898 Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

[Finch]

The deleted scenes actually reinforce just how good the theatrical cut of the film already was. Most of the Missing Pieces footage is extraneous though the extended convenience store sequence has excellent value as Twin Peaks lore and would have made the Philadelphia scenes with Bowie easier to follow. The Deer Meadow section is fine as it is in the film. Even in the second half, there isn't really anything that is truly essential though I do miss the Laura under the fan sequence as originally filmed. I think you could argue that a Director's Cut needn't be substantially longer, and the various fan edits online that reinserted everything back in are bloated pieces that completely miss the point of FWWM. I had a go at a fan edit myself when the box set was released and I ended up only adding 10-12 mins back in (Jeffries in Argentina, the entire convenience store scene, the Palmers talking Norwegian, Laura under the fan).

The drive to Partyland clarifies that the scene is meant to be happening in Canada but if you add that back in, you lose the impact of that hard sudden cut from the Roadhouse to the loud orgy. Admittedly, some dialogue in the film makes only sense with related deleted scenes reinstated (Donna offers Laura a muffin after her breakdown and Laura calls herself a muffin when she leaves the Hayward house in tears; whereas in the film itself, Laura's "I'm a muffin" line at Partyland is a big "huh?" moment). I love FWWM. I think it's Lynch's best film ahead of Mulholland Drive and Eraserhead but I'm the first one to admit that its script is pretty messy compared to those two (as is Wild at Heart; Lynch wasn't the most disciplined writer in the early 90s).

[Finch]

The Lee and Badalamenti interviews are fine (I especially liked his performance of The Voice of Love at the end) but if you've watched them speak about Twin Peaks before, there is literally very little you don't already know. I attended Comic Con in May 2019 when Sheryl and Ray (Wise) came to a Peaks panel, and I subsequently watched other panels with them, and they pretty much talk about the same things every time. I must say, I respect Ray Wise for how game he is: every single time he gets asked to perform his song from Episode 8 (the Season 2 opener) and he does it admirably but I kinda wonder if he is not heartily sick of it by now.

[flyonthewall2983]

Do you see them as deleted scenes? I'm under the impression that Lynch sees them as canonical but simply couldn't fit them into the feature at the time. Thinking on them myself they felt more like extra bits of clarification/context. I'm unsure how I feel about them outside of that.

In a purely technical sense they are but I do realize they are much more than that, and there is some coherency in how they all fit in sequentially as almost an alternate movie to this. I haven't seen the fan edit yet, but I'm interested in how it all fits together.

[hearthesilence]

I must say, I respect Ray Wise for how game he is: every single time he gets asked to perform his song from Episode 8 (the Season 2 opener) and he does it admirably but I kinda wonder if he is not heartily sick of it by now.

He did a nice A.V. Club interview in 2008, and I forgot that he used to play so many heavies - playing the "possessed" side of his role wasn't a stretch given that experience, but just about every role I've seen him do outside of Twin Peaks since exudes a natural gentleness. Even a role like his defense lawyer in Larry Sanders had this quality - it's not anywhere in his lines, he just has an aura of a really decent person. When you see him in interviews, it feels like it's just his natural personality.

[flyonthewall2983]

He was great at that in the third season of Fargo

[Finch]

he just has an aura of a really decent person. When you see him in interviews, it feels like it's just his natural personality.

He was very kind to everyone. We spoke briefly about filming Robocop with Paul Verhoeven and his regret that he wasn't in The Return more (though really Leland's arc was done, what more could they have done with that character? If Unrecorded Night is Twin Peaks under a different name, I think it'd be fun to see Ray returning as a new character). He was very reluctant to do the murder scene in Episode 14 initially because he had just had a baby daughter but Lynch convinced him to do it.

[whaleallright]

(Donna offers Laura a muffin after her breakdown and Laura calls herself a muffin when she leaves the Hayward house in tears; whereas in the film itself, Laura's "I'm a muffin" line at Partyland is a big "huh?" moment).

It's weird to think of anyone getting stuck on that line, amidst a film (and a larger body of work) filled with non-sequitirs and absolutely inexplicable things. Does "I am the great went" make any more sense?

[Finch]

Oh I wasn't meaning necessarily to single out that one line but I realise it may have come across that way. As much as I love the film some lines make me cringe a lot ("gobble, gobble" etc, some of Cooper's dialogue, too).

[whaleallright]

Oh, I didn't mean to single you out -- just expressing my amusement at those who prefer to have the things in the film "explained" better via the left-out scenes, when I would think in order to appreciate Twin Peaks in most of its incarnations you need to be ready to allow much of it to be totally inexplicable.

[Finch]

podcast with the film's sound supervisor Douglas Murray

I'd love to hear the sound they originally put together for the train car scene.

[Finch]

Potemkine French UHD coming April 18th 2023

If French subs aren't enforced, this will do if CC don't follow suit.

[FrauBlucher]

Possible tease for a UHD

[Finch]

Pieter at the BR forum found an Amazon France listing for a The Straight Story UHD but I don't imagine CC doing two Lynch films in the same month.

[TechnicolorAcid]

And it would be odd for a Criterion release to pop up on Amazon France.

[Finch]

Wonder if Kyle did a piece for FWWM as well as Inland Empire at their offices last year. He's only in the film for 10-15 minutes but it'd be nice to hear him talk candidly about the circumstances surrounding his participation in the film. I was always intrigued by his reluctance to appear in the film when it was another opportunity to work with Lynch and after everyone complained how Lynch abandoned the show halfway through season 2. Maybe the burnout was too great at the time. As good as Chris Isaak is, I can't help wondering how the Deer Meadows scenes would have played with Kyle in from the very beginning. The early FWWM drafts suggest that a lot of the scenes with Coop are identical to the Desmond scenes in the finished film. Cooper playing the hot coffee prank on Stanley would have jarred a bit after the show but would have been in line with Coop in the pilot where he comes across as colder than subsequent episodes.

[PfR73]

I'd be very doubtful of that since the pattern has been that Criterion doesn't put extras on the 4K disc (other than commentaries), and doesn't upgrade an existing Blu-ray that they package with the UHD combo, thus no new extras.