GIRL MUSIC 009: THE MUSIC AND TREES OF TWIN PEAKS (THE GREATEST MAGIC TRICK IN THE HISTORY OF TV)
“You’ve done the greatest magic trick ever in the history of television. We’re going to watch on Sunday and by the end no one’s going to be watching, but I want to congratulate you.”
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Words: Juno Rylee Schultz (she/her)
Edits: Morgan Shaver (they/them), Nathan Miller (he/him), and Bex Stump (she/her)
“David Lynch always believes things are more beautiful when they’re played slower.
— Angelo Badalamenti, TWIN PEAKS conductor and composer
When we wrote ‘Laura Palmer’s Theme,’ David sat next to me as I played and said:
‘Imagine you’re alone in the dark woods and you hear the soft cry of an owl in the background. There’s sycamore trees blowing softly in the wind and the moon is out. A girl appears from behind the tree and pauses for a moment. She’s walking towards you and looks into your eyes…’
And as he’s talking, he told me to visualize it — and I did. I started improvising and playing with the opening of those dark, C minor, legato chords. He said, ‘Angelo, that’s beautiful, can you play it slower?’ I slowed down and kept playing for a minute and a half, and he said, ‘Let it build, let it build, she’s walking toward you and she’s very sad.’
I segued into the main theme and kept going up the scale — a very kind of strange scale in a way. He said, ‘Now get it to reach a climax.’ I did, and he said, ‘It’s beautiful! It’s beautiful, Angelo! Now come down again! Slow it down and then go back into the dark wood where you were.’
We did one take. I said I’d go home and work on it. He said, ‘Angelo, don’t change a single note.’ You could see the hairs on his arm were standing up and his eyes became just a little bit salty.
He said, ‘Angelo, this is TWIN PEAKS. I can see it.’”
“If the show was a boat moving along, Angelo’s music was the river that carried it.
— Mark Frost, TWIN PEAKS Co-Creator and Executive Producer
It helped create and support the mood of the show. It gave you a very specific sense of time and place that felt outside of real time and real place.
It helped elevate the show into a mythological realm that really separated it from the usual TV view of what the world is.”
TWIN PEAKS began as a proposed film adaptation presented to David Lynch and Mark Frost — an idea about a different dead girl.
It was called Goddess, an adaptation of a biography about Marilyn Monroe. It was an uncanny, yet perfectly natural match. Lynch was mostly known and celebrated for his surreal arthouse films, like Eraserhead. Mark Frost, however, was highly regarded as a television screenwriter, having worked on several series, including Hill Street Blues.
“An idea holds everything, really, if you analyze it.
An idea comes in, and if you stop and think about it, it has sound, it has image, it has a mood, and it even has an indication of wardrobe, and knowing a character, or the way they speak, the words they say.
A whole bunch of things can come in an instant.
You don’t make the fish, you catch the fish. It’s like, that idea existed before you caught it, so in some strange way, we human beings, we don’t really do anything. The ideas come along and you just translate them.”
— David Lynch, Creator and Executive Producer of TWIN PEAKS, 2017
Goddess fell through for Lynch and Frost, but the two creators kept talking, their minds whirring with the possibilities of a story still centered around a dead girl beloved by those left to mourn her.
“I met David Lynch because I was an agent at Creative Artists Agency and he was a client of the agency and he was my favorite director. I remember the first meeting I ever had with him was a motion picture meeting, even though I was a television agent. He came into the conference room and met with fifteen agents at CAA and he just talked about things that he loved.
He said, “Red lips, rubber, radiators, and leather.”
It was like a miracle: my favorite director talking to me about the things he loved the most. His primary agent created an opportunity for me to build a relationship with David and as a television agent I just started talking to him and enticing him into the world of television.”
— Tony Krantz, former television agent, Creative Artists Agency
Frost and Lynch’s ideas were in motion, and both were in love with the idea of working together in television. Tony Krantz booked a meeting for the two writers to speak with Brandon Tartikoff, the president of NBC, for a pitch called The Lemurians — a show about F.B.I. agents investigating a missing continent, similar to Atlantis, home to alien invaders intent on conquering Earth. Tartikoff committed to the idea immediately, but only for a two-hour television film, which Lynch and Frost had no interest in.
“David didn’t want to do The Lemurians as a movie. After having seen Blue Velvet, I went to Nibblers [a restaurant Lynch loved in Beverly Hills] with David and I told him, ‘You should do a show about these people, the customers here in Nibblers,’ and we started talking about an idea for a soap opera.”
— Tony Krantz
Mark and David were both interested in creating a television series about a dead girl, and a weird town. The pieces were falling into place, and the concept felt electric — charged with mystery, mood, and possibility.
“The show just came out of David and I sitting in a room until we hit on the idea of the dead girl as a way into the town. That came before we knew who she was or even where the town was, but we thought that would be an interesting way to start to peel back the layers of the onion. That was the entry point.”
— Mark Frost
NBC wouldn’t be the network to bring TWIN PEAKS to air. Instead, their competitor, ABC — while locked in a fierce battle for ratings saw the show as a golden opportunity to differentiate itself from other networks and seized it.
“By the time TWIN PEAKS surfaces, it’s very clear two-plus years into our mission that people clearly understood in the creative community what we were trying to do. We really were trying to break the fourth wall on television and just do stuff nobody else would be doing.
Hopefully it succeeded, but our feeling was that even if it failed — as so much in television does — the failures would be so interesting and memorable that even those could help serve the company in terms of bringing in more interesting people and ideas and programming that would be successful.
So that kind of groundswell on that foundation is what ultimately led to Tony Krantz to call me up to say, ‘You’re the only guy brave and crazy enough in town to do this.’
He said, ‘I want you to meet with David Lynch and Mark Frost,’ both of whom I certainly knew creatively, and I said, ‘Sure, bring ‘em in. Why not?’ That was kind of my whole attitude always: Why not? Try things that other people won’t try.”
— Chad Hoffman, former Vice President of Drama Series Development at ABC
“Chad absolutely believed in finding the highest quality and most distinctive programming, and if you build that, the audience will come. He’d say, ‘Never pander to the audience and respect the creators who come in. I thought he was terrific.”
— Gary Levine, former director and vice president of drama development of ABC
A few weeks later, Chad Hoffman, Gary Levine, Mark Frost, David Lynch, and Tony Krantz met for breakfast at the old Café Plaza. There, the network executives, writers, and television agent would discuss what would become the town of TWIN PEAKS — its people, its secrets, and how everything connected together.
“David drew a charcoal map of the town of TWIN PEAKS that we unfurled with Chad when we sold the show. He gave it to me for my birthday one year. I have it framed in my office. It is television history.”
— Tony Krantz
Tony Krantz is quick to credit Mark and David with the successful pitch, but he was an essential instrument in bringing it all to fruition.
“Tony was the guy who kept slapping us and telling us to get back in the ring: ‘Come on, you guys can do this!’ He put a lot of energy into making the ABC deal happen. I would say he was clearly the driving force.”
— Mark Frost
Chad and Gary had no idea if the show was going to be successful, but they believed it would be interesting regardless, which is exactly what ABC was searching for.
“I remember it like it was yesterday. They talked about a real sense of mood of this town in the Northwest where everything was pristine and beautiful, but behind the curtains was a world with the lives of people that were quite opposite of the environment that they lived in.
It was all about secrets and I remember David and Mark talking about what you see in the foreground is not what’s going on in the background and what’s going on in the background is what’s going to capture everybody.
At the end of the breakfast I said, ‘Let’s do it.’ We hired them to go ahead and write the script and I remember talking with Gary as we were walking back from breakfast to the office.
I said, ‘I don’t know if this is going to work or not, but it’s not going to be boring. It’s going to be really interesting. So we’ll take the shot.”
— Chad Hoffman
It took David and Mark almost no time at all to deliver the pilot script to ABC. By this time, Mark and David had been writing together for several years, and the script flowed like a waterfall — spilling out over a handful of writing sessions that moved between New York, a Macintosh computer, a modem, and Los Angeles.
“We had a few writing sessions like that and both thought, ‘Welcome to the future.’ After we finished we were planning to let it sit for a couple of days, but we both couldn’t help it. That night we both read it and we both said, ‘I think it’s working,’ and we called each other that night and said, ‘I think this thing is ready to go.”
— Mark Frost
It didn’t take much convincing after completing the script to sell ABC on an order for filming the pilot. Casting started immediately after, along with Mark and David scouting out filming locations for what they hoped would become the messy and dark soap opera that lived inside their dreams.
“It was this perfect synergy of the framing dramatic abilities of television through the ‘Hill Street Blues’ experience that Mark had and the genius of David Lynch in his particular ‘avant-garde-ness’ The two of them came together to create TWIN PEAKS, and the merger of those two things is not to be underestimated.”
— Tony Krantz
“The Frost family have always had this small vacation home on a lake, about thiry miles east of Albany, New York. Very rustic, a lot of cabins, and a lot of strange characters in the area, some of whom found their way into my thinking about the show.
One story in particular that had haunted me was one my grandmother told me about a girl who had been murdered and found on the shore of a nearby lake. There was supposedly a ghost in the area of this crime that some people said they had occasionally seen. I went down to the city hall and did some digging and found that a murder had taken place there, in the early 1900’s.
That obviously had a lot to do with how Laura came into our lives.”
— Mark Frost
ABC didn’t interfere or get in the way with anything, including the casting of TWIN PEAKS. David, Mark, and casting director Johanna Ray were free to build the series the way they saw fit.
“David and I sat in together on all the various meetings and we didn’t have anyone read, we just met with people.”
— Mark Frost
“What was interesting about TWIN PEAKS is that ABC didn’t tell David Lynch what to do. He said, ‘Here’s my cast!’ He didn’t say, ‘Here’s my first, second, third choice, you all can read them and make them jump through hoops.’ David thinks an actor having to audition is the most horrible, brutal thing ever.”
— Sherilyn Fenn, Audrey Horne
“So I thought this was either going to be a horrible flop…
“I had already known David’s work from Dune. I had gone to see it with my Mom and I thought it was the strangest, weirdest movie I had ever seen so when I knew he was doing this TV show I thought this was either going to be a horrible flop or it’s going to be brilliant. Once I read the script I thought, ‘Wow, this is really good,’ and it reminded me a lot of my home town in Reno, Nevada, in a really dark and twisted way.”
— Mädchen Amick, Shelly Johnson
… or it’s going to be brilliant.”
“[Some actors] impressed us so much that we altered our plans [like when] Mädchen Amick came in. She was brand new in town and hadn’t really done anything at that point, but we were so taken with her that we actually conceived the role for her.
— Mark Frost
“I had done a guest part on Star Trek: The Next Generation and I had done the pilot for Baywatch, neither one had actually aired before I was cast in TWIN PEAKS. Since I had been auditioning for anything and everything I had gotten to know Johanna Ray and gone in for her a lot. She brought me in basically to meet David and I had gone in to read for Lara Flynn Boyle’s part.”
— Mädchen Amick, Shelly Johnston
“The Shelly character was nothing like what it became at that point, but we saw a lot of potential in her.”
— Mark Frost
“They did a great job of finding these really wonderful young actors and I think it went a long way towards making the show that much more interesting. And at the same time, finding these established actors — like Kyle Maclachlan.
It was kind of fascinating to have the older guard be representative of another time period and then find all these really young actors and match them together in a really interesting way.”
— Caleb Deschanel, director of episodes 6, 15, 19
“I loved the script. I recognized right away that the character of Cooper was special and that it was something that I really wanted to do. I thought it presented one of the greatest introductions into a film or television project that I had ever had. Just that long, one single take driving up the mountain, talking into the tape recorder pretty much said everything about the character.”
— Kyle MacLachlan, Special Agent Dale Cooper
Once casting was complete, David Lynch and Mark Frost traveled to Seattle, Washington, to scout filming locations. Every area was studied in meticulous detail, all in service of authentically building the magical-realist vision of an idyllic Pacific Northwest town.
“I remember David and I just having a ton of fun on that trip, excited that we were actually going to make this thing. Washington seemed like the right place. This local scout drove us all over and we didn’t see anything for the first two or three days. We had one day left, and he finally said he’s going to show us this area around Issaquah and Snoqualmie, and the minute we got there everything we’d written showed up in front of our eyes.
A sawmill, the diner by the railroad tracks, a hotel by a waterfall… it was all there like we’d been looking through some kind of magic crystal and seeing this place from a distance, then we get there and find it’s exactly as we’d written it. We just knew we had found everything we needed and we didn’t need to alter anything.”
— Mark Frost
The two writers found more than just the town of TWIN PEAKS during that trip. They also found a few of their key actors among the local talent, including their plastic-wrapped princess who would serve as the spark for all of the events that would unfold within the town.
“I was very young and had no experience in TV or film, and at that point wasn’t even thinking about pursuing television or film; I was just interested in doing theater. I went in and met David and he was wonderful and kind and welcoming and funny. I was so nervous; I sat on my hands the whole time because I was shaking so badly.
David was just so joyful and put me at ease. He didn’t tell me a lot about the project, except that it was a pilot and that I would be playing a dead girl and I would have to be wrapped in plastic and probably put in freezing cold water.
He asked if I could handle that and he said there would be a few flashback scenes. At the end he said something along the lines of, ‘okay, let’s do this.’ I didn’t know what that meant and the casting director walked me out and just said very quietly, ‘I think you just got this, but don’t say anything,’ and I said I wouldn’t.
I remember the walk home like it was yesterday because I was so excited. The excitement wasn’t so much, ‘Oh, I’m going to be on the TV show, it was because he was so nice and so creative and that’s what was so exciting and interesting to me.”
— Sheryl Lee, Laura Palmer
The aesthetic, the talent, the location itself — everything was moving into place for the creation of TWIN PEAKS.
“Just the visual part of TWIN PEAKS is so unique. The way we filmed it, we were all put up in a little motel outside of Seattle, about an hour and a half from Snoqualmie. David and Mark had a dinner for the cast and they were so relaxed and encouraging. We were able to hang out and get to know each other and that sticks out the most — the bonding. And the appreciation too. It was very special.”
— Mädchen Amick
“It was a lot of fun and it created an environment for everyone to really get into their characters and get into the mood of this place. We showed up in Washington and everyone was getting to know each other, and it was just a moody place. Kyle MacLachlan’s character was constantly talking to Diane; he was talking about the trees, the waterfall, the people, and the birds — that’s how it was.
It was a little bit spooky up there. These trees were dark and tall and it was kind of like we were at camp, trying to explore what David Lynch’s vision was for TWIN PEAKS.”
— Gary Hershberger, Mike Nelson
TWIN PEAKS was being born, and there was truly magic in the air as every element swirled together in the cauldron.
“When we read the lines it was like we were zapped into a dream and just speaking what we were feeling.”
— James Marshall
The production of the TWIN PEAKS pilot was chaotic, messy, and beautiful — and utterly pure. Lynch was conscious of each department’s role in serving the overall picture, and he and Frost remained respectful while trying to cultivate a comfortable working environment for everyone.
“David just had an uncanny way of beginning the day, and I just love it when he says, ‘… and it’s going to be a beautiful thing,’ no matter what he was talking about. Whatever was going on in the scene — as long as he ended it with that little phrase — I was happy and comforted by that. He had the uncanny ability to be able to say just the right thing before you had to do a scene, and it just sort of triggered everything that followed.”
— Ray Wise
“… and it’s going to be a beautiful thing.”
Lynch gave actors the time and space to explore themselves, their characters, the nuances of modulation — and where it all fit within each scene.
“David was great; the entire time we were up there I felt spoiled rotten by his direction. There was so much care; it was like shooting a feature. I remember when we were filming the scene in the bar, there was the theme song called ‘Falling’ being sung and David was showing me the lyrics for it. I think he even wrote them. He was involved with every little detail.”
— Gary Hershberger
Lynch embraced suggestions from actors and things that other directors would have considered mistakes, such as flickering lights in scenes. David was different, though. He had a “clear vision of how he wanted it all to be,” but was also willing to let go and see where the art took him — and everyone else. As David J. Latt put it: “There was that wryness, and David’s willingness to hold on to the awkwardness of the moment.”
“Believe it or not, my favorite part of the pilot was James and Donna’s scene in the woods. David was so into it; we did it literally hundreds of times. The whole mystery between them and the intimacy we had — it was something that most teenagers can relate to. That time in one’s life where you feel really alone, yet you get with somebody and that person doesn’t turn out to be the right person and all of a sudden you end up with someone else, where you’ve both been watching each other from afar. It’s so explosive. When that got played out, I thought it was really cool.”
— James Marshall
It was perhaps due to David Lynch’s great insight that the music of TWIN PEAKS was placed squarely in the spotlight of the production, but the strings and notes were all pulled by composer Angelo Badalamenti. Badalamenti’s influence on TWIN PEAKS even extended, in part, to guiding the show toward its final name.
“I had a little office across the street from Carnegie Hall and that’s where David Lynch and I would work. I had a Fender Rhodes piano there in this little room and David would come in and sit next to me, on the right. He said, ‘Angelo, I’m going to do this show. It’s called ‘Northwest Passage.’
I said, ‘Northwest Passage?’ David, that’s something I read when I was in grammar school. You can’t use that title!’
Before you knew it, it was changed to TWIN PEAKS. That must have hit home for David.
I did all the music in New York — a little studio called Excalibur with Artie Polhemus, a brilliant engineer who could do magic. At the time it was not a world of out-and-out digital stuff; he would record everything on tape and do these incredible edits. Both me and David were in awe of what Artie would do for us.”
— Angelo Badalamenti
The music of TWIN PEAKS was also treated as a crucial ingredient from the very beginning.
“I can’t imagine the show without the music. Angelo is such a fun guy and so great to work with, he’s just as important in the TWIN PEAKS tapestry as anybody else’s contribution and you know, that turned out pretty well.”
— Mark Frost
The music of TWIN PEAKS is part of why the show tastes like the Double R Diner’s famous cherry pie, or feels like the shimmer of the stage curtains situated inside the infamous Red Room — yet it was designed separately, in tandem with the show, without any of the composers or players having seen any of the footage.
“When it reaches the climax and goes into the high part… that’s so Italian.”
The music effortlessly inhabited the same places of movement and uncertainty as the action onscreen, and did so with style and grace when viewed through the lens of musical theory.
“The funny thing is that with the TWIN PEAKS pilot, the music was done before we ever saw a lick of film. We never scored the picture; that was all laid in after the fact. I don’t think I’d even seen the name. Working with Angelo, one of the things I like is that he knows what he wants but he’s open to input from his musicians.”
‘Laura Palmer’s Theme’ is quite an interesting piece of music. If you know about theory, it goes through that whole climbing sequence — three different tonic relationships (or keys, if you will) only to arrive at the major version of the minor key which it starts in, which is called parallel major as opposed to relative major.
At one point, it reminded me of the main theme of Last Tango in Paris, that’s a tune by Gato Barbieri, a great saxophone player. When it reaches the climax and goes into the high part… that’s so Italian.
It’s a surprising piece of music.”
— Kinny Landrum
The visuals and aesthetic of David Lynch are already haunting on their own, but it’s impossible to imagine TWIN PEAKS without the sounds and music of Angelo Badalamenti.
“Every layer adds more to the impact and effectiveness of the material. The most exciting thing to me is when the music comes on. David’s visuals are very haunting without sound, but then you lay in the sound effect mix together with Angelo’s score and you reach an almost operatic level. If you had the ability to hear only Angelo’s tracks, it would be pretty amazing on its own. So in terms of post-production, the final layering of that music was really something.”
— David J. Latt
“David Lynch always believes things are more beautiful when they’re played slower.”
Angelo Badalamenti did all the music at a studio called Excalibur in New York. Artie Polhemus was the engineer who built the six-story studio, which housed all the necessary tools and atmosphere. It was perfect for David’s vision.
“It was a very odd, old building that was very spooky and the lobby looked very foreboding. I had it very dark inside, which I always prefer. David liked the atmosphere for it. Everybody settled in and got accustomed to it and everything ironed itself out.”
— Artie Polhemus, lead engineer at Excalibur
“We did one take. I said I’ll go home and work on it. He said, “Angelo, don’t change a single note. This is TWIN PEAKS. I can see it.”
“Just talking and whispering in my right ear as I’m at a keyboard, David describes a mood and I’m able to take his words and translate that into music. It has its own identity. It’s been kind of incredible to work so closely, and the fact we’re on the same musical wavelength, it’s very special if and when that happens.
It’s also great for David because, he’s told me this a bunch of times, even in TWIN PEAKS before he would film or shoot a scene he would have some demos of the themes I’ve written and he would play it for the actors on the set and it would put them in some kind of a mood, even as they speak their words. The style, the mood, and the pace — it helps the director with the actors. The music becomes an integral part of the story.”
— Angelo Badalamenti
“David would play [demos] for the actors on the set and it would put them in some kind of a mood. The music becomes an integral part of the story.”
Fall 1989 came and went, and so did leadership heads at ABC. Mark Frost and David Lynch were screening the completed TWIN PEAKS pilot to various audiences, including the Museum of Television Arts and Sciences and the Directors Guild of America.
“The reaction was extraordinary; people just went nuts for it. So that’s the moment when David and I looked at each other and said, ‘Holy cow, we might have something here.”
—Mark Frost
It was unequivocally true how special the TWIN PEAKS pilot was to everyone who witnessed it, but that didn’t make marketing or selling it to studios as a series any easier for Lynch/Frost Productions.
“It was difficult to get anybody to agree to any sort of series commitment for anything, but the pilot was so absolutely undeniable; it was so new. The famous quote that Brandon Tartikoff gave about TWIN PEAKS was that he knew that ‘tried and true was dead and buried.”
— Tony Krantz
“I saw the pilot and it was simply outrageous.”
— Angelo Badalamenti
“It’s the kind of horrifying vision or surprising moment that is very hard to create on television, where the hair on the back of your neck stands up… and they had a number of moments like that on the pilot.”
— Kyle MacLachlan
Gary Levine and Chad Hoffman both believed in TWIN PEAKS, but they also understood the difficult task in selling the series to corporate brass above them. Hoffman “raved about it” to Bob Iger before leaving ABC saying, “You have to put this on the air and see what happens. The show and these guys are too important.”
It took some time but Tony Krantz finally got the call.
The delay came from the vice president of research (Alan Wurtzel) and other ABC leadership not really knowing what to think of what they had just seen. But ABC “felt positive enough that they wanted to give it a shot,” regardless of the pilot being received poorly in test screenings.
“I remember it vividly. I was in New York. Ted Harbert (president of ABC) came over to meet with me. He told me that TWIN PEAKS was going to be picked up as a series, but not until mid-season for seven episodes, in addition to the two-hour pilot.
I actually thought that was a good thing because it wouldn’t require everybody to dive in and make so many episodes so quickly. It would give everyone a chance to do it in a more relaxed atmosphere.”
— Tony Krantz
According to Hoffman, there was always a plan for ABC to do something with TWIN PEAKS, but that it also needed to “find a place” and address questions like, “where can you put it on where it’s not lost in the clutter of all the new shows?”
“The cost of the pilot wasn’t that exorbitant. There were no big stars, it was all affordable, so the financial downside wasn’t too difficult. Then they sat in the screening room and thought, ‘Oh my God, this is haunting and evocative. We ought to take a shot at this.’ It was one of those instances where they had enough reasons to take a chance on something that wasn’t normal and they could pat themselves on the back if it paid off.”
— David J. Latt
Mark and David continued with their original approach: approaching the filming of TWIN PEAKS like they were filming chapters from a novel. The short order of episodes wasn’t a problem at all. It gave everyone involved the time to create something special.
“The model (particularly then) for network television was you cranked out episodes like sausages and the closer they were to being identical to each other without being identifiable as such, the better it was for the company you were making it for.
But we weren’t making this for a studio, we were making it for ourselves and we wanted to break the mold and said, ‘Let’s make a nine-hour movie.’ And that’s how we proceeded all the way through that first season.”
— Mark Frost
TWIN PEAKS features an abundant amount of on-location filming in Washington, but the series production also needed every setting recreated as studio sets for budgetary reasons.
In October 1989, Mark Frost reached out to Richard Hoover and asked him to literally rebuild TWIN PEAKS in sunny Southern California. The effort took six weeks, two construction coordinators, and two soundstages for the town of TWIN PEAKS to be born and raised once more under the California sun.
“I had never done anything like that before, but it was a great way to learn something. All the sets are Americana in their own Northwest idiom and the colors were buttery and warm. I think the color in the piece is interesting because it’s not necessarily film noir. It’s warm and fuzzy in a way, yet at the same time there is something dark lurking in there and that was kind of on purpose. Each one of the sets had its own visual comfort and color and life… and a lot of other mysteries you never know about.”
— Richard Hoover, series production designer
“What Hoover did was perfectly in sync with Lynch and Frost. One of my favorite things was leaving the office and walking down into those empty sets and kind of exploring, soaking up those feelings you would later put into the script.”
— Harley Peyton, series screenwriter and season two producer’
Everything was coming into full focus for TWIN PEAKS. Although it all happened quickly and wasn’t without its fair share of growing pains, the passion and commitment from every department involved helped keep the speeding train on the rails.
“When I first started the show and I saw the pilot, my take on the whole photographic direction was the Orson Welles picture ‘Touch of Evil.’ It is black and white and and it was shot with wider lenses and longer takes and that type of contrasting photography. I said, ‘This is it, this is what I need to translate.’
‘Touch of Evil’ was the blueprint for me. They liked what I was doing right off the bat, so they just let me go. I very rarely heard from David, but on his episodes he would be specific about certain things. The first season I operated the camera and I was really happy to do that. The minimum day was sixteen hours.
We actually shot more on location than you’d think. We were out there a few times an episode. It wasn’t all stage. They were great locations. By the time those seven episodes were done, my health was going. It was really, really hard.”
— Frank Byers, series director of photography
Everything had its right place within the town of TWIN PEAKS, which helped to authentically build the identity of the series.
“My thoughts going forward after the pilot were of a small town in the Pacific Northwest where the people would hold on to their clothing for years and years. They were practical, hard-working folks whose money was not spent on expensive clothing.
I felt they shopped at local Goodwill stores or at most, Horne’s Department Store. Perhaps they even made their clothing. There were a few characters like Catherine and Josie who were much closer to modern-day fashion. I always dreamed of Nadine Hurley’s character having a variegated yarn sweater that perhaps she made.
Costume design is not what it is in ‘Vogue’ magazine. It is about the psychology of the character, not unlike someone’s home or office environment which is a reflection of who they are and I believe clothing is no different.”
— Sara Markowitz, series costume designer
David Lynch brought in a lot of different collaborators and directors to assist with the creation of TWIN PEAKS, and the town and series are all the richer for it. Many of the directors were just as excited about the material they had to work with as they were about “the wide road” David Lynch gave them all to capture and canvas across.
“David and Mark were very involved; they were the best possible collaborators. It was a constant open door. It was an idyllic kind of situation in terms of many creative artists of all disciplines working together. But when you were directing, no one was staring over your shoulder in any way, but they were always available as great springboards.”
— Lesli Linka Glatter, director of episodes 5,10,13, 23
“Most shows tend to be pretty hard-nosed about the way the script is done — it’s locked in stone and that’s what you do. The impression I got from David is that they were very much director-centric in that sense. There were scripts, but they were welcome to input from the directors so it made the environment that much more creative and more fun.”
— Caleb Deschanel, director of episodes 6,15,19
“I would tell directors coming in to study the pilot, look at the storytelling style we’ve evolved here, and figure out what you can bring to it. We were hiring really talented and interesting people and I didn’t want them to just come in and feel like they’re stamping out engine parts at a Chrysler plant. I think everyone understood the assignment: work with the house style and the mood that David had so brilliantly created and then bring whatever you can of yourself to add to that.”
— Mark Frost
“Every episode felt like a mini movie and they were treated that way from the way they wrote the script and the time the directors spent on shooting and post-production. The consciousness of the show was really well taken care of.”
— Jonathan P. Shaw
“A lot of television shows today will cut five times within a single line of dialogue to bring up the pace and make it more visually stimulating, but TWIN PEAKS followed a very deliberate pace with less cuts which David established. That created a real mood and tension and made it a little more theatrical.”
— Philip Carr Neel, series associate and co-producer
“David described it as, [in David Lynch’s voice] ‘You’ve gotta give my directors a chance to make a one-hour movie. They’re going to drive down a wide road.’ And what’s what they did. It was really unique for television because most directors just come in and leave.
Typically, pre-production and shooting was barely three weeks, but with David and Mark, it was their plan to allow the directors to see the post-production all the way through and come to the sound mix, which was unheard of at the time.”
— Paul Trejo, series editor
David Lynch kept his words and material closely guarded when it came to the network executives. In his mind, there was no reason to have an open-door policy with the brass.
“I don’t think the network believed in it from day one, but all of the publicity forced their hand to do something. ABC called me on Thursday or Friday morning, before the pilot aired, and basically said, ‘You’ve done the greatest magic trick ever in the history of television. We’re going to watch the first half hour on Sunday night with people tuning in and they’re going to say to themselves, ‘What the fuck is this thing about?’ and slowly, by the end of the show no one’s going to be watching, but I just want to congratulate you for all of your great work.”
— Michael Saltzman, former publicist, Lynch/Frost productions, 2004
“There were certain things we did along the way that were really bad, like sending ABC scripts that were completely fake. I think it may have been the end of the first season. We didn’t want them to know what we were really going to do, so we wrote a fake script and sent it to them saying ‘this is what we’ll shoot.”
— Gregg Fienberg, producer
Everyone involved met in the middle of the idyllic town, and as a result, everything inside TWIN PEAKS came to life.
“The whole experience of TWIN PEAKS, especially the first season, was extraordinary and probably the most fun I’ve had in my entire career. It was made because of David and Mark. The way everybody approached those first seven episodes… it was the camaraderie of everyone that David and Mark were able to put together. It was an extraordinary bunch.”
— Duwayne Dunham
It was hard for everyone to fathom — including those that believed in the vision of Lynch and Frost the most — but TWIN PEAKS had clearly struck a chord inside the curious and twisted minds of America. By the spring and summer of 1990, the notes of Angelo Badalamenti were ringing internationally.
“When TWIN PEAKS debuted, it got a thirty-three share in the last half hour. That’s in a pre-cable universe, but it was still unbelievable. It was as if the Earth shifted in the television business for a minute and the notion of doing something quirky and different and odd and weird became something that could be possible in TV.”
— Tony Krantz
“I remember that the research that had been done indicated that by the end of the first hour of the two-hour pilot that half the audience would drop away — and it was the opposite. I think the audience built up and it was the highest rated two-hour movie or pilot of the year.
It felt great and it was a vindication for everything we had fought for and strived to do. The ratings for the first six episodes did comparatively well, given that it was Thursday night at nine o’ clock — and up against Cheers and that mammoth NBC lineup.”
— Chad Hoffman
TWIN PEAKS HAD TRANSCENDED BORDERS, BARRIERS, AND EXPECTATIONS. IT HAD BECOME SYNONYMOUS WITH POP CULTURE AND THE AIR.
And it had all started with a dead girl wrapped in plastic, and a song about making sense of it all — and everything that lay ahead.
“I received a call from Paul McCartney’s office when TWIN PEAKS was riding high in England. It was maybe bigger there than America. They said, ‘Paul would love for you to come and work with him at Abbey Road Studios where you can add some of your TWIN PEAKS sound on something that he’s doing. He loves it so much and would love your direct input.’
So I’m rehearsing this piece I had re-scored with the orchestra at Abbey Road and Paul came over to me and said, ‘Angelo, it sounds great. Let me tell you this story. I was invited by the Queen’s office to perform forty minutes of my music to celebrate her birthday at Buckingham Palace. I’m about to go on and she comes by and says, ‘Oh, Mr. McCartney, it’s so lovely to see you, but I can’t stay!’
Paul said he replied with, ‘What do you mean? We’re celebrating your birthday!’ The Queen replied with, ‘You see, it’s five minutes of eight; I must go upstairs and watch TWIN PEAKS.’ Paul turned around and punched me on the left arm right on the conductor stand and had a few choice words. [laughs] I thought that was incredible!”
— Angelo Badalamenti
“I think David Lynch approached television without realizing it was television, or without giving a moment’s consideration to the fact that it was television. He unintentionally or unconsciously broke every rule of television and opened people’s minds to what came afterwards, and I think the influences are still seen today.“
— Miguel Ferrer
“Plenty of creative people over time have told me, ‘It inspired us to do what we did.’ That’s always great to hear, that there’s a legacy there that we will all have a reason to be proud of.”
— Mark Frost
“I can tell you, nobody thought it would ever see the light of day. David Lynch didn’t think it would ever be aired. That’s what he told me. He called me and said, ‘I want you to edit this thing. ABC is going to give us five million dollars and they’re never going to air it. Let’s go have some fun.’
Along the way, certain things happened… magic happened. You can say it derailed a little bit and it just got weird and goofy, but in the end you have to look back and say, ‘Wow, what a show.’ Nobody had seen anything like this on network television, ever.”
— Duwayne Dunham
TWIN PEAKS was the culmination of the creative efforts of an endless amount of people, but landscape of television wouldn’t be the same if it wasn’t for the maniac genius and arthouse brain of David Lynch, and the pen and paper of Mark Frost.
“TWIN PEAKS is just unbelievable. Whoever thought this outrageous program would take a hold on the world the way it did? When I say the world, I mean the world. I travel fairly extensively to many countries for various events and that’s the first thing they talk about. Everybody wants to know more about TWIN PEAKS. It’s one of those shows that will never die. What can you say? You’ve got to be grateful for beautiful things that happen in life.
— Angelo Badalamenti
“… and it’s going to be a beautiful thing.”
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