Twin Peaks and 15 Months Of Fame By: Jack Connolly
There are many famous abstract artists. People like Jackson Pollock and Henri Matisse revolutionized the way the world views art. Abstract filmmaking, also called“ Making confusing movies,” is a less mainstream type of art, but is still a great, if time-consuming, form of art. I say time-consuming because the ending of Mulholland Drive will keep you scratching your head for months. David Lynch, the director of such disturbing masterpieces as Eraserhead, Inland Empire, Mulholland Drive, and Blue Velvet, is one of the more brilliant storytellers in recent memory. Riding on the success of his most recent work, Blue Velvet, Lynch, in collaboration with then-newcomer Mark Frost, started work on Twin Peaks, a soap opera-noir-horror-romance-mystery-satire, which left more people scratching their heads than a widespread lice breakout. The show was set in Twin Peaks, Washington, your typical small town 5 miles south of the Canadian border. The series starts when Pete Martell, the local fisherman, finds the body of Laura Palmer, the Twin Peaks High School Prom Queen, washed up on the shore. An FBI agent named Dale Cooper shows up, and what follows is 18 of the best( and 12 of the worst) episodes in TV history. While Twin Peaks was, at its heart, a murder mystery, one element set it apart from other murder mysteries at the time: the killer was never supposed to be revealed. It was also a surreal supernatural nightmare, but that’ s beside the point. David Lynch is a very open-ended person, so he just started the show and hoped it would stay good( although with a genius like David Lynch at the helm, whether or not it would stay good wasn’ t really a question). Spoiler( although it’ s not really a spoiler because it’ s revealed in the third episode): Laura was killed by a demonic entity named Killer BOB. And now the question becomes,
Photography by Emma Jacques
“ Who was BOB possessing when he killed Laura Palmer?” But,“ Who Killed Laura Palmer?” sounds better, so we’ ll use that. Although BOB is a famous character in Twin Peaks and a critical part of the show’ s mystery, he wasn’ t originally supposed to exist. When David Lynch was shooting the pilot, Frank Silva, the show’ s set dresser, showed up in a mirror. David Lynch is a master of little details, and he noticed Frank Silva in the shot, and he was like,“ Bring me this dude,” then Frank Silva showed up and Lynch was like,“ This could be cool, say, how’ d you like to kill Laura Palmer?” Silva was like,“ Sure, cool GARMONBOZIA.” And thus, a beautiful friendship was born.
Even if Twin Peaks is the greatest TV Show ever made( there’ s no debating it) the middle of season 2 is painful. You see, because he was forced to reveal the killer, David Lynch just up and left after season 2 episode 9. Only Mark Frost was left, and the quality of the show explains why Frost wasn’ t included in any future Twin Peaks projects. The show was absolutely horrible until the finale. James leaves, Billy Zane shows up, and Cooper loses his FBI badge. Everything was bad. But if 12 episodes of actual torture is the price to pay for the visual nightmare that was the finale, I’ d say it was worth it.
If David Lynch is famous for one thing, it’ s his hauntingly beautiful visual style, and in no place is that more apparent than Twin Peaks. David Lynch could make disposing of a dead body look operatic and beautiful. Oh wait, he did that? David Lynch is great at using colors. The color red is used in so many different ways in just the first season, from Josie’ s shirt to the curtains in the Red Room. Everything about the first 18 episodes of Twin Peaks is visually perfect.