by David Lynch
“I love that scene,” said Peggy Lipton. “They just stand there looking out into space, and I laughed so hard. There’s air to breathe in that scene, and that’s a beautiful quality in all of David’s work. When he asks the viewer to spend several minutes watching a guy sweep out a bar and be completely focused on that sweeper, it gives you a minute to sink into your own thoughts, and it’s like an ongoing meditation.”
Reflecting on that scene, Dern observed, “David doesn’t abandon his characters when they’re not doing something big that moves the plot forward. He’ll stay with them while they stare into space making a decision.”
That room to breathe is a crucial part of the magic of Lynch’s work, and as Struycken pointed out, his approach to pacing is radical. The show is punctuated with lingering close-ups, long, silent pans of landscape and road shot from inside a car, a solitary figure slowly eating a bowl of soup, a train passing through a railway crossing at night. These scenes lead nowhere and exist solely to harness the pace of the storytelling.
The narrative style is leisurely, but Lynch tended to spring things on his actors during the shoot. “My first day on set, we shot the interrogation scene with William Hastings, and when David told me that’s what we were doing I went white with fear, because it’s a highly charged scene,” said Chrysta Bell. “He didn’t give me any direction beyond ‘You’re gonna stand here and then you’re gonna sit there,’ but the script was so finely written and I knew not to change a letter. So he was sitting in his director’s chair and I was standing across from him, and he just looked at me and gave me an infusion of confidence. His gaze told me, This is a beautiful experience in your life, so just take it and run with it—I know you’ve got it in you.”
Playing opposite her in that scene was Matthew Lillard, who didn’t meet Lynch until his first day on set. “I walked over to him and said, ‘Hi, I’m Matt Lillard,’ and he said, ‘Hello, Bill!’ I thought he thought I was the prop guy or something, so I said, ‘No, I’m Matt,’ and he said, ‘Hello, Bill Hastings!’ again and didn’t give me any direction for the scene. When I saw him at the premiere he still called me Bill Hastings.”17
As Don Murray said, Lynch trusts his actors to deliver what he needs from them and never raises the emotional temperature of the set, regardless of how intense the scene at hand might be. “At the end of my first day, David very casually said, ‘We’re gonna get you bloodied up tomorrow and you’re gonna have a fight with an orb with Bob’s face on it,’ ” recalled Jake Wardle of the biggest action scene in the show.
“The fight was choreographed on the spot by David, who was on his megaphone, saying, ‘He’s above you! Hit him! He’s below you now, he’s knocked you down, get back up and hit him again!’ ” continued Wardle, who had no idea the fight scene was coming. “He wanted me to actually hit the camera, so they put padding on it and told me not to hit it too hard, but after the first take David said, ‘Hit it harder!’ So I did and the camera made a weird noise and everyone gasped, but he didn’t just leave it there. No. David got them to put a lens protector on it and had me hit it again, and he kept saying, ‘Hit it harder!’ Finally the lens protector broke. I think they might’ve used that take.”
After the show wrapped in April 2016, Lynch hunkered down for a year of post-production, and during that period he barely left the house. He took a break in October to curate the first annual Festival of Disruption, a two-day fundraiser for his foundation that featured appearances by Robert Plant, Frank Gehry, Kyle MacLachlan, and Laura Dern, among many others. Mostly, though, he just worked up until the first episode of the show aired on May 21st, 2017.
Nobody had seen the show before it aired, so the people who helped make it were as excited about the premiere as everyone else. “I was surprised by the incredible range of tones it had,” said David Nevins. “The funny parts were really funny, there’s unnerving nightmare stuff, and there are incredible surreal elements that felt different to me than they felt in the original Twin Peaks. It was unquestionably a business success, and it’s a show people will talk about for years to come.”
The show was a different kind of revelation for Don Murray. “My God, David’s such a wonderful actor! One of the things I love most about the film is his acting,” Murray said. “That’s a marvelous character he’s created with Gordon Cole, just great. And there’s such humor in the show. The New York Daily News described it as ‘the most hysterical comedy of the year.’ ”
Critical response to the show was generally ecstatic, and when the first two episodes screened at the Cannes Film Festival on May 25th, Lynch received an extended standing ovation and the series was hailed as a work of genius. “I didn’t know until I saw the show that it included all of David’s animations, sculptures, paintings—all of the stuff he’d been working on for years,” said Chrysta Bell. “But then I realized, how could we expect anything else? That’s what a real artist does. They use every part of themselves and take everything they’ve learned and make a piece of art that combines all of it with no fanfare.”
“This is absolutely the David Lynch of right now,” said Eric Edelstein. “It incorporated every bit of filmmaking he’s refined over the course of his life and was a giant commentary on today. It was the Twin Peaks of 2017. He just nailed that.”
As for what it means? Lynch isn’t about to answer that question, but clues abound. The show spurred a reappraisal of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, which many viewers looked to as a kind of decoder ring for the new series. Numerous motifs from the film do reappear and are developed further in the series, including the Blue Rose case, the jade ring, Laura Palmer’s diary, and electricity as a metaphor for the invisible energies that propel existence. The show is swimming in numbers, too; coordinates, phone numbers, addresses, room numbers, voltage rates, clocks and watches, and car mileage serve the story in various ways. Many dots can be connected to create many different scenarios, but those who truly love and surrender to the show have no interest in deconstructing the narrative. It’s a work of art, and that’s not what it’s for.
“There are things we all know that we don’t look at very often,” said Robert Forster, who plays Twin Peaks sheriff Frank Truman. “Everybody knows some things are eternal, and it isn’t names or houses and it isn’t even the stars; we know in our bones there’s something eternal, though, and that it has to do with human beings. Whatever David is doing, it is of a high order, and he may be a portal to the eternal, because he asks us to find that connection to the eternal in ourselves. His work suggests that we are not just isolated atoms and that if we understand that connection to the eternal we’re capable of making better choices. Each individual can pull in a direction, and if enough of us pull in the same positive direction, there is movement that brings humanity along with it. He is leading his audience toward the good.”18
“David’s trying to tell people that this world we live in isn’t the ultimate reality and that there are many dimensions of existence that need to be considered,” ventured Michael Horse. “There’s deep stuff there, and you can’t multi-task while you’re watching Twin Peaks.”
“It’s too advanced for most people to understand,” said Al Strobel. “When I was seventeen years old I had a car accident and technically died, and I had an experience many people have described having: I left my body and went to another place. It wasn’t as harsh as the Red Room—it was more pastel and warm—and the hardest thing I ever had to do was to come back into my body. I know there’s a place between this existence and the next one, because I’ve been there; I think that’s what the Red Room represents and that this is a realm David is familiar with.”
“David’s spiritual life has always been part of his work, and that’s deepened in a way that’s reflected in his work,” said MacLachlan. “I can’t point to something and say, ‘Oh, now he’s doing this,’ because the change has been more subtle than that. It’s like his work has gotten riche
r. Twin Peaks has confounded many people, but David’s an artist and the work he does isn’t supposed to be easy. I don’t think he feels compelled to tell a story people want him to tell, and he seems totally comfortable with that.”
“The show did exactly what it was meant to do,” said Barile. “The original series fucked with the conventions of television and made its mark, and season three—which is basically an eighteen-hour film that he somehow got on television—did it again.”
“I love the way David ended the show,” said Dern. “Trying to understand it is kind of mind blowing. David taps into the subconscious in an amazing way. and I think we’ve all observed that the work he makes gets digested a decade after he creates it.”
The final episode of the series suggested there could be more to come, and there was speculation as to whether there might be another season. “If everything lined up perfectly, he’d probably say, ‘Sure, let’s do it,’ but he’s not going to waste his time at a negotiating table,” said Barile. “He’d rather be painting and smoking and drinking coffee and daydreaming. David’s at peace with himself and with the way things are. Emily’s great and they’re a good couple. He likes to drive slowly, he eats a grapefruit for breakfast and half a chicken sandwich with tomatoes for lunch, and I think he likes the simplicity of that. In his mind he’s still poor in lots of ways. He likes to sweep.”
Twin Peaks: The Return has aired and Lynch is on to other things, but the process of making it changed his marriage permanently; he still lives in the house next door with the blackout curtains. “He says he needs uninterrupted time for thinking and complains that he’s never alone, but he’s in charge of the world he’s created for himself,” said Stofle. “I tease him all the time that he is finally living ‘the art life,’ something he has fantasized about since he was in art school. Being alone and having ultimate freedom to do what he wants and to create—and now he is doing this. He even has a small twin bed now…something I have always heard him fantasize about. A small bed for sleeping and lots of space for work.”
On September 15th, ten days after the final episode of Twin Peaks aired, Harry Dean Stanton passed away at the age of ninety-one. Two weeks later his final film, Lucky, opened in a limited release. Directed by actor John Carroll Lynch, it featured David Lynch as a small-town eccentric distraught over the disappearance of his pet tortoise. “David was pretty stressed about working with Harry Dean, because he loves him,” said Barile. “He still gets giddy about the fact that he acted with Harry Dean. That’s huge in his book, like being knighted or something.”
Until he’s pushed back out into the world again, Lynch is spending as much time as possible in his painting studio. A small concrete bunker perched on the side of a hill, it has lots of windows and a wide opening onto a concrete deck, where he often works. Lynch likes to paint outdoors. The studio is cluttered with an assortment of stuff that’s been accumulating for decades. A beautiful, unusually large light bulb sits on a windowsill, and messy piles of paper scraps scribbled with enigmatic musings and ideas are scattered here and there. A reproduction of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights is taped to a wall near an expansive desk; two panels of the triptych have had too much sun and faded, but the third continues to glitter like a nasty jewel. The desk is littered with several small, crudely sculpted clay heads, and there’s a rusting set of metal file drawers. One drawer is labeled DENTAL TOOLS, and when you open it that’s exactly what you find: dozens of gleaming dental tools. Lynch keeps his collection immaculately clean and good to go. There are a few dirty folding chairs available for visitors and an old-fashioned wall phone he continues to use. Cigarette butts are flicked on the floor, and he pees in the sink. The sole visible concession to the twenty-first century is a laptop computer.
Poised atop one pile of stuff on the desk is a dusty cardboard box with the word “bugs” scribbled on it in pencil. Lynch is excited to report that he once befriended a “bug man” who regularly delivered specimens to him. Lynch has kept each and every one of them, because you never know when a dead bug might be exactly what you need. His aren’t labeled and as neatly organized as the ones he saw as a child in those flat files at the Experimental Forest, but they still thrill him.
THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT stopping something before it’s finished that leaves you wanting it, and Twin Peaks wasn’t finished. In music you hear a theme and then it goes away, then the song goes along for a while, then you sort of hear the theme again, then it goes away again. It feels so good and then it goes and you can’t get it out of your mind. So when it comes up later, the full theme, it has so much more power because you’ve already heard it and felt it a couple of times before. It’s what goes before that sets up the power and meaning of things.
Mark and I met with Showtime about doing Twin Peaks, then Sabrina came up with numbers and everybody freaked out. They were realistic numbers, but Showtime thought the budget was stupid high. I hadn’t made anything since INLAND EMPIRE and nobody went to see that, and you could tell they were a little bit like, “Yeah, we want to do this, but we don’t know if we can go with the money you’re asking for. And this business of more than nine episodes? We definitely don’t know about that.” Then, when I saw the budget they were offering, I said, “Fuck this,” and then they made another offer that was worse than the bad one they’d already made! I said, “I’m fuckin’ out! If they want to do it without me I’ll probably let them, but I’m out,” and I felt a tremendous sense of freedom mixed with sadness when I made that decision. That was on a Friday. Then I hear from David Nevins and on Sunday night he and Gary Levine come up. Gary brought cookies and they were here for about forty-five minutes. By the end it wasn’t happening at all, then when they stood up to leave David said, “I’m going to work up an offer for you.” I said, “Well, maybe I’ll work up an offer for you.” With not a fuckin’ thing to lose, Sabrina and I drew up a list of everything we’d need and I said, “Okay, Sabrina, you’re gonna go in there and say, ‘This is not a negotiation. If you want to do it, this is what it takes.’ If they start quibbling about stuff, say thank you very much and stand up and leave.” But David Nevins said, “We can make this work,” and that was it—I’m back in the thing.
People came into the show in lots of different ways. I knew I could count on Kyle being able to go that dark, and he played a great bad guy. A certain type of bad person can come out of any good person, but each person has their own kind of bad person. Kyle couldn’t play Frank Booth, for instance—it just wouldn’t work—but he can play a Kyle bad guy, and he found that guy. Both Mark and I are nuts about Michael Cera, and Michael came up to the house with Eric Edelstein a few years ago to talk about Transcendental Meditation. When we were casting and it came to Wally Brando, Michael, of course, was the guy. I love Eric Edelstein and he became the third Fusco brother because of his giggle—that’s why he’s there; it’s the greatest giggle. I love the Fusco brothers and we had a lot of fun together.
My friend Steve sent me a link and said, “Check this guy out,” and there was Jake Wardle in the shed in his backyard in London, doing accents from all around the world, and so natural and funny. So we started talking on Skype. I had the green-glove idea from long ago and originally Jack Nance was going to wear it, and that would’ve been a whole different thing. The power of the green glove and the way it’s found in the hardware store were perfect for Freddie Sykes, though, and Jake was perfect for Freddie. You see a thousand people on the Internet, but I knew Jake could do this. He’s super smart and he’s like Harry Dean—he’s just a natural.
Dr. Mehmet Oz has a daughter and she’s married to George Griffith. I know Dr. Oz because Bobby [Roth] and I talked to him and his family and the people that work for him about TM. Dr. Oz is a really good guy. George made a film called From the Head, about the bathroom attendant at a strip club, and when I saw it I knew he’d be a great Ray Monroe.
I met Jennifer Jason Leigh in 1985
when she came in to talk about the part of Sandy for Blue Velvet; I always wanted to work with her, and lo and behold this thing comes up. I saw Tim Roth in Robert Altman’s film Vincent & Theo and thought he would be perfect for Hutch. I didn’t know that Jennifer and Tim had just worked together with Quentin Tarantino and were good friends. So it was perfect, but they were cast independently.
The character of Bill Hastings had to have certain qualities, and Matthew Lillard seemed like he could be a believable high school principal—intelligent, open face, all this stuff—but he could also be one of these guys who does something crazy and people who know him say, “He was the nicest guy, I can’t believe he’d do something like that.” So he had these things swimming together and the rest is history. It’s true that I always called Matt Bill Hastings. I call most of these actors by their characters’ names because that’s how I know them. I swear I don’t know many of their real names.
Robert Forster was the original pick to play Sheriff Truman in the first season of Twin Peaks, and Robert told me then that he really wanted to do it, but he’d promised a friend that he’d be in his low-budget film and he said, “I have to honor my promise.” That’s the kind of guy Robert is—he’s so great. And all Johanna Ray had to do was say “Don Murray.” Some people might’ve had some kind of thing about his age, but he was an incredible Bushnell Mullins. I recently saw him speak on a panel at Comic-Con and this man is one of the nicest human beings ever, and intelligent. We were so lucky to get him and I loved working with him. He was so great start to finish. Chrysta Bell was fantastic, too. I knew she could do it, because she’s a singer and is used to going in front of people. I love her and everybody else who worked on the show, and we had so much fun together.
