Twin Peaks Return: The Profoundly Disappointed Support Group

[LurkerAtTheThreshold]

Maybe the poster who made that post jumped to conclusion re Frost's presence on the set as there really weren't that many photos of him there (I remember 1, maybe 2) and everyone has been silent as a tomb re Frost's role in the actual shoot - hence, his speculation seems more than valid to me.

Earle, a huge bulk of the shit we've seen in the last hour alone (and other parts) comes straight out of Mark Frost's book. It may not be explicated through pages of dialogue in the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department conference room (yet), but it's all there in that text and people have been poring over it for the last 24-48 hours. Mark Frost would seem to be the furthest from out in the cold. BTW Mädchen Amick, among others, has also come out and specifically said a huge portion of Season 3's story is all Frost.

Further: I get that you want to take it as a personal offense that Lynch had an offhand comment about Season 2, but you have to understand the man's own point of view. His baby was fucked with because the network wanted the story wrapped up. He was deeply invested in that story, and the show was never the same after that compromise, nor was his career. If you were a creator in a similar position you'd likely have similar complicated feelings.

I love Season 2 but I know Lynch is not referring to all of it, and I don't take it personally. It's not about me or my love for the show in all its good, bad or both. It's about what he went through. It's not about validating you. Diving deep into a grudge with David Lynch over Season 2 after 25+ years seems like a pointless use of time to me.

I'm just not convinced that the way it all went down was Mark Frost and Lynch with this finished script and Frost having written off on this nuclear explosion section.

The fact that the Gordon Cole mushroom cloud photo scene (and so much else of episode 8 and the other surreal bits) are a tribute to eraserhead and other Lynch works.

My gut feeling is that Frost had a neatly packaged script albeit about aliens --but with a very clear linear narrative in mind.
Lynch took that, parodied half the ideas and went on his own tangent--

Then later Frost retconned the stuff in Secret history by introducing the Babylon working ritual Jack Parsons and Marjorie Cameron to make sense of Lynch's space opera.

I have trouble believing that Frost would have come up with Laura floating in a bubble in the space scene. That's Lynch's obsession with Laura Palmer, it's totally his aesthetic.

We know for a fact that the black-face hobos were made up on the spot because in an interview Lynch said (in his usual cryptic pseudobabble) 'About that. An idea comes to you. It's about translating. And about that guy--you just wait and see.'
This is confirmation that Lynch probably ad libbed half of these sequences. Just like he did in episode 29

Anyway. I could be wrong. That's just my gut feeling. Bit don't pretend like you have some secret insight into Lynch's and Frosts creative process.

I suspect lost of people are holding their tongues about what really happened on set, and we won't know what really happened until after the whole thing airs and showtime has nothing to lose financially from people being negative about Lynch's processes.
Right now it's heroine lynch and they hope that people will enjoy it as much as is possible. It explains Frost and all the other cast backing it albeit with icy confusion and standoffishness as to what's happening.

I remember Madchen or one of the other cast said about the return something like ; 'I understand it now. The whole thing is about David.'

[Hockey Mask]

It always bordered on being terrible verse that translating into brilliant parody - mixed with genuine emotion and enthusiastic characters.

I just remember that back in the day, it was the fact that it was a soap opera parody that gave people a licence to praise Lynch as an infallible genius. But now that that's not there (They're still doing it) it's just not as clear why sloppy filmmaking, nostalgia for themes explored to death in last century --and bad acting are examples of Avante guards genius.

What I dot understand is why go back to the nuclear bomb? Something which has been explored in countless works of art, when their are a million things which are just as haunting happening in the world today. Islamic terror? The rise of totalitarian ideologies? Militantism? Imperialism?

Instead we are re exploring something that happened mid last century. Yes; it was a horrible moment in humanity. But the way it's treated in this series is almost nostalgic. The atomic bomb is the cherry pie, and coffee of the aged horror filmmaker.
Lynch is so out of touch it's unbelievable. Then the fact that a small town murder mystery has slowly expanded into a camp invasion of the body snatchers sci fi double feature which would make Ed Wood laugh.

I love it but it hate it. I love to hate it.

You really want Twin Peaks to revolve around Islamic terror? You need to take a deep breath.

Let me tell you this-- I want Islamic terror in my twin peaks as much as I want the white sands bomb tests.

Not very much at all.
But if a film maker is going to attempt to shock me with a total diversion from a normal viewing experience, Islamic terror would have had more chance of instilling dread in me than the nuclear bomb detonation --which just bored me and made me feel Lynch had lost his marbles.

It just didn't connect to real world fears for me. That's all I'm saying. If it worked for you--- great

Maybe you should pop in Iron Man 3.

[Rudagger]

Maybe you should pop in Iron Man 3.

Off topic, but for all the crap IM3 gets, it actually cleverly subverted the middle eastern terrorist thing.

[LateReg]

I'm enjoying this conversation and before Counterpaul responds I'd just like clarification on something. I get the anti-narrative thing you're talking about and have theories as to why, but what do you perceive as shoddiness in The Return? Are you saying you see the floor sweeping/shovel painting as shoddy? What are you referring to?

You've got to admit. Sometimes elements like the special effects and acting are so bad, but there seems to be no context for it.

Don't get me wrong, mostly I like the series.

But for instance in the last episode when Ray kills Mr C and then says "I think he's dead. But I'm not sure about that. I saw something in Cooper. It may be the key to what this is all about."

The delivery and the inflection, and hell even the content is so corny, I haven't seen such bad dialogue and acting at some points in the return since the 1980's. Like it reminds me of something you would see in a Stephen segal movie.

The original series got away with a lot of bad acting because it was parodying soap operas. James and Donna were ok as pastiches, it was only once the irony drifted off that the thrill of terrible acting wore off.

The problem with the return is it's not directly setting itself up as a parody of anything. It just seems to parody random things, and there's a lot of self loathing or something. The bad acting is just really distracting.

All that said, I like the new series as a dodgy third season, mixed with Lynchian self referential aggrandising.

Speaking of which. I just saw someone pull from Reddit a shot from Eraserhead of Henry with a nuclear bomb picture behind him. They were of course discussing this image in the context of what a genius Lynch is to be able to endlessly reference his own work.

But this only further gave me the shits. To think that you would just recycle old imagery from your early films for such a major plot point in the new mythology, for me, is extremely dull.

Well, I don't think the effects are bad. I mean, yes, early on the effects aren't great in a realistic sense, but they're wonderful in a pure art sense, and unlike anyone else's use of effects. I think they're brilliant. In Part 8, they're flawlessly executed by any measure, so I think you really have to go back and then think about why the early effects called so much attention to themselves, seeming cheap when, imo, they're probably not and also didn't have to look that way. Maybe because they exist in a surreal, impossible dreamlike world? Because Lynch is creating art that suits his particular style, and the effects look like his paintings?

The acting can at times seem off, but I wouldn't term it bad. I see the parody/satire here and there, such as with the lady and her dog, and it does push dangerously close to "bad" acting, but I don't plainly view acting like that as good or bad, but rather as performance art plain and simple. It's a performance more so than acting, if that makes sense, and it's great. It's that uncommon miss of parody and sincerity working overtime.

I don't believe Lynch is out of touch. He's always had his obsessions and the 1950s are one of them. They are his formative years and in many ways the formative post-war years of modern America, and he's going to continue to explore that, and I'm very happy to see him do so in a way that enriches his filmography and shows us something we haven't quite seen before. As Mr Reindeer said, it's fascinating to see him finally set a film in the decade that all of his films come to resemble.

And I love how this series is a hall of mirrors for Lynch's obsessions and past films in general. He's always carried visual motifs from one film to the next, and this series is a complex web of his life's work that fits perfectly with the themes relating to the passage of time.

[N. Needleman]

We know for a fact that the black-face hobos were made up on the spot because in an interview Lynch said (in his usual cryptic pseudobabble) 'About that. An idea comes to you. It's about translating. And about that guy--you just wait and see.' This is confirmation that Lynch probably ad libbed half of these sequences.

No, it's not, at all. That's you guessing based on what you are extrapolating from your reactions to that sequence and subsequent interpretation of Lynch's comments on his creative process - basically the same sort of thing he's been saying about it for decades, BTW. These are not new statements from David Lynch. He has talked about translating ideas into meaning since before he made the first pilot.

There is zero confirmation of anything you just said. And people have spent the last several days poring over the Secret History because of the past episode (and previous ones') connections to that text, so pretending it's meaningless or coincidental is silly at this point.

Bit don't pretend like you have some secret insight into Lynch's and Frosts creative process.

This is a bizarre request considering what you've just postulated from whole cloth. I have what they've actually said and done to go on; you have nothing but your own feelings.

It explains Frost and all the other cast backing it albeit with icy confusion and standoffishness as to what's happening.

I remember Madchen or one of the other cast said about the return something like ; 'I understand it now. The whole thing is about David.'

I'm sorry, but this is just not true. Neither statement. It's ascribing emotions and attitudes ("icy confusion and standoffishness") to the cast and crew which are the polar opposite of what they have presented, including Frost. It's what you choose to project onto them to validate your own feelings.

Like we said before: You are entitled to your own feelings about the show, which are valid, not your own facts, which are not. My telling you you're making shit up does not make your feelings wrong. But it doesn't mean you get to make shit up.

[LurkerAtTheThreshold]

We know for a fact that the black-face hobos were made up on the spot because in an interview Lynch said (in his usual cryptic pseudobabble) 'About that. An idea comes to you. It's about translating. And about that guy--you just wait and see.' This is confirmation that Lynch probably ad libbed half of these sequences.

No, it's not, at all. That's you guessing based on what you are extrapolating from your reactions to that sequence and subsequent interpretation of Lynch's comments on his creative process - basically the same sort of thing he's been saying about it for decades, BTW. These are not new statements from David Lynch. He has talked about translating ideas into meaning since before he made the first pilot.

There is zero confirmation of anything you just said. And people have spent the last several days poring over the Secret History because of the past episode (and previous ones') connections to that text, so pretending it's meaningless or coincidental is silly at this point.

Bit don't pretend like you have some secret insight into Lynch's and Frosts creative process.

This is a bizarre request considering what you've just postulated from whole cloth. I have what they've actually said and done to go on; you have nothing but your own feelings.

It explains Frost and all the other cast backing it albeit with icy confusion and standoffishness as to what's happening.

I remember Madchen or one of the other cast said about the return something like ; 'I understand it now. The whole thing is about David.'

I'm sorry, but this is just not true. Neither statement. It's ascribing emotions and attitudes ("icy confusion and standoffishness") to the cast and crew which are the polar opposite of what they have presented, including Frost. It's what you choose to project onto them to validate your own feelings.

Like we said before: You are entitled to your own feelings about the show, which are valid, not your own facts, which are not. My telling you you're making shit up does not make your feelings wrong. But it doesn't mean you get to make shit up.

Your allowed to speculate but I'm not. I see how this open discussion works...

[N. Needleman]

Yeah, I speculate about the show. You're claiming Frost and the cast and crew are ice cold about the show and were clearly frozen out out of the creative process - you call that fact. There's no evidence of that, there's actually the exact opposite.

[LurkerAtTheThreshold]

Yeah, I speculate about the show. You're claiming Frost and the cast and crew are ice cold about the show and were clearly frozen out out of the creative process - you call that fact. There's no evidence of that, there's actually the exact opposite.

I'm not calling anything fact.
I've said a thousand times I could be wrong, but that it's just my gut feeling.

Why is it not ok to be wrong? That's what opinions are.

You act like I'm Michael j Anderson callin Lynch a pedo rapist. I'm just criticising his art.

[LurkerAtTheThreshold]

Yeah, I speculate about the show. You're claiming Frost and the cast and crew are ice cold about the show and were clearly frozen out out of the creative process - you call that fact. There's no evidence of that, there's actually the exact opposite.

And honestly I don't understand why you have to be so vitriolic. You can disagree with me that's fine. But why do we have to scream at each other about it?

It's just an opinion.

[BigEd]

Yeah, I speculate about the show. You're claiming Frost and the cast and crew are ice cold about the show and were clearly frozen out out of the creative process - you call that fact. There's no evidence of that, there's actually the exact opposite.

And honestly I don't understand why you have to be so vitriolic. You can disagree with me that's fine. But why do we have to scream at each other about it?

It's just an opinion.

Scream??

[N. Needleman]

Yeah, I speculate about the show. You're claiming Frost and the cast and crew are ice cold about the show and were clearly frozen out out of the creative process - you call that fact. There's no evidence of that, there's actually the exact opposite.

And honestly I don't understand why you have to be so vitriolic. You can disagree with me that's fine. But why do we have to scream at each other about it?

It's just an opinion.

You outright say it is 'a fact' that Lynch made scenes up on the spot (like the black-faced hobos) and ignored Frost, and that it is proven by your supposition. It's not. You also say it's fact that Frost and the cast are ice cold and standoffish about the finished show. This is not only untrue, it's provably false.

I'm not being vitriolic or screaming at you. I'm just saying, this came up before with a previous post and you admitted at that time you had no idea and were 'making it up'. I don't see the point of doing it again. It's just unnecessary.

[LurkerAtTheThreshold]

Yeah, I speculate about the show. You're claiming Frost and the cast and crew are ice cold about the show and were clearly frozen out out of the creative process - you call that fact. There's no evidence of that, there's actually the exact opposite.

And honestly I don't understand why you have to be so vitriolic. You can disagree with me that's fine. But why do we have to scream at each other about it?

It's just an opinion.

You outright say it is 'a fact' that Lynch made scenes up on the spot (like the black-faced hobos) and ignored Frost, and that it is proven by your supposition. It's not. You also say it's fact that Frost and the cast are ice cold and standoffish about the finished show. This is not only untrue, it's provably false.

I'm not being vitriolic or screaming at you. I'm just saying, this came up before with a previous post and you admitted at that time you had no idea and were 'making it up'. I don't see the point of doing it again. It's just unnecessary.

But you're also 'making it up' that it didn't happen that way. I don't know how you can be so blind to the fallacy of your argument.

You said that 'there is not evidence that this happened but there is strong evidence that it happened the other way'.
At least you admit that either side is just evidence based guess work for something neither of us know.

It's just becoming this battle of language where someone on your side of the debate 'speculates' and someone on my side 'makes stuff up'.

I think the quote I provided does give evidence that Lynch will have veered off the script in various ways. We know that he has done this in the past, and I would say this is reasonable evidence that he would do it again now.

It's quite plausible that the 'woodsmen' were introduced after the fact. I'd say the eyeless woman and other story elements may be tangential.
Time will tell how it really happened --

In the meantime all you can do is 'speculate' and I'll just have to 'make things up' because language is slanted in your favour

[douglasb]

Less frustrating than the show is the CONTINUAL use of this thread by individuals as a platform for debate. Read the first f'kin post. There are other debate threads. This is not a debate thread! By all means battle it out! Just not in this f'kin thread!

[counterpaul]

By the “standard measures” of narrative art – strong characterisation and storytelling – many anti-novels would be regarded as artistic failures, no? I’m not saying I necessarily see them that way, but that many others would.

Ah. Well, I still have a couple of questions and a few honest disagreements:

1) "Strong characterization and storytelling" begs the question a bit. You leave "strong" undefined and the word "storytelling" is so broad as to be almost meaningless, so the clarification isn't all that much more helpful than the original assertion of "artistic failure." But I think I get what you're going for here. I would just argue that there are many, many ways to create narratives with strong characterization and storytelling. I mean, you brought up Joyce for goodness's sake and Bloom from Ulysses is pretty universally considered, by literary types, to be one of the greatest (I, personally, would say the greatest) characters in 20th Century literature. And Stephen Dedalus ain't too far behind. Then there's something like, say, Beckett's Not I, which I would call a storytelling tour de force. The characterization in Ulysses and the storytelling in Not I are unconventional, and possibly hard to parse at times, but I do not believe it is fair at all to call them "weak" by any measure.

2) If "any standard measure" can be boiled down to these two things, that seems incredibly limiting. Especially if by "storytelling" you're referring to stuff like a clear plot and a tight structure, neither of which is in any way necessary to tell a moving and truthful story. I reject your assertion, if I'm reading it right, that any narrative artwork that subverts or downright ignores these things cannot, by default, be an artistic success. We just plain disagree.

3) "Regarded" by whom? It takes a person--an intelligence--to regard a work of art. Nothing can be regarded in a vacuum. It seems strange that you would stick with a set of criteria for judging art that you yourself often disagree with. Whose "regarding" counts and whose doesn't in this scenario? Is there some person or group of people with some special authority that overrides anybody else's opinion? Critics? I mentioned critical consensus as being very much in TPTR's favor, so critical consensus must not be sufficient to deem a work an artistic success by the measures you're describing. I remain confused.

4) Who cares what "many" people think? First, "many" is quite vague. Second, name any piece of art and there are going to be people (often lots and lots of people--and I don't mean idiots) who will honestly hate it, for all kinds of perfectly valid reasons. But there will also be people who love it for equally valid reasons. If your goal is to create some sort of objective test of a work's artistic success or failure (a project I have grave doubts is even possible), polling isn't going to help you.

In fact, for the moment I’m parking my own judgement about The Return’s failure or otherwise until somebody comes up with a plausible explanation for its anti-narrative approach. Impossible to judge the overall work until we can see why it’s taken this route.

But I just did (above). Lynch simply likes to incorporate the art-making into the art and does not seem to see this practice (the practice of revealing the seams, etc.) as at all antithetical to emotional investment and immersion. His work (quite persuasively, I personally would add) argues, aesthetically, that the audience can become a participant in the making of a work and only be drawn more deeply into it.

And here it’s necessary to retract something said right at the start of this thread, which was that it doesn’t matter if the shoddiness of this series is deliberate or not. Obviously I’ve done a 180 on this, my only defence being that this is a headwrecker of a work to grapple with! The key has been to see the shoddiness (I could put such words in quote marks but would rather not) as systematic and scenes such as the floorsweeping and shovel-painting as clues to this; systematic anti-narrative being brought to millions via television – as you say, that’s an interesting project all right. And having done such a 180, I should probably be more forgiving of those who see nothing wrong at all with this show. I think they’re wrong in the same way people cracking up at Andy Kaufman (non-existent) punchlines are wrong, but none of us is without sin here.

And I think you're wrong. This is one of the things that makes sharing opinions so fascinating!

Whatever you mean by the word, I do not think any aspect of TPTR can accurately be called "shoddy" (I put it in quotes because I am quoting you and because I am not 100% sure what you mean by the word). It's entirely possible that we have very different definitions of that word in mind, but however aesthetically displeasing you may find some of Lynch's decisions regarding VFX or pacing or direction of performances, it seems nigh undeniable to me (though, please, deny all you want and I am genuinely interested in reading you support your denial) that it was all done with a great deal of intent, focus, and dedication to detail. In other words, not shoddily.

Elsewhere on this giant thread I wrote at length about the VFX, for example, especially those in Part 2 and 3 (the stuff in the red room and Coop falling in space), and how Lynch is not going for conventional realism, but that the rendering of the VFX are uniformly excellent (I speak as a post production professional of 20 years). This confuses a lot of viewers who judge the quality of VFX solely on their naturalism, but whether you like the unrealistic results or not, it is not accurate to call the VFX "bad" and certainly not "shoddy." They are, at worst, expert renderings of poor ideas (that is not my opinion--I find them thrilling--but for those that hate them). Anyway, I won't repeat it all here. If you're interested, search this thread for my handle and you'll find it.

And Andy Kaufman makes me laugh until I cry, and I cannot fathom a world in which involuntary, copious laughter in response to a master comedian is a "sin." What a sad world that would be!

Good to see the suggestion about an anti-narrative approach has some resonance with you. So let’s put the question directly: why do you think the creators may have taken this approach? Call it narrative-plus if that helps, as the anti-narrative thing hasn’t been completely systematic.

Is what I said above not sufficient? I'm happy to elaborate, but I think I'm not sure exactly what you're asking here.

Fun discussion! I hope you've taken no offence at any of my disagreements--I am not offended by your disagreements with me.

[counterpaul]

What I dot understand is why go back to the nuclear bomb? Something which has been explored in countless works of art, when their are a million things which are just as haunting happening in the world today. Islamic terror? The rise of totalitarian ideologies? Militantism? Imperialism?

I have two responses to this.

First, I honestly can't imagine why time would blunt the resonance of using the image of a nuclear explosion as a metaphor for total chaos and destruction. It is still the only tool that can literally destroy the habitability of the entire planet in one fell swoop. It sure remains a damn potent image for me.

Second, back to Twin Peaks specifically: Eeeeeeelectricity! Splitting an atom generates massive amounts of power and electricity is one of the key motifs of Twin Peaks, certainly since FWWM.