms, the cliches of which The Return adamantly avoided.
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Re: Mark Frost's Contributions to TP:TR (Speculation)

Post by Hester Prynne »

eyeboogers wrote:
Why make it about gender? Are the male character's any different (in general)? Cooper, Truman, Hank, Leo, James, Pete, Benjamin Horne, Ed (until now). Near universal tragedies. That isn't a flaw on the writer's part. That is an aspect of aging, and what comes with that, that they clearly wanted to address.
Put my post in a spoiler caption for those that haven't read The Final Dossier:
Spoiler:
I agree 100% about FD being centered around the passage of time, its looming presence for the characters, regrets, etc. I read the book last evening, and there are some very beautiful passages to this effect. I don't take issue with that or Frost's darker vision for the book as a whole, but for me, it's not an explanation or absolution for some of the bizarre, out-of-left-field story choices.

Not trying to make this about anything other than the story. To answer your question, yes, I think there is a difference. All the tragedies for the male characters make sense more or less. Frost didn't have to bend over backwards to weave those storylines - the groundwork was already there. Why he didn't follow suit for Audrey, Donna, Annie, and others, I don't understand. What about Donna's best friend being murdered, her boyfriend fleeing town, and finding out Doc Hayward wasn't her biological father? What trajectory would that have put her on - moving to New York and becoming a fashion model? Huh? Did Audrey sustain injuries from the bank blast? Does she know that it was Coop (Mr. C) that assaulted her? How would this have affected her in future relationships and what did she go through trying to move past this trauma? There's just so much there to work with! The salon owner/model/rape victim/drug addict/molested as a child themes just seem contrived, uninspired, repetitive, and aren't in keeping with the characters. They aren't just "broken birds", to borrow a quote from the book, they are completely shattered. These aren't universal tragedies as those heaped on some of the female characters, to me, seem far more devastating for no other reason than it feels like Frost couldn't get into the mindset of a woman over 40 and what a tragedy might be for her, or how the passage of time might affect these characters. For me, there was no emotional connection to these characters' struggles. Their stories just felt thrown away.

Anyway, all of this is subjective, and I'm not asking for anyone to agree with me. I just felt really let down by FD in this sense, especially since Frost has had so much time over the years since the original show to think about what these characters' outcomes might have been.
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Re: Mark Frost's Contributions to TP:TR (Speculation)

Post by Audrey Horne »

And to piggyback on that... no spoiler tag for me... there’s no exploration of the passage of time in book or series. Just bleakness. That might be fine if this were The Wire, but for me, I don’t really feel the Peaks characters warrant it. I’m not inspired by these stylized characters, only depressed... and not depressed in a tragic way, but a ho hum way. Peaks was just a potentially great playground and box of toys, so (for me) I was just baffled by most of the choices.
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Re: Mark Frost's Contributions to TP:TR (Speculation)

Post by bowisneski »

Frost quotes from the Empire article - Issue 343 December 2017. Each quote is under the heading it appears under in the article, I've added /'s to some of them to add context that was in the article.

Glass Box/Bad Coop/Answers
“He clearly has some connection to it,” Frost tells Empire. “He’s the one who’s motivated to find this entity, and this was the means through which he goes about it. Concerning what the entity is, I’ll let you decide that for yourself. Between the book and the show I think the answer’s pretty clear, but I’d rather let you connect the dots.”

“This is a piece of work best left to the viewer to interpret for themselves,” he says. “I don’t think either of us wanted there to be just one way to look at all this. Let people be free to wander through it and make of it what they will.”
Bad Coop/Dweller on the Threshold
“It’s an old spiritual concept that has very deep roots in a lot of eastern philosophies,” explains Frost. “Whether these things are metaphorical, philosophical, factual, they become useful metaphysical guidelines for us to wend our way through confrontations with darkness.”
The Birth of BOB
“My advocacy for that part of the plot was that we needed an origin story for everything we’ve been working with on the series for 25 years,” says Frost. “I felt you can’t just hint endlessly at something just beyond your reach. Even if it’s at a mythological level, it needs to be, to a certain point, explicit. I felt very strongly that we needed a way to figure out how this darkness came along. And that’s where we went with it!”
The Woodsmen
“Yes, we first saw them in Fire Walk With Me,” confirms Frost. “This gives you their origin story. They’re so frightening and elemental, nightmarish figures, and the less said about them the better.”
Audrey's Fate
“We wanted everybody to be travelling down different paths, and this is where we ended up with Audrey,” offers Frost. “We have her son [Richard, played by Eamon Farren], who’s obviously a pretty horrifying presence in the show. That all flows from what happened to her when she was in that hospital 25 years before.”
The Palmer House/Laura/Coop's Quest
“Cooper feels some sense of duty to undertake this last quest for Laura,” explains Frost. “He’s driven by it, and goes to great lengths to pursue it. And he encounters truly mortal danger, not just physically, but perhaps metaphysically. There are echoes of classic mythological themes. It’s Orpheus descending into the Underworld. You are playing with deep, profound, mysterious forces that will have unintended consequences. In the old mythology, as a mortal, to cross into the realm of what was thought of as the gods’, meant you risked everything. That’s what we’re seeing happen here.”
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Re: Mark Frost's Contributions to TP:TR (Speculation)

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From The Film Stage I cut out the parts specifically about the books and left in the stuff that related to the script writing/Frost involvement in what was aired.
I feel as though the character[Preston] in the book has a different voice from the character in the series. Did writing for her after seeing Bell’s performance change your approach to or ideas about the character?
No, it didn’t change it in the slightest. I had created the character with David in the script and elaborated upon it in The Secret History. So I think what you might be describing is simply the character in The Final Dossier is the character after having gone through the experience of The Return.

You fold in so much of the Twin Peaks universe – not just the shows and film, but even references to your brother’s book, The Autobiography of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes. Did you revisit it in preparation for this book?
No. I revisited it when we were working on the script, because I needed some reference points to Cooper’s backstory, and that was the most extensive work that had been done on his backstory, so I revisited it up to that point.

Some have called the book a “conclusive narrative” to the show, but I feel like that’s not true at all – it doesn’t really answer so much as comment upon. Do you see this as more open-ended than “final” would indicate? And how might you strike that balance?
I would say that, particularly, those last chapters were an effort to expand and elaborate upon the ending of the show rather than make conclusive statements about it; it was fun to just kind of hold it and look at it from different angles. And, again, it’s looking at it from Agent Preston’s point-of-view, which is not privy to everything that happened in the show – she’s only looking at it through her own perceptions, which are a little more limited.

The Final Dossier‘s ending also allows, I think, room to interpret the new show — which, likes its predecessor, doesn’t follow traditional temporal continuity nor adherence to laws of logic — as its own closed circuit: the description of what happens after Cooper saves Laura — she’s pronounced missing, not dead; Cooper comes to town and, with no trace to follow, there isn’t much of a case to solve; for most people, life goes on as it did in the wake of her death — has a weird way of aligning precisely with what we’ve seen in season three: her father’s absence, her mother’s intense depression, the gap she still left in the town despite the change in her fate.
I wouldn’t say that… I mean, if the timeline is going to change, it doesn’t change until the end, so I don’t think anything that precedes the end — if you’re viewing the show as chronological in time and space, which I believe it more or less is — there would be no effects, retroactively, to material that happens before we see it; it would have to happen in sequence. So I’m not sure I entirely agree with your thesis there.

The melding of what’s written and shown is really beautiful. You’d expressed an attraction to Las Vegas, setting-wise, because of homes that had been built and then abandoned, and the way he and Peter Deming photograph it is rather haunting.
Well, he shot what we wrote. It’s in the script, so, for the most part, that’s the blueprint. But those things were spelled-out, to some extent – particularly in the Las Vegas scenes – and I thought he did a great job depicting them.

Reports told us you and Lynch spent about a year working on the first two hours, then a year with the rest. There seems to be a big discrepancy, time- and length-wise. Was the opening just particularly tough to crack?
I wouldn’t say it was a whole year to write the two hours. What I meant by that was: it was a whole year before we started writing the script in earnest because it took, kind of, that long to cross the ts and dot the is on the deal with Showtime. The actual writing of those first two hours took, maybe, two or three months, and then there was a long period where we were waiting to see whether it was going to happen; and then it took about another year to do the rest. So I would refine the timeline that way.

Even thought it was constructed in one long film, did the first two hours still become something of a separate entity?
Well, we had to have something to show to Showtime; those first two hours had to function as a sales tool to get them to jump onboard. So I’d say that was the only distinction: we needed to cover enough of the story to give them enough information to make a decision.

And it ends, roughly, with Cooper getting out?
Yeah, more or less.

The screenplay for episode eight was said to be about twelve pages.
Yeah. My memory is twelve-to-fifteen pages.

And that the atomic bomb sequence was only about a paragraph. How much of that was written together, and how much of it was part of the material Lynch is said to have later written with your approval? And was it a particularly fun hour to write, standing out in your memory the way it’s since stood out for viewers?
We wrote it together. It was certainly different from a lot of the rest of the material, and it was challenging in that regard, but it was just part of the story on another level. So I wouldn’t say it was distinctly different, no.
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Re: Mark Frost's Contributions to TP:TR (Speculation)

Post by bowisneski »

And I was going to do the same with this interview from Salon, but there's just too much related to the show to fit in to a single post so I'd suggest checking it out. He talks about Freddie, a little about David's involvement on Season 1, Episode 8, expanding the mythology created in FWwM, and some other random bits including a bit of clarification on the 119 woman.

All of these interviews he's been doing recently really help to clarify his role in the final show and scripting.
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Re: Mark Frost's Contributions to TP:TR (Speculation)

Post by baxter »

" I'll give you one possible thing to think about [with the "119" woman]: The people who have one foot in the other world have a pronounced tendency to speak backwards."

:-D
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