Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

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Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

Theatrical poster
Directed by David Lynch
Produced by Francis Bouygues
Gregg Fienberg
Written by David Lynch
Robert Engels
Starring Sheryl Lee
Moira Kelly
Ray Wise
Dana Ashbrook
Chris Isaak
Kyle MacLachlan
Kiefer Sutherland
Music by Angelo Badalamenti
Cinematography Ron Garcia
Editing by Mary Sweeney
Distributed by New Line Cinema
Release date(s) May 1992 (Cannes Film Festival)
United States:
August 28, 1992
Running time 135 minutes
Country USA
Language English
Budget $10,000,000 (estimated)
Gross revenue $4,160,851 (USA)
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (sometimes referred to as Fire Walk with Me, or internationally, Twin Peaks: The Movie) is a 1992 movie written and directed by David Lynch and Robert Engels. The film can be viewed as both prologue and epilogue to the cult television series Twin Peaks (1990–91), created by Lynch and Mark Frost. The film revolves around the investigation into the murder of Teresa Banks (Pamela Gidley) and the last seven days in the life of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), a popular high school student in the small Washington town of Twin Peaks, of which these two connected murders were the central mysteries of the television series. Additionally, the film's convoluted narrative makes reference to - and clarification of - Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan)'s fate in the series finale. Thus, the film is often called a prequel, but it is not intended to be viewed before the series and also has sequel qualities.

Most of the television cast returned for the film, with the notable exceptions of Lara Flynn Boyle who declined to return as Laura’s best friend Donna Hayward (she was replaced by Moira Kelly), and Sherilyn Fenn due to scheduling conflicts. Also, Kyle MacLachlan, who starred as Special Agent Dale Cooper in the TV series, was reluctant to return so his presence in the film is smaller than originally planned.

Fire Walk with Me was greeted at the Cannes Film Festival with booing from the audience and met with almost unanimously negative reviews in the United States. The film fared poorly in the United States at the box office, partially because it was released almost a year after the television series was canceled (due to a sharp ratings decline in the second season), partially due to its incomprehensibility to the uninitiated and the fact that the film only appeals to the very subset of the Twin Peaks series. However, it was an overwhelming commercial hit in Japan. The film also disappointed many devotees of the TV series due to its darker tone, lack of humor and absence of resolution to the series’ cliff-hanger ending.

Contents

[edit] Plot

The film begins with Gordon Cole calling Agent Chester Desmond about the mysterious murder of Teresa Banks; Cole introduces Chester to his new partner, Sam Stanley, and they receive clues from Lil the dancer. Desmond and Stanley view Teresa's body, realizing that her ring is missing and that a letter "T" has been placed under her fingernail. Desmond and Stanley learn about the victim's recent past, and Desmond vanishes after picking up Teresa's ring in the trailer park where she lived.

Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, long-lost Agent Phillip Jeffries re-appears, and tells Gordon that he was in a nightmare for two years. As he explains, we see images of the Man from Another Place, BOB, Mrs. Chalfont, and her grandson. Jeffries disappears into thin air, and Agent Dale Cooper is sent to investigate Desmond's disappearance, and sees the words "Let's Rock" (words said by the Man From Another Place in the series) on the windshield of Desmond's car. The clues to Teresa Banks' murder have led to a dead end.

Sheryl Lee as Laura Palmer, Ray Wise as Leland Palmer and Grace Zabriskie as Sarah Palmer.
Sheryl Lee as Laura Palmer, Ray Wise as Leland Palmer and Grace Zabriskie as Sarah Palmer.

One year later in Twin Peaks, Laura Palmer and Donna Hayward go to school, where Laura does drugs and kisses James Hurley. After school, Laura talks with Donna about the difference between Bobby Briggs and James Hurley. Laura realizes that there are pages missing from her secret diary, and goes to tell Harold Smith about the pages, saying that BOB did it, and getting mad at Harold for not believing in BOB. Laura gives Harold her diary.

Meanwhile, Agent Cooper tells fellow FBI agent Albert Rosenfield that he believes the killer will strike again. During her Meals on Wheels rounds, Laura sees Mrs. Chalfont and her grandson. Mrs. Chalfont gives Laura a painting, and her grandson informs Laura that the "man behind the mask" is in Laura's room. Laura lets Shelly deliver the remaining Meals on Wheels and returns home, where she sees BOB – as Laura rushes outside in terror, she sees her father Leland emerge from the house.

When the Palmer family is about to eat, Leland menaces Laura about her dirty hands, and questions her about her "lovers." Later, about to go to bed, Laura hangs the painting she got from Mrs. Chalfont. She dreams about Cooper entering the Black Lodge, and the Man from Another Place telling Cooper that he sounds like a beeping noise. The Man from Another Place shows Cooper the ring that Teresa Banks had, and Cooper tells Laura not to take the ring. Laura wakes up to find Annie Blackburn next to her in bed, and Annie tells Laura that "the good Dale" (Cooper) is trapped in the Black Lodge, that he can't leave, and that she should write it in her diary. Laura awakens to find the ring in her hand. Meanwhile, Bobby, Leo, and Jacques Renault discuss drug scores.

Laura is ready to go to the Bang Bang Bar when Donna tells her of her wish to accompany her, but Laura says she's not invited. As Laura is about to enter the bar, she encounters the Log Lady. Inside the bar, Jacques introduces Laura to two rednecks. The group is about to leave for the Pink Room to have sex, but Donna shows up and wants to come too; impressed by her "audition" kiss, they let her. Within the Pink Room, Laura discusses Teresa Banks' murder with Ronette Pulaski, then has group sex with the men. Laura saves Donna from drugged rape, and takes her home.

The next morning, Laura tells Donna that she doesn't want Donna to become like her. Leland arrives, and takes Laura home. On the way home, MIKE (the one-armed man) shouts madly at Leland and Laura, accusing Leland of stealing his "corn," and showing Laura Teresa's ring.

Leland pulls into a gas station parking lot to gather his wits, then recalls his affair with Teresa, and her murder at his hands. Laura realizes that the ring she saw was the same one from her dream. The next night, Laura and Bobby take cocaine in the woods, and Jacques sends a drug messenger carrying an enormous amount of cocaine. The messenger takes out a gun, but Bobby shoots him, and tries to bury him as Laura laughs maniacally in drunken hysteria.

The next morning, James is worried about Laura taking too many drugs. That night, BOB comes through Laura's window and begins raping her. She realizes that BOB is Leland, and warns Leland away from her the next morning. Upset over the realization that her father is actually BOB, and strung out on cocaine, Laura can't concentrate at school. Later, Laura refuses sex with Bobby, and he finally realizes that Laura was using him to get the cocaine. The angel in Laura's painting disappears.

James and Laura go to the woods and start to make out, but she tells James "his Laura" is gone. Screaming that she loves him, Laura runs away from James into the woods. Laura meets Ronette, Jacques, and Leo, and they hold an orgy in Jacques' cabin as Leland watches from outside. Jacques wants to have harder sex, and ties Laura up. Leland attacks Jacques outside, and Leo flees in panic; Leland takes Laura and Ronette, both bound, to the train car.

Meanwhile, MIKE (the one-armed man) realizes that BOB/Leland is about to kill again, and chases after him. BOB/Leland takes a mirror, and says he'll kill Laura if she won't let him inside her. Ronette escapes the train car as MIKE drops Teresa's ring. Laura takes the ring, preventing BOB from going inside her. Angered that he can't enter her anymore, he starts brutally stabbing her to death.

BOB/Leland dumps Laura's body in the lake. As her corpse drifts away, BOB/Leland enters the Black Lodge, where he encounters MIKE, the one-armed man, and the Man from Another Place. They tell BOB that they want their garmonbozia ("pain and sorrow"). BOB returns it in the form of blood. As Laura's body is found, she enters the Black Lodge. She realizes that Agent Cooper is by her side, and that her angel is guarding her.

[edit] Cast and characters

[edit] Production

Twin Peaks had only been canceled for a month when it was announced that David Lynch would be making a movie with French company CIBY-2000 financing what would be the first film of a three-picture deal.[1] However, on July 11, 1991, Ken Scherer, CEO of Lynch/Frost productions, announced that the film was not going to be made because series star Kyle MacLachlan did not want to reprise his role of Special Agent Dale Cooper. A month later, MacLachlan had changed his mind and the film was back on.

The film was made without the Twin Peaks series regulars Lara Flynn Boyle and Sherilyn Fenn. At the time, the absence of these actresses was attributed to scheduling conflicts, but in a 1995 interview, Fenn revealed that the real reason was that she "was extremely disappointed in the way the second season got off track. As far as Fire Walk with Me, it was something that I chose not to be a part of."[1] Fenn’s character was cut from the script and Boyle was recast with Moira Kelly. MacLachlan's reluctance was also caused by the decline of quality in the second season of the show; he said "David and Mark [Frost] were only around for the first season...I think we all felt a little abandoned. So I was fairly resentful when the film, Fire Walk with Me, came around."[1]Although he agreed to be in the film, MacLachlan wanted a smaller role, forcing Lynch and co-writer Robert Engels to re-write the screenplay so that the Teresa Banks murder was investigated by Agent Chester Desmond and not by Cooper as originally planned. MacLachlan ended up working only five days on the movie.

Another missing figure from Twin Peaks was co-creator Mark Frost. The relationship between Lynch and Frost had become strained during the second season and after the series ended. Frost went on to direct his own movie, Storyville (1992), and was unable to collaborate with Lynch on Fire Walk with Me.[2]

Filming began on September 5, 1991 in Snoqualmie, Washington and lasted until October of the same year, with four weeks dedicated to locations in Washington, and another four weeks of interiors and additional locations in Los Angeles, California. When shooting went over schedule in Seattle, Washington, Laura's death in the train car had to be shot in Los Angeles on soundstage during the last day of shooting, October 31.[3]

[edit] Themes

Lynch wanted to make a Twin Peaks movie because, as he claimed in an interview, "I couldn’t get myself to leave the world of Twin Peaks. I was in love with the character of Laura Palmer and her contradictions: radiant on the surface but dying inside. I wanted to see her live, move and talk."[4] And that he had "not yet finished with the material".[5] Actress Sheryl Lee, who played Laura Palmer, also echoed these sentiments. "I never got to be Laura alive, just in flashbacks, it allowed me to come full circle with the character."[1] According to Lynch, the movie is about "the loneliness, shame, guilt, confusion and devastation of the victim of incest. It also dealt with the torment of the father – the war in him."[4]

[edit] Critical reaction

Fire Walk with Me received a reaction quite the contrary to the television series. At the Cannes Film Festival, the film was greeted with booing from the audience and met with almost unanimously negative reviews.[6] Even the CIBY-2000 party at Cannes did not go well. According to Lynch, Francis Bouygues (then head of CIBY) was not well liked in France and this only added to the film’s demise at the festival.[4]

U.S. distributor New Line Cinema released the film in America on August 28, 1992. It grossed a total of USD $1.8 million in 691 theaters in its opening weekend and went on to gross a total of $4.1 million in North America.[7]

Fire Walk With Me was released with no advance press screenings which did not endear it with critics. The film flopped in the United States, partially because it was released almost a year after the television series was canceled (due to a sharp ratings decline in the second season) and partially due to its incomprehensibility to the uninitiated. Many people, especially critics, found the film stylish but bewildering. Janet Maslin in her review for the New York Times wrote, "Mr. Lynch’s taste for brain-dead grotesque has lost its novelty".[1] Fellow Times film critic Vincent Canby concurred, "It's not the worst movie ever made; it just seems to be".[8] In his review for Variety magazine, Todd McCarthy said, "that Laura Palmer, after all the talk, is not a very interesting or compelling character and long before the climax has become a tiresome teenager".[9] USA Today gave the film one-and-a-half stars out of four, calling it, "a morbidly joyless affair".[10] However, Kim Newman gave the film one of its rare positive reviews in Sight & Sound magazine. "The film’s many moments of horror . . . demonstrate just how tidy, conventional and domesticated the generic horror movie of the 1980s and 1990s has become".[11] The film currently has holds a 59 percent "fresh" rating at Rotten Tomatoes.

According to the film’s cinematographer, Ron Garcia, the film was very popular in Japan — in particular, with women, as Martha Nochimson wrote in her book on Lynch's movies, "He surmises that the enthusiasm of the Japanese women comes from a gratification of seeing in Laura some acknowledgment of their suffering in a repressive society".[12] Released under the title, Twin Peaks: The Last Seven Days of Laura Palmer and was greeted with long lines of moviegoers at theaters.[13] In retrospect, Lynch felt bad that the film "did no business and that a lot of people hate the film. I really like the film. But it had a lot of baggage with it".[4] The film’s editor Mary Sweeney said, "They so badly wanted it to be like the T.V. show, and it wasn’t. It was a David Lynch feature. And people were very angry about it. They felt betrayed".[1] Lee is very proud of the film, saying, "I have had many people, victims of incest, approach me since the film was released, so glad that it had been made because it helped them to release a lot".[1]

After Fire Walk with Me was released, Lynch reportedly planned a second prequel, possibly utilizing footage edited out of the first movie. However, in a 2001 interview he said that the Twin Peaks franchise is “dead as a doornail”.[14]

[edit] DVD

Director David Lynch originally shot about five hours of footage that was subsequently cut down to two hours and fifteen minutes. This missing footage is highly coveted by many Twin Peaks fans. The footage nearly appeared on New Line's Special Edition DVD in 2002, but was nixed over budgetary and running-time concerns.[15] In 2002, a French company called MK2 began negotiations with Lynch to include the missing scenes, properly edited and scored, in an upcoming Special Edition DVD. This has yet to appear. Most of the deleted scenes feature additional characters from the television series who ultimately did not appear in the finished film.[16]

Recently, dvdrama.com reported that French distributor company MK2 was in final negotiations with Lynch about a new two-disc Special Edition that would have included 17 deleted scenes hand-picked by the director himself. It was tentatively scheduled for release date on October 17th, 2007, but since then MK2 has opted instead to re-release a bare-bones edition of Fire Walk with Me, and there is no information about whether they ever intended to release an edition with deleted scenes, at this time.[17]

[edit] Soundtrack

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack)
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack) cover
Soundtrack by Angelo Badalamenti
Released August 11, 1992
Genre Soundtrack
Length 129 minutes (aprox)
Label Warner Brothers
Producer Angelo Badalamenti
Professional reviews

In addition, a second soundtrack of music, entitled, Twin Peaks: New Season Two Music, from both the TV show and the film was released on October 30, 2007.[18]

[edit] Track listing

  1. "Theme from Twin Peaks-Fire Walk with Me" 6:40
  2. "The Pine Float" 3:58
  3. Jimmy Scott - "Sycamore Trees" 3:52
  4. "Don't Do Anything (I Wouldn't Do)" 7:17
  5. Thought Gang - "A Real Indication" 5:31
  6. Julee Cruise - "Questions in a World of Blue" 4:50
  7. "The Pink Room" 4:02
  8. Thought Gang - "The Black Dog Runs at Night" 1:45
  9. "Best Friends" 2:12
  10. "Moving Through Time" 6:41
  11. "Montage from Twin Peaks: Girl Talk/Birds in Hell/Laura Palmer's Theme" 5:27
  12. "The Voice of Love" 3:55

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Hughes, David. "The Complete Lynch", Virgin Media, 2001. 
  2. ^ Woods, Paul A. "Weirdsville USA: The Obsessive Universe of David Lynch", Plexus, 1997. 
  3. ^ Ferrante, Anthony C. "The Fire Walkers of Twin Peaks", Fangoria, October 1992. Retrieved on 2007-06-01. 
  4. ^ a b c d Rodley, Chris. "Lynch on Lynch", Faber and Faber, 1997, pp. 184. 
  5. ^ Müller, Jürgen (2003). Best movies of the 90s. New York: Taschen, p.64-66. ISBN 3822847836. 
  6. ^ Twin Peaks at Philipcoppens.com; accessed December 11, 2007.
  7. ^ "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me", Box Office Mojo, April 3, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-04-03. 
  8. ^ Canby, Vincent. "One Long Last Gasp For Laura Palmer", New York Times, August 29, 1992. Retrieved on 2007-04-03. 
  9. ^ McCarthy, Todd. "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me", Variety, May 18, 1992. Retrieved on 2007-04-03. 
  10. ^ Wloszczyna, Susan. "Dark and depressing doings in Twin Peaks", USA Today, August 31, 1992. 
  11. ^ Newman, Kim. "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me", Sight & Sound, November 1992. 
  12. ^ Nochimson, Martha P. "The Passion of David Lynch: Wild at Heart in Hollywood", University of Texas Press, 1997, pp. 184. 
  13. ^ Regelman, Karen. "Japanese piqued by Peaks as picture opens in theaters", Variety, May 26, 1992. 
  14. ^ Hughes, David. "David Lynch, Weird on Top", Empire, November 2001. Retrieved on 2007-08-03. 
  15. ^ Smith, Kevin P. "Still Burning Strong", Total Movie and Entertainment Magazine, March/April 2002. Retrieved on 2008-01-30. 
  16. ^ Horowitz, Josh. "David Lynch On His Empire, Turning Down Jedi — And Cooking Quinoa", MTV News, August 22, 2007. Retrieved on 2008-01-25. 
  17. ^ "Twin peaks collector encore repoussÉ...", dvdrama. (French) 
  18. ^ "Twin Peaks: New Season Two Music", Ryko Distribution, October 30, 2007. Retrieved on 2008-01-25. 

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks   (episodes)  • Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
Main characters
Dale Cooper  •  Laura Palmer  •  Bobby Briggs  •  Major Briggs  •  Windom Earle  •  Donna Hayward  •  Audrey Horne  •  Ben Horne  •  Big Ed Hurley  •  James Hurley  •  Norma Jennings  •  Shelly Johnson  •  Leo Johnson  •  Killer BOB  •  Catherine Martell  •  Pete Martell  •  Josie Packard  •  Leland Palmer  •  Harry S. Truman
Secondary characters
Characters only in prequel film
Others
Creators/Executive Producers
Other crew
Angelo Badalamenti  •  Tricia Brock  •  Julee Cruise  •  Caleb Deschanel  •  Duwayne Dunham  •  Robert Engels  •  Scott Frost  •  Lesli Linka Glatter  •  Tim Hunter  •  Jennifer Lynch  •  Harley Peyton  •  Barry Pullman  •  Tina Rathborne  •  Johanna Ray
Other media
Books  •  Music
v • d • e
The works of David Lynch
Feature films
Eraserhead (1977) • The Elephant Man (1980) • Dune (1984) • Blue Velvet (1986) • Wild at Heart (1990) • Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) • Lost Highway (1997) • The Straight Story (1999) • Mulholland Dr. (2001) • Inland Empire (2006)
Short films
Television
Other work