Twin Peaks

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Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks opening title screen
Genre	Drama
Creator(s)	David Lynch & Mark Frost
Starring	Kyle MacLachlan Michael Ontkean Sherilyn Fenn Lara Flynn Boyle Dana Ashbrook Mädchen Amick Russ Tamblyn Richard Beymer Peggy Lipton James Marshall Ray Wise Piper Laurie Joan Chen Jack Nance Kimmy Robertson Sheryl Lee Heather Graham Eric Da Re
Country of origin	USA
No. of episodes	30 (List of episodes)
Production
Running time	0:48
Broadcast
Original channel	ABC
Original run	April 8, 1990 – June 10, 1991
Links
IMDb profile
TV.com summary

Twin Peaks is an American serial drama created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. The show is set in the fictional town of Twin Peaks in northeast Washington state, while the filming took place in northwest Washington. The central plot line tells the story of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper and his investigation of the murder of a popular local teenage schoolgirl, Laura Palmer.

It initially aired on the ABC network in the United States from April 8, 1990 until June 10, 1991. Some episodes were written and directed by David Lynch and Mark Frost, but most were directed by guests. The show was co-produced by Aaron Spelling's production company and ran for 30 episodes over two seasons.

Contents 1 Synopsis 2 Origins 3 Production info 3.1 The creation of BOB 3.2 Mike, the One-Armed Man 3.3 The Man from Another Place 3.4 Laura Palmer 4 Episode list 5 Themes 5.1 Random events 5.2 Invitation to Love 6 Characters 6.1 Casting 7 Music 8 Response 8.1 Surprise hit 8.2 The second season 8.3 Declining ratings 8.4 Aftermath 9 Video releases and re-airings 10 Books 11 Location 12 Popular culture 13 Trivia 14 References 15 Further reading 16 External links

[edit] Synopsis

The series is set in 1989, with each episode — barring occasional exceptions — representing a single day in the chronology.

On the morning of February 23, in the town of Twin Peaks, Washington state, lumberjack Pete Martell discovers a naked corpse tightly wrapped in a sheet of clear plastic on the bank of a river. Following the arrival of Sheriff Harry S. Truman, his deputies, and Dr. Will Hayward on the scene, the body is discovered to be that of homecoming queen Laura Palmer, the most popular girl at the local high school. The news spreads among the town's residents — particularly Laura's family and friends — who react in various ways. Meanwhile, just across the state line, a second girl, Ronnette Pulaski, is found walking along the railroad tracks in a fugue. Since Ronette was discovered across the state line, the FBI (Special Agent Dale Cooper) is called in to investigate. Cooper's initial examination of Laura's body reveals a tiny typed letter 'R' inserted under her fingernail. He recognizes this as the "calling card" of a killer who took the life of Teresa Banks a year earlier in a town described as "in the southwest corner of the state" (revealed in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me to be Deer Meadow).

Cooper quickly establishes that Laura's character and relationships are not as they first appear, and that she's far from the wholesome homecoming queen that those closest to her believed her to be. It is revealed that Laura had been two-timing her boyfriend Bobby Briggs with sullen biker James Hurley, a situation known to Laura's best friend Donna Hayward. Cooper also finds traces of cocaine in Laura's diary, a habit she shared with Bobby. Meanwhile, Donna and James begin an investigation of their own into Laura's death, and find themselves embarking on a romantic relationship with each other.

Laura's cousin Maddy Ferguson, arrives to stay with Laura's parents prior to the funeral. Maddy, who resembles Laura closely, befriends Donna and James and helps them in their efforts to find the killer — even impersonating Laura at one point to fool Laura's psychologist, Dr. Lawrence Jacoby.

During his investigation, Cooper stays at the Great Northern Hotel owned by the Horne family. The Hornes' sultry daughter Audrey develops a crush on Cooper (that at least initially appears to be mutual, until he later rebuffs her advances, on the grounds that she is a high schooler and she is part of the case he is working on). With Audrey's help, Cooper traces Laura's cocaine usage to a brothel called 'One-Eyed Jacks'. Audrey later infiltrates it on his behalf. It is revealed that Laura had also been working as a prostitute sometimes based at the club.

Cooper also experiences a bizarre dream, in which he sees a one-armed man (a reference to The Fugitive) called Mike who chants a strange poem "Through the darkness of Future Past. The Magician longs to see.One Chants out between two worlds-'Fire Walk With Me'," and who then proceeds to tell Cooper about another man called Bob, and how they went "killing together." Bob also appears as a man with long grey hair, dressed in denim who swears to Cooper "I will kill again." As the dream continues, Cooper finds himself aged twenty-five years sitting in a mysterious red-curtained room. It is here he meets the diminutive Man From Another Place who intones clues to Cooper in the form of strange phrases and then proceeds to dance to a jazzy beat. Also present is the spirit of Laura Palmer, who kisses Cooper and then whispers into his ear the name of her killer. Lynch enhanced the profoundly surreal nature of these scenes by having the actors recite their lines backward, and then replaying the vocals backward (imitating the so-called backmasking technique). However, when he awakes, Cooper is unable to recall the killer's name.

Cooper and the local police force are then able to track down the one-armed man known as 'Mike' in Cooper's dream, whose full name is Phillip Michael Gerard (another reference to The Fugitive, where the recurring police detective is named Phil Gerard). Gerard appears to be nothing more than a shoe salesman and claims to know nothing of the Bob that Cooper describes. However, it eventually becomes clear that Gerard is possessed by an "inhabiting spirit" (the true 'Mike') who reveals to Cooper and his allies the true nature of Bob - Bob is a fellow inhabiting spirit who has possessed someone in Twin Peaks "for over forty years."

Cooper is also visited by an apparition of a mysterious giant who provides him with further clues in the murder investigation. All this information that Cooper has gained from psychic and observed means, including the mysterious utterances of an eccentric local woman known as The Log Lady, leads him to a number of suspects; but when he discovers the existence of Laura's second, secret diary, he realises that therein lies the key to solving the mystery. Harold Smith, a local man who was one of Laura's confidants, holds this diary. The secret diary reveals that from a very early age Laura was abused by a figure called 'Bob', and that her use of drugs and sex are the means she has used to numb herself and escape from him.

On the night before she is to leave town, Maddy is brutally murdered by Laura's father, Leland — who stands revealed as the man who is possessed by 'Bob'. Cooper and Truman apprehend Leland, and as they interrogate the Bob-possessed Leland, it becomes clear that Leland has no idea of the murderous actions he has committed while under Bob's influence. A crazed Leland then smashes his own head against the wall of his cell as his memories of what he had done to his daughter returns to him, and in his dying moment, Leland speaks of seeing his daughter Laura and how beautiful she looks, and finally his soul is restored. However, as Cooper and his allies note, if Bob had truly left Leland's body, it means his spirit is now loose in the woods of Twin Peaks.

With the murder investigation concluded, Cooper is then all set to leave Twin Peaks when he is framed for drug trafficking by the criminal Jean Renault and is temporarily suspended from the FBI. Renault holds Cooper responsible for the death of his brother Jacques, who was murdered by a grieving Leland Palmer when Jacques was under suspicion for Laura's murder.

After Renault is killed in a shoot-out with police and Cooper is cleared of the charges, his former FBI partner and mentor Windom Earle comes to Twin Peaks to play a deadly game of chess with Cooper — in which each piece of Cooper's that he takes means someone dies. As Cooper explains to Truman, during his early years with the FBI alongside Earle, he had begun an affair with Earle's wife, Caroline, while she had been under the protection of him and Earle since she had been a witness to a federal crime. Earle went mad and killed Caroline, and seriously wounded Cooper — and was subsequently committed to a mental institution. Now having escaped and in Twin Peaks, Earle establishes a secret base-of-operations in the woods from which to go about his revenge scheme.

As this is going on, Cooper continues to try to track down the origins (and whereabouts) of Bob and learns more about the mysteries of the dark woods surrounding Twin Peaks. It is here he learns of the existence of the White Lodge and the Black Lodge, mystical extradimensional realms of which the gateway to both reside somewhere in the woods. Cooper also falls in love with a new girl in town, Annie Blackburn.

When Annie wins the Miss Twin Peaks contest, Windom Earle kidnaps her and takes her to the Black Lodge — which Cooper realises has been Earle's goal all along. The Black Lodge then stands revealed to be where Bob, the Little Man From Another Place and the Giant inhabit, and of which the red-curtained room of Cooper's dream is a part. Cooper follows and has a series of bizarre encounters including meeting his own shadow self, otherwise known as a doppelgänger. During Cooper's time in the Black Lodge, Windom Earle's soul is destroyed by an enraged Bob, and Annie's fate is unclear. Cooper then attempts escape, but cannot find the exit to the nonlinear labyrinth of the Black Lodge - he is also chased by his own doppleganger as he tries to find the way out. He is eventually captured by the doppleganger and returns to the woods, unconscious. In the last episode's last scene, he awakes in his room at the Great Northern Hotel to say "I wasn't sleeping," in a more ominous tone of voice than Cooper usually had. And in the final shot, his reflection in the bathroom mirror is seem to be that of Bob, who turns to the camera laughing.

Following the cancellation of Twin Peaks, series co-creator David Lynch created a feature film prequel to the series Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, that detailed the last week of Laura Palmer's life, as well as subtly expanding on the events of Cooper's fate in the series finale.

[edit] Origins

A producer at Warner Brothers wanted Lynch to direct a film about the life of Marilyn Monroe, based on the book The Goddess. Lynch recalls in the Lynch on Lynch book that he was "sort of interested. I loved the idea of this woman in trouble, but I didn't know if I liked it being a real story."^[1] Mark Frost was hired to write the screenplay. Even though this project was dropped by Warner Brothers, Lynch and Frost became good friends, and wrote a screenplay entitled One Saliva Bubble, with Steve Martin attached to star in it. However, this film was not made, either.

Lynch's agent, Tony Krantz, had been trying to get the filmmaker to work on TV since Blue Velvet, but he was never really that interested in the idea. "So one day Mark and I were talking at Du Pars, the coffee shop on the corner of Laurel Canyon and Ventura, and, all of a sudden, Mark and I had this image of a body washing up on the shore of a lake," Lynch remembered in an interview.^[2] Lynch and Frost pitched the idea to ABC in a 10-minute meeting with the network's drama head, Chad Hoffman, with nothing more than this image and a concept, according to the director: "The mystery of who killed Laura Palmer was the foreground, but this would recede slightly as you got to know the other people in the town and the problems they were having...The project was to mix a police investigation with a soap opera. We had drawn a map of the city. We knew where everything was located and that helped us determine the prevailing atmosphere and what might happen there."^[3]

ABC liked the idea, and asked Lynch and Frost to write a screenplay for the pilot episode. Originally, the show was entitled Northwest Passage and set in North Dakota, but the fact that a town called Twin Peaks really existed (much like Lumberton in Blue Velvet) prompted a revision in the script. However, even though ABC's Bob Iger liked the pilot, he had a tough time persuading the rest of the network brass. Iger suggested showing it to a more diverse, younger group, who liked it, and the executive subsequently convinced ABC to buy seven episodes at $1 million apiece. Some executives figured that the show would never get on the air. However, Iger planned to schedule it for the spring. The final showdown occurred during a bi-coastal conference call between Iger and a room full of New York executives — Iger won, and Twin Peaks was on the air.

[edit] Production info

[edit] The creation of BOB

Frank Silva was a member of the crew who worked on the pilot episode. One day, when he was moving furniture in Laura Palmer's bedroom, Lynch noticed Silva and asked if he would want a part in front of the camera. Silva accepted and Lynch shot footage of him behind Laura's bed with no real idea of what he would do with it.

When Lynch shot the scene of Sarah Palmer's frightening vision Silva's reflection was accidentally caught in the footage. Instead of redoing the scene, Lynch kept it in and decided to cast Silva as the physical manifestation of BOB.

[edit] Mike, the One-Armed Man

Mike's appearance in the pilot episode was only originally intended to be a "kind of homage to The Fugitive. The only thing he was gonna do was be in this elevator and walk out."^[4] However, when Lynch wrote the "fire walk with me" speech, he imagined Mike saying it in the basement of the Twin Peaks hospital - a scene that would appear in the European version of the pilot episode and surface later in Agent Cooper's dream sequence.

[edit] The Man from Another Place

Lynch had met Michael J. Anderson in 1987. After seeing him in a short film, Lynch wanted to cast the actor in the title role in Ronnie Rocket, but that project failed to be made. While editing the alternate ending of the foreign version of the pilot episode, an idea occurred to Lynch on his way home one day: "I was leaning against a car - the front of me was leaning against this very warm car. My hands were on the roof and the metal was very hot. The Red Room scene leapt into my mind. 'Little Mike' was there and he was speaking backwards... For the rest of the night I thought only about The Red Room."^[5]

[edit] Laura Palmer

To save on money, Lynch intended to cast a local girl from Seattle "just to play a dead girl."^[6] The local girl ended up being Sheryl Lee. "But no one - not Mark, me, anyone -- had any idea that she could act, or that she was going to be so powerful just being dead."^[7] Indeed, the image of Lee wrapped in plastic became one of the show's most enduring and memorable images. And then, while Lynch shot the home movie that James takes of Donna and Laura, he realized that Lee had something special. "She did do another scene -- the video with Donna on the picnic -- and it was that scene that did it."^[8] As a result, Sheryl Lee became a semi-regular addition to the cast appearing in flashbacks as Laura and becoming a re-occurring character - Maddie, Laura's cousin who also becomes another victim of BOB.

[edit] Episode list

Main article: List of Twin Peaks episodes

[edit] Themes

As with much of Lynch's other work (notably Blue Velvet), Twin Peaks explores the gulf between the veneer of small-town respectability and the seedier layers of life beneath it. Each character from the town leads a double life. The show further resembles Lynch's previous and subsequent work in that it is difficult to place in a defined genre: stylistically, the program borrows the unsettling tone and supernatural premises of horror films, and simultaneously offers a bizarrely comical parody of American soap operas with a campy, melodramatic presentation of the morally dubious activities of its characters. Finally, like the rest of Lynch's oeuvre, the show represents an earnest moral inquiry distinguished by both weird comedy and a deep vein of surrealism.

A popular feature of the series was Frost and Lynch's use of repeating and sometimes mysterious motifs — trees, water, coffee, donuts, owls, ducks, fire — and numerous embedded references to other films and TV shows, such as The Twilight Zone (mysteriously malfunctioning electrical equipment), and The Patty Duke Show (the phenomenon of identical cousins).

[edit] Random events

Lynch also incorporated a number of random events that occurred during filming, most notably in the scene where Cooper first examines Laura's body. When the scene was filmed, a malfunctioning fluorescent light above the table flickered constantly, but Lynch decided not to replace it since he liked the disconcerting effect that it created. Also, during the take, one of the minor actors misheard a line and, thinking he was being asked his name, he told Cooper his real name instead of saying his line, briefly throwing the cast off balance. Lynch was reportedly so pleased with this unsettling moment that he kept the 'mistake' in the scene. The resulting dialog aired as follows:

ATTENDANT: I have to apologize again for the fluorescent lights. I, I think it's a bad transformer.

COOPER (Kyle MacLachlan): That's quite all right.

TRUMAN (Michael Ontkean): Agent Cooper, we did scrape those nails when we brought her in.

COOPER: Here it is. There it is. Oh my God, here it is!

TRUMAN: What?

COOPER (to attendant): Would you leave us, please?

ATTENDANT: Mm, Jim.

COOPER: Uh...would you leave us alone, please?

ATTENDANT: Oh. Certainly.

In another random event during the filming of the pilot episode, set-decorator Frank Silva was accidentally filmed in a mirror in Laura Palmer's bedroom. When David Lynch saw Silva's face, he liked it so much he kept it in the show, and cast Silva as 'Bob', the mysterious tormentor of Laura Palmer.

[edit] Invitation to Love

Invitation to Love is a fictional soap opera in Twin Peaks. It is seen briefly on TV screens in all but the first of the seven regular episodes making up the first season.

The show acts as a commentary on events unfolding in Twin Peaks itself, often highlighting some of the more outlandish or melodramatic elements of the show. The most obvious example of this "show within a show" commentary can be found when Maddy Ferguson, the near-identical cousin of Laura Palmer, first arrives in Twin Peaks. Just before Maddy first appears on the show, an episode of Invitation to Love is shown in which it is revealed that there are identical twin characters in Invitation to Love who are played by the same actress, much as Maddy and Laura Palmer are almost identical and are both played by Sheryl Lee. It is also implied in the brief snippet of the show that is shown that Jade and Emerald, the two characters in Invitation to Love, are characters with very different personalities, much as sweet and innocent Maddy is diametrically opposed to the dark and secretive Laura in Twin Peaks.

Another example can be found in the final episode of the first season, when Leo Johnson is shot in a dramatic fashion and a similar event is shown happening to the character of Montana in Invitation to Love. Both shootings involve the character who has been shot lying down and slowly dying.

Invitation characters

• Jared Lancaster, soap patriarch and owner of "The Towers." Aging father to Emerald and Jade. Played by "Evan St. Vincent" (Peter Michael Goetz).
• Chet, geeky husband to Jade and keeper of Jared's will. He is played by the fictional actor "Martin Hadley" (Lance Davis).
• Montana, an aggressive, rapacious bully who schemes with Emerald to gain ownership of The Towers. He is played by "Jason Denbo" (Rick Giolito).
• Emerald, seductive, manipulative twin sister to Jade. Schemes with Montana to end her father's life and collect the inheritance. Played by "Selina Swift" (Erika Anderson).
• Jade, sweeter, more innocent twin to Emerald who tries to save her father's life. Wife of Chet. Also played by "Selina Swift" (Erika Anderson).

[edit] Characters

Grouping	Name	Description	Played by
The FBI	Special Agent Dale Cooper	Investigates the murder of Laura Palmer, very intuitive and gifted, falls in love with Twin Peaks and all its rural life, humble hero of the story	Kyle MacLachlan
	Albert Rosenfield	Abrasive forensics expert, whose façade hides a spiritual nature	Miguel Ferrer
	Chester Desmond	Investigates murder of Teresa Banks, mysteriously disappears	Chris Isaak
	Sam Stanley	Forensics specialist, assists Desmond in the investigation of Teresa Banks' murder	Kiefer Sutherland
	Phillip Jeffries	Long lost FBI agent who knows of the Lodges and their inhabitants	David Bowie
	Roger Hardy	Agent working for Internal Affairs who temporarily suspends Cooper from the FBI.	Clarence Williams III
	Gordon Cole	Stone-deaf Regional Bureau Chief, known to shout constantly	David Lynch
	Diane	Cooper's never-seen secretary; when Cooper speaks into his tape recorder each episode, the intended recipient is Diane	(never seen or heard)
Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department	Sheriff Harry S. Truman	Lover of Josie Packard	Michael Ontkean
	Deputy Andy Brennan	Dorky sidekick, lover of Lucy	Harry Goaz
	Deputy Hawk, Tommy Hill	Native American, expert tracker	Michael Horse
	Lucy Moran	Ditzy receptionist, on and off lover of Deputy Andy Brennan	Kimmy Robertson
The Palmers	Laura Palmer	Murder victim and the center of the story, Laura Palmer is the one figure that connects almost everyone in Twin Peaks	Sheryl Lee
	Leland Palmer	Laura's father, known for his compulsive singing and dancing	Ray Wise
	Sarah Palmer	Laura's psychic mother	Grace Zabriskie
	Maddy Ferguson	Laura's identical-looking cousin	Sheryl Lee
The Haywards	Doctor William Hayward	The doctor of Twin Peaks, assists on the autopsy of Laura Palmer	Warren Frost
	Eileen Hayward	Doctor Hayward's wheelchair bound wife	Mary Jo Deschanel
	Donna Hayward	Laura's best friend, lover of James Hurley	Lara Flynn Boyle
	Harriet Hayward	Donna's younger sister	Jessica Wallenfels
	Gersten Hayward	Donna's youngest sister	Alicia Witt
The Hornes	Benjamin Horne	Wealthy businessman, owns Great Northern Hotel and Horne's Department Store	Richard Beymer
	Jerry Horne	Ben's playboy brother and business partner	David Patrick Kelly
	Sylvia Horne	Ben's constantly angry wife	Jan D'Arcy
	Audrey Horne	Ben's sultry teenage daughter	Sherilyn Fenn
	Johnny Horne	Ben's mentally handicapped son, tutored by Laura	Robert Bauer III
Packard/Martell Family	Josie Packard	Widowed sawmill owner, lover of Sheriff Truman, tutored by Laura	Joan Chen
	Andrew Packard	Late Ex-owner of the Packard Sawmill and husband of Josie	Dan O'Herlihy
	Catherine Packard Martell	Sister of Andrew, schemes with secret lover Ben Horne to burn down the sawmill	Piper Laurie
	Pete Martell	Long-suffering husband of Catherine, fishing enthusiast	Jack Nance
The Briggs	Major Garland Briggs	Intelligent and gifted Air Force officer involved in Project Blue Book, deep space monitoring, and the woods surrounding Twin Peaks	Don S. Davis
	Betty Briggs	Unassuming and loving wife and mother	Charlotte Stewart
	Bobby Briggs	Rebellious teenager, captain of the football team, boyfriend of Laura Palmer, secret lover of Shelly Johnson	Dana Ashbrook
The Hurleys	Big Ed Hurley	Owner of Big Ed's Gas Farm, secret lover of Norma Jennings	Everett McGill
	Nadine Hurley	Ed's one-eyed, mad, drape-obsessed wife	Wendy Robie
	James Hurley	Ed's nephew, secret love of Laura Palmer, lover of Donna Hayward	James Marshall
The Jennings	Norma Jennings	Double R Diner owner, lover of Big Ed Hurley, organizer of Meals on Wheels with Laura	Peggy Lipton
	Hank Jennings	Norma's husband, paroled criminal, conspirator with Josie Packard	Chris Mulkey
	Annie Blackburn	Younger sister of Norma, an ex-nun with a troubled past	Heather Graham
The Johnsons	Leo Johnson	Brutish trucker and drug-runner, had a sexual relationship with Laura Palmer	Eric Da Re
	Shelly Johnson	Abused young wife of Leo, waitress at Norma's diner, secret lover of Bobby Briggs	Mädchen Amick
The Milfords	Mayor Dwayne Milford	Long time mayor of Twin Peaks, has an ongoing feud with his brother Dougie	John Boylan
	Dougie Milford	Publisher of the Twin Peaks Gazette local newspaper, known to marry often	Tony Jay
	Lana Budding Milford	Seductive wife of Dwayne, known to charm almost any man that's around her	Robyn Lively
The O'Reillys	Black Rose/Blackie O'Reilly	The madame of One Eyed Jacks	Victoria Catlin
	Nancy O'Reilly	Blackie's sister, lover of Jean Renault	Galyn Gorg
The Renaults	Jacques Renault	Canadian croupier, drug-runner, and bartender at the Roadhouse. Had sexual relationship with Laura Palmer	Walter Olkewicz
	Jean Renault	Oldest and most dangerous Renault brother, veteran criminal, insurance agent.	Michael Parks
	Bernard Renault	Youngest Renault brother, mules drugs over the border	Clay Wilcox
Others	Margaret Lanterman ("The Log Lady")	Mystic, widow who divines through a log she carries with her everywhere	Catherine E. Coulson
	Windom Earle	Psychotic and brilliant ex-partner of Cooper, desires the powers of the Lodges	Kenneth Welsh
	Dr. Lawrence Jacoby	Eccentric former psychiatrist of Laura	Russ Tamblyn
	Thomas Eckhardt	Former business partner of Andrew Packard, obsessively in love with Josie Packard	David Warner
	Jones	Thomas Eckhardt's assistant	Brenda Strong
	Emory Battis	Store manager of Horne's Department Store, recruits girls from the perfume counter to work at One Eyed Jack's	Dan Amendola
	Harold Smith	Agoraphobic horticulturist, Laura's Meals on Wheels friend	Lenny Von Dohlen
	Denise/Dennis Bryson	Cross-dressing DEA agent who investigates drug allegations against Dale Cooper	David Duchovny
	Dick Tremayne	Pretentious employee of Men's Department at Horne's, ex-lover of Lucy	Ian Buchanan
	Mike Nelson	Bobby's best friend, high school wrestling champ, ex-boyfriend of Donna.	Gary Hershberger
	Phillip Gerard, AKA "The One-Armed Man"	A one-armed shoe salesman inhabited by the evil spirit of Mike (Man From Another Place).	Al Strobel
	Ronnette Pulaski	Ex-employee of One Eyed Jacks and Horne's Department Store, was with Laura the night she died	Phoebe Augustine
	Evelyn Marsh	Rich woman who James Hurley runs into, and who is beaten by her husband	Annette McCarthy
	Teresa Banks	First victim, found almost exactly one year before the murder of Laura Palmer	Pamela Gidley
	Roadhouse Singer	Angelic singer at the Roadhouse, known for her dream-like voice	Julee Cruise
	The Elderly Room Service Waiter	Elderly bellhop at the Great Northern who appears to have some kind of link to the Black Lodge and the mysterious goings on in Twin Peaks, often appearing at key moments to indirectly provide Dale Cooper with a cryptic clue.	Hank Worden
Lodge Inhabitants	Bob	An evil and malevolent spirit who haunts Laura Palmer and inhabits humans similar to Mike	Frank Silva
	The Man From Another Place	Enigmatic dwarf. A spirit, like BOB, inhabits Phillip Gerard, the one-armed shoe salesman, consumer of garmonbozia	Michael J. Anderson
	The Giant	A supernatural giant who helps Cooper	Carel Struycken
	Mrs. Tremond / Chalfont	Connected to the Lodges, Pierre's grandmother, intentions unknown	Frances Bay
	Pierre Tremond / Chalfont	Also connected to the Lodges, intentions unknown	Austin Jack Lynch

[edit] Casting

Twin Peaks features members of the loose ensemble of Lynch's favorite character actors, including Jack Nance, Kyle MacLachlan, Grace Zabriskie and Everett McGill. It is also notable for the casting of several veteran actors who had long been absent from the screen, including 1950s movie stars Piper Laurie and Russ Tamblyn and former Mod Squad star Peggy Lipton.

[edit] Music

Composer Angelo Badalamenti, a frequent contributor to Lynch projects, scored the series and provides the leitmotif "Laura's Theme", the famous title theme and other evocative pieces to the soundtrack. A handful of the motifs were borrowed from the Julee Cruise album Floating Into the Night, which was written in large part by Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch, and was released in 1989. This album also serves as the soundtrack to another Lynch project, "Industrial Symphony No. 1", a live Cruise performance also featuring Michael J. Anderson (the Man from another place"). The song "Falling" (sans vocals) became the theme to the show, and the songs "Rockin' Back Inside My Heart", "The Nightingale," "The World Spins," and "Into the Night", found in their full versions on the album, were used elsewhere during the show's run.

[edit] Response

[edit] Surprise hit

Twin Peaks started life as an offbeat project for David Lynch and Mark Frost. They filmed the pilot with an agreement with ABC that they would shoot an additional "ending" to it so it could be sold directly to video in Europe as a feature if the TV show was not picked up. Such were the inauspicious beginnings of Twin Peaks.

During the first season it was the search for Laura Palmer's killer that drove the show and caught the public's imagination, although the creators admitted this was a macguffin designed to keep the audience coming back for more. Each episode was really about the townsfolk and the sinister underbelly of the seemingly idyllic town.

The first season contained only eight episodes (including the pilot episode) and was considered technically and artistically revolutionary for television at the time, working hard as it did to reach the standards set by film. It has been said that Twin Peaks started the accomplished cinematography now commonplace in today's television dramas. Lynch and Frost maintained tight control over the first season, handpicking all of the directors with some that Lynch had known from his days at the American Film Institute (i.e., Caleb Deschanel and Tim Hunter) or referrals from someone he knew.

The interesting elements, charming style and intelligent writing made Twin Peaks a huge and surprising hit. People loved its quirky characters, particularly Kyle MacLachlan's special agent Dale Cooper, and its equally quirky humor. Soon after the cliffhanger ending of the first season, the show's popularity reached a fever pitch, and "Peaksmania" was born. Suddenly everybody knew about Twin Peaks and it began to seep into mainstream popular culture (such as Saturday Night Live) and its cast and creators were seen regularly on talk shows and in interviews. ABC began to take a lot more notice of its quirky new show. Twin Peaks was hotly tipped to sweep the Emmys in 1990, being nominated for no fewer than eight non-technical awards, but to the shock of most (especially the show's creators), it didn't win a single one.

[edit] The second season

Soon after this success (both critical and financial) of the first season, ABC ordered a second season, this time expanding the number of episodes dramatically to 22. It was during this time that ABC put pressure on the writers to reveal the killer of Laura Palmer in the new season. This was at odds with David Lynch's sensibility who wished it to remain a secret forever, but he was overruled by the network executives and his fellow creator Mark Frost, with them fearing the audience would get bored with the mystery if it were not resolved soon.

For the longer second season, new writers were hired, along with new directors, and, after directing a few episodes (including the one which finally revealed the killer), David Lynch began to drift away from the show. (Accounts of the series frequently claim that Lynch was shooting the film Wild at Heart during this period, but in fact, that film had already premiered before Twin Peaks' second season began.)

When the killer's identity was finally revealed, many fans of the show felt let down and alienated by the infamous murder's resolution, especially with the show's previously hinted at ethereal and "weird" side coming fully to the forefront. Also around this time a major story line involving a romance between Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) and Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) was vetoed by Kyle MacLachlan (some said with pressure from then-girlfriend and co-star Lara Flynn Boyle), as he felt his character, who was known for his strong morals, would never become involved with a high school student. Since no agreement could be reached, the writers unhappily had to take evasive action and bring minor subplots (which were never intended to dominate the show) into the foreground to cover the missing story.

[edit] Declining ratings

With the unpopular resolution of the show's main drawing point (Laura Palmer's murder) and with the story lines becoming more obscure and drawn out, public interest finally began to wane and "Peaksmania" seemed over. Many believed the show's new overt oddness had made it a parody of itself and was far removed from the first season's charm and intelligence. This discontent, coupled with ABC changing its timeslot over a number of occasions, led to a huge drop in ratings after being the most watched television programming in the USA in 1990. On February 15, 1991, ABC announced that the show had been put on "indefinite hiatus", a move which usually leads to cancellation.^[9]

This wasn't quite the end, though, as there was still large enough interest in the show for fans to begin their own letter-writing campaign, dubbed C.O.O.P (Citizens Opposed to the Offing of [Twin]Peaks). The campaign was a huge success and ABC agreed to another six episodes (to finish the season).

With the creators knowing this was possibly the end for the show, they made a last ditch effort to revitalize it. Agent Cooper was given a love interest, Annie Blackburn (Heather Graham) (with no objections from Kyle MacLachlan this time around). With the season finale they hoped to spark more interest in the show with a dramatic cliffhanger ending (the same way the previous season had). Unfortunately it did not boost interest sufficiently and the show was not renewed for a third season, leaving fans with a completely unresolved story line that continues to be debated on fan web sites to this day.

David Lynch himself 'returned' to direct the finale of the series, leaving some of the head writers annoyed, as they had previously felt 'abandoned' by him, and didn't appreciate his unprompted return and subsequent changes to their script. However, Lynch's direction produced an episode which was nightmarishly surreal and memorable, and it returned some of the character's personalities to a state more akin to how they had been in the pilot, rather than how they had changed over the course of the second season.

Later, David Lynch, having been long unhappy with ABC's "meddling" during the second season, sold the whole show to Bravo for a small sum, finally taking it from their hands. Bravo began airing the show from scratch again, but even with David Lynch shooting special "Log Lady introductions" for each episode, it never caught the public interest the way it did the first time around.

[edit] Aftermath

David Lynch was not quite finished with Twin Peaks. In 1992 Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, the Twin Peaks motion picture, was released. It focused on the subject David Lynch had initially been interested in, 'the woman in trouble': The story of Laura Palmer. The film was a prequel to Twin Peaks, showing Laura's murder and the events immediately preceding it. Unfortunately, many people, both fans of the series and critics, were disappointed by the film, which was more disturbing and less humorous than the series and did not resolve the cliffhanger ending of season two. During the film's premier at Cannes, it was reportedly booed by the audience.^[10] Another popular complaint at the time was its incomprehensibility, especially to those who were not familiar with the series.^[11]

Twin Peaks legacy can be seen in the slew of "quirky" TV shows that followed it, such as Northern Exposure; Wild Palms; American Gothic; Eerie, Indiana; Picket Fences; The X-Files; Veronica Mars; Desperate Housewives; Six Feet Under; Lost; Nip/Tuck and Carnivàle. Many of these series have been referred to as "the next Twin Peaks", either before their run or after popular success.

This masks a far wider legacy - after Twin Peaks, the traditional barriers between cinema and television were blurred, and making television became far more respectable for film-makers (who'd traditionally seen TV as a way into working on features ... or a step down for actors and directors past their best). Mainstream shows made to look like movies by people best-known for working in movies, often at the height of their success in Hollywood, but who enjoyed the idea of telling far longer, ongoing stories, like ER, House, Alias, The West Wing, Lost and CSI were unthinkable before Twin Peaks, the norm afterwards. All of the above are unmistakably influenced by Frost and Lynch's series. Before Twin Peaks, episodes of drama series tended to be standalone, and could be watched in any order. Twin Peaks demonstrated that the interest of the television audience could be sustained, and even enhanced, if there were running storylines. The show also started a trend that continues to this day for even mainstream television to make extensive use of dream sequences, casual surrealism and flashback.

[edit] Video releases and re-airings

The two-hour pilot episode, first screened on TV in the US, was also released on video in some European territories in 1989 as a stand-alone story. This was because no television network agreed to air the series. The European version is 20 minutes longer than the TV pilot with a different ending added to bring closure to the story. Cooper, Truman, Hawk, and Andy find BOB, who admits to Laura's murder, and then is shot by Mike, the one-armed man. The Red Room dream sequence that ends episode 3, where Cooper encounters the Little Man From Another Place and Laura Palmer, was originally shot for this film. Lynch was so happy with the material that he incorporated part of it into the second episode of the regular series (that is, the third episode shown in the U.S. including the pilot) as a dream Cooper has about the case.

After the TV series ended, Lynch made a Twin Peaks movie, Fire Walk With Me, co-written with Robert Engels (a writer from the series). The movie, instead of continuing the story forward, flashes back to the investigation of the Teresa Banks murder and the events leading to Laura's death.

On December 18th, 2001, the first season (episodes 1-7) of Twin Peaks was released by Republic Pictures (through Artisan Entertainment, now part of Lions Gate Entertainment) as a DVD box set. The box set was noted for being the first TV show to have its audio track redone in DTS. The region 1 release was heavily criticized for not including the key pilot episode, which could not be included due to the fact Lynch sold the rights to it to Warner Home Video (the video division of Warner Bros.) in order to facilitate its video release in Europe. When the series was released on video in the US (twice by Worldvision Home Video), the pilot episode was excluded both times. In turn, Warner Home Video released the pilot on video however, it was actually the European version and was labelled as having "bonus footage". The televised pilot episode is included in the UK (region 2) DVD release from Universal Home Entertainment, but as of summer 2006 it is not yet known whether this version of the pilot (which ties in with the rest of the series) will ever be released to DVD in North America, or if the version released there will be the version with an extra 20 minutes of footage.

The DVD box set is known to have production errors, which cause many DVD players to freeze. One known track glitch occurs during the opening credits of Episode 2. Another glitch occurs 15 minutes into Episode 4, during Donna and Audrey's scene in the girls' high school lavatory.

The release of Season Two was complicated by the sale of Republic Pictures, the successor-in-interest to Worldvision Enterprises (the series' former distributor) and which currently holds ancillary rights in North America, to Paramount/Viacom in 1998; the transition of home video rights; and the later 2006 split of Viacom into two separate companies. Also, David Lynch oversaw the transfer from video to DVD personally, but was delayed by the production of his new film, Inland Empire. The first season was released to DVD on Artisan Entertainment, the video licensee for Republic, but Artisan/Lions Gate's rights expired in September 2005, and thus were transferred to Paramount. The second season is due to be released worldwide by Paramount. It has previously been postponed several times, from September 2004, to early 2005, to September 2005, to early 2006. TVshowsonDVD.com is reporting that Season Two will be released on DVD on April 3, 2007. Although Paramount has made no official announcement in the United States to present, TVShowsonDVD.com has presented the cover art and confirmed the date with US retailers.[1] The release of Season Two on DVD is confirmed even further by major US retailers Amazon.com, Best Buy and Target making Season Two available for pre-order with the release date of April 3, 2007.

In Germany, where Season 2 is to be released in two parts on separate dates in 2007, Part 1 went on general release on January 4, 2007. [2]

North American rights to the Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me film are owned by New Line Cinema, a division of Time Warner (which also owns Warner Bros.), and is available on video and DVD through New Line. In Canada, the DVD was distributed through Alliance Atlantis, which holds all Canadian rights to the New Line library.

Although Republic technically holds major ancillary rights, Paramount's home entertainment division (a Viacom unit) now holds home video rights. Television distribution rights are now held by CBS Paramount Television, the successor-in-interest to Paramount's television unit.

In the mid-'90s, Bravo re-aired Twin Peaks in the U.S..

NBC Universal's horror-themed cable channel Chiller, which launched on March 1st, 2007 is airing Twin Peaks for the first time on television in close to a decade. The series airs Fridays at 8PM and 11PM Eastern, Saturdays at 6PM, and Sundays at 4PM Eastern. During its launch weekend (Thursday, March 1st-Sunday March 4th), Chiller aired the two-hour pilot of Twin Peaks Friday, March 2nd at 8PM Eastern and 12AM Eastern (technically early Saturday, March 3rd), Saturday, March 3rd at 6PM Eastern, and Sunday, March 4th at 4PM Eastern. [3]

[edit] Books

Many books have been written from or about the television show Twin Peaks. During the show's second season, Pocket Books released three official tie-in books, each authored by the show's creators (or their family) which offer a wealth of backstory. These three books are:

• The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes (ISBN 978-0-330-27280-3), 1991: by Scott Frost (Mark Frost's brother). A collection of transcripts from Agent Dale Cooper's audio tapes, from his childhood to the day he is assigned to Laura Palmer's murder. The book includes Dale's upbringing in Philadelphia, family, education at Quaker institutions Germantown Friends School and Haverford College, first stumbles with love, obsession with the FBI and the relationship between himself, Windom Earle and Earle's wife. Many of these tape transcripts are dictated to "Diane", though a later tape states that Cooper enjoys the thought of Diane listening to his tapes so much that he will address all tapes to her, whether she will ever listen to them or not.
• The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (ISBN 978-0-671-73590-6), 1990, written by Jennifer Lynch (David Lynch's daughter). Lynch paints a haunting portrait of an abused teen's double life, falling into a world of prostitution and drug abuse while maintaining the status quo as homecoming queen and high school student. Published during the summer between the original broadcasts of the first and second season, the book provided fans with much sought-after information regarding Laura's veiled personal life, including her knowledge of and/or relationship with the enigmatic character of "Killer Bob." With the exception of a discrepancy in the actual year of Laura's death (a discrepancy that is actually salient in the pilot episode vs. the rest of the series), Lynch's book is faithful to the Lynch/Frost collaboration as it existed at the time of its publication (while there is some accurate crossover, later episodes in season two would refer to diary entries that do not appear in Lynch's work).
• Twin Peaks: An Access Guide to the Town (ISBN 978-0-671-74399-4), 1991, is the most lighthearted and humorous of the books. It's a parody of a traveler's guide book, as published by the Twin Peaks Chamber of Commerce. Inside fans can find anything from a history of the Native Americans around the area to a list of songs on the jukebox in the Double R Diner. A double-page ad in the middle stars David Lynch and Mark Frost as brothers "Tim and Tom", who offer a "Taxi-Dermy" service: A blind David Lynch (Tim) will drive you anywhere within the Twin Peaks city limits, while Mark Frost (Tom) will stuff and mount any fish or game up to and including the size of a bear.

[edit] Location

The towns of Snoqualmie and North Bend, in Washington, which were the primary filming locations for Twin Peaks, are only about an hour drive from the town of Roslyn. This town was the set of the series Northern Exposure, which debuted the same year, and also focused on the eccentric populace of a small northwestern town. A scene in the Northern Exposure first season episode "The Russian Flu" was shot at Snoqualmie Falls which was also featured in the opening titles sequence of Twin Peaks.

[edit] Popular culture

Many other television shows, songs, video games and other popular media have parodied or paid homage to Twin Peaks. Long-running animated television show, The Simpsons, has even had multiple episodes with Twin Peaks-related subject matter — in "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" which parodies the 'Red Room' scene and "Lisa's Sax" which shows Homer watching Twin Peaks in a flashback.

[edit] Trivia

• In the long-running series NYPD Blue, actors Nicholas Turturro and Gordon Clapp referred to their comedy scenes together as "Twin Peaks", in reference to the series. ^[12]

[edit] References

1. ^ Rodley, Chris. "Lynch on Lynch", Faber & Faber, 1997, pp. 156.
2. ^ Chion, Michel. "David Lynch", British Film Institute, 1995, pp. 100.
3. ^ Chion, Michel. "David Lynch", British Film Institute, 1995, pp. 103.
4. ^ Rodley, Chris. "Lynch on Lynch", Faber & Faber, 1997, pp. 164.
5. ^ Rodley, Chris. "Lynch on Lynch", Faber & Faber, 1997, pp. 165.
6. ^ Rodley, Chris. "Lynch on Lynch", Faber & Faber, 1997, pp. 172.
7. ^ Rodley, Chris. "Lynch on Lynch", Faber & Faber, 1997, pp. 172.
8. ^ Rodley, Chris. "Lynch on Lynch", Faber & Faber, 1997, pp. 174.
9. ^ Lavery, David. Introduction, Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks. Wayne State UP, 1995. ISBN 0-8143-2506-8
10. ^ http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/movie/5947479/review/5947480/twin_peaks_fire_walk_with_me
11. ^ http://members.aol.com/KTPattersn/fwwmrev.html
12. ^ Life in the 15th Precinct, NYPD Blue season 3 DVD documentary

[edit] Further reading

• Tropiano, Stephen (2000). TV Towns. New York, NY: TV Books L.L.C.. ISBN 978-1-57500-127-2. 

[edit] External links

• Twin Peaks at the Internet Movie Database
• TwinPeaksFestival.com The yearly Twin Peaks Festival
• Twin Peaks at the Encyclopedia of Television
• A Guide to Twin Peaks An interactive guide to 'Twin Peaks', includes reviews of each episode and the prequel film
• Highly detailed timeline of the show from twinpeaks.org
• Map: Unofficial Filming Locations of Twin Peaks
• InTwinPeaks.com Twin Peaks filming locations, then and now
• Second Season of Twin Peaks DVD ...Information about release of second season of Twin Peaks on DVD

The work of David Lynch
Feature films: Eraserhead • The Elephant Man • Dune • Blue Velvet • Wild at Heart • Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me • Lost Highway • The Straight Story • Mulholland Dr. • Inland Empire TV series: Twin Peaks • American Chronicles • On the Air • Hotel Room Other work: Short films • Industrial Symphony No. 1 • Rabbits • Darkened Room • Dumb Land • The Angriest Dog in the World