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Jennifer Lynch writes THE SECRET DIARY OF LAURA PALMER · MUBI Podcast

• 0:00
  Heads up, this episode includes frank talk about sexual violence, some poignant memories of the great David Lynch, and also a few spoilers, but it doesn't include me.
• 0:09
  Your regular host Rico Gagliano.
• 0:11
  For this season I've handed the reins to Simran Hans.
• 0:14
  She is a UK film critic and writer for outlets like The Guardian and The New York Times.
• 0:18
  You're in great hands with her, enjoy.
• 0:24
  What's something useful that you learned from your dad, either in art or in life?
• 0:31
  Oh man.
• 0:32
  I carry a rubber chicken.
• 0:36
  Everywhere I go.
• 0:37
  I use it at work and at home.
• 0:39
  This is Jennifer Lynch, David Lynch's eldest daughter.
• 0:43
  I know and have learned that the only thing I can ever control is how I respond to things.
• 0:49
  And so I try to do that joyfully and with patience and understanding, and I try to set myself in a place of kindness before I respond.
• 1:01
  And I think he taught me that, just watching him live his life, he taught me that.
• 1:09
  And I think his greatest advice to me regarding filmmaking was, and I remember very specifically, he got a little smile on his face and he leaned over so that it was almost a whisper.
• 1:21
  I was being told the secret, and he said"It's common sense.
• 1:25
  That's how you do it. It's common sense." Welcome back to the MUBI Podcast.
• 1:42
  MUBI is the global film company that champions great cinema.
• 1:45
  And on this show, we tell you the stories behind great cinema.
• 1:49
  I'm your guest host, Simran Hans, and this is season nine.
• 1:53
  We're calling it 'Ladies of Lynch.' Conversations about the subversive female characters created by David Lynch and the singular women who helped shape them.
• 2:02
  In today's episode, I'm joined by someone who was very close to Lynch's heart.
• 2:09
  Allow me to introduce myself: I am Jennifer Lynch, author ofThe Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, film and television director, daughter of David Lynch.
• 2:16
  Allow me to introduce myself: Jennifer is a filmmaker and screenwriter of films including 1993's Boxing Helena and the psychological horror Chained.
• 2:24
  Allow me to introduce myself: She also collaborated with her dad throughout his career.
• 2:27
  Allow me to introduce myself: She is full of insights about the women in Lynch's orbit.
• 2:31
  Allow me to introduce myself: He was very good at, you know, creating worlds about women in trouble, but he was very fortunate to have surrounded himself with women who could handle trouble.
• 2:41
  Allow me to introduce myself: And also about his characters.
• 2:43
  Allow me to introduce myself: We'll hear about how she gave his heroine, Laura Palmer, an inner life and inspired one of Lynch's boldest movies.
• 2:50
  Allow me to introduce myself: The diary is the bridge to Fire Walk with Me.
• 2:53
  Allow me to introduce myself: What was it like for her when she was smiling on the outside.
• 2:57
  Allow me to introduce myself: What was going on on the inside?
• 2:59
  Allow me to introduce myself: But first, Jennifer told me about her unique upbringing as the child of two artist parents.
• 3:06
  Allow me to introduce myself: Her mother is the painter Peggy Reavey, who Lynch married when they were both art students in Philadelphia in the 1970s.
• 3:18
  Allow me to introduce myself: When I was growing up, something was always being made.
• 3:21
  Allow me to introduce myself: There was always a story being told, something being created.
• 3:25
  Allow me to introduce myself: Nothing was impossible.
• 3:27
  Allow me to introduce myself: There weren't regular rules at my house.
• 3:30
  Allow me to introduce myself: You know, when I went to other people's houses and saw their refrigerators, I thought both boy, that's a lot of food they have.
• 3:35
  Allow me to introduce myself: And where do they keep their film?
• 3:39
  Allow me to introduce myself: And I never saw any film in anybody else's refrigerator.
• 3:42
  Allow me to introduce myself: You know, there was always film in my refrigerator.
• 3:45
  Allow me to introduce myself: It's true. He made his first short film,Six Men Getting Sick, the year before Jennifer was born, but she didn't start working with him until age 17, when she was a production assistant on Blue Velvet.
• 3:56
  Allow me to introduce myself: Released in 1986, it features an infamous scene.
• 4:00
  Allow me to introduce myself: Actor Isabella Rossellini told me about it on the first episode of this podcast.
• 4:05
  Allow me to introduce myself: In the scene, her character Dorothy, wanders the streets, lost and without any clothes.
• 4:11
  Allow me to introduce myself: He always said he loved seeing people come out of darkness.
• 4:15
  Allow me to introduce myself: The scene in Blue Velvet when Dorothy walks out of the darkness naked, that's based on something that actually happened to my father and his brother when they were younger.
• 4:24
  Allow me to introduce myself: They were walking home from a friend's house, and a woman who'd been in a domestic violence incident came out of her house naked and walked down the street, and they both froze.
• 4:36
  Allow me to introduce myself: My uncle burst into tears, and I think my father just found himself frozen and mystified by this and seemingly helpless, which I think is what that moment is all about.
• 4:49
  Allow me to introduce myself: You know, she can fall into your arms, but what do you do?
• 4:53
  Allow me to introduce myself: How do you fix that?
• 4:57
  Allow me to introduce myself: This idea of a woman in trouble is something Lynch would come back to again and again in his films.
• 5:05
  Allow me to introduce myself: It's the idea at the center of Twin Peaks with its ill fated main character, Laura Palmer.
• 5:10
  Allow me to introduce myself: You damn hypocrites make me sick.Everybody knew she was in trouble,but we didn't do anything.You want to know who killed Laura?You did!We all did. It comes up in films like Wild at Heart,Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive. And Lynch's final film, Inland Empire, even has the tagline "A woman in trouble." I think that a woman who isn't in trouble didn't interest him.
• 5:39
  Allow me to introduce myself: There was mystery in a woman in trouble.
• 5:42
  Allow me to introduce myself: There was perhaps something he could do.
• 5:45
  Allow me to introduce myself: The little boy that the man you know inside him could do or create or make better or investigate.
• 5:53
  Allow me to introduce myself: But I-- you know, he had such a really perfect childhood and such a perfect mom and dad and such a white picket fence life that what interested him was, you know, what was really going on beneath that in the house next door.
• 6:11
  Allow me to introduce myself: And so a woman in trouble is, I think he thought it was mysterious and sexy and, and women who were confident and had it together.
• 6:21
  Allow me to introduce myself: He didn't get turned on by them as much.
• 6:26
  Allow me to introduce myself: You know what's exciting about that?
• 6:31
  Allow me to introduce myself: You know, this series is about David's female collaborators and the women that he worked with.
• 6:38
  Allow me to introduce myself: And there are a lot of people who he worked with for a long time, people like Patricia Norris and Joanna Ray and Sabrina Southerland and Mary Sweeney and many others.
• 6:48
  Allow me to introduce myself: That's just a handful.
• 6:50
  Allow me to introduce myself: What do you think is the particular quality that those women share or have in common?
• 6:57
  Allow me to introduce myself: I think they are the opposite of women in trouble.
• 7:01
  Allow me to introduce myself: They're incredibly empathetic, incredibly strong, thoughtful, and they are listeners.
• 7:08
  Allow me to introduce myself: And as a result, he was able to listen to them and really hear them.
• 7:12
  Allow me to introduce myself: Women are full of good ideas, especially when they're not in trouble.
• 7:16
  Allow me to introduce myself: And I think he loved having women in his life who would make him ask a question of himself, when otherwise he might not.
• 7:25
  Allow me to introduce myself: And they were able to make him be specific when he otherwise might not have been specific.
• 7:31
  Allow me to introduce myself: You know. Well, okay, David, but what does that look like?
• 7:34
  Allow me to introduce myself: You know, I have to design this.
• 7:34
  Allow me to introduce myself: What does that look like?
• 7:38
  Allow me to introduce myself: And it forced him to sort of work through things in a way that, you know, worked that muscle of his, in his head that he so enjoyed working.
• 7:47
  Allow me to introduce myself: He was very good at, you know, creating worlds about women in trouble.
• 7:52
  Allow me to introduce myself: But he was very fortunate to have surrounded himself with women who could handle trouble and could handle him.
• 8:00
  Allow me to introduce myself: It also seems like he really took women's creativity incredibly seriously.
• 8:04
  Allow me to introduce myself: One of the amazing things about my father, aside from the fact that he was incredible when you had his attention life was perfect.
• 8:14
  Allow me to introduce myself: You know, you never felt so seen and accepted.
• 8:17
  Allow me to introduce myself: The feeling of falling in love is very much what it was like to be seen by my father and appreciated by my father.
• 8:24
  Allow me to introduce myself: And women all over the world fell in love with him.
• 8:28
  Allow me to introduce myself: I knew it was rare because I sought that look that acceptance, that excitement.
• 8:35
  Allow me to introduce myself: Everywhere else in my life and never quite found it.
• 8:40
  Allow me to introduce myself: I think, you know, that's the romance of the creative spirit he had.
• 8:44
  Allow me to introduce myself: We would all love to be seen that way.
• 8:44
  Allow me to introduce myself: And he was so charming.
• 8:48
  Allow me to introduce myself: And when he said, "Golly gee that was fantastic" he really meant it.
• 8:52
  Allow me to introduce myself: You know, pretty much anyone who's worked with your dad will tell you how much he revered women.
• 8:57
  Allow me to introduce myself: And I think you can see that in his films, too.
• 8:59
  Allow me to introduce myself: That was one of dad's gifts, too, is that he could make every woman seem magical.
• 9:05
  Allow me to introduce myself: And I think he's helped many people fall in love with each other and things because he was able to see the beauty in something that otherwise might not have been instantly beautiful.
• 9:16
  Allow me to introduce myself: You mentioned Blue Velvet's, Dorothy Vallens, which is such a dark role when you think of Isabella Rossellini's portrayal of her, what strikes you about it now?
• 9:25
  Allow me to introduce myself: Isabella is one of the most incredible human beings that's ever walked the earth.
• 9:30
  Allow me to introduce myself: That role could have worked with less because it was such a dynamic character, but she really went there, and she not only in the scene where she was naked did she get naked, but she was naked in my mind the whole time.
• 9:46
  Allow me to introduce myself: She really exposed herself, and I think it's a testament to how much she trusted my father and how much she saw him trust her.
• 9:57
  Allow me to introduce myself: They had a great time playing together, and as they did in life.
• 10:03
  Allow me to introduce myself: Maybe we can jump ahead to Twin Peaks, since it's got this cast of characters full of women who are both troubled and strong and brave.
• 10:11
  Allow me to introduce myself: What's your earliest memory of the show?
• 10:13
  Allow me to introduce myself: My earliest memory is Dad taking off to Seattle to shoot a pilot called Northwest Passage and he was really excited.
• 10:21
  Allow me to introduce myself: There was a lot of joy for him in it.
• 10:26
  Allow me to introduce myself: I had read the pilot, so I was always like,"Dad, that's, you know, freaking incredible.
• 10:31
  Allow me to introduce myself: "I can't wait to see what you do with it." I was specifically anticipating the mood and, like, in the woods at night, they tried to light the woods and my dad said, "No. Flashlight." And they said "No, but we can't see anything." He said, "Yes, I know. Flashlight." That's what's terrifying.
• 10:53
  Allow me to introduce myself: Jennifer would play her own role in creating an important part of the show's atmosphere, thanks to an incident from years before.
• 11:01
  Allow me to introduce myself: She was 12 years old and her father had picked her up from school.
• 11:05
  Allow me to introduce myself: I must have looked like I was ruminating on something.
• 11:07
  Allow me to introduce myself: And he asked what was on her mind.
• 11:09
  Allow me to introduce myself: And when asked, I said, "I just wish I could find another girl's diary and pick"it up and take it home and read it." She wanted to know if other adolescent girls felt like her, to see if they were as afraid and wanting and confused as she was.
• 11:25
  Allow me to introduce myself: And he remembered that.
• 11:27
  Allow me to introduce myself: And when I was 21 and he was making this show, he called me and he said,"Do you remember that day you told me you wanted to find another girl's diary?
• 11:35
  Allow me to introduce myself: "Well, would you write Laura's secret diary?" In 1990, the first season of Twin Peaks had been a massive hit.
• 11:42
  Allow me to introduce myself: And that autumn, Jennifer's novelThe Secret Diary of Laura Palmer reached number four on the New York Times Best Seller Paperback list.
• 11:50
  Allow me to introduce myself: The book was going to have a huge impact on the rest of the series, as well as on Lynch's spin-off movieFire Walk with Me.
• 12:00
  Allow me to introduce myself: It wasn't Jennifer's first stab at writing, though.
• 12:02
  Allow me to introduce myself: I had written a screenplay forBoxing Helena when I was 19, and I was on my second attempt at trying to make the film and, going to the production office every day and trying to get cast.
• 12:16
  Allow me to introduce myself: And so while that was brewing, were you writing The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer on the side?
• 12:21
  Allow me to introduce myself: I'm a doer of many things.
• 12:22
  Allow me to introduce myself: It sort of helps me think better about something if I also am thinking of something else.
• 12:28
  Allow me to introduce myself: I got to fulfill a wish of my own since childhood, and I got to work with my father and for my father for this show where, you know, the world was...
• 12:40
  Allow me to introduce myself: people were actually staying home at night to see the show.
• 12:44
  Allow me to introduce myself: And I was, as always, inspired by him and inspired by the idea of, yes, doing something that wasn't trying to get this film off the ground again.
• 12:55
  Allow me to introduce myself: And I was, you know, giddy with excitement.
• 12:59
  Allow me to introduce myself: I knew I needed to start on her 12th birthday, and I knew I knew she was going to die in the end.
• 13:05
  Allow me to introduce myself: I knew what was coming.
• 13:07
  Allow me to introduce myself: I was one of three air breathing mammals to know who killed Laura.
• 13:11
  Allow me to introduce myself: I was told not to give it away, to follow the characters who were in the show, and to build Laura's inner life and her sexual awakening and her drug use and her thoughts.
• 13:25
  Allow me to introduce myself: I find that really easy to digest.
• 13:28
  Allow me to introduce myself: You know, letters and diary entries.
• 13:28
  Allow me to introduce myself: I find it really exciting.
• 13:31
  Allow me to introduce myself: I went into a dream for, I don't know how long while this was happening.And it was like nothing bad ever happened to me.Everything disappeared and I suddenly didn't care if I ever sawDonna, mom, dad, anyone ever again. I think Sheryl Lee did a beautiful job on the audiobook.
• 13:51
  Allow me to introduce myself: I think that's particularly haunting.
• 13:53
  Allow me to introduce myself: This warm feeling of being needed,wanted, and special like I was a treasure,was all I wanted to feel, forever. There was a little fantasy I had that Audible would ask me to play Bob in the audiobook, but they didn't.
• 14:15
  Allow me to introduce myself: I hope somebody from Audible is listening.
• 14:17
  Allow me to introduce myself: Yes. Me too.
• 14:21
  Allow me to introduce myself: I want to talk a little bit about the character of Laura Palmer.
• 14:23
  Allow me to introduce myself: Can you describe how we'd come to know her or how we'd seen her in the pilot and in those early episodes?
• 14:30
  Allow me to introduce myself: In the pilot, she is a homecoming queen who is now lost to a mysterious murder.
• 14:37
  Allow me to introduce myself: Stolen from us, stolen from what feels to be a perfect town.
• 14:42
  Allow me to introduce myself: And she seems to be a perfect girl.
• 14:42
  Allow me to introduce myself: And the devastation of that.
• 14:47
  Allow me to introduce myself: So you sort of fall into a world that is beautiful but broken.
• 14:52
  Allow me to introduce myself: And we're guessing at what her daily life was like based on the reactions of other people, which I think is a really nice way to introduce somebody.
• 15:00
  Allow me to introduce myself: It's very mysterious, and it feels like you're putting something together and involves the audience, and I was able to fill in those blanks in her diary.
• 15:11
  Allow me to introduce myself: You know, this is what we thought, what everybody else thought was going on for Laura.
• 15:15
  Allow me to introduce myself: Here's what actually was going on for Laura.
• 15:17
  Allow me to introduce myself: What were the threads of Laura that you wanted to pull on?
• 15:21
  Allow me to introduce myself: Because she's still kind of an outline in that first episode.
• 15:25
  Allow me to introduce myself: - You know, she's an image.
• 15:25
  Allow me to introduce myself: - She's an image.
• 15:27
  Allow me to introduce myself: I knew that she was, just due to the nature of the pilot itself.
• 15:31
  Allow me to introduce myself: I knew she was in trouble.
• 15:31
  Allow me to introduce myself: I knew she had demons she was fighting, And I sort of in many ways, young adolescent girls are fighting demons no matter what their life is like.
• 15:44
  Allow me to introduce myself: It's it's a time of confusion and masking and self-discovery.
• 15:50
  Allow me to introduce myself: And I wanted to really involve us in how innocent her 12th birthday entry is versus her later entries, once she's been dealing with this person who's hurting her.
• 16:06
  Allow me to introduce myself: July 22nd, 1984.
• 16:06
  Allow me to introduce myself: Dear diary.My name is Laura Palmer, and of just three short minutes ago,I officially turned 12 years old.It is July 22nd, 1984 and I have had such a good day.You were the last gift. When you think back on, you know, writing that at such a young age yourself, how do you reflect on it now?
• 16:35
  Allow me to introduce myself: I got lost in it.
• 16:36
  Allow me to introduce myself: I knew there were to be pages missing, and so I purposefully decided what was on those pages and then had those disappear just so that I was never giving it away, but that I had at some point allowed her to have some sort of revelatory experience.
• 16:51
  Allow me to introduce myself: She suspects certain things.
• 16:54
  Allow me to introduce myself: I think it's fun to read. It holds up now.
• 16:56
  Allow me to introduce myself: It'll always be a young girl's diary.
• 17:00
  Allow me to introduce myself: But just like the town of Twin Peaks, the book would be plagued by disappearances.
• 17:06
  Allow me to introduce myself: That story is coming up in just a minute.
• 17:06
  Allow me to introduce myself: Stay with us.
• 17:16
  Allow me to introduce myself: All right, everybody, your regular host Rico Gagliano here, takin' just a moment to tell you about MUBI.
• 17:22
  Allow me to introduce myself: It is the global film company that champions great cinema, bringing it to you wherever you are, in as many ways as we possibly can.
• 17:28
  Allow me to introduce myself: We stream movies, we produce them, we release them in theaters. Movies from any country, from legendary auteurs or brilliant first timers, we've always got something new for you to discover.
• 17:37
  Allow me to introduce myself: And after listening to this episode, I have a feeling you will want to discover or maybe rediscover Twin Peaks, the show that brought Laura Palmer to life in all her sad, damaged beauty.
• 17:48
  Allow me to introduce myself: It was also just a total reimagining of prime time TV and all its genres.
• 17:53
  Allow me to introduce myself: This was a show that was a soap opera, a noir, a supernatural thriller.
• 17:58
  Allow me to introduce myself: Some say it was one of the first police procedurals that spent an entire season dealing with a single crime, mostly to have shows where a detective solved a crime per episode.
• 18:07
  Allow me to introduce myself: I can tell you, I was an undergrad when Twin Peaks came out in 1990, and I remember every episode was an event.
• 18:15
  Allow me to introduce myself: It was one of the very few network shows we would take a break from being indie snobs to watch, and you can relive those days or experience the show for the very first time by watching Twin Peaks on MUBI.
• 18:26
  Allow me to introduce myself: We've got every episode the first two seasons,
• 18:29
  plus 2017's <i: Twin Peaks>a limited event series.
• 18:32
  plus 2017's <i: Twin Peaks>Subscribe to MUBI at mubi.com and have at it.
• 18:36
  plus 2017's <i: Twin Peaks>Also, if you happen to be listening to this episode on Thursday, September 25th, 2025 and you are in the LA area, you should know that I will be at Vidiot Cinema in Eagle Rock to host a screening of David Lynch's Lost Highway, maybe the most disturbing of his movies, and a roller coaster ride through the dark side of my adopted hometown of Los Angeles.
• 18:58
  plus 2017's <i: Twin Peaks>I love it anyway.
• 18:59
  plus 2017's <i: Twin Peaks>The screening is sold out, but there are limited walk up tickets available starting 45 minutes before the show.
• 19:05
  It is at 7: 30 p.m.
• 19:05
  It is at 7: Thursday the 25th at Vidiots.
• 19:09
  It is at 7: As usual, we have more info and links to everything you need in the show notes of this episode.
• 19:14
  It is at 7: Speaking of which, let's get back to Simran and Jennifer and the rest of this episode.
• 19:21
  It is at 7: So Jennifer was writing The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer in the early 90s, an era before Google Docs, a time of floppy disks CD ROMs and their attendant disasters.
• 19:34
  It is at 7: The first draft was completed in just under three weeks and then disappeared off the disks.
• 19:40
  It is at 7: And they said, there's nothing there.
• 19:42
  It is at 7: And I was devastated.
• 19:42
  It is at 7: So I went back to the drawing board.
• 19:45
  It is at 7: We did all we could to try and get the information off the disks.
• 19:49
  It is at 7: And I was certain that everybody thought I hadn't written a word and that I was just saying it was on there.
• 19:56
  It is at 7: And so devastated, I dove back in and wrote it again.
• 20:01
  It is at 7: Then I traveled to New York with that disk and arrived in New York with that disk empty as well.
• 20:08
  It is at 7: - You're joking.
• 20:08
  It is at 7: - Yeah. No. Swear to God.
• 20:11
  It is at 7: And, you know, you can see in people's faces that they think you're a liar.
• 20:17
  It is at 7: And the good news is, is that I had made quite a bit of handwritten notes and I had the shape of an entire book in bits and pieces.
• 20:27
  It is at 7: So over nine days in a hotel room in New York with an editor sitting by when I needed her, God bless her, I slept very little and wrote the diary again, and I think it ended up giving it some edge it might not otherwise have had, because I was sleep deprived at certain points, and Laura's on cocaine and sleep deprived and that sort of vibration, the body has when it hasn't had enough sleep or, you know, when terror is afoot.
• 20:57
  It is at 7: And then finally, there it was.
• 20:59
  It is at 7: I wrote it in real time in front of the editor.
• 21:03
  It is at 7: You know, the story goes about Sheryl Lee that she was hired for this small but really important role.
• 21:10
  It is at 7: What do you think it is or was about Sheryl that made David want to develop this character that they had created together?
• 21:19
  It is at 7: You believe that she was pure entirely.
• 21:23
  It is at 7: You'd also believe that she has a darker side.
• 21:25
  It is at 7: There's an intelligence to her and a wisdom that only comes from trauma.
• 21:30
  It is at 7: She's wholesome, she's Americana, and yet she's got an edge to her.
• 21:36
  It is at 7: You know what I mean?
• 21:37
  It is at 7: And I think that it became very obvious to my father in his conversations with her, that she could go dark.
• 21:43
  It is at 7: For you, sort of, when you have watched it, what are the the sort of ways you think that she's woven your novel into her performance?
• 21:52
  It is at 7: She can do things like violently scream into the camera and terrify you deep into your soul, but she can also look at you and smile.
• 22:02
  It is at 7: But you can tell she's masking tremendous pain.
• 22:05
  It is at 7: So she's layered.
• 22:06
  It is at 7: And I wanted to give her ammunition to mask.
• 22:11
  It is at 7: I think a lot of being a young girl is pretending everything's okay when you're not sure that it is.
• 22:16
  It is at 7: Pretending you're not afraid when you are afraid.
• 22:19
  It is at 7: There's a lot of fear in being a young girl, let alone a young girl who's being tormented.
• 22:24
  It is at 7: And she's again, she's such an intelligent and strong performer, and she's so thoughtful about what she does that, you know, she helped inform what I was saying so that I could help inform what she was saying.
• 22:39
  It is at 7: It was a nice dance.
• 22:40
  It is at 7: You know, from your perspective as a filmmaker, I'm really interested to hear how you think David was able to give voice to Laura's experience as a victim of incest, of abuse in this visceral, moving way.
• 22:57
  It is at 7: Because, you know, when you do it on the page in the book, you have language, right, as your tool.
• 23:01
  It is at 7: So it's direct.
• 23:04
  It is at 7: But when he expresses it in the film, it's not so much about the words on the page and the script, but it's about the atmosphere that's created and the performance that is created as well.
• 23:16
  It is at 7: What tools do you see David using to create that atmosphere?
• 23:21
  It is at 7: Oh, God. You know, I mean, he's-- he was able to tell the story, in my opinion, visually and emotionally.
• 23:29
  It is at 7: Perfectly, without words.
• 23:31
  It is at 7: Simply because he knows what it is to be human.
• 23:34
  It is at 7: And he knows what it is to see something beautiful fall apart.
• 23:39
  It is at 7: And he knows fear, and he knows irreparable damage.
• 23:44
  It is at 7: And he's able to visually show you the disassembly of a young girl's soul.
• 23:52
  It is at 7: You know my father, I can't believe he's not here anymore, was so always curious and always looking to follow an idea, Trust an idea. Follow his instincts.
• 24:06
  It is at 7: And here was a beautiful girl that he knew had a darkness about her.
• 24:10
  It is at 7: And that she was being violated by somebody very close to her.
• 24:14
  It is at 7: And what does that look like?
• 24:14
  It is at 7: Why doesn't she know that?
• 24:17
  It is at 7: And what is it like when she discovers it?
• 24:20
  It is at 7: It strikes me as radical that he took that pain so seriously.
• 24:25
  It is at 7: I think a lot of people would not be able to look a character like Laura in the eye and face that pain, and face that devastation.
• 24:35
  It is at 7: And I think that's the thing that I take away from a film like Fire Walk With Me.
• 24:40
  It is at 7: - It is a tough watch.
• 24:40
  It is at 7: - It's a tough watch.
• 24:43
  It is at 7: It is the best film, in my opinion, about child abuse ever, though.
• 24:49
  It is at 7: Fire Walk with Me was Lynch's feature length prequel to Twin Peaks.
• 24:53
  It is at 7: It focuses on the last week of Laura Palmer's life and details the night of her murder.
• 24:58
  It is at 7: It's truly terrifying, and that's what my father was so brilliant at throughout his career, you know, as well as in his paintings, there was a way he was able to demonstrate things: loss, gain, hope, fear in ways that felt like they were from our own subconscious and we related to them.
• 25:20
  It is at 7: The movie ends with Laura's death, but the film presents this as a redemptive moment.
• 25:25
  It is at 7: She's visited by an angel and finally released from her pain, but Laura Palmer continued to haunt Lynch long after Fire Walk With Me.
• 25:34
  It is at 7: It seems like he was grappling with the question of whether a person can ever truly escape their trauma.
• 25:40
  And years later, in <i: Twin Peaks>The Return he has the character in a way, relive that trauma.
• 25:47
  - As Jennifer puts it: - It's forever.
• 25:56
  - As Jennifer puts it: Now, this is your spoiler warning for any listeners who haven't yet watched
• 25:59
  <i: Twin Peaks>The Return.
• 26:01
  <i: Twin Peaks>In the final episode, Agent Cooper takes a character called Carrie Page to Laura Palmer's childhood home.
• 26:07
  <i: Twin Peaks>When they get there, he asks to see Laura's mother.
• 26:11
  <i: Twin Peaks>Oh, and Carrie Page, well, she looks exactly like Laura Palmer.
• 26:17
  <i: Twin Peaks>FBI...I'm special agent Dale Cooper.
• 26:19
  <i: Twin Peaks>Is Sarah Palmer here?Who? The woman at the door doesn't know what he's talking about.
• 26:28
  <i: Twin Peaks>Cooper and Carrie turned to leave, but then out on the street, something dawns on him.
• 26:35
  <i: Twin Peaks>What year is this? We don't know if Carrie Page actually is Laura Palmer, but as Carrie gazes at the house, she suddenly reacts like it's a portal to a memory, Laura's memory, and back to her tortured childhood.
• 26:59
  <i: Twin Peaks>And that is the sort of toughest, deepest sort of philosophical life lesson, right?
• 27:05
  <i: Twin Peaks>That we we can't escape these things.
• 27:05
  <i: Twin Peaks>Or that was my takeaway from it.
• 27:09
  <i: Twin Peaks>Absolutely. I think the, you know, there are many perspectives on hell or torment that would suggest you end up cycling over and over and over again on some horrible event.
• 27:22
  <i: Twin Peaks>Something you did, something that happened to you and that you will spend eternity in that place unless somehow, magically, you are released from it.
• 27:31
  <i: Twin Peaks>And I think my father had a lot of fun with, you know, playing with the idea that what if that was the case for Laura?
• 27:38
  <i: Twin Peaks>What if she found herself, you know, completely trapped in that, in the realization and in the moment of dying?
• 27:45
  <i: Twin Peaks>You didn't understand what that was all about.Never mind, neither did I. This is a bizarre mess of a movie,a thing of mood, atmosphere and inscrutability. At the time, Fire Walk with Me was not well received.
• 27:57
  <i: Twin Peaks>Here's the legendary British film critic Barry Norman, reviewing the film on the BBC.
• 28:02
  <i: Twin Peaks>I watched it all in a state of seething irritation, and yet, well,I did quite enjoy it afterwards. It got bad reviews when it premiered in Cannes and people didn't really like or they didn't get how confrontational and bleak the film was without the sort of coziness of all the fun, quirky characters of Twin Peaks.
• 28:21
  <i: Twin Peaks>You strip that away, and this is a story about a girl who has been raped by her dad.
• 28:27
  <i: Twin Peaks>Again, for me, I had this hope that had people read the diary, they would have understood the film better.
• 28:34
  <i: Twin Peaks>- Yes.
• 28:34
  <i: Twin Peaks>- I think that might have been what was missing for people when it was first misunderstood.
• 28:40
  <i: Twin Peaks>The diary is is the bridge to Fire Walk with Me.
• 28:44
  <i: Twin Peaks>I think that you're much more open to a different world than the first two seasons.
• 28:50
  <i: Twin Peaks>You know, knowing that you're going inside the real story.
• 28:53
  <i: Twin Peaks>What was it like for her when she was smiling on the outside?
• 28:57
  <i: Twin Peaks>What was going on on the inside?
• 29:00
  <i: Twin Peaks>In Fire Walk with Me Laura's best friend Donna asks her a strange question.
• 29:05
  <i: Twin Peaks>Do you think that if you were falling in spacethat you would slow down after a while or go faster and faster? The camera tightens into a close up on Laura's face, her eyes blank and glassy.
• 29:20
  <i: Twin Peaks>Faster and faster. And for a long time you wouldn't feel anything.
• 29:31
  <i: Twin Peaks>Then you'd burst into fire. Forever.
• 29:40
  <i: Twin Peaks>And the angels wouldn't help you.
• 29:47
  <i: Twin Peaks>Because they've all gone away.
• 29:49
  <i: Twin Peaks>That's a-- poor girl could barely catch her breath even when she was sitting still.
• 29:53
  <i: Twin Peaks>The amount of terror and wreckage and her own guilt.
• 29:57
  <i: Twin Peaks>I was devastated that people didn't receive it well.
• 30:00
  <i: Twin Peaks>I think it hurt dad's heart, and he wished they had understood it.
• 30:05
  <i: Twin Peaks>I think they were expecting Twin Peaks rather than expecting what were the inner workings of Laura's tragedy.
• 30:12
  <i: Twin Peaks>We go inside Laura and her life and were with her holding her hand when she realizes what's happening, and very clearly she's been pushing that away for years.
• 30:24
  <i: Twin Peaks>Giving it a different face and protecting herself and him, you know.
• 30:29
  <i: Twin Peaks>And the owls are not what they seem.
• 30:32
  <i: Twin Peaks>The owls are not what they seem. This is one of the cryptic messages that pops up in the second series of the show.
• 30:41
  <i: Twin Peaks>It's never explained, but in the town of Twin Peaks, the owls mean something.
• 30:47
  <i: Twin Peaks>The owls are not what they seem. They're really not.
• 30:52
  <i: Twin Peaks>They're really not.
• 30:54
  <i: Twin Peaks>They're really not.
• 30:55
  <i: Twin Peaks>After my father passed away, I was staying at his house'cause I was evacuated due to the fires.
• 31:00
  <i: Twin Peaks>And that night outside, my first night there, outside the window, there was an owl who was so beautifully and perfectly an owl.
• 31:11
  <i: Twin Peaks>All night long.
• 31:12
  <i: Twin Peaks>And, I know I drifted in and out of sleep, but was sort of in this sort of space of bewilderment and grief.
• 31:20
  <i: Twin Peaks>But I felt like he was right there.
• 31:20
  <i: Twin Peaks>I was like, "Thanks, Dad." Well, you know, it's still relatively fresh, and I can't imagine how hard it's been.
• 31:31
  <i: Twin Peaks>I still, you know, go to text him and call him.
• 31:35
  <i: Twin Peaks>And I can't believe that he's not going to pick up or text right back.
• 31:39
  <i: Twin Peaks>It's, you know, there's life with my father in it, and then there's life after my father left. Very recently, he had asked me to direct a script of his, which sadly never came to be.
• 31:54
  <i: Twin Peaks>But I was so overwhelmed and touched that he would give me that script and that he thought I could make something beautiful out of it.
• 32:03
  <i: Twin Peaks>And he was shocked that I was surprised.
• 32:06
  <i: Twin Peaks>And, I said, you know, "I'm always gonna fangirl over you, Dad." You know, I was saying, you know, there's there's there's always going to be a part of me that's like"You think I can do that?" I think he taught me to ultimately believe in myself and to learn by doing.
• 32:25
  <i: Twin Peaks>You know what I mean?
• 32:25
  <i: Twin Peaks>The learning is in the doing.
• 32:27
  <i: Twin Peaks>And what's something that you hope that maybe you taught him?
• 32:31
  <i: Twin Peaks>He used to say, "My Jen-o, a heart of gold, mouth of a sailor." I think I taught him to giggle in ways he might not have otherwise.
• 32:47
  <i: Twin Peaks>Throughout his life, there was a lot of talk about David Lynch as this sort of eccentric artist who lived in a bubble.
• 32:54
  <i: Twin Peaks>He didn't like the smell of cooking in his house, and he rarely watched other people's movies.
• 32:59
  <i: Twin Peaks>This was a man committed to his own art life.
• 33:04
  <i: Twin Peaks>But part of Lynch's art life was his family, and being a father shaped his humor, his humanity, and his work.
• 33:13
  <i: Twin Peaks>I think I taught him to have some patience.
• 33:17
  <i: Twin Peaks>I think I helped him problem solve moments of frustration just by existing, just by being a child who needed a father.
• 33:26
  <i: Twin Peaks>Maybe in the same way that he taught me to, you know, come at things from love, and control my response.
• 33:32
  <i: Twin Peaks>I taught him the same thing.
• 33:37
  <i: Twin Peaks>And that's this week's episode of the MUBI Podcast.
• 33:40
  <i: Twin Peaks>Follow us to hear more stories about the ladies of Lynch.
• 33:44
  <i: Twin Peaks>On the show next week we'll hear from someone who knew David Lynch better than most.
• 33:48
  <i: Twin Peaks>He was not happy a lot of times to see me, because I would be the person who would be telling him he was not allowed to have the technocrane for a week, but he could have it one day.
• 33:58
  <i: Twin Peaks>And what day did he want it?
• 34:01
  <i: Twin Peaks>Our guest is Sabrina Sutherland, Lynch's longtime producer and right hand woman.
• 34:05
  <i: Twin Peaks>Follow us so you don't miss it.
• 34:07
  <i: Twin Peaks>Meanwhile, if you love the show, leave a five star rating or review wherever you listen.
• 34:13
  <i: Twin Peaks>And if you've got questions, comments, or perhaps your own rubber chicken, our email is podcast@mubi.com And now let's roll credits.
• 34:22
  <i: Twin Peaks>This show is written and hosted by me, Simran Hans.
• 34:26
  <i: Twin Peaks>Ciara McEniff is our Producer with help from Assistant Producer Kat Kowalczyk.
• 34:31
  <i: Twin Peaks>Christian Coons is our editor.
• 34:32
  <i: Twin Peaks>Our Booking Producer is Ollie Charles.
• 34:35
  <i: Twin Peaks>Martin Austwick composed our original theme music.
• 34:38
  <i: Twin Peaks>Special thanks to Maquita Peters and our friends at NPR West Studios who recorded Jennifer Paul Smith who recorded me.
• 34:45
  <i: Twin Peaks>This show is executive produced by Efe Çakarel, Rico Gagliano, Michael Tacca and Daniel Kasman.
• 34:53
  <i: Twin Peaks>And finally, to watch the best in cinema, subscribe to mubi.com Thanks for listening.
• 34:59
  <i: Twin Peaks>And remember, the owls are not what they seem.