World of Blue - Archived Forum 2007-2022

Here is Part 1 of my Bob Engels interview, Part 2 will have even more!

http://archive.alternativenation.net/ex ... backstory/

Very interesting interview. I would love to read that early draft of FWWM. I know it's been circulated in a few small circles of TP fans. I wonder if anyone on here has ever read it...

fearltd wrote:Very interesting interview. I would love to read that early draft of FWWM. I know it's been circulated in a few small circles of TP fans. I wonder if anyone on here has ever read it...

Man when Bob mentioned that, I wished I was there in person! I'd have marched him to his closet to dig and find it! Total honor though to talk to Bob and Dana. Two nice guys who seem so appreciative of the show and its fans even all these years later. Anyways, back to transcribing Part 2 and the Dana interview!

Cool stuff!!

Thanks for interviewing Robert Engels! Very interesting.

Great stuff, thanks for posting!

I enjoyed reading the interview with Robert Engels. After reading it, I researched the Eisenhower inauguration, which happened on 20th January 1953. The episode of I Love Lucy, in which Lucy goes to the hospital to give birth, was broadcast the day before, but it received higher ratings!

Engels refers to the presidential ball being interrupted so that people could watch I Love Lucy on TV. At this moment, time seems to freeze and so there is gap which opens up between the two worlds, allowing the Black Lodge inhabitants to travel to Earth for perhaps the first time. Robert Engels mentions that there are insects under the kitchen table in someone's house (perhaps Leland Palmer's house). In Blue Velvet, the insect is a symbol of evil, ie, the Black Lodge. If Leland is about 40 in 1989, he would be 4 years old in 1953. Perhaps at this age, he meets BOB at Pearl Lakes.

This is just my interpretation. Any thoughts on this?

Fred wrote: This is just my interpretation. Any thoughts on this?

Really like this. It definitely sounds like this is somewhere they might've/could've gone with sequels to FWWM, too.




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Thanks. Glad you like this.

I have been thinking: Leland mentions that he first meets BOB during the Summer, over at Pearl Lakes. That would make it Summer 1953, about 6 months after the inauguration of Eisenhower.

It's possible that BOB has been floating around in Twin Peaks for about 6 months, looking for a person to inhabit.

Another thought (not strictly related): In the deleted scene, where Laura is staring at the ceiling fan, and slowly grinning, it seems that BOB is using the circular motion of the fan to hypnotise her! He says "See what we can do?", referring to the incident at Harold Smith's house, when he briefly possesses her, and the teeth turn yellow. Also, it explains why she is frightened of the fan, when Leland turns it on a few days later.

Is this valid?

Fred wrote:
Another thought (not strictly related): In the deleted scene, where Laura is staring at the ceiling fan, and slowly grinning, it seems that BOB is using the circular motion of the fan to hypnotise her! He says "See what we can do?", referring to the incident at Harold Smith's house, when he briefly possesses her, and the teeth turn yellow. Also, it explains why she is frightened of the fan, when Leland turns it on a few days later.

Is this valid?

I'm thinking that BOB uses the fan, yes, but I think all the spirits of the Lodge use electricity, and the fan is just one way. But he's definitely trying to enter her body. I love the deleted scene with the grinning.


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My feeling is that most of the BOB/Leland stuff in Fire Walk With Me has both a real-world and a mythological explanation. The latter, extended by the Missing Pieces, involves BOB using electricity as a conduit (there's also that reference to "beings of pure air" in the Lodge). I always thought the Leland aspect of it was that he was using the fan to cover the sound from Laura's room, one more component, like the drugged milk, to keep the Palmer family denial going. Which really gives it a lot of resonance when you go back and see it in the pilot - it's like a visual reminder of what Mrs. Palmer half-knows, doesn't want to face, and know realizes she might have to, in the worst possible way.

LostInTheMovies wrote:My feeling is that most of the BOB/Leland stuff in Fire Walk With Me has both a real-world and a mythological explanation. The latter, extended by the Missing Pieces, involves BOB using electricity as a conduit (there's also that reference to "beings of pure air" in the Lodge). I always thought the Leland aspect of it was that he was using the fan to cover the sound from Laura's room, one more component, like the drugged milk, to keep the Palmer family denial going. Which really gives it a lot of resonance when you go back and see it in the pilot - it's like a visual reminder of what Mrs. Palmer half-knows, doesn't want to face, and know realizes she might have to, in the worst possible way.

Also one more thought that occurred to me during my recent run-through...if the fan represents denial, how perfect that a shot of the fan dissolves into placing food on the table in that bizarre wake scene in episode 17, which represents denial on a perhaps unintentionally meta-level. (Incidentally, Tina Rathborne's and Tricia Brock's comments on this episode in Brad Dukes' oral history are really fascinating.)

I think in the original, original draft, there was this whole thing from 1954. I’d have to go look it up to be sure, but there was this whole thing that took place, the inauguration night of [President] Eisenhower. There were insects on this kitchen table, and somehow the Garmonbozia was there (chuckles), or the corn was there. If my memory serves me correctly, we got that idea because I think it’s Eisenhower’s inauguration, they actually stop the inauguration ball for a half hour, because it was the same night that on I Love Lucy where she had her baby. That was the episode, so everything stopped, so the world stopped. So maybe that’s what we were thinking (laughs), there’s a journey.

That is so bizarre, even for Twin Peaks. But yet I can just see Lynch filming these slow, creepy shots going through empty or frozen buildings like the White House (almost like the unsettling shots of the highschool from Episode 27 I think, before we see BOB's arm coming through the Grove). I can just see a disgusting shot of insects swarming over corn on/under the (Formica?) table, like in Blue Velvet. But I have no idea what its supposed to mean or represent.

And if I'm not sure how its even supposed to be possible that delaying the presidential ball to watch I Love Lucy causes time to stop, even assuming Twin Peaks physics. And is this supposed to be what opens up a portal from MIKE and BOB's dimension? If so, how was the garmonbozia already there?

But yet, at the same time, it seems to fit right in with the rest of Lynch & Frost's strange world: all-powerful inhabiting spirits that go by pedestrian contemporary names like "MIKE" and "BOB", pain and suffering taking the form of "creamed corn" (why exactly?), BOB speaking through a ceiling fan, said spirits living together above a "convenience store" of all places, the Black Lodge taking the form of a room with red curtains, art deco furniture and zig-zag flooring with jazzy music in the background, making a magical ring from a "Formica" table. From the standpoint of a writer trying to create a consistent mythology that makes sense, those ideas sound ridiculous and make no sense. But yet they fit so well with the offbeat, mysterious, dreamlike vibe of Twin Peaks.

I don't know, I wish Bob Engels was more clear about exactly how this idea would have tied in to the mythology, but it is fascinating to read.

(del.)

All of these interviews were great reads, thanks a lot!