Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me - Classic or Dud [spoilers]

Neither have I, though I did pick up the DVD cheap a few weeks back, so one day I'll actually watch the darn thing...

If you read the original shooting script you will see that much that seems "inexplicable" in the final cut is indeed explicated, in a quite turgid manner. For example David Bowie's appearance. I'm torn between wishing the entire script made it into the film (it would've been more than three hours long) and being glad it didn't. I get the feeling that the cut as it exists is not completely due to the studio imposing a two-hour running time on Lynch's company. I suspect that Lynch was tired of the overexplicit nature of the original screenplay and did something of a cut-and-paste to achieve the requisite level of incoherence.

Anyways. Jacques Rivette on this film:

I don't own a television, which is why I couldn't share Serge Daney's passion for TV series. And I took a long time to appreciate Lynch. In fact, I didn't really start until Blue Velvet (1986). With Isabella Rossellini's apartment, Lynch succeeded in creating the creepiest set in the history of cinema. And Twin Peaks, the Film is the craziest film in the history of cinema. I have no idea what happened, I have no idea what I saw, all I know is that I left the theater floating six feet above the ground. Only the first part of Lost Highway (1996) is as great. After which you get the idea, and by the last section I was one step ahead of the film, although it remained a powerful experience right up to the end.

And Jonathan Rosenbaum (who much admires Rivette) on this film:

The 1992 prequel to David Lynch and Mark Frost's famous but short-lived TV series, this deals with the events leading up to the murder of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) in a Pacific northwest town that suggests a somewhat funnier and kinkier version of Peyton Place. It has its moments, but not many, and generally speaking it runs neck and neck with Dune as the least successful and least interesting Lynch feature. The material, not much different from Jennifer Lynch's spin-off book The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, involves a lot of heavy breathing about the evil that lurks in supposedly innocent small towns, with various intimations about sexual abuse. The surrealist conceits work better here than the orgies, and both suggest that Lynch was badly in need of both a rest and a change of pace. With Kyle MacLachlan as caffeine-addicted FBI agent Dale Cooper, Harry Dean Stanton, David Bowie, Chris Isaak, Moira Kelly, Ray Wise, and other weird types--though not, alas, Sherilyn Fenn, Russ Tamblyn, Richard Beymer, Joan Chen, Piper Laurie, Jack Nance, and others from the TV series. Robert Engels wrote the script with Lynch. 135 min.

I'm more with Rivette. I enjoy the film, tremendously at times. I couldn't disagree more with Rosenbaum about it and Dune being uninteresting. Unsuccessful, perhaps, but the failings of these films shed about as much light on Lynch's peculiarities of style as the more "successful" films like Mulholland Drive or Blue Velvet (the former being my least favorite Lynch feature, the latter being my favorite).

So, um, maybe classic, maybe dud.

This reminds me of an afternoon when I dozed off while listening to It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. In my half-sleeping delerium I remember thinking to myself, "What a lovely, sweet record...."

Anyway, yeah, the boys told me that the end of Fire Walk with Me was fairly, um, dramatic. But I was snoring off in my own world (much like I did through Akira and some other movie last weekend. And, likely, much as I will do this weekend, while watching the original "Bedazzled" and um, whatever that new anime is that everyone is raving about).

Just watched it, did little for me except creep me out in an uninteresting way. I'm also fresh from watching the TV series for the first time, and through it all I always felt that the brunt of its appeal was in Coop, and that in the end it was his story, not Laura's. So what scenes that had him in it are classic, everything else I didn't care for.

Joan Chen
....
Jocelyn "Josie" Packard (scenes deleted)

Jan D'Arcy
....
Sylvia Horne (scenes deleted)

Don S. Davis
....
Maj. Garland Briggs (scenes deleted)

Mary Jo Deschanel
....
Eileen Hayward (scenes deleted)

Warren Frost
....
Doc Hayward (scenes deleted)

Harry Goaz
....
Deputy Andy Brennan (scenes deleted)

Michael Horse
....
Deputy Hawk (scenes deleted)

David Patrick Kelly
....
Jerry Horne (scenes deleted)

Everett McGill
....
Big Ed Hurley (scenes deleted)

Jack Nance
....
Pete Martell (scenes deleted)

Michael Ontkean
....
Sheriff Harry S. Truman (scenes deleted)

Kimmy Robertson
....
Lucy Moran (scenes deleted)

Wendy Robie
....
Nadine Hurley (scenes deleted)

Charlotte Stewart
....
Betty Briggs (scenes deleted)

Russ Tamblyn
....
Dr. Lawrence Jacoby (scenes deleted)

Don't make us wait!

PRESS RELEASE

TWIN PEAKS, FIRE WALK WITH ME
ON DVD DECEMBER 8TH MK2 EDITIONS

Since May 2002, fans from all over the world have been asking us to edit the original cut scenes from “Twin Peaks – Fire Walk With Me.”

As early as 2002, New Line, the American editor of the DVD, had tried to include these cut excerpts into its edition, but had been forced to give up for financial reasons.

We have tried several times to contact David Lynch and his associates to find a technical and financial solution to the problem.

We had thus stopped exporting the film worldwide in 2002 and 2003, and had delayed the French editing of the DVD.

Despite a few sporadic contacts, mail without answers and missing appointment on David Lynch’s side has made us take the decision not to deprive the French audience anymore from this major film that is also an important work in David Lynch’s filmography.

The DVD, to be released on December 8th 2004 in France, will thus be edited with as much care as any of the other MK2 products, but these cut scenes will unfortunately be missing.

We still hope – as all David Lynch fans worldwide do – to have these cut scenes included in a future version of the DVD, but this responsibility and willingness has to be shared by David Lynch himself.

MK2 Editions

(FWMM = classic btw. Scary, funny and very moving all at the same time; I blub like a baby at the end, every time.)

But cmon you need that fight scene in your life

I’m going to assume you’re talking about a fight with two by fours and that Pete’s “two by fours, four by eights. Two by fours, four by eights” in the pilot is him inventorying his arsenal

The stairs/fan scene should have been in the film.

Yeah, that and the scene at the Hayward place are the two that really feel like "missing pieces" insofar as they feel like they belong to the other film. Maybe the palmer dinner scene too as it provides a contrast to the later (wash your hands) scene

yeah i love the happy palmers. makes everything much sadder. would've probably felt excessive in the film itself though

i love that whole scene, where bobby is just so fucked up over having shot a guy, and laura can't stop laughing

― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson), Saturday, 2 December 2017 17:54 (two days ago) Permalink

really enriches bobby's scene with jacoby in the first season

― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson), Saturday, 2 December 2017 17:55 (two days ago) Permalink

idk why, but having to piece together an explanation from events witnessed out of chronological sequence seems to add to the emotional richness

any reports from the boxset people? i'm a jerk and a half but if the BTS stuff is good (and why wouldn't it be, since built to spill were once capable of transcendence on a good night, although i've also seen them on a night where i almost fell asleep - indie dad joke) i definitely want to track down the good bits on this here internet

They played a great set at the Road House

i feel like Twin Peaks would be a MAJOR market for Built to Spill

RIP Pamela Gidley (Teresa Banks). Small role, but she gave a really striking performance

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/pamela-gidley-dies-twin-peaks-141938829.html

glad to see a lot of places picking the news up, she was a very good actor and an equally decent person.

Watched this for I guess the 3rd time tonight, this time with my kids — we just finished the first two seasons (skipping most of the back half of season 2, except for the final episode). There were points in the movie where I wondered if it was too much for them, they're 16 and 12, but they're pretty invested in seeing the whole Twin Peaks universe. They were definitely scared and upset by stuff in the movie that is scary and upsetting, but they were also just kind of mesmerized by the whole thing. It is a trip. Really the darkest single thing he's ever done.

Also, I knew its reputation had improved over the years, but it's pretty striking to look at Metacritic — reviews range from 100 to 0, in an almost perfect reverse chronological order. https://www.metacritic.com/movie/twin-peaks-fire-walk-with-me/critic-reviews

I really want to watch TP with my kid, but she’s 11 and it is not yet time. Maddy’s death would be Too Much. Maybe another year or two. It will be a while before she can handle FWWM though. I saw it totally alone in a theater when I was 16 and it stunned me.

Every time I see it I like it more and i’m glad its reputation has turned around. Is it Lynch’s scariest movie? The evil in it feels real in a way that he usually doesn’t manage or try for.

It's pretty scary! And in really visceral and upsetting ways. My kids like horror movies and have seen Halloween, Friday the 13th, The Thing, Scream. But none of those feel like FWWM, the conventions of the genres and the stories give more distance. FWWM forces you to feel Laura's desperation and horror, it doesn't give you much distance.

A dad rapes and kills his daughter, the main character of the show/movie--it's definitely the darkest thing he's done. Cow OTM about the evil being "real" in a way that Inland Empire or even Mulholland Drive isn't.

R.I.P. Jacques Renault. I hope they put "I am as blank as a fart" on his headstone.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2021/04/07/walter-olkewicz-dies-twin-peaks-actor-starred-jacques-renault/7133539002/

Watching this for the first time since seeing The Return three times, which kinda reset my brain on how to understand time and suchlike. Harry Dean Stanton is surely a different character? They both run (different) trailer parks but are very different in personality. Dammit I had other more important thoughts I forget, something about seperating the young Lynch kid (Tremond? grandchild or something) from the Jumping Man, but what I've mainly learnt these years is to not concentrate on any sort of plot, it's all thematically and visually connected, I suppose that big spurious blog you were all praising might agree but fuck all nonsense except Lynch nonsense. If he draws 6 from his jar tomorrow I think the universe will have aligned

I'd never heard this song til the other day and didn't know that what I thought of as just an oddball Twin Peaks line — immortalized by Laura's "gobble gobble" — was a reference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2yd3DRhAI0

Which in turn comes from this: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5758/