From 1990 to 1991, TV viewers were obsessed with a tantalizing question: "Who killed Laura
Palmer?"
That was the central mystery on Twin Peaks, a stylish, bizarre murder mystery set in the
Pacific Northwest.
Now that the show's long-awaited third season has returned, 26 years later, let's step into
the Red Room, pour a cup of damn fine coffee, and have a look into the seedy underbelly
of Twin Peaks.
Inspired by Marilyn Monroe
In the late '80s, Warner Bros. asked David Lynch to direct a bio-pic based on Goddess,
a 1985 biography of Marilyn Monroe.
Lynch teamed up with Mark Frost to write the screenplay, but the studio pulled out for
what Lynch called "political reasons".
Specifically, he and Frost believed the conspiracy theory that Monroe was murdered because her
relationship with the Kennedys.
Lynch and Frost so liked working together that they began collaborating on a TV series
that would become Twin Peaks.
The idea that Monroe's death was not quite what it seemed factored into what ultimately
became Laura Palmer's fate on Twin Peaks.
Still, David Lynch wouldn't let the whole Monroe thing go.
"What really went on between Marilyn Monroe and the Kennedy's?
And who really pulled the trigger on JFK?"
Population whatever
In the opening credits of Twin Peaks, the fictional town is said to have a population
of 51,201.
Creators Lynch and Frost wanted the town to be even smaller, with a population of 5,120,
bu t ABC thought that people wouldn't tune in to a show about a tiny, rural town.
The producers made them add an extra digit and multiply the population tenfold, even
though the area kept its very small town vibe.
Later, Lynch and Frost got around ABC's order to change the population.
In the 1991 tie-in book Twin Peaks: Access Guide to the Town, they wrote that Twin Peaks
"...recently discovered our population is not 52,201.
The 1990 census revealed our present population is 5,120.1, not 51,201."
That .1 person wasn't officially revealed, but we all know it's probably the baby from
Eraserhead.
The origin of BOB
Spoilers: the guy behind Twin Peaks' murders was BOB, an evil monster that possesses people
and makes them do horrible things… except when Twin Peaks was originally scripted, BOB
wasn't even a character.
In fact, David Lynch never even wanted to reveal who killed Laura Palmer at all.
Of course, a murder that goes unsolved for years didn't sit well with ABC executives,
who urged Lynch and Frost to identify the murderer at the end of the first season…
which they didn't do.
They even went one further and slapped another potential murder or two on top.
The writers even sent the network a fake finale script to indicate that they were playing
along.
The unsolved murder of Laura Palmer, along with the show's huge ratings, ensured a season
two renewal…and even more pressure from ABC to say who killed her.
Enter Frank Silva, the Twin Peaks set dresser.
While shooting a scene for the pilot, Silva was putting finishing touches on a room when
Lynch realized that if he were to shoot the scene at that moment, Silva would appear in
the frame.
Silva recalled in a 1993 interview,
"And then suddenly he said, 'Wait a minute!
Frank, get down to the base of the bed, crouch down, look through those wrought iron bars,
and act scared!'
[...] And it just sort of snowballed from there."
Later, in a completely fortunate accident, Silva can be spotted in a mirror during the
pilot, cementing his place in the series and essentially revealing the series' murderer
in the pilot episode.
You know, if you had DVR back in 1991.
Cooper and Horne
The first season of the show featured a budding romance between visiting investigator Agent
Dale Cooper, played by Kyle MacLachlan, and Audrey Horne, played by Sherilyn Fenn.
But then, the plot thread was abruptly dropped.
Reportedly, MacLachlan asked Lynch to break them up because he didn't think a straight-laced,
older guy like Cooper would date a high school student.
But Fenn told The AV Club that the real reason was on-set tension.
At the time, MacLachlan was dating cast member Lara Flynn Boyle, and she and Fenn did not
get along.
Boyle apparently resented the screen time that Fenn was getting as the romantic interest
of the show's main character.
In order to keep the peace, hearts had to be broken.
The truth of Mr. Tojamura
In the first season finale of Twin Peaks, Leo, acting at the behest of Ben Horne, sets
fire to Catherine Martell's Packard Sawmill…and Catherine, played by Piper Laurie, is believed
to have died in the blaze.
In truth, Catherine survives, but under the guise of a Japanese businessman named Mr.
Tojamura.
The writers didn't want anyone, including the cast and crew, to know what was going
on.
So, Piper Laurie's name was taken out of the credits, but she still showed up on set each
day completely ready to play Mr. Tojamura, wearing a suit and several layers of prosthetics
and makeup.
As Laurie relates in her memoir Learning to Live Out Loud, cast and crew were told that
this person was a legendary Japanese actor named Fumio Yamaguchi, and that he didn't
speak English.
Cast member Peggy Lipton still thought something was up, and assumed that the Japanese actor
wandering silently around the set was actually a disguised Isabella Rossellini, who had dated
David Lynch around the time Twin Peaks was in production, and is no stranger to weird
costumes.
The Log Lady
One of the quirkiest characters on Twin Peaks was the Log Lady, portrayed by Catherine Coulson.
Surprisingly, David Lynch came up with the Log Lady in the late '70s, years before he
co-created Twin Peaks, while on the set of his cult classic Eraserhead, where Coulson
was an assistant director.
Seeing Coulson in her glasses during a late-night shoot, and with wood apparently on his mind,
Lynch told Coulson that he wanted to make a TV series starring her some day called I'll
Test My Log with Every Branch of Knowledge.
According to Lynch,
"...the idea was that Catherine would go with the log to various experts; a dentist, a doctor,
a physicist.
And they would talk only to the log and we would learn that information as an audience."
While that never happened, the Log Lady was brought to life in a slightly different form
for Twin Peaks.
Audrey Horne's spin-off
After the show had been on the air for a while, Sherilyn Fenn's Audrey Horne emerged as a
fan favorite, so Lynch and Frost proposed a Twin Peaks spin-off feature film to Fenn,
centered around her character moving to California.
According to Fenn,
"They talked about an opening scene of her driving along Mulholland Drive, and how she's
a little bit older.
Whatever it was going to be, it never ended up happening for me."
It didn't happen for her, but the idea of a young woman getting into bizarre adventures
in Southern California is pretty much the plot of Lynch's 2001 movie Mulholland Drive,
which is no coincidence.
Other revivals
The last episode of the original run of Twin Peaks features some kind of spectral Laura
Palmer telling Agent Cooper that she'll see him again "in 25 years."
Now, 26 years later, and after some production delays, the show has returned.
But that's not a long time to wait, in the grand scheme of botched Twin Peaks continuation
attempts.
In 1993, the cable network Bravo secured the rights to air reruns of the show, and persuaded
David Lynch to write and direct new introductions to the episodes.
As a potential part of a deluxe DVD release of the full series in 2007, Twin Peaks story
editor Bob Engels teamed up with comic artist Matt Haley to create a canonical third season
of the show in graphic novel format, based on the original notes for the show's cancelled
third season.
Among the plot points: Dale Cooper moves to Twin Peaks to work as the town pharmacist,
and BOB may or may not have been from "a planet made of creamed corn."
The graphic novel was ultimately never finished because David Lynch refused to sign off on
it.
And after hearing about Planet Corn, maybe that's for the best.
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