Twin Peaks – Press Play Video Blog

Coming as it did on the heels of the more-than-a-cult-show ‘Twin Peaks,’ David Lynch’s film annex to the series, ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me’ had an uphill climb with its viewers and reviewers. Such is the way with extensions like this: Tolkien’s Silmarillion never had much of a chance beside the Lord of the Rings series, just as the X-Files films have not seen much critical acclaim. (Ever read the "other" Oz books by L. Frank Baum? Didn’t think so.) It’s hard to say what causes this syndrome of reception, if you want to call it that: perhaps the simplest way of saying it is that once viewers decide they’ve had enough, they back away? Or, in the case of Lynch’s film, a creative world that teemed and had true magnetism in one medium didn’t have the same draw for its viewers in another, for reasons that weren’t the film’s fault? Whatever the case, Joel Bocko is a defender of ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me,’ and defend it he does, with 7 well-supported points and an appropriately dreamy tour of Lynch’s much-maligned film, which takes imaginative leaps that shouldn’t be overlooked. Take a look yourself: you might want to enter into the Twin-Peaks dreamscape once more after you watch this piece.

What is it that made ‘Twin Peaks’ so influential in so many different cultural areas? This is the question most often asked about David Lynch’s and Mark Frost’s pioneering television series–beyond, of course, "What’s it mean?" This video essay by YouTube user "Glit Boy" offers us a history of the show and, in so doing, provides a possible answer to the question, perhaps uninintentionally. The video shows us snippets of the show’s origins, alluding to Frost’s previous work with ‘Hill Street Blues,’ by way of saying that the show was wholly unconventional in a time at which the networks were dominated by police procedurals and other similarly plot-driven vehicles. After a run-down of the plot, we get an explanation of the show’s influence on video games such as ‘A Link to the Past’ and ‘Deadly Premonition,’ as well as series such as ‘The Killing’ and countless others. What all of this accumulated evidence indicates is that what made the series so influential may have been its confidence: not just its storytelling skill, or its cinematography, but the sense that all of its elements, from Agent Cooper’s love of coffee to the fixation of the Log Lady, were in place before Lynch even imagined them, that he simply walked into the world of the show and began filming.

Tag: Twin Peaks

Watch: 7 Reasons Why David Lynch’s ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me’ Is an Underrated Masterpiece

Watch: ‘Twin Peaks’: A Short Video History