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Transcript

Mark Frost founds TWIN PEAKS · MUBI Podcast

• 0:00
  Heads up, this episode includes adult themes of sexuality and violence, a few spoilers and some memories of the great David Lynch.
• 0:07
  But it doesn't include me, your regular host Rico Gagliano.
• 0:08
  For this season of the show I am handing over the hosting reins to UK film critic and culture writer Simran Hans.
• 0:17
  You can find her writing on the regular in The Guardian, New York Times and Sight and Sound magazine.
• 0:22
  You are in very good hands with her. Enjoy.
• 0:28
  Something happened to the writer Mark Frost when he was 13 years old.
• 0:32
  Something that's haunted him for years.
• 0:35
  It was 1966, and he was living with his family in Southern California, where his dad worked selling real estate.
• 0:42
  That year, they became close with his boss's family.
• 0:45
  The head of the realty firm had two kids, a daughter who was a year older than I was and a son who was a year younger, and we were great friends with both of them.
• 0:55
  Mark had a bit of a crush on the daughter, so when he found out she was moving away to boarding school he felt his heart sink.
• 1:02
  Susan was her name, was going to go that fall to a boarding school in Vancouver, Canada.
• 1:11
  And she left at the end of that summer for her first year of high school.
• 1:15
  And it was some 6 or 7 months later that the the family got a call that she had been abducted and murdered at the school by an escaped lunatic.
• 1:34
  The news was devastating.
• 1:36
  Susan's parents made the journey to Canada to retrieve their daughter's body, while her brother stayed at home with Mark and his family.
• 1:43
  He hadn't been told what had happened to his sister.
• 1:46
  We knew about this and he didn't, and there was something about the experience of that weekend of holding that information, but not being able to share it with this close friend of mine that was kind of devastating and it stayed with me my whole life.
• 2:08
  Years later, Mark Frost was developing a TV series with the filmmaker David Lynch.
• 2:13
  You might have heard of it.
• 2:13
  It was called Twin Peaks.
• 2:17
  The show begins with an image of a teenage girl washed up on the beach.
• 2:22
  Her eyes are closed like she's sleeping, but her lips are lifeless and gray.
• 2:29
  The girl's name is Laura Palmer, and her murder devastates the town of Twin Peaks.
• 2:35
  So when we started talking about who's the girl on the beach, this was the story that came up for me.
• 2:42
  And I think it was why I felt it personally, it had so much emotional impact, at least as far as I was concerned.
• 2:59
  Welcome back to the MUBI Podcast.
• 3:01
  MUBI is the global film company that champions great cinema, and on this show we tell you the stories behind great cinema.
• 3:08
  I'm your guest host, Simran Hans, and this is season nine.
• 3:12
  We're calling it Ladies of Lynch, a mini series about the subversive female characters created by David Lynch and the singular women who helped shape them.
• 3:21
  In today's episode, I'm joined by Mark Frost.
• 3:24
  I'm the co-creator, co-executive producer, principal writer, and showrunner of Twin Peaks.
• 3:30
  If you've watched Twin Peaks and if you haven't, it's currently streaming on MUBI, you'll know that it features an incredible cast of memorable, funny, and idiosyncratic female characters.
• 3:42
  Coming up, you'll hear me talk to Mark about how he and Lynch developed most of them.
• 3:47
  From Audrey Horne...
• 3:48
  The powerful, swaggering businessman should have a teenage daughter who completely befuddles and perplexes and bedevils him.
• 3:56
  To Josie Packard.
• 3:57
  We played with the trope of the Asian woman who was a woman of mystery, but we tried to do more with it than that.
• 4:04
  But I started things off by asking Mark how these characters compared to the rest of network TV when the show first aired on ABC in 1989.
• 4:16
  Well, I mean, they were wildly out of step with what was going on.
• 4:20
  This was remember, the show debuted not long after the kind of the heyday of the 80s nighttime soap. Dynasty and Dallas and The Love Boat and Knots Landing.
• 4:31
  And it was all these people with big hair and lots of big emotions, and it was melodrama, basically, it was nighttime soap operas.
• 4:39
  Which was the antithesis of what we wanted to do.
• 4:42
  We-- that was ostensibly what ABC had asked for.
• 4:47
  They wanted a nighttime soap, and we gave them something quite different.
• 4:52
  They could still sort of see it categorically as something that they could maybe market that way, but they were utterly baffled by it in every other department.
• 5:01
  It didn't fit any of their parameters, and we took that as a very encouraging sign, actually.
• 5:07
  In fact, Frost and Lynch were first brought together by another story that didn't fit easy parameters about a woman who didn't either.
• 5:17
  It was back in 1985, and the two were both represented by the same talent agency, CAA.
• 5:23
  A new biography of Marilyn Monroe, written by the British journalist Anthony Summers, had just come out and CAA had scored the rights.
• 5:33
  The agency paired them up to make a film based on the book, with Jessica Lange set to star as Marilyn.
• 5:38
  First, though, they figured it'd be a good idea to meet.
• 5:41
  And it was instantly clear that we got along as David used to say, like Ike and Mike and we made each other laugh.
• 5:51
  We had the same taste in movies.
• 5:53
  We had the same kind of favorite classic movies that we liked to draw from.
• 5:59
  And we were both drawn to the story of of Marilyn.
• 6:03
  She represented such a powerful archetype and the kind of the American and Hollywood mythology of its day.
• 6:11
  There was quite a lot more to her than what people knew about just from watching her on film or perceiving her as a celebrity.
• 6:19
  I turned the script in we were all feeling very positive about it, to United Artists on a Friday,
• 6:25
  and on Monday morning at about 9: 00, I got a call from the producer saying the studio had already put it in turnaround.
• 6:33
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Turns out Bobby Kennedy's widow sat on the board of United Artists, and she didn't like the part in the book or the script about her late husband's alleged affair with Marilyn.
• 6:42
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Needless to say...
• 6:44
  and on Monday morning at about 9: They said, absolutely not. We can't make this movie here. I'm sorry.
• 6:47
  and on Monday morning at about 9: You would have thought they might have read the book first before they bought the rights, but that's Hollywood.
• 6:56
  and on Monday morning at about 9: So we didn't end up doing that project.
• 6:58
  and on Monday morning at about 9: But we had such a fun time working together.
• 7:01
  and on Monday morning at about 9: We started collaborating on a couple of other projects as well.
• 7:04
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And when you sort of referenced that archetype that Marilyn Monroe represented, how would you describe that?
• 7:11
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Well, she was in some ways the ultimate objectified woman in terms of the male gaze in the postwar era.
• 7:21
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And although there was, as I said, a great deal more to her than we knew, she was often cast in these kind of stereotypical roles and quickly became the Hollywood blond goddess of the 1950s.
• 7:34
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Well, I thought it was an interesting moment to bring up and reflect on because, you know, there is another enigmatic, mysterious blond at the center of Twin Peaks, and she also has a secret diary with a lock and a key.
• 7:49
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And there's quite a bit made of that, actually, in the book.
• 7:52
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Yes.
• 7:53
  and on Monday morning at about 9: In what ways did that project and sort of those themes feed into or inform the character of Laura Palmer as you began to create her?
• 8:02
  and on Monday morning at about 9: I don't recall that we spoke about that as a conscious connection, but clearly, as you have just outlined, there were similarities.
• 8:12
  and on Monday morning at about 9: I'm sure, given that we'd been talking about that for quite some time, it found its way into our conception of Laura.
• 8:19
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Now, remember that Laura was not going to be in the show.
• 8:23
  and on Monday morning at about 9: She was simply a figure from the recent past.
• 8:27
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And it's her death that ignites the entire story.
• 8:30
  and on Monday morning at about 9: But when we found Sheryl Lee in Washington at that point, all we knew she was going to be was a headshot as the homecoming queen, and she was going to be found on the beach.
• 8:44
  and on Monday morning at about 9: But when we were filming the pilot, Sheryl was so full of life and so delightfully in the grasp of this character.
• 8:52
  and on Monday morning at about 9: It prompted us to say, well, we've got to find some way to keep her alive in the story.
• 8:57
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And in fact, I had decided to bring her back as her cousin a little bit later, which an idea that David liked a lot.
• 9:05
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And so Cheryl really became a central part of the Twin Peaks experience.
• 9:12
  and on Monday morning at about 9: When you and David were first creating the world of Twin Peaks, which female archetypes did you start with when you were building out the world?
• 9:22
  and on Monday morning at about 9: What-- where did you begin in terms of the sort of broad templates, and then how did you sort of work to subvert them or kind of make them a little bit more interesting, a little bit more off kilter in the writing process?
• 9:35
  and on Monday morning at about 9: I think it's safe to say we started with Laura because she was going to be our portal into the town, so everyone whose life touched hers suddenly came into our view.
• 9:49
  and on Monday morning at about 9: She had to have a best friend who had survived her.
• 9:51
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And that was Donna.
• 9:52
  and on Monday morning at about 9: She had to have a mother.
• 9:52
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Donna had to have a mother.
• 9:56
  and on Monday morning at about 9: As we started to, as you say, build out the town, the gathering place for small towns like this is often a diner or a, you know, a small coffee shop that brought us to Norma.
• 10:06
  and on Monday morning at about 9: We wanted it to be owned and operated by Norma, have her be a strong, independent businesswoman.
• 10:12
  and on Monday morning at about 9: That led to a relationship with a waitress that in the pilot was a very small part.
• 10:19
  and on Monday morning at about 9: But when we met Madchen Amick, we thought she was a perfect fit for sort of Norma's protege.
• 10:27
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And so she became part of the diner, and we came up with the idea of Ben, you know, the powerful, swaggering businessman should have a teenage daughter who completely befuddles and perplexes and bedevils him.
• 10:42
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And so we came up with Audrey.
• 10:44
  and on Monday morning at about 9: My name's Audrey Horne.Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Dale Cooper.Can I sit here?Well, Miss Horne, unless I miss my guessyour father is Benjamin Horne, the owner of this fine establishment.So I imagine you can sit anywhere you'd like. And, Sherilyn Fenn, you know, was indelible in that role as well.
• 11:11
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Let's talk a little bit about Audrey, because I think she is a very specific character.
• 11:17
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And, she's introduced in this really fun way with her, her saddle shoes and legs swinging out of the limousine.
• 11:25
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And, you know, when people think of Audrey Horne, they think of that music and they think of Audrey's theme and they think of the dance.
• 11:31
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Yeah.
• 11:32
  and on Monday morning at about 9: God, I love this music.Isn't it too dreamy? How did the dance come to be in Twin Peaks, and why was it important to see that character sort of expressing herself in that way and having that moment to herself.
• 11:52
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Well, we initially thought of Audrey as kind of the if you take the good homecoming queen image of Laura as the kind of classic American good girl.
• 12:02
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And Audrey then became kind of the classic bad girl, the the daughter of the rich, wealthy, powerful man.
• 12:10
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Who's he he's almost powerless to control.
• 12:12
  and on Monday morning at about 9: We thought there was a lot of fun to be had with that dynamic.
• 12:18
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And once we met Sherilyn, she just simply had that quality, you know, that it was playful.
• 12:22
  and on Monday morning at about 9: It was intelligent. It was funny.
• 12:27
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Audrey was somebody who was aware of the effect she could have on people, and she wasn't shy about using it.
• 12:33
  and on Monday morning at about 9: It was almost like Veronica and Betty from the, you know, those comic books which were very much a staple of 60s culture.
• 12:41
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And if Sherilyn Fenn's Audrey Horne was one of Twin Peaks pin ups Josie Packard, co-owner of the local sawmill and glamorous international woman of mystery, was another.
• 12:53
  and on Monday morning at about 9: That was originally going to be Isabella Rossellini.
• 12:56
  and on Monday morning at about 9: As we were talking about writing it, who David was living with at the time, and then Isabella got way too busy with her feature career, and I suggested we look at Joan Chen, who had been in The Last Emperor.
• 13:08
  and on Monday morning at about 9: What was it about Joan in particular, that made you feel that she would be the right fit for this femme fatale?
• 13:16
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Well, Joan had a wonderful, powerful, quiet dignity about her.
• 13:20
  and on Monday morning at about 9: When you met her, you were immediately impressed by that enormously intelligent and hard to read.
• 13:27
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And we thought, okay, well, that's kind of perfect for Josie, because we played with the trope of the Asian woman who was a woman of mystery, but we tried to do more with it than that and make her a real life person with a real life, painful past, which...
• 13:44
  and on Monday morning at about 9: ultimately catches up with her in the second season.
• 13:47
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Now we're forgetting one other very important female archetype with the Log Lady.
• 13:52
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Should we talk about her for a moment?
• 13:55
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Ah yes.
• 13:56
  and on Monday morning at about 9: The Log Lady, whose name in the show is actually Margaret Lanterman.
• 14:01
  and on Monday morning at about 9: As the town mystic she becomes very important as the show progresses, but at first no one takes her seriously.
• 14:08
  and on Monday morning at about 9: The Log Lady was played by Catherine Coulson.
• 14:11
  and on Monday morning at about 9: I asked Mark how she came to be such an important part of the show.
• 14:14
  and on Monday morning at about 9: It's a very funny story, because Catherine and David had known each other for 20 years at this point and were very close friends because at the time she was married to Jack Nance, and they were both in a theater company that he drew a lot of actors from to populate Eraserhead.
• 14:31
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And Catherine became part of his crew and then later in her own right, had a very successful career as a first camera assistant in the Cinematographers Guild.
• 14:42
  and on Monday morning at about 9: She was the first woman to ever be admitted in that capacity.
• 14:46
  and on Monday morning at about 9: So they had a great friendship.
• 14:48
  and on Monday morning at about 9: But Catherine was also a terrific actress, and they started playing around with this funny character in between setups about a woman who had a game show.
• 14:58
  and on Monday morning at about 9: It was like like a question and answer show where she said, I want to test my log in every branch of knowledge.
• 15:05
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And that was kind of as far as they had gone with it.
• 15:07
  and on Monday morning at about 9: It was it was sort of a one note, very funny idea.
• 15:12
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And when he told me about it and said, why don't we see if there's a way for her to fit into our town?
• 15:18
  and on Monday morning at about 9: I immediately said, well, of course there is.
• 15:21
  and on Monday morning at about 9: She's she's a perfect archetype.
• 15:23
  and on Monday morning at about 9: She is the kind of classic, mythic crone, the witch who lives in the woods, the woman who does have other ways of seeing and knowing, which is very much a part of classic fairy tales and Greek tragedies.
• 15:37
  and on Monday morning at about 9: So we thought, this is a fun way to update the crone.
• 15:42
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And the log became a kind of perfect channel, given where we were for the kind of energy that was present in this, you know, heavily forested part of the world.
• 15:54
  and on Monday morning at about 9: So initially she wasn't even.
• 15:57
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Well, she was in the pilot script just a tiny little bit.
• 16:00
  and on Monday morning at about 9: She appears in the town hall meeting.
• 16:02
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Who's the glad-handing dandy? When Cooper's come to town and he's meeting all the townspeople.
• 16:06
  and on Monday morning at about 9: She's flashing the lights, trying to get the meeting started.
• 16:09
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And there's a very funny line where he says.
• 16:12
  and on Monday morning at about 9: - Who's the lady with the log?
• 16:12
  and on Monday morning at about 9: - We call her the Log Lady. And that's almost all you see of her in the pilot.
• 16:18
  and on Monday morning at about 9: But people so sparked to Catherine and this amazing commitment she made to, as comics say, the commitment to the bit, you know, that she was profoundly connected to that log.
• 16:32
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And I was very interested as we moved forward in deepening that and showing that, far from being a town joke, she was actually quite revered as sort of the shaman of the tribe, and that feeling belonged in the town as we had conceived of it.
• 16:48
  and on Monday morning at about 9: He found my friend Laura lying face down on a rocky beach,completely naked.She'd been murdered.Twin Peaks, a nice place to visit.But you wouldn't want to die there.Sunday... When the show first arrived in 1990, I guess the pilot was in 89.
• 17:11
  and on Monday morning at about 9: But when it first arrived on screens, the sex and the violence in Twin Peak s is something that attracted a lot of attention.
• 17:18
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Also a lot of criticism.
• 17:20
  and on Monday morning at about 9: What did you make of that response at the time?
• 17:22
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Well, I guess you can always say there is a very fine line between showing something and exploiting it.
• 17:30
  and on Monday morning at about 9: I've gone back and watched the pilot a couple of times as years have gone by with different audiences, and what's clear to me is that the pilot in particular is a story about how a small community processes grief and how devastating it is, and how it affects...
• 17:50
  and on Monday morning at about 9: if that stone hits the lake, the ripples go everywhere and everyone is affected by it.
• 17:56
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And I felt we stayed on the right side of not exploiting it.
• 18:00
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And I think my perception of it, as I've looked at it now, bears that out.
• 18:05
  and on Monday morning at about 9: That grief is palpable.
• 18:07
  and on Monday morning at about 9: The the the performance is particularly Grace Zabriskie as Sarah Palmer is incredibly authentic and wrenching.
• 18:16
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And that's what I remember from the incident that I told you about in my life.
• 18:21
  and on Monday morning at about 9: There was there was nothing funny about it.
• 18:24
  and on Monday morning at about 9: There was nothing ironic about it.
• 18:24
  and on Monday morning at about 9: It was raw and horrifying.
• 18:28
  and on Monday morning at about 9: When Andy, Sheriff Andy finds her body, he's devastated.
• 18:32
  and on Monday morning at about 9: - He immediately starts crying.
• 18:32
  and on Monday morning at about 9: - Yeah.
• 18:38
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Andy... We see a man bursting into tears because it's so devastating.
• 18:44
  and on Monday morning at about 9: We were trying to upset the expectation that so often these things in procedurals are just used as a plot device.
• 18:51
  and on Monday morning at about 9: There's almost no time at all other than maybe some lip service into what did that loss mean for the people who were left behind?
• 18:59
  and on Monday morning at about 9: So we wanted the pilot to focus almost exclusively on that.
• 19:02
  and on Monday morning at about 9: We weren't there to solve a mystery.
• 19:04
  and on Monday morning at about 9: We wanted to show what an event like this did to a closely knit community in ways that we hadn't seen depicted on television before.
• 19:17
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And there were other things about Twin Peaks that hadn't been seen on TV before.
• 19:21
  and on Monday morning at about 9: The sexuality on show in the series got a lot of people extremely hot and even more bothered.
• 19:28
  and on Monday morning at about 9: But more on that in just a minute.
• 19:28
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Stay with us.
• 19:39
  and on Monday morning at about 9: All right, everybody, your regular host Rico Gagliano here taking just a moment to tell you about MUBI.
• 19:44
  and on Monday morning at about 9: 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.
• 19:51
  and on Monday morning at about 9: We stream movies, we produce them.
• 19:52
  and on Monday morning at about 9: We release them in theaters, movies from any country, from legendary auteurs or brilliant first timers.
• 19:58
  and on Monday morning at about 9: We've always got something new for you to discover.
• 20:00
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And as Simran mentioned earlier, ready to be discovered on MUBI right now is every episode of Twin Peaks.
• 20:07
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And as much as Mark rightly talks about the show's examination of grief and straight up evil, in the next segment, you'll also hear an example or two of how Lynch and Frost also created almost transcendent moments of joy.
• 20:20
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And for me, those are the moments I remember from when I first watched the show back when I was an undergrad.
• 20:26
  and on Monday morning at about 9: There's a reason agent Dale Cooper is a lot of folks favorite character in this show.
• 20:32
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Like David Lynch, he preached the gospel of taking a second and just enjoying a damn fine cup of coffee.
• 20:37
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And all of this hadn't been seen on TV back in 1990.
• 20:41
  and on Monday morning at about 9: This mashup of genres, from police procedurals to supernatural thrillers and a mashup of tones.
• 20:47
  and on Monday morning at about 9: It was scary. It was hip.
• 20:49
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Mark is about to talk about how sexy it was, and also kind of life affirming all at once.
• 20:54
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And if you're in the US, UK, Mexico and many other countries, you can experience it for yourself by watching Twin Peaks on MUBI right now.
• 21:02
  and on Monday morning at about 9: We've got the whole series, the first two seasons, plus 2017 Twin Peaks, a limited event series.
• 21:08
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Subscribe to MUBI at mubi.com and have at it.
• 21:11
  and on Monday morning at about 9: We've got links and all the information you need in the show notes of this episode.
• 21:15
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Speaking of which, let's get back to Simran and Mark and the rest of this episode.
• 21:23
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Twin Peaks was a phenomenon.
• 21:25
  and on Monday morning at about 9: The cast showed up on all the big TV chat shows in every imaginable publication.
• 21:30
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Sherilyn Fenn appeared on the pages of Playboy and on the cover of New York Magazine, and Rolling Stone did a big photo shoot with the 'Mystery Girls of Twin Peaks' Sherilyn Fenn, Lara Flynn Boyle and Madchen Amick all wrapped in a fluffy white towels.
• 21:46
  and on Monday morning at about 9: It was a lot, and it wasn't always pretty.
• 21:51
  and on Monday morning at about 9: In some of the press coverage from the time there was a Rolling Stone magazine cover that has aged quite badly.
• 21:58
  and on Monday morning at about 9: I agree.
• 21:59
  and on Monday morning at about 9: I'll read you the opening paragraph just for fun, just to take us back.
• 22:04
  and on Monday morning at about 9: "They are mystery babes.
• 22:04
  and on Monday morning at about 9: They are mixed up in murder.
• 22:07
  and on Monday morning at about 9: "They look good in sweaters.
• 22:09
  and on Monday morning at about 9: "They are the women of Twin Peaks, or at least three of the women of Twin Peaks.
• 22:13
  and on Monday morning at about 9: "They are six peaks, which is to say, there are other twin peaks in this series.
• 22:18
  and on Monday morning at about 9: "But together, these three account for exactly six of those peaks.
• 22:22
  and on Monday morning at about 9: "And that is only one of their secrets."- That's ghastly.
• 22:24
  and on Monday morning at about 9: - Isn't it?
• 22:26
  and on Monday morning at about 9: I did not remember that at all.
• 22:28
  and on Monday morning at about 9: - That's truly awful.
• 22:28
  and on Monday morning at about 9: - It's absolutely terrible.
• 22:32
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And it also doesn't at all reflect anything really about the show.
• 22:37
  and on Monday morning at about 9: But what do you think it was about the specific sexuality of Twin Peaks that got everybody sort of so worked up?
• 22:44
  and on Monday morning at about 9: I think because we were showing women in all of their aspects, and part of their aspect is their sexuality and part of their moving through life.
• 22:54
  and on Monday morning at about 9: It was just part of who they were.
• 22:54
  and on Monday morning at about 9: It wasn't the only thing they were.
• 22:58
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Look, it's no secret that for 100 years, the motion picture and television business have shown you attractive people.
• 23:06
  and on Monday morning at about 9: That's part of the deal.
• 23:06
  and on Monday morning at about 9: That's how it works.
• 23:09
  and on Monday morning at about 9: That's very often who's drawn to wanting to be an actor or actress.
• 23:14
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And it's played an important part in many people's careers.
• 23:18
  and on Monday morning at about 9: So I don't think you can feel guilty or shy about saying we cast attractive actors in roles where they're being attractive was part of who that character was, so I never felt that we were exploiting them, per se.
• 23:34
  and on Monday morning at about 9: I felt that we were trying to show them in their totality.
• 23:38
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And then, you know,Rolling Stone goes ahead and does a cover like that and you go, well, that was a lot of work up in smoke the minute that ended up on newsstands.
• 23:46
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And it strikes me rewatching Twin Peaks, that a lot of the female characters have a lot of sexual agency, and they're making decisions.
• 23:56
  and on Monday morning at about 9: They're not passive, they're instigating things.
• 23:58
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And you know, the show does deal with some really dark themes.
• 24:04
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Rape, incest, sexual violence, sex trafficking.
• 24:08
  and on Monday morning at about 9: How did you sort of approach these themes with what you felt was the right tone?
• 24:15
  and on Monday morning at about 9: How did you and David do that?
• 24:16
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Well, we were drawing a lot from the tropes of film noir as a storytelling technique.
• 24:23
  and on Monday morning at about 9: If you go back and look at those films, many of them had quite powerful female characters with a lot of agency.
• 24:30
  and on Monday morning at about 9: They were very often in charge in a story.
• 24:30
  and on Monday morning at about 9: It was their story.
• 24:34
  and on Monday morning at about 9: So we wanted to capture that that felt more authentic to us.
• 24:38
  and on Monday morning at about 9: That was just the characters as they presented themselves to us.
• 24:41
  and on Monday morning at about 9: You know, we-- it's a spectrum and there's some representation for somebody all the way from one end to the other, with Laura being the, you know, the victim of that kind of violence.
• 24:52
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And in the worst way.
• 24:54
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Let's talk a little bit aboutTwin Peaks: The Return.
• 24:56
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Whatever people prefer to call it.
• 24:59
  and on Monday morning at about 9: The show picks up 25 years later, but it refuses to trade in any kind of feel good coziness or nostalgia.
• 25:10
  and on Monday morning at about 9: If that's what you think you're getting when you return to Twin Peaks, forget it.
• 25:14
  and on Monday morning at about 9: You've got a rude awakening within the first five minutes.
• 25:18
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And actually, I think that's that's a real strength of the show.
• 25:21
  and on Monday morning at about 9: But why was it important to you and to David to not give the audience that kind of easy gratification?
• 25:28
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Well, for the reasons you just described, it was, it's, that's what television always does with these kinds of things.
• 25:36
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And since we felt that we had gone in like a bull in a China shop the first time and broke all the furniture and the lamps and tore the curtains and the drapes, and we just basically played with the whole safe notion of what network TV was supposed to be.
• 25:53
  and on Monday morning at about 9: The show had to reflect not just how we had changed as storytellers, but how those people's lives might have changed and how the society around them had changed.
• 26:05
  and on Monday morning at about 9: We wanted to really reflect the passage of time in a realistic way, and that meant any thought of doing this as an exercise in nostalgia was like simply the first thing we said in the first meeting.
• 26:18
  and on Monday morning at about 9: We're not doing that.
• 26:18
  and on Monday morning at about 9: We're going to try to-- If we broke down the door the first time, this time we want to destroy the building.
• 26:27
  and on Monday morning at about 9: We want to really go even further with this idea of being disruptive and breaking new boundaries.
• 26:35
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And that's what we set out to do.
• 26:37
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And there was also the sense of a lot of unfinished business, because we felt we were given a fairly rum go by the network, you know, particularly in the second year.
• 26:47
  and on Monday morning at about 9: When it came to revisiting some of these characters who, you know, we knew them in the prime of their youth and their beauty, and we see how time has kind of ravaged them.
• 27:00
  and on Monday morning at about 9: A lot of people, not in terms of their beauty, obviously, some of the older characters still kind of have this absolute grace and radiance to them, but a lot of them are emotionally in much worse shape than where we left them.
• 27:15
  and on Monday morning at about 9: When you think about those characters that we pick up with, whose story do you find yourself most moved by?
• 27:21
  and on Monday morning at about 9: I think the one that we really wanted to pay off in a positive way, because there are a lot of things that don't go well for people in that 25 year...
• 27:33
  and on Monday morning at about 9: was Ed and Norma, Big Ed and Norma.
• 27:36
  and on Monday morning at about 9: My love is growing strong In the first two seasons of Twin Peaks, we learn that Ed and Norma were high school sweethearts, but they end up with other people.
• 27:48
  and on Monday morning at about 9: In The Return, an older Ed and Norma finally reunite, and then one day in the Double R diner, as Otis Redding plays on the jukebox, he proposes.
• 27:57
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Will you marry me? And in the most romantic scene in the series, they share a tender kiss.
• 28:04
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And that's kind of the beating heart of, I think, The Return.
• 28:08
  and on Monday morning at about 9: The fact that all sorts of things can go wrong in a town and a culture and a society, I mean, sort of, as we're seeing now in this country.
• 28:18
  and on Monday morning at about 9: But there are always rays of light.
• 28:21
  and on Monday morning at about 9: There are always people who manage to find some kind of happiness in the depths of that darkness.
• 28:29
  and on Monday morning at about 9: And we wanted them-- We thought we felt we owed it to them and it was a long time coming.
• 28:34
  and on Monday morning at about 9: But I think given the the wonderful sensitivity and delicacy with which David directed them in their performances, that's one of the most satisfying moments for me in the entire run of the show.
• 29:06
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Another thread that's picked up in The Return is the character of Diane.
• 29:11
  and on Monday morning at about 9: Diane is Special Agent Dale Cooper's secretary, and in the early episodes of Twin Peaks, Cooper, played by Kyle MacLachlan, is always recording messages for her into his tape recorder.
• 29:23
  and on Monday morning at about 9: In season three, we finally get to meet her and she's played by Laura Dern.
• 29:29
  and on Monday morning at about 9: She first began, and this is what people often thought she was, was simply a way to get to exposition quickly and neatly, and also do quite a bit of character work about Cooper in the way that he records things and how he makes his observations.
• 29:44
  <i: Diane 11>30 a.m. February 24th.Entering the town of Twin Peaks, five miles south of the Canadian border,12 miles west of the state line.I've never seen so many trees in my life.As WC Fields would say, I'd rather be here than Philadelphia.54 degrees on a slightly overcast day, the weatherman said, rain.You can get paid that kind of money for being wrong 60%of the time you'd be working. But in our minds, Diane was always a real person.
• 30:14
  <i: Diane 11>There have been theories like, you know, in the old days of, oh, well, there is no Diane.
• 30:19
  <i: Diane 11>And he's crazy.
• 30:19
  <i: Diane 11>He's keeping all these tapes himself.
• 30:22
  <i: Diane 11>And no, she was always very real to us.
• 30:22
  <i: Diane 11>And it became a huge part of the show.
• 30:27
  <i: Diane 11>And she became, in her own way, an enduring mystery.
• 30:31
  <i: Diane 11>So one of the things we felt we really had to do in The Return was, we've got to see Diane.
• 30:36
  <i: Diane 11>I mean, we've got to know who this is.
• 30:39
  <i: Diane 11>And we also, you know, Laura, one of David's favorite people, one of my favorite people.
• 30:44
  <i: Diane 11>She had actually been around when we were shooting the pilot.
• 30:47
  <i: Diane 11>She and Kyle were dating when we shot the pilot, and Laura was there with us for most of the shoot.
• 30:53
  <i: Diane 11>So in a funny way, she already felt like she was part of our community.
• 30:57
  <i: Diane 11>And there was nobody else in my mind who could play Diane.
• 31:01
  <i: Diane 11>It had to be Laura.
• 31:01
  <i: Diane 11>We wanted to give her a real story.
• 31:04
  <i: Diane 11>And the way we wove her into the the larger fabric, I think was quite effective.
• 31:11
  <i: Diane 11>I think it's totally, totally genius.
• 31:13
  <i: Diane 11>Both Laura Dern and Naomi Watts, who plays Janey-E, Dougie's wife, long suffering wife, are two actresses who have worked with David a lot, and they're kind of part of his family.
• 31:28
  <i: Diane 11>What did their roles in Twin Peaks allow them to do that was different than what they had done before?
• 31:34
  <i: Diane 11>Naomi has great comedy chops, and I don't think she'd had a chance to show those as often as perhaps she might have wanted.
• 31:43
  <i: Diane 11>The whole key in my mind to doing comedy is to play it as if you're in a drama.
• 31:49
  <i: Diane 11>I had a mentor in the 70s, very famous actor who was the father of one of my roommates, Alan Arkin.
• 31:55
  <i: Diane 11>I mean, one of the great screen actors of all time, and I think one of the funniest people to ever appear on screen.
• 32:01
  <i: Diane 11>But he told me the commitment he always made to the comedy is that it had to come out of someplace real.
• 32:09
  <i: Diane 11>And that's what Naomi can do.
• 32:11
  <i: Diane 11>I mean, her exasperation with Dougie and that whole, I mean, that whole storyline, I collapse.
• 32:17
  <i: Diane 11>I'm helpless with laughter.
• 32:18
  <i: Diane 11>In The Return, when Janey-E learns that Dougie is being extorted, well, she takes matters into her own hands.
• 32:25
  <i: Diane 11>Not only does she negotiate with the gangsters pretty successfully too, she gives them a piece of her mind.
• 32:32
  <i: Diane 11>What kind of world are we living in where people can behave like this?Treat other people this way without any compassion or feeling for their suffering.We are living in a dark, dark age and you are part of the problem.Now I suggest you take a good long look at yourselves,because I never want to see either of you again. Janey-E storms off back to her car and slams the door.
• 32:58
  <i: Diane 11>- Tough dame.
• 32:58
  <i: Diane 11>- Tough. With David now sadly gone, it's you who is the sort of main keeper ofTwin Peaks secrets and all of its wisdom.
• 33:12
  <i: Diane 11>- Yeah.
• 33:12
  <i: Diane 11>- How has his passing made you reflect on the work that you made together.
• 33:17
  <i: Diane 11>When you lose a friend and close collaborator of 40 years, it has a lot of impact on your life and on your sense of time passing.
• 33:27
  <i: Diane 11>And Kyle and I talked a lot about this after David was gone, because we both knew him, Kyle, even longer than I had, and the whole town, the whole experience, the whole show came out of people who liked each other, working together in an atmosphere that was completely conducive to creativity.
• 33:48
  <i: Diane 11>And I came from a theater background.
• 33:51
  <i: Diane 11>David always wanted to create a family atmosphere on his sets.
• 33:55
  <i: Diane 11>I was used to ensemble work.
• 33:58
  <i: Diane 11>That was something I tried to instill in all of our younger actors as we were starting up and why when we brought in all these great veteran actors, I asked each of them to, you know, find somebody in the cast that, you know, you sort of spark with and mentor them if, 'cause if we, if this show hits and we go through the tunnel of fame and fortune that might attend some of these folks, it's severely disorienting, and many of them had been through that.
• 34:27
  <i: Diane 11>Piper, Ross Tamblyn, Richard Beymer, Peggy.
• 34:31
  <i: Diane 11>I mean, they'd all walked through that fire.
• 34:35
  <i: Diane 11>So it was sort of an us against the world atmosphere that we tried to create.
• 34:40
  <i: Diane 11>His particular skill set, his ability to create mood and feeling with picture and sound, and his sensitivity toward getting actors to give you the performance that you want and need was unmatched.
• 34:53
  <i: Diane 11>He's I think he's in the pantheon of directors.
• 34:56
  <i: Diane 11>And it's really hard to imagine the town without him.
• 35:00
  <i: Diane 11>I've been, I guess, reckoning with that and feeling what happens to the town now.
• 35:05
  <i: Diane 11>Because, as you say, I do feel a sense of responsibility to all these stories and all these characters and the millions of people who've gotten some kind of enjoyment or nourishment out of the show over the, over these years.
• 35:19
  <i: Diane 11>And, you know, 35 years after you made the show, it's now reaching a new generation of viewers and new audiences.
• 35:29
  <i: Diane 11>What new meaning might this kind of next generation of viewers take from it?
• 35:35
  <i: Diane 11>We started writing, you know, in 2013, 2014, and we finished writing, I think by mid or late 2015, and a certain person had not yet come down the golden escalator at that point in New York City.
• 35:53
  <i: Diane 11>I think you know who I'm talking about.
• 35:54
  <i: Diane 11>And that hearkened the approach of a fairly dark ten years in our country's history, and God knows where it's going to lead.
• 36:03
  <i: Diane 11>So I think writers are like canaries in the coal mine.
• 36:07
  <i: Diane 11>They see or feel things coming.
• 36:07
  <i: Diane 11>I was feeling something, something dark on its way, and I wanted the show as we came into the current day to reflect that.
• 36:20
  <i: Diane 11>And David did too, particularly in what I felt was the centerpiece of season three, episode eight.
• 36:31
  <i: Diane 11>This is the episode in season three where we get Bob's origin story.
• 36:35
  <i: Diane 11>Bob, being the demon we learn, has been both haunting and sexually abusing Laura Palmer.
• 36:44
  <i: Diane 11>You know, people are always saying, is evil objectively real?
• 36:48
  <i: Diane 11>Is it something that's just part of the human spirit?
• 36:52
  <i: Diane 11>So we decided to depict it and to tie it to an event that could certainly in Greek mythology terms, be likened to Prometheus stealing fire from the gods.
• 37:07
  <i: Diane 11>You know, it's exactly what Oppenheimer said after the test at Trinity,"I am become death." Something was unleashed.
• 37:15
  <i: Diane 11>We give you a metaphor there for perhaps how this came to be.
• 37:20
  <i: Diane 11>What he did with that episode and visualizing it was extraordinary to my mind.
• 37:27
  <i: Diane 11>When evil is present, it doesn't matter where it came from.
• 37:31
  <i: Diane 11>Doesn't matter if it's a demon.
• 37:31
  <i: Diane 11>It doesn't matter if it's someone insane.
• 37:35
  <i: Diane 11>It is what it is.
• 37:37
  <i: Diane 11>And you've got to face it, and you've got to confront it, and you've got to decide, what am I willing to do in my life to contribute to its defeat?
• 37:47
  <i: Diane 11>I think that's a question that's very pertinent to where we are.
• 37:54
  <i: Diane 11>There's something, Mark said, that I keep turning over in my mind.
• 37:58
  <i: Diane 11>When evil is present, it doesn't matter where it came from.
• 38:02
  <i: Diane 11>What matters is that we notice it.
• 38:05
  <i: Diane 11>The Log Lady sees it.
• 38:06
  <i: Diane 11>Laura Palmer definitely saw it.
• 38:09
  <i: Diane 11>In Twin Peaks Mark Frost and David Lynch make us feel the presence of evil, and it's only when we're tuned into that feeling that we can fight it and move closer towards the light.
• 38:31
  <i: Diane 11>And that's the MUBI Podcast for this week.
• 38:33
  <i: Diane 11>Follow us to hear more stories about the Ladies of Lynch.
• 38:37
  <i: Diane 11>Next week we hear from David Lynch's daughter, Jennifer Lynch, about how she shaped one of her father's quintessential heroines, Laura Palmer.
• 38:46
  <i: Diane 11>Despite the limits of early 90s technology.
• 38:49
  <i: Diane 11>The first draft was completed in just under three weeks and then disappeared off the disks.
• 38:54
  <i: Diane 11>And they said, there's nothing there.
• 38:56
  <i: Diane 11>And I was certain that everybody thought I hadn't written a word and that I was just saying it was on there.
• 39:03
  <i: Diane 11>Make sure you follow us so you don't miss it.
• 39:06
  <i: Diane 11>Meanwhile, if you love the show, leave a five star review wherever you listen.
• 39:10
  <i: Diane 11>And if you've got questions, comments, or a log with a secret, our email is podcast@mubi.com And now let's roll credits.
• 39:20
  <i: Diane 11>This show is written and hosted by me. Simran Hans.
• 39:23
  <i: Diane 11>Ciara McEniff is our producer.
• 39:26
  <i: Diane 11>Our booking producer is Oli Charles.
• 39:26
  <i: Diane 11>Christian Coons is our editor.
• 39:30
  <i: Diane 11>Our original music is composed by Martin Austwick and our assistant producer is Kat Kowalczyk.
• 39:36
  <i: Diane 11>Phoebe Unterman recorded.
• 39:36
  <i: Diane 11>Mark Frost and David Harper recorded me.
• 39:41
  <i: Diane 11>Special thanks to Paul Smith for additional recording and moral support.
• 39:45
  <i: Diane 11>This show is executive produced by Efe Çakarel, Rico Gagliano, Mike Tacca and Daniel Kasman.
• 39:52
  <i: Diane 11>And finally, to watch the best in cinema subscribe to mubi.com Thanks for listening.
• 39:58
  <i: Diane 11>And remember, as a wise woman with a log once said,"Fire is the devil hiding like a coward in the smoke."