From: jgp@raid.Rational.COM (Jim Pellmann)
Subject: TP: "Fire Walk With Me" review/essay (SPOILERS)
Organization: Rational
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 20:37:43 GMT

This is courtesy of jm0i@Lehigh.EDU (Joseph McVeigh), who does not
have access to the alt.tv.twin-peaks newsgroup.

There are *SPOILERS* to the TV series and movie below!


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The following is the entire text of a story from a publication called
"Pittsburgh City Paper", in their Sept 9-15, 1992 edition.  It was
forwarded to me (through some local friends) by a friend of mine, a big
fan living in Pittsburgh.

FYI, my "source" for the Pittsburgh City Paper" clipping has decided to
cultivate her bit of Twin Peaks fame. It's only right, in that she is a public
personality anyway. Additionally, she has no Usenet node and the only way to
thank her is to listen to her.

She's Marcia Gan, a DJ in Pittsburgh. She's been following the ongoing news
from the Usenet via downloaded and printed messages from Yours Truly.

I think the least Peaks Freaks can do is listen to her show when and if
they're in Pittsburgh. She's on "97 Rock", from 7 PM - 12M.

There are many "technical" errors, mostly spelling misconceptions.
Punctuation errors are corrected without notation, as are glaring word
omissions; other lapses are indicated by the standard [sic], which I'll
eschew for recurrences of the same mistake.  There will of course be
errors of transcription, for which I will assume blame; please direct
your comments to me:  jm0i@lehigh.edu.

I assume no responsibility for, and make no comment on, the accuracy of
either the description or the analysis.  This text is reprinted without
anyone's permission.

                - Joseph Aloysius McVeigh

*****************************************************************

From "The Pittsburgh City Paper", Sept. 9-15, 1992

TWIN PEAKS
You Know WHO...Now find out WHY in "Fire Walk With Me"
by BOB DRYLIE


    'In many tribes, the owl has a sinister meaning.  In the
    Northwest, the owl calls out names of men and women who will die
    soon.  Among the Sioux and Hin-Han, the owl guards the entrance
    to the Milky Way over which the souls of the dead must pass to
    reach the Spirit Land.  Those who fail the owl's inspection
    because they do not have the proper tattoo on their wrists or
    elsewhere are thrown into a bottomless abyss.'

Fr. "American Indian Myths and Legends," pgs. 399-400. Eds. Ortiz and
Erdoes.

Cultist, riveting, and tragically absorbing, the eerie pathos of the
Lynch/Frost dreamscape, known as "Twin Peaks," captured, or should I say,
invaded the imagination of millions of viewers when the original series
ran in 1990-91.  Sometimes described as a "hypnotic who-dunit," for lack
of a better phrase, it was certainly the most original, the most off-beat
television that ever went out over the air waves.

Cast into the viewer-familiar format of a night-time soap opera, it was
quirky, post modern, and cinematically elegant.  As eclectic as a
jackdaw's nest, timely as the six o'clock news, and for those familiar
with David Lynch's cinematic works, as weird as "Eraserhead" and the
seminal 1980's film "Blue Velvet."  Who killed Laura Palmer, the 16
year-old homecoming queen of the fictional town of Twin Peaks? (played as
'Marat de Sade Does Peyton Place') It became a national guessing game,
but not for the faint-hearted.  Film and especially television is the
basis for social interaction in our culture today, and the murder of
Laura Palmer just naturally struck home.  The whole series had the feel of
looking into a keyhole and having a finger poked into your eye.  So,
smarting from the reproof, and fascinated by what you have seen, that is
sex and death, you stoop to look yet again.  When your tongue is hanging
out a mile, Lynch uses it for toilet paper.

Never was a soap opera so bloody, or so morbid; "Crime Peaks" was more
like it.  The body count by the end of the series was 15 dead, four more
in and out of comas, and at least three killers at large, one of which
was "Bob" [sic].  There were more double-crosses, subplots and treachery
that in any town 10 times the size of Twin Peaks.

The series, for the most part, was a smashing success, an accolade which
Lynch would no doubt approve of.  It functioned as a two-part Lynch
ellipsis:  a straight-forward and often heart-rending, anguishing study
of an incestuous family which is set in the seemingly idyllic town in the
Pacific Northwest.  Laura becomes a microcosm for her small, seemingly
innocuous town; everything and everyone has some sort of secret, some
sort of double-life:  even Margaret's log has a secret.

But there's more to it than this.  When Special FBI Agent Dale Cooper
finally gets his hands on Laura's diary, he relays to Diana [sic], his
unseen secretary, via his hand-held recorder, "There are several
references to "Bob" here," then:  "indications of molestation and abuse
from the same person at an early age identifies 'Bob' as a friend of her
father's."

As is often the case, the abused child, in order to relieve the anxiety
of confession, will reveal the identity of the molester as a "friend
to..." whomever the case may be, and in this instance, Laura's father.

Laura changes after dark, and when she's all decked out in "Fire Walk
With Me," Donna asks, "Where're you going?" And Laura answers, "Nowhere
fast, and you aren't coming."  There is a similar piece of dialogue
between Special Agents Chester Desmond and Sam Stanley in the new film,
when Stanley asks Desmond about the blue rose.  These are small homages to
B-movies from the '40s, where everyone talked like a tough-guy, even the
dames.

Laura's wild promiscuity sees her graduate from high school boys to tough
biker-dudes in the local roadhouses, to guys like Leo and Jacques, who
are like bad guys from another time.  Laura even does a stint at "One-Eyed
Jacks." Laura's wild streak can be traced directly to her sexual abuse.
She becomes a vixen and a dope-head after dark, like her friends Ronette
Pulaski (read:  Roman Polanski, ha ha ha.) and Teresa Banks.  These high
school girls make the women of Peyton Place look like Sunday school
teachers.

On another level of the weird Lynch-ellipsis, is a story of Black arts,
pseudo-occult, with ties to legend and myth.  It rated well, but was hard
to decipher and difficult to tie to the murder plot.  This weirdness
eventually killed the show.

For the cineast, "Twin Peaks" was eclectic and toothsome fare, at once
sober and scary, and at the same time, a sly sendup, with small jewels of
homage strewn about which will be remembered as great moments.  Kind of
like the great moments in sports-blurbs which are on between the creamed-
corn and catsup commercials.  Lynch would add some baby dolls being
lowered into the frame on strings and say, "Smashing."  At least I think
so:  his publicity network is air-tight; they wouldn't even consider
letting me talk to him.

The film is borrowed in many ways and respects.  It resembles the 1944
film "Laura," by Rouben Mamoulian, who was fired and replaced by Otto
Preminger.  Dana Andrews plays the clean-cut, slouch-hat dick, falling for
the portrait of the dead woman.

He stares at the portrait, and refers to her [as] "the face in the misty
light."  Or is it?

"Twin Peaks" also resembles "The Hidden," in which Kyle MacLachlan plays
an agent on the trail of alien forms which inhabit and animate their
human hosts for malevolent purposes.  Then again, "Twin Peaks" also
resembles Alan Parker's "Angel Heart," with Mickey Rourke playing the
seedy detective from New York City, on the drugs, sex, voodoo and death
trail, only to discover a most horrible and vampir-ish secret.  The series
also reminded one of Tony Scott's film "The Hunger," and even "The
Stepfather..." "Twin Peaks," like all of the aforementioned films, works
on elemental, primitive, and social fears, like the fiercesome [sic],
howling wolf which is the killing entity known only as "Bob."  Its
television similes are multiple as well:  it had the format of "Ellery
Queen," a who-dunit guessing game with multiple suspects and motive, the
intrigues of the big, glossy soaps, such as "Dallas," (Who shot J.R.?)
and the campiness of any daytime-TV soap; take your pick.

In "Fire Walk With Me," it is the television which is the first casualty
after we see Bob kill Teresa Banks, and not by accident.  Lynch loads up
the most popular media, the most mid-line plot conventions, the
archetypes and even stereotypes and cliches, but he uses them all so
well, in the multi-purposed and manipulative series.  (Incidentally, there
is no point to this whole series; Lynch said it himself:  "If you want a
message, go to Western Union.")  You might also see the smashing of the
television as a dig against ABC for canceling the series.  It was Mel
Brooks who jokingly referred to Lynch's clean-cut and mild-mannered image
when he called him "Jimmy Stewart from Mars."  Personally, I'd be afraid
to be in the same room with him.

Throughout the series there were brilliant vignettes, such as Lynch as
Gordon Cole, top banana in the staff of the FBI, portrayed as an
organization as weird as the people that they are investigating. (Lil,
from the film "Fire Walk With Me", takes the cake.)

You might remember Gordon Cole as the name of the studio executive that
you hear Norma Desmond speaking to in the film "Sunset Boulevard," which
incidentally is Lynch's favorite film.  Which figures; it is a story
narrated by a dead man floating in a pool.

There are many such homages and sendups in the series; Cooper is shot
with a Walther PPK, which just happens to be James Bond's preferred gun.
The shoot-out at "One-Eyed Jacks" is a send-up of "Rio Bravo" (1959,
Howard Hawks).  Lynch does a Hitchcock vignette as Cole, the FBI man.  HE'S
HARD OF HEARING, YOU KNOW, AND HE YELLS ALL OF THE TIME.  A lot of people
don't know that this character was played by Lynch; he's so loud and
obnoxious that he's invisible, just like the television.  It's a relief
when he exits the frame.

The original Donna in the series, played in the film "Fire..." by Moira
Kelly with great results, is visiting James Hurley, the biker, in the
lock-up a couple of days after the murder of Laura.  She's wearing dark
shades and she's smoking.

"When did you start smokin'?" James asks.

"It helps relieve the tension," she says, exhaling through her puckered
lips at James between the bars.  Ohhh baby, I can feel the tension.

"When did you get so tense?" he asks.

"When I started smokin'," Donna answers.  She's doing a 40s femme fatale;
it could be Bacall or Gene Tierney, and James is doing Dana Andrews or
Bogie.  Probably the most famous piece of "Twin Peaks" erotica is when
Audrey ties the cherry stem into a knot with her tongue, which impresses
the madame of her father's bordello across the border, "One-Eyed Jacks."
(Which is the name of a famous film, and the only film Kubrick was ever
fired from and replaced by Marlon Brando, who directs and stars.)

Kiefer Sutherland plays special agent Sam Stanley in the new film, and
even has Stanley [Kubrick]'s odd hair, sticking up here and there like
Stan's, a bumbling innocent in a world of sharks and killers.

What Lynch does so well, in both the series and the new film, is to give
contrast to the two worlds, the one of the high school students (it
reminds you most of Coppola's "The Outsiders" and "Rumble Fish") and
their motives are so on track that the characters disappear, and we begin
to know them as people, even understand to some degree, what it is that
makes them tick.

A lot of critics have determined that Lynch is "Weird for weird's sake."
This sort of punning is juvenile when you consider the multiple levels
which the series functioned upon, and the ultimate impact of the story
when you see the missing pieces in "Fire Walk With Me."  How elegantly it
puns and clowns with itself and the media.  It's not all in your head,
it's all in your set.

Even his style of film making is eclectic.  "Twin Peaks" carried many
visual motifs and employed its own semantic language which is cinematic
in origin, and rare for television programming.  The ominous, whirling fan
in the upstairs hallway of the Palmer household, the cry of the owl, the
wind in the trees, the waterfall, and the frequent searching lights amid
the pines, all combine to create a language of dread and oppression which
hung over the tiny town.  The stop light was employed to shift the moods
for the character James Hurley, and the musical score was used to shift
overall mood for the series, to great effect.  Lynch employed the brooding
style of Winders, the ghastly, quirky colors of Fassbinder, the love of
mystery, the hidden object, and the director cameos from Hitchcock, and
endlessly improvised as no other director working today.

The music for "Twin Peaks," and the film "Fire Walk With Me," is a
melange from "Blue Velvet" and some very subtle allusions to "Twin
Peaks," but is altogether different, and what a relief.  The same music
for the film as the series would have ruined the effect, making it seem
all-too familiar.  The jazz licks for the film are hot, and the reprise
performance by Julee Cruise as Geidi at the roadhouse is great.

Much has already been said, perhaps too much for me to even add to, at
this point.  Lynch probably finds it difficult to keep his tongue from
his cheek, I'm sure.  The series was praised for its originality, and
criticized for its technical inconsistencies during the run of the
series.  This was partially due to all the directors, including
dilettantes like Diane Keaton, taking a crack at the series (Second
season, 14th episode).  Lynch's episodes were apparent, taking a zooming,
upward ascent, super-natural and super-real, bordering on unintelligible.
He used bizarre sets, lighting, color, and sound distortions, and
freakish characters.  Never in the history of television has the terror
of a murder scene been more convincing than the death of 'Natty [sic] in
the series.  The stark unreality of the scene, the shock and horror of
the victim was thoroughly and convincingly handled.  It is like the scene
in "Rear Window" where Jimmy Stewart and Thelma Ritter watch across the
courtyard of the apartment complex, helpless while Raymond Burr proceeds
to throttle Grace Kelly, praying for the cops to arrive before it's too
late.  The series drew the most amazing list of stars and guest stars:
Piper Laurie, Peggy Lipton, Eric DaRe, Sherilyn Fenn, Michael Parks,
Miguel Ferrer, Russ Tamblyn, one of the original cast members of "Peyton
Place," and coffee-and-cherry-pie boy scout Kyle MacLachlan, a Lynch
veteran.  I noted at the time a strange penchant for characters with "lyn"
and "rln" consonant combinations in their names.

New additions to the film "Fire..." include Harry Dean Stanton as Carl
Rodd, owner of the run-down Fat Trout trailer park where some mysterious
things happen.  Sutherland plays special agent Sam Stanley, and Moira
Kelly takes the place of Lara Flynn Boyle as Donna, Laura Palmer's "best
friend." David Bowie has a cameo role as special agent Phillip Jeffries,
in a leisure suit, and Chris Isaak is special agent Chester Desmond.

As mentioned earlier, in a different context, "Fire Walk With Me" opens
on the fuzzy-focus of "snow" on the television, the cool, haunting jazz
of "Blue Velvet" is employed to set the somber tone for the film to
follow.  The television will be the first casualty of the film, followed
shortly by Teresa Banks.  Banks will next be seen floating down the Wind
River in Washington state.  The time setting is one year and one week
before the murder of Laura by the same killer, a.k.a. "Bob." Time is a
strange thing, and Lynch plays with time throughout the series and the
film.  (In the series, by the fifth episode of the second season, only 12
days have elapsed since the murder of Laura.)

The first reel and a half is dedicated to the investigation of the FBI
into the murder of Teresa.  In that time period, which is undisclosed,
but may be one or two days, we see the first paper chip, bearing the
letter "T", extracted from beneath Banks' fourth [sic] finger, or ring
finger of her left hand.  It is discovered by the perspicacious Sam
Stanley, the man who recently cracked the Wilkenson [sic] case, we
understand.  The letter is some weird death/marriage ritual preformed
[sic] by Bob with his victims, and will be repeated with Laura, Ronette,
and 'Natty, giving us a T, an R, an O and finally a B, all the letters of
Robert, the formal of Bob, without the R repeated.  (Remember, Bob
inserts the chip beneath Ronette's finger while she is laying in the
hospital in a coma during the series.)

The agents visit a restaurant called Hap's Place, and a trailer park
called The Fat Trout.  Watch for the cameo of Paige Bennet as the French
girl in Hap's Place.  They tussle with the local authorities.  After
Stanley takes the body back to Portland, Desmond returns to the trailer
park, and finds the missing ring of Banks under the trailer of the people
referred throughout the film is Chalfont, but their real name is Tremond.
As he stoops to retrieve the ring, Lynch freezes the frame and fades to
black.  Desmond disappears.

Here's the pertinent clues so far:  The ugly waitress at Hap's tells
Desmond that three days before Banks was murdered, her left arm went
completely numb and she couldn't move it at all.  The ring which she was
wearing on her finger, the same finger they find the chip under, is
missing.  It is the ring that Desmond finds, but he, too, disappears.  And
finally, Carl Rodd, manager of the trailer park tells Cooper "There were
two people named Chalfont who rented this same trailer space, one right
after the other, weird, huh?" I'll say.  Rodd adds:  "I have already gone
places.  I just want to stay where I am."

There is also something strange going on with electricity, and Lynch
deliberately draws your attention to an electric pole (number 6) outside
of Banks' trailer, and later, Laura also picks up on this as she is on
the verge of discovering who Bob is.  Remember, the first casualty is the
television.  The Black Lodge melts around Laura, Chester, and Dale, in a
weird, crackling light, and we see a superimposition of the "snow" from
the television set over the scenes from the lodge.  MFAW [sic] says, "we
are living in a dream." He also says, "Electricity." Leyland [sic] is
also buzzed by electricity, and we intimately associate the fan upstairs
with his transformations into the entity Bob.

The story begins to accelerate.  Dale Cooper relates his strange dream
premonition to Gordon Cole.  It is Feb. 16, 10:10 a.m. (seven days before
the murder of Laura Palmer.) Cooper becomes a double in the video
surveyance [sic] cameras on the 7th floor of the FBI headquarters in
Philadelphia.  At that precise point, Agent Jeffries returns, in a
leisure suit after an eight-year [sic] absence.  He gives a recounting of
his encounter with the "Black Lodge."  We see the first group, which is
met above a convenience store, a location alluded to throughout the
series.  Bob is there, a strange man with a false beard, a man with a
cane, the dwarf, MFAW = Man From Another World, is there, so is Mrs.
Tremond (Chalfont) and her grandson, wearing the Pinocchio-like mask.  It
is the first time we see the monkey as well; a new twist in the case.

Faster.  The film accelerates and enters the final few days of Laura's
life.  She has a terrible premonition when she finds the pages of her
diary torn out.  She is put wise by Mrs. Chalfont's grandson as to the
"the man"'s presence, and catches Bob lurking behind her bureau where she
keeps the diary.  Laura is slowly coming to understand that Bob is her
father.  After the crazed encounter with Mike on the highway, Laura
finally does understand.  We already know.

Three nights before her death, Laura is given a mysterious photograph of
a bare room with an open door which leads to the "Black Lodge," and she
enters the lodge for the first time in her dreams, guided by Mrs.
Chalfont and the same boy (Donna saw them once during the series, when
she is delivering the "Meals on Wheels." The boy has two handsful of
creamed corn.  They disappear when Donna returns the following day, the
house is empty.)  It is a scary trip, and she is visited by the ring,
which is in her hand, and then by the corpse of a girl named Annie, with
two blue roses, and then sees herself in the doorway of the photograph.

The night of her death, we see Leyland [sic] drug his wife, and the white
mare appears to her, just as it did before the murder of 'Natty, Laura's
cousin, in the series.  The white mare is a classic, cinematic-semantic
image, an ominous foreboding, usually of impending death.  That night,
Laura sees the angel in the domestic scene, serving a meal to her
children, on her wall, disappear out of the picture.

Laura has her last tryst with Bobby, then James, leaving him at Sparkwood
and 21st street [sic], and goes off to meet Jacques, Leo, and Ronette.  It
is Thursday night, and they are going to the cabin to party.  "Bob" has
followed the foursome, and disabling Jacques, (his bloody, blob-face is
pure Lynch) he causes Leo to split in a panic.  Ronette and Laura are left
to "Bob".  But "Mike", Bob's old killing partner is also tuned, and
follows them to the abandoned Pullman car on the railroad tracks where
the final scene begins.  Mike attempts to force the door from without.  It
is then that the domestic angel appears (remember it disappeared out of
the picture on Laura's wall) facing Ronette, and looses her bonds.  Bob
throws her out of the car, and at the same time, Mike throws in the ring,
which Laura promptly puts on.  Remember Cooper told her not to take the
ring, but Laura will not be used as a conduit for the evil which has
invaded her heart any longer, and prefers death to her life of torture.

"Why're you making me do this?" [sic] Leyland cries as he kills her. We
see almost subliminal cuts of MFAW as Bob/Leyland consummates the act,
and then wraps the body in plastic for the trip to the river.

Laura appears in the classic room in her funerary clothes, and Dale is at
her shoulder.  She has graduated to the baddest sex, drugs, and death
night club of them all, the "Black Lodge."  The angel from the photo comes
to hover over them, creating the perfect archetype of a nuclear family.
Laura laughs and cries.  She gets it at last, but do we?

All functionaries of the Black Lodge are emissaries of the Man From
Another World.  He is the apex of this mystery.  All we know about him is
that he dances, albeit not too well, that he is "the arm," and he is also
the monkey behind the mask, eating the creamed corn.  Huh?  We don't know
where he comes from, although he says that they all live in a dream, or
what his motivations are, lest they be the pain and sorrow of humans, or
what the Black Lodge is.

"Fire Walk With Me" is as mysterious, puzzling, and delicious as the
series "Twin Peaks," and again, works on many levels, with much finesse
and ribbing to the viewer.  Lynch has fashioned truly bizarre worlds spun
from his imagination; inspirations for which were garnered at the
unlikely place of "Bob's Big Boy Restaurants."

-30-

--
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"I lived in my head mostly."                | Jim Pellmann (jgp@rational.com)
"That's not a bad neighborhood."            | RATIONAL
"There were some pretty strange neighbors." | Santa Clara, California