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

lynch had to cut a lot of scenes to make the film a manageable length, and in doing so he seems to have deliberately rendered much of the film incoherent.

After watching the deleted scenes in the Lime Green set, this is now my exact impression of Wild At Heart. So many of the baffling things in that movie are explained relatively clearly with the context of those deleted scenes, and the entire effort seems to have been in the service of making the film more (airquotes) "Lynchian". Like he was putting in an excess of effort in trying to live up to his own style/hype. The finished film feels a lot more flimsy to me now, although it never was one of my favorites of his.

That said, he made it work with TP:FWWM. The strange and unexplained scenes feel much more authentically (airquoteless) Lynchian.

the script doesn't really explain Bowie's character though. I think Bowie's character and "Judy" are showing that there is this other world inhabited by BOB et al. and that it's fucking terrifying and Chet Desmond is now stuck there.

IIRC there's only one other scene with bowie's character in the script and it involves him teleporting to Cairo or something and setting a room on fire.

FWWM, Lost Highway and Wild at Heart were all made with the contractual obligation to keep the films at most 2 hours and 15 minutes in length. With LH and WaH I think it led to the films being too long and FWWM ended up too short.

the script doesn't really explain Bowie's character though. I think Bowie's character and "Judy" are showing that there is this other world inhabited by BOB et al. and that it's fucking terrifying and Chet Desmond is now stuck there.

― Matt Armstrong, Saturday, March 3, 2012 7:27 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well it doesn't exactly "explain" it but it does at least place it into some context IIRC.

they showed a really knackered looking print at the BFI Lynch fest supposedly, which i find astonishing for such a relativley recent film. The copy they had of Lost Highway had *French subtitles*!

^very commonplace if it's not a beloved blockbuster

FWWM ended up too short

oh, never

http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_liblxiuc541qzyllfo1_500.jpg

^this

would look nice on yr wall

That reminds me of something I've searched the internet for over the years. In "Inland Empire" when they are in Poland around the dinner table there is some painting of an arm holding a candle on the wall. I've been looking for the artist or title for years with no luck.

i would imagine it's a lynch painting or photo of his that looks like a painting but i can only vaguely remember it.

Yeah I think it's at around 2 minutes in on this clip, but the low resolution makes it pretty much impossible to see

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9_O5wK6yOk&feature=related

they showed a really knackered looking print at the BFI Lynch fest supposedly, which i find astonishing for such a relativley recent film. The copy they had of Lost Highway had *French subtitles*!

― piscesx, Sunday, March 4, 2012 12:02 AM (20 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

copyright holders in both cases are french companies (canal+?) and they must not have been able to wrangle new prints out of 'em. i'm sure good elements exist in both cases; the french are generally good at this.

i have seen some late-90s central asian films that look like release prints from the 1930s.

http://www.copronason.com/tpreview2/images/shag.jpg

http://www.copronason.com/tpreview2/images/ryan_heshka_voice_of_love.jpg

Plenty more for those who know shit from shinola: http://www.copronason.com/tpreview2/index.html#20

Forgot how terrifying this shit is

lynch can make the blood run cold like few others

scene w/ mike screaming at leland from his truck induces legit panic attack

https://38.media.tumblr.com/e3d27132d35cf63d1a53a6a77f8e2684/tumblr_nczmy8oQgv1snmmclo1_500.gif

That one was ok

Anything in bedrooms destroyed me. Im a mess rn

What's Lynch's most terrifying scene over all? I think I may go with the video cammed scenes of Patricia Arquette's mutilated body in Lost Highway or the "call me" party scene from the same film.

Darragh, did you watch the theatrical version or the extended fan-cut of this?

amazingly, it might be one of the scenes from the network television show he created! the two murder scenes in s2, bob climbing over the couch, the laura palmer doppelganger screaming in the last episode...

then again the first time I watched mullholland dr the diner scene got me good

I really love fwwm: the missing pieces, the feature film that david lynch edited from deleted fwwm scenes, but I'm turned off by the idea of watching a version of fwwm where some nerd has inserted them back in. Especially once laura's story gets going, I think the decision not to cut keep cutting away to big ed and pete is a good one, however great those scenes are

cut

Oh yeah the man behind winky' scene. That's probably the most terrifying thing he did.

I understand where you're coming from wins although I'm going to watch it regardless.

What's Lynch's most terrifying scene over all?

Either Maddy's death or this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A7ksKLqvpQ

I guess the theatrical, jed?

Bob couch prob the worst scene, my god

Old lunch otm

The most amazing thing is the in-camera(ness) - excuse my lack of vocabulary - of what he achieves. Even something as simple as the v close up camera shifting in and out of focus as they prize up Teresa's nail to find the typed letter hidden under there but it reaches a kind of sublime in the backwards scenes of the man from the red room with Bob and the guy in the blank misshapen punted nose mask jumping up and down backwards shrouded in smoke. I'm watching the fan edit (for shame) but that scene is extremely extended in that version and unlike anything I've ever seen in film, truly. Pretty sure it's not all in the theatrical cut anyway. It is uniquely terrifying and inspiring. Terrifyingly beautiful.

There's a little boy in the scene and he has the same misshapen pointed nose mask as the guy with the flat top Afro and he moves the mask back and forward to uncover his face and when he does it one time it's the face of a real white haired monkey. Then the boy points to Bob and says "fell a victim" backwards. Shudder.

The same monkey we see later in the film who (if you turn the volume pretty much all the way up) you hear whisper 'Judy' (presumably the Judy that Phillip Jeffries is ranting about earlier). Freaked my shit out the first time I caught that.

https://vimeo.com/151489812

bob over the couch scared the shit out of me.

lynch the master of creepy in twin peaks in general tho. like even the repetitive static shot of the damn ceiling fan in the palmer's house is fucking chilling.

Like everyone else, I've been revisiting TP and finally reached the end with this movie. Hadn't seen it since I saw it at the cinema upon its first release: my overwhelming memory was of it being perhaps the scariest movie Lynch had ever made. That might've been the impact of watching it on a big screen - this time round, I was much more frequently ambushed by unexpected emotion, particularly during the final scene of Laura laughing hysterically and being comforted by Cooper; as the 'last' moment in TP (until the revival, obv) it seemed to emphasise the tragedy at the heart of the story, just what a short, horrible life that Laura Palmer had. A more 'realistic', straight-forward telling of the same story would not have anything like the same power, I don't think, so the film acts as justification and celebration of Lynch's obscurantism and allusiveness. Underneath it all, he's an incredibly 'warm' director who seems very heavily invested in his characters.

So, onto the new series.

Underneath it all, he's an incredibly 'warm' director who seems very heavily invested in his characters.

v. otm

I think we've seen just the right amount of TP there needs to be.

― Literal Facepalms (Dr Morbius), Friday, March 2, 2012

well little did i know

So, onto the new series.

― Bernie Lugg (Ward Fowler), Tuesday, 6 June 2017 09:32 Bookmark

do watch the missing pieces if you havent - it's sort of obscene and certainly unfair how the new series directly and explicitly builds on scenes from it

Thanks for the tip r/t/c, funnily enough I'd been checking out the wiki entry on FWWM and at the end it says

Lynch has recently stated that "'Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me' is very important to understanding (the revival)"

So, onto the Missing Pieces

the missing pieces is like... seven times more important to understanding the revival than fwwm on its own imo

i guess no one wants to be That Guy sternly prescribing some supposed offcuts from 1992 but tmp honestly does exist more plausibly as the anciently prerecorded first episodes of 2017 (not just in terms of plot/backstory but tonally also)

I think if you haven't seen the palmer family interview in "between two worlds" you're practically going in blind

serious question: why do ppl need to "understand" TP? It's not Agatha Christie.

otm

serious question: why do ppl need to "understand" TP? It's not Agatha Christie.

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 6 June 2017 21:51 (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

because if you watch it as a horror mystery comedy with soap elements, it's about a third as interesting

Nothing about the revival makes any sense until you've watched all of the Georgia Coffee commercials at least a few times.

Criterion now out.

Sheryl Lee:

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5050-surrendering-logic-in-twin-peaks-fire-walk-with-me

Anyone seen the CC?

This 207-minute (!) podcast may be of interest:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/projectionbooth/2017/10/25/episode-346-fire-walk-with-me-redux-twin-peaks-the-return

I have the new Criterion edition and haven't had the chance to watch it yet. Saw FWWM in a theater in July before I had started The Return, so I'm stoked to watch it again.

and like I said in the Lynch poll redux, Inland Empire is seriously due for a sweet Criterion reissue. the DVD is out of print in the USA and the only available copies of it are $30+ Japanese blu-rays.

One scene sticks in my mind from when i (re)watched it a few months ago. Bobby is pissed at Laura but she just smiles at him until he crumbles, and sort of dance-walks backwards away from her with a goofy grin on his face. Left at that it would be a great scene, showing Laura's irresistible winning charm. What is strange though is that after Bobby starts dancing, almost everyone else in the scene seems to start dancing too, as though accidental victims of her powerful juju. It's subtle, mostly, I had to rewind a few times to be sure.

Lee and Ashbrook are both so good in that scene

the DVD is out of print in the USA and the only available copies of it are $30+ Japanese blu-rays

wow wtf