10 Things You Might Not Know about Twin Peaks

Mark Frost and David Lynch twin peaks follows FBI agent Dale Cooper as he tries to solve the murder of teenage Laura Palmer. First broadcast in 1990, the show features eccentric characters, supernatural elements, and soap opera melodrama, all of which combine to create a surreal and intriguing series.

twin peaks It only lasted two seasons before being cancelled, although the prequel film followed shortly after. The fire walks with me (1992). In 2017, a season-long revival hit screens, and ever since, the future of the show has been, much like the story itself, shrouded in mystery. Here are some very good lesser-known (and sometimes spoiler-filled) facts about twin peaks.

Related: Top 10 TV Shows Canceled Too Soon

10 Twin Peaks was inspired by a real murder

Mark Frost says that the story of Laura Palmer’s murder was inspired by “a little nightmarish tale my grandmother Betty Calhoun planted in my ear when I was a child.” The body of 20-year-old Hazel Drew was found floating in a pond in upstate New York in July 1908. To keep him out of the woods at night, Frost’s grandmother, who lived nearby, framed the murder. of Drew as “a warning”. ghost story.”

Although Frost was unfamiliar with the actual facts of the case, it is eerily similar to Laura Palmer’s story. Drew was initially seen as the typical good girl, but she lived a secret life. Her last known actions remain unexplained: she abruptly resigned from her job as a maid, she left a suitcase of clothes at a Troy train station and then boarded a train to Albany. She was romantically linked to a variety of cunning older men, and even occult elements began to creep into the investigation, with hints of hypnotism and dark magic coming into play.

David Bushman and Mark Givens have tried to unravel the secrets of Drew’s life and death, but officially the case remains unsolved.^[1]

9 filming the red room

The Red Room, also known as The Black Lodge, is one of the strangest parts of twin peaks, but one element of the location should be familiar to Lynch fans. A black and white chevron floor is also seen on the surreal Lynch. eraser head (1977), although the film itself is in black and white, so it could be another color.

One of the most challenging things about filming scenes in the Red Room was the dialogue. To make it sound as weird as possible, the actors spoke their lines backwards, and then the footage was played in reverse. Michael J. Anderson, The Man From Another Place, had spoken backwards to friends about him when he was younger, so he was particularly good at it. He even recorded a tutorial on how to speak backwards.^[2]

8 Games influenced by Twin Peaks

The impact of twin peaks in other television programs it is clear, from x-files to Gravity Falls. But twin peaks also influenced the world of video games, being the most obvious imitator Deadly Premonition. Following FBI agent Francis York Morgan as he tries to solve the murder of a teenage girl, the game plays out with twin peaks vibes. Like Cooper, Morgan loves coffee, shares asides with an unseen character, and finds clues in dreams. Greenvale is also full of weird characters, like the Pot Lady, who is clearly modeled on the Log Lady. (LINK 7)

Some other games influenced by twin peaks include mystery and suspense games from Remedy Entertainment Alan Wake and max payne. The first is set in a small mountain town reminiscent of twin peaks, and the last one features a room with a black and white chevron floor and red curtains. Perhaps less obvious is the influence of the program on The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. Director Takashi Tezuka called for all the characters to be “suspicious types like in the then popular twin peaks.”^[3]

7 Twin Peaks expanded into multiple tie-in novels

The world of twin peaks it was expanded upon through books, all of which add more detail and depth. 1990 saw the release of Laura Palmer’s Secret Diary—which was written by Jennifer Lynch, the daughter of David Lynch. In the same year, Scott Frost, the brother of Mark Frost, published the audiobook “Diane…”: Agent Cooper’s Twin Peaks tapes. The following year saw the publication of two more books: The Autobiography of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapesalso written by Scott Frost, and Welcome to Twin Peaks: An Access Guide to the City.

Two more books were published around this time, both written by Mark Frost. The return airy The secret history of Twin Peaks delves into the mysterious history of the town, while his follow-up, Twin Peaks: The Final Dossierfill in the blanks between seasons two and three.^[4]

6 Fire Walk with Me Deleted Scenes Matter

Lynch had to cut a substantial amount of The fire walks with me (1992) to achieve an acceptable run time. Fans were desperate to see the deleted scenes, but European investors blocked the studio from releasing the footage. Finally, in 2014, Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces broke loose, giving fans 90 more minutes of weirdness.

the missing pieces it is executed as interconnected vignettes rather than a cohesive narrative. Phillip Jeffries (David Bowie) gets more screen time, as does the mysterious green jade ring. Viewers can also catch a glimpse of Cooper’s evil doppelgänger after his maniacally terrifying expression of “How’s Annie?” which ended the second season.

Although the missing pieces did not have a large audience, Lynch makes a direct reference to it in The return. Mike asks Cooper, “Is it future or is it past?” just as The Man From Another Place did in a deleted scene.^[5]

5 Killer BOB was unexpectedly kicked out of the crew

Killer BOB, played by Frank Silva, is one of the most important characters in twin peaks, but was not originally on the show. Silva was a dresser for the pilot episode, and while moving furniture, he was told not to lock himself in by blocking the door. Lynch brushes this comment aside, saying that “the image of Frank locked in that room popped into my head.” He asked Silva if he would like to act and filmed the scene of him crouching at the foot of Laura’s bed not knowing how the spooky scene would fit into the story.

Later that night, they were filming the scene of Laura’s (Grace Zabriskie) mother screaming after remembering something traumatic, and the cameraman said they would have to reshoot because someone’s reflection got caught in the mirror. It was Silva, and Lynch realized that the messy scene would fit perfectly with the scene he had shot of Silva earlier. An instruction to a decorator and an accidental appearance on camera led to one of the most terrifying villains in television history.^[6]

4 Roles created by Lynch for specific actors

Along with creating the role of BOB for Silva, Lynch also created a number of other twin peaks roles for specific actors. Sheryl Lee was hired for only a few days to play Laura, and aside from playing a corpse, she only had one scene as a living character. It was this flashback scene with Donna (Lara Flynn Boyle) that convinced Lynch that she had “a natural presence and ability.” He expanded on Laura’s character and even gave Lee another character to play: Laura’s dark-haired cousin, Maddy.

The same thing happened with Al Strobel, who had only one arm and was released as a tribute to the wanted (1993) in the pilot. But after hearing Strobel speak, Lynch decided that he “had to write something for that voice.” The character of Mike was subsequently written out, and Strobel went so far as to recite the iconic poem “Fire Walk with Me”. Mädchen Amick auditioned for Donna, but Lynch decided to write her an entirely new character, Shelly. “They just liked me in the room, so they wrote something for me,” recalls Amick.

Frost and Lynch also planned to create a spin-off for Sherilyn Fenn’s character Audrey Horne, which would set her “loose on Hollywood, in modern noir.” The project went ahead without Fenn and became Mulholland Drive (2001).

One change in the story that was also due to the actors was that Audrey and Cooper did not pursue a romantic relationship, despite their obvious chemistry. According to Fenn, “Lara [Flynn Boyle] i was dating kyle [MacLachlan]and I was mad that my character was getting more attention, then Kyle started saying that her character shouldn’t be with mine because it doesn’t look good, because I’m too young.^[7]

3 Queen Elizabeth II said no to Paul McCartney’s private program to see Twin Peaks

Angelo Badalamenti, the composer of twin peaks music, he once worked with Paul McCartney at Abbey Road Studios and remembers a story McCartney told about twin peaks preventing him from performing a private show for Queen Elizabeth II’s birthday.

McCartney saw the Queen just before she was set to perform and said: “Your Highness, I’m delighted that you’ve invited me to help celebrate your birthday.” Unexpectedly, he apparently replied, “I’m sorry, but I can’t stay. It’s five to eight; I must go up and look twin peaks.” However, McCartney performed for her several times throughout her career, including at hers’ Golden and Diamond Jubilees.^[8]

2 Kyle MacLachlan imitated David Lynch in his performance

MacLachlan’s portrayal of Cooper was based in part on Lynch. “David is definitely an influence,” he said in a 2017 interview with Vulture. “He has precision and empathy. He understands the human condition. He can cheer himself up a lot by talking about coffee or cherry pie or something like that, things that he really likes.” These qualities definitely apply to Cooper as well.

Lynch also influenced MacLachlan’s portrayal of the childhood Dougie Jones in The return. When Dougie yells “hello” every time he wins a casino jackpot, MacLachlan channeled Lynch: “Those were my chances to imitate David, who also does that ‘HelloooOOOOHoooo!'”^[9]

1 A fake scene was filmed to hide the identity of the killer from the cast and crew

Frost and Lynch were so secretive about who killed Laura Palmer that they even filmed a fake scene to keep the cast and crew in the dark. In an interview in 1993 twin peaks Festival, Silva revealed that he filmed Maddy’s crime scene as BOB, Ray Wise filmed it as Leland Palmer, and Richard Beymer filmed it as Benjamin Horne. “Sheryl Lee had to be killed by all three; she was like beaten at the end of the day,” he explained. Silva and Wise’s takes were mixed for the episode, but Beymer’s version was never released.

However, the original plan was never to reveal the killer. In 1997, Lynch said Rolling Stone, “It was not supposed to be resolved. The idea was that it would go back a bit to the background, and the foreground would be the program for that week. But ABC wanted the identity of the killer to be resolved by the end of the first season. Frost and Lynch balked, but the network continued to put pressure on the pair, and it’s likely that the mid-season reveal coincided with the season of sweeps as the networks try to attract more viewers in a bid to increase their revenue. advertising rates.^[10]