Part 3 of Journey Through Twin Peaks: The Whole Damned Town

[Audrey Horne]

And if course Lynch would have made a Dell live, and do exactly like you said. I can easily see him in the hospital and no one believing him about Andrew.

[Jasper]

I have to say you have certainly done a fantastic job with these installments, a true labor of love. And they are just so much fun to watch. The amount of care in the outstanding edit is well, outstanding.

Pro work, and in case it hasn't been mentioned, the voice-over work is also very well done, performance-wise and from a technical standpoint. Calm, lucid, and unobtrusive. Just the thing to keep us immersed in the TP world even though said world is being analyzed. A neat trick. Like dream analysis while you're still dreaming.

[LostInTheMovies]

I have to say you have certainly done a fantastic job with these installments, a true labor of love. And they are just so much fun to watch. The amount of care in the outstanding edit is well, outstanding.

Pro work, and in case it hasn't been mentioned, the voice-over work is also very well done, performance-wise and from a technical standpoint. Calm, lucid, and unobtrusive. Just the thing to keep us immersed in the TP world even though said world is being analyzed. A neat trick. Like dream analysis while you're still dreaming.

Thanks - that's the part of it that I'm the most uncomfortable with, though I feel it's gotten better as the series progressed. Maybe nobody likes the sound of their own voice!

[LostInTheMovies]

As you celebrate Christmas, don't forget our pal Cooper still stuck in the Black Lodge (or half-stuck, like one of Dante's characters) after all these years. At least we know he'll be out in eighteen months (hopefully). Here's my final chapter of Part 3, on Cooper's journey into the Lodge:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37S8Cq0nCrY

I've also updated the lead post of this thread with a couple title pictures and a link to my blog post, which gathers all the chapters of Part 3 (and the full video on Vimeo) into one convenient location.

Happy holidays, and a happy New Year.

[LostInTheMovies]

I'll save a Part 4 thread for when more videos go up, but for now I've offered a sample of the upcoming video. It isn't the next chapter, per se (it jumps right past the opening, which will either go up separately or as part of a longer video also incorporating this one). But I wanted it to go up as a standalone video which could be watched either alone or as part of the larger video series. It's called "7 Facts About Fire Walk With Me" and explores the film's controversial relationship to the series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27_9L6YFHrs

Here's what I wrote up on my blog by way of background:

I explore the context for positive and negative opinion in the following video (an excerpt from the upcoming Part 4 of Journey Through Twin Peaks, it can still be watched on its own). There are obviously many other details that could be pointed out: the film's structural messiness of the movie, the difficulty getting Kyle MacLachlan to do more than a cameo, the hour and a half of deleted footage, but these will be addressed in upcoming chapters and did not seem as integral to me as these seven fundamental facts. While some of these statements can seem more like opinions - how do we "prove" that Fire Walk With Me fulfills Twin Peaks? - they remain solidly rooted in visual and/or historical evidence which I present onscreen.

On to Fire Walk With Me, and the final part of Journey Through Twin Peaks, in 2015. Thanks everyone for accompanying me on the journey. See you on the other side.

[LostInTheMovies]

I've uploaded the introduction to Part 4, "Introducing Fire Walk With Me" which is actually chapter 20 and comes before the last thing I uploaded (7 Facts About Fire Walk With Me). Phew! Well, makes sense that video essays on a sequel/prequel would also have a jumbled chronology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3Uw7Sa3_uk

[Audrey Horne]

Excellent work once again.

To me what is most interesting about the film is that David fell under the spell of his character, sort of like Dana Andrews in the film Laura itself.

[LostInTheMovies]

Excellent work once again.

To me what is most interesting about the film is that David fell under the spell of his character, sort of like Dana Andrews in the film Laura itself.

Yeah, it really is fascinating. I think some people expected it to unfold that way onscreen with Cooper but it's funny that it more or less happened offscreen in real life, instead! And the Sheryl Lee-Laura Palmer dynamic also feels similar, where an actress is kind of taken over slowly by the character she's playing. I know there are some classic movies/stories where that happens but none leap to mind at the moment (I know in The Red Shoes, the story of the play replicates itself in reality but I can't remember if the actress really "transforms" into the character or if they are just always paralleled.) I can, however, think of several later films that show this actress/character fusion (and it does usually seem to be an actress, rather than actor): Black Swan's one, and of course Inland Empire is another.

[Jasper]

What's cookin'? I don't mean I smell scorched engine oil, nor do I mean I'm waiting for Meals on Wheels. I mean when will we see more installments of this damn fine series?

I want all my . . . Journey Through Twin Peaks (viewing pleasure).

[LostInTheMovies]

What's cookin'? I don't mean I smell scorched engine oil, nor do I mean I'm waiting for Meals on Wheels. I mean when will we see more installments of this damn fine series?

I want all my . . . Journey Through Twin Peaks (viewing pleasure).

Lots of research & prep, mostly on Hinduism. I think the connection will be more diffuse, but in some ways even more emphatic, than I initially expected - the strongest link is not the explicit ritualistic images of the Rig Veda (though there's some interesting stuff there) than to the mystical monism of the Upanishads. Not sure yet how I'll visualize/discuss it but some ideas are brewing...

Anyway, I'm hoping to dive into FWWM (both re-watching, and writing the narration) tonight, after watching Log Lady intros, Between Two Worlds etc. Also toying with the idea of a penultimate chapter on the Missing Pieces, separate from a chapter on Lynch's later work, and a concluding montage/narration - so we're talking now 3 chapters AFTER I wrap up FWWM haha - possibly 9 chapters total in Part 4, even more than Part 3. At this point I might be cooking up too many endings to the series. Maybe I just don't want it to end...

[N. Needleman]

I was hoping for a chapter on the unexpected revival! Complete with Between Two Worlds, Lynch and Ray Wise's hinting in recent years, and so forth.

I find your series fascinating. We don't agree on every last little bit, but it is mostly right on the mark for me and exquisitely designed, researched and cut.

[LostInTheMovies]

I was hoping for a chapter on the unexpected revival! Complete with Between Two Worlds, Lynch and Ray Wise's hinting in recent years, and so forth.

I find your series fascinating. We don't agree on every last little bit, but it is mostly right on the mark for me and exquisitely designed, researched and cut.

Thanks, N. There are a few possibilities. Today I'm finally going to script the remaining chapters. It will probably go as follows:

22. The FBI/Deer Meadow - I may also include the ring in this section, since it first comes to our attention when Chet sees the picture of it in the trailer. And discuss Cooper's role in FWWM.

23. The Lodge - If that's the right word for Twin Peaks' shadow world; it occurred to me recently that the word "Lodge" is spoken only once in the film (when explicitly referring to the finale), the phrase "Black Lodge" never, and supposedly Lynch prefers to refer to it as "the Red Room" in conversation. With that in mind, I'll discuss how Frost's Theosophical concepts are translated to the film (in some cases, like the dugpa, mostly disposed, in others - the dweller on the threshold - fulfilled). Also the way the spirit world interacts with the human world - particularly Leland/Bob, possible influences of the Rig Veda on the imagery including garmonbozia (though the spirit of the Upanishads, and the specificity of garmonbozia as "pain and sorrow" will be reserved for a later chapter), and probably the door portrait on Laura's wall. This chapter will be tricky because of overlap with the next, so I'll have to figure out what to put where.

24. The Last 7 Days of Laura Palmer - This may be the longest chapter of the whole series. It will examine Laura's character arc in the film as well as her relationships to Donna and Ronette as they reflect on her own personality. I may move the door portrait here instead of the Lodge chapter. I will also discuss the angels (although not yet their final appearance).

25. The Train Car - This will be presented as the climax of the journey through Twin Peaks - at least as it presently exists. I will probably take a step back to discuss the Upanishads and Lynch's overarching worldview, the fulfillment of the dweller on the threshold theme, as well as the way the meaning of the ring, the garmonbozia, and the angels were changed/added to from script to screen. Initially I didn't plan to make this a separate chapter but there's much to discuss and I think it might deserve its own space, similarly to the Killer's Reveal and Cooper in the Lodge.

And then it gets tricky. Either...

26. The Legacy of Twin Peaks - Not so much its influence on TV, but on Lynch's later films. Would also discuss his later entries in the Twin Peaks universe (well, aside from the Georgia Coffee commercials!): the Log Lady intros, that "What Does She See, What Does She Hear?" video on his website, the Missing Pieces, the Entire Mystery packaging, and Between Two Worlds, even the promo for 2016. All of which do two things: emphasize Laura Palmer as the center of Twin Peaks, and create a more holistic sense of the Twin Peaks universe after the messiness of the actual show. I may attach the final coda to this.

Or...

26 followed by:

27. Instead of cutting to the final coda, perhaps I will devote an entire chapter to The Missing Pieces (with a bit on Between Two Worlds), discussing how they function both as an addition to the original journey through Twin Peaks, as well as opening up further pathways for the next stretch of the journey. Not sure yet if I want to do this especially because I really like the ending I have planned for the discussion of TP's and FWWM's influence on Lynch's work. It seems like a better conclusion that the more open-ended discussion of Missing Pieces. But we'll see (maybe I could switch the chapters, or effectively present this chapter as an epilogue rather than a conclusion).

28. The Coda as a separate chapter (if there's no chapter 27, this will probably just be attached to #26). The series will end with a montage and a narration summing up my perspective of the journey. As well as a bit of a nudge toward 2016.