In October 2014 I found myself travelling to Paris to
interview David Lynch. I made landfall soon after a minor hurricane that had
been scouring its way across Europe: the city’s trees moaned and the sky filled
with leaves, and by the time I arrived at the Cartier Foundation – European
patron for Lynch’s output as a fine artist – the storm was a neat metaphor for
the state of my nerves.
A new exhibition was being installed, and the museum was
closed to the public. I gave my name at reception and took a seat, and was
immediately plunged into a scene of such Lynchian weirdness that I began to
wonder if I was part of the show. On the desk was an old-fashioned table lamp
that kept flickering on and off, though this didn’t faze the male receptionist,
who stared ahead as if in a trance. Occasionally a vintage telephone would
ring, and he would pick up, mutter the words ‘Fondation Cartier’, then replace
the receiver, all without breaking his gaze. Meanwhile the storm howled
outside, and every time the doors slid open to admit a visitor, a gust of wind
scattered dry leaves across the foyer. Amid this stood an old lady with a
broom, who with agonising slowness swept the leaves into a pile, only to watch
each time the doors opened and her work was destroyed, before quietly and
uncomplainingly starting over.
Eventually I felt in need of air, and was heading towards
the door when I saw Lynch through the glass. He was standing alone in front of
a large tree that shook violently in the wind, one hand pressed against the
trunk as though in secret communion, the other cradling a cigarette. He wore a
raincoat that flapped in the gale, though his famous silver quiff was remarkably
unruffled. Twenty minutes later we were sitting across from each other over a
table in an upstairs conference room, and I found myself with the unusual
problem of being unable to visually process his face: if I focussed on Lynch’s
eyes, or his mouth, or the chrome fin of his quiff, the rest seemed to dissolve
into a shimmering pool of colour. I considered the possibility that this was anxiety
– for 30 years I had viewed Lynch as a genius on a par with Blake, a visionary
giant who had lifted a curtain to reveal the tenuous nature of reality. At the
same time, part of me felt this might be Lynch’s magic – like the receptionist,
like the old lady with the broom – and that if I looked out the window I’d see him
still standing there with his back to me, coat billowing and palm flat against
the tree. Either way, I thought, this is how cults get started.
At the same time he was lovely – of course he was lovely,
the same adorable oddball I’d seen beguile and befuddle countless interviewers
in the past. Lynch’s eccentricities elude description, though the impression I
had was of an excitable 12-year-old Eagle Scout in an old man’s body,
permanently propping up the bar of a 1950s diner in the afterlife. He
interspersed our conversation with ‘hot diggedy’s and ‘darn tootin’s, and he yelped with pleasure when a PR person entered carrying coffees. He politely
indulged a couple of dry questions about his love of Paris – I was writing for
Eurostar’s travel magazine – and he told darkly personal stories about his
creative process, including an anecdote about a childhood encounter with a naked woman who had
stumbled bruised and bloodied down the quiet street on which he and his brother
were playing one evening, a clear influence on Blue Velvet. But he refused to be drawn on the forthcoming third
season of Twin Peaks, filming of
which was scheduled to begin in a few months. All he would say, when pressed,
was a phrase that I would hear him repeat several times in interviews of that
period: “I just love the world of Twin
Peaks, and I can’t wait to go back there.”
***
A few days before receiving the call about this interview,
I’d posted a piece summarising why I thought a third season of Twin
Peaks was a terrible idea. I admitted that this was partly the
protectiveness of a nostalgic superfan loath to see the cinematic love of his
adolescence exhumed and reanimated in front of a braying public. But I also saw
no way that it could work. Twin Peaks,
I wrote, was a moment in time and space that would be endlessly revisited – in
writing, at fan festivals, in the countless films and shows indebted to its
influence – but never convincingly recreated. I ended with a quote by Ray Wise
(Leland Palmer), who in 2005 said: “I’ve always felt that Twin Peaks was meant to burn very brightly for a short period of
time. Almost like a comet. Very hot, very intense, very passionate. And then it
burns out and disappears.”
I did my best to park these concerns when the new series
aired, and I was pleasantly surprised by the first couple of episodes, which
were so weird, even by Twin Peaks
standards, that I couldn’t help feeling pride at Lynch and Frost for staying
true to their initial vision of the show as a Trojan Horse for letting the
inmates overrun the airwaves. But before long I was feeling uneasy, and by episode
five I was convinced that season three was a failure – partly for reasons I
expected, partly for reasons I didn’t, but with one overarching conclusion: it
didn’t feel like Twin Peaks, at least not the Twin
Peaks that mattered to those of us who had sat transfixed in
front of every episode as it aired, and formed a club in a cobweb-strewn boot
closet at school to discuss the latest plot twists.
Despite his claim in our interview, Lynch appears to have
been reluctant to go back to the world of Twin
Peaks. Even on a geographical level, season three has limited interest in
Twin Peaks as a place. The first show felt in danger of jumping the shark every
time the action crossed the swinging traffic lights that marked the outskirts
of town (James Hurley’s fling with Evelyn Marsh being a notable low point). Yet
season three expands to take in Las Vegas, South Dakota, New York and Texas, with
the result that the whimsical sense of place that made the original show so
memorable – that for many people was
the original show – feels more like an origin myth.
The creators also break the fourth wall between the world of
the show and that of the viewer. Whereas the first run made very few cultural
references – a 1950s pop song here, a mention of Sherlock Holmes there – the
events in season three unfold in a world seemingly infiltrated by our own, as
though 30 years of poking and prodding by eager fans has finally penetrated the
town’s defences. So it is that we get Gordon Cole’s dream about Monica Bellucci,
or scenes in which modern bands play episodes out – Chromatics, Hudson Mohawke,
Eddie actual Vedder – lending the feel of a 90s chat show, and implying that
Lynch, once capable of convincing a generation that carrying a log around was
cool, is now looking to the wider world to learn what’s hip. The musical
segments are depressing for their predictability, and for their presentation of
the once edgy Roadhouse as the sort of venue the family in Party Of Five might visit. But most of all, these scenes feel like
a betrayal because of the way they suggest that Twin Peaks, previously as inaccessible
as a dream, is now a place you might find on Google Maps.
Underpinning this is also a fundamental aesthetic difference.
Once the creators were content to play the ironic small-town-soap-opera card
for all it was worth, letting the action unfold between the same characters, in
the same locations, with plot lines that were strange and tangled but could all
be traced back to the emotional big bang that was Laura Palmer’s murder. Now
the show feels like a series of self-contained scenes, each like one of Lynch’s
painted canvases, vivid and surreal, but with little to link them together.
Some of these scenes work well, like the young couple watching the glass box in
a New York warehouse. Others are downright awful; the cockney with a superhero
hand sucker punching Bob-in-a-bubble was my least favourite.
This architecturally abstract approach to narrative is
nothing new. Lynch’s recent films have increasingly employed this structure,
edging further away from conventional storytelling and closer in feel to his
bizarre debut, Eraserhead. But Twin Peaks wasn’t one of Lynch’s films:
it was a television show, and its success was as indebted to Lynch’s vision as
it was to Mark Frost’s skilful manipulation of a large cast of quirky
character, so many of whom we cared about, though so few we felt we knew.
Season three disappoints in terms of characterisation. Yes, there are some touching reunions: the stoical Hawk is
superb, virtually unaltered save the shock of silver hair, while Lucy leaps off
the screen as though she’s been waiting for this moment half her life; Jacoby
is great in his new role as ranting radio host Dr Amp, while Nadine’s decision
to free her long-suffering husband Ed is perhaps the only moment that genuinely
feels lifted from the first run. Most powerful are the scenes in which a
cancer-stricken Log Lady calls the sheriff’s office and relays her final
cryptic messages to a quietly understanding Hawk: actress Catherine Coulson
passed away from the disease shortly after, and these moments serve as a moving
cinematic memorial.
Other returning characters fare less well. Alfred seems
exhausted by his anger, while Deputy Andy’s ‘Stan Laurel’ shtick hasn’t aged
well. Both James Hurley and Audrey Horne fall foul of scenes so dreadful that
it’s hard not to feel sorry for them. Audrey spends almost the entire show
trapped in a traumatised argument with an unlikely husband, finally escaping to
the Roadhouse, where she takes the stage to awkwardly rekindle what the emcee
refers to as ‘Audrey’s Dance’ (a title lifted from Badalamenti’s soundtrack), a
scene that doesn’t so much break the fourth wall as reduce it to rubble. As for
the new characters, they range from intriguing to agonisingly awful, though very
few are allowed the space or sincerity to develop to a point where we care
about them.
Yet it’s also possible to argue that this isn’t really the issue;
that the single biggest problem with season three isn’t what’s on the screen,
but what isn’t. Dale Cooper is one of the most compelling characters in
television history: clipped and methodical yet warm and spiritual, with an old-fashioned
style and a quirky sense of humour that have caused some to see him as a direct
representation of Lynch. Beyond this, Kyle McLachlan’s beloved FBI agent is
also the prism through which viewers experience Twin Peaks; he too is an outsider, regarding the people and events
around him with childlike wonder, while simultaneously gathering together the
strands of a great mystery in a way that makes us believe, albeit in vain, that
everything will soon make sense.
McLachlan has been rightly praised for his portrayal in
season three of what are essentially three different characters, but his
presence is problematic. Between the brutal criminality of the dark Dale and
the stumbling amnesia of Dougie Jones, what we actually get is an anti-Cooper,
a step that feels a little like rubbing salt in the wound. We endure disturbing
transmissions from the Red Room in which the One Armed Man pleads with Cooper,
somehow trapped inside Jones, to wake up. Occasionally Dougie expresses a
twinge of recognition – a sheriff’s badge, a bundle of case files, a superhuman
desire for coffee – and our hearts leap. Oh, how we too want Cooper to wake up.
And finally he does wake up, though by then we’re into the final episodes, and
within minutes it becomes clear that this isn’t going to be an eleventh hour
return of the hero, but a cameo by a Cooper who feels jarring and unfamiliar;
who spends all of ten minutes in the town of Twin Peaks; and who serves,
ultimately, as another symbol in Lynch’s shadowy exploration of the unstable
nature of identity.
This is a running theme in Lynch’s work. In recent films he has
upturned narrative convention and had characters slip in and out of other
lives: see the jailed saxophonist in Lost
Highway who wakes up transformed into a car mechanic, or the aspiring actress
in Mulholland Drive who may also be a
downtrodden diner waitress. In light of this, Lynch’s decision to populate Twin Peaks with multiple Dales and
Dianes – even a Laura Palmer who is also a Texan waitress called Carrie Page –
shouldn’t come as a surprise. But it feels profoundly symbolic when a Dale
we’re not sure is Dale takes a Laura who definitely thinks she’s not Laura to
the house she grew up in, and she doesn’t recognise it, and a stranger answers
the door, and the pair of them just stand around looking confused, and we
realise that this is where the show is going to end.
It hurts because, despite their surreal quirks that
occasionally slid into parody, we believed in and cared about those characters.
Yes, there were doppelgängers and alternate dimensions, but they served as a
dark half to highlight the inherent goodness of the community: Major Briggs
reducing his wayward son to tears as he describes his Arcadian vision; Leland
Palmer wailing and clinging to his daughter’s coffin as it descends into the
ground; Ed Hurley jumping to his nephew’s defence when a fight breaks out in
the Roadhouse. Our love for those characters was what made it so unthinkably terrifying
when, in the cliffhanger ending to season two, we realised that it was the dark
Dale who had escaped from the other side – I remember my brother and I sitting
with our mouths open, feeling like our entire world had fallen apart.
We didn’t know it at the time, but things were going to get
so much worse.
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