“It’s happening again…”
“Twin Peaks: The Return,” the third and final season of the critically acclaimed television series, found its way onto the big screen at The Brattle as part of a marathon event showing all 18 episodes from Sept. 10-18. Were Cambridge audiences ready for an extended stay inside the strange and surreal mind of director David Lynch? Diehard fans and newbies alike were eager to take the leap.
It was never a foregone conclusion that Lynch, who died in January, would make a long and sustained dent in the mainstream of American pop culture. When the first episode of the first season of “Twin Peaks” aired in the spring of 1990, the director was still a mutable commodity.
He was the midnight movie weirdo of “Eraserhead” (1977). The highbrow dramatist of the Academy Award-nominated “Elephant Man” (1980). The blockbuster flop artist of “Dune” (1984). The newly resurgent art house darling of “Blue Velvet” (1986). The studio executives who lured the film director to television knew what he was capable of, even if they weren’t sure which Lynch would show up for the job.
The right Lynch showed up. The two-hour pilot did smash ratings. Lynch and screenwriting partner Mark Frost got the country hooked on finding the answer to one big question: Who killed Laura Palmer? At its height of popularity “Twin Peaks” was more than a TV series, it was a cultural phenomenon that captured the imagination of critics and water cooler conversationalists alike.
“Twin Peaks” wasn’t the first TV series to rise to the level of cultural phenomenon. “Dallas” (1978-1991), a series about a wealthy oil family in Texas with its own driving question (“Who shot J.R.?”) was an obvious precedent. Nor was “Twin Peaks” the last. Series such as “The Sopranos,” “Lost,” “Breaking Bad” and “Game of Thrones” have all had their time in the sun. Even in this moment of cultural fragmentation, the public’s attention still occasionally finds a central focus, and will again.
But what “Twin Peaks” possesses that its rivals lack is the genius of Lynch. His singular vision of small-town life in rural Washington was so richly and warmly drawn that fans continued to revere its personalities, locations and storylines long after Laura Palmer’s killer was revealed (no spoilers!) in Episode 14. Though the series was canceled at the conclusion of the second season, the drumbeat of die-hard admirers marched on with a cultlike devotion through magazines, blogs and fan art inspired by the show.
One of those die-hard admirers is Daniel Knox, musician, former longtime projectionist at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago and one of the world’s foremost collectors of Lynch arcana. He started programming the director’s films as midnight movies. Fans would come again and again to relive surreal classics such as “Lost Highway” (1997) and “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me,” the 1992 feature film prequel to the TV series.
The midnight screenings built up enough buzz to prompt interest in meatier Lynchian fare. What resulted was a five-day Lynch retrospective in 2017 that rounded up every scrap of Lynch-directed or peripherally related TV and film clip that Knox could lay his hands on and legally (or thereabouts) project on screen. Feature films, shorts and short-lived TV shows predominated.
The real gems, however, were rare clips from Knox’s collection that you couldn’t find anywhere else: forgotten TV commercials, animations, documentary shorts, interviews, oddball foreign ripoffs of the Lynchian zeitgeist.
The timing of the 2017 retrospective was fortuitous. Showtime was set to premiere the third season of the series, “Twin Peaks: The Return” in the same year. Suddenly Lynch and his beloved series broke back into the mainstream of cultural discourse.
To meet the moment, Knox has since revived and rebooted the retrospective multiple times. The most recent event in April at the Music Box, “David Lynch: Moving Through Time,” screened Lynch’s work for 10 days, hosted a number of Lynch’s closest collaborators, sold 11,000 tickets and reportedly broke a world record by showing every single item in Lynch’s IMDb. Though the director died in January, in some ways it’s never felt more like his moment.
If there’s an asterisk to stamp on that record, it’s one related to Lynch-directed episodes of “Twin Peaks.” The dream of a complete retrospective of Lynch’s work in a theater would remain a dream for many years. Until recently the episodes, whether from Season 1, 2 or 3, were not available for licensing for public performance.
Lynch himself prepared a theatrical cut of Season 3 when filming wrapped in 2016, even before its public screening in a movie theater was legally permissible. He anticipated that “Twin Peaks,” born out of television, would find its way to film audiences eventually. But fans would still have to wait until 2025 for the first screening of the theatrical cut (outside of a 2017 Cannes Film Festival preview) at the Metrograph in New York City, which screened the cut in three-episode batches over the course of two days.
The version that made its way to The Brattle, on the other hand, operated at the slower drip of two-episode batches delivered over a week, which allowed for thoughtful reflection before moving on to the next plot point. Cantabrigians of all ages turned out, curious about what many regard as Lynch’s final masterpiece, would look and feel like in a real theatre.
Elaine S., a retiree in Cambridge, who had never seen a Lynch movie, signed up for every single episode of the marathon. “It seemed like a good place to start.”
Tim T., a college student from Somerville, who had brought along a row full of friends, was already a big Lynch fan. While he didn’t catch every episode, he was in attendance for Episode 8 (“Part 8”), a “must see,” which includes the famous atomic blast scene.
More than a few guests “bookended” the marathon, attending the start, the conclusion and missing out on weird moments in the middle. Of which there are plenty.
In his opening remarks throughout the marathon, Ned Hinkle, creative director at The Brattle, underscored the theater’s long relationship with the work of Lynch. Brattle lore maintains that the theater’s plan to premiere Lynch’s first feature, “Eraserhead,” as a late-night movie in 1977, was derailed by a City Council that didn’t want screenings after midnight. The situation was ironed out, but, in the meantime, the premiere shifted to another local theater. The Brattle stuck with it and screened “Eraserhead” soon thereafter, and has been a reliable destination for Lynch’s work ever since.
Hinkle also mentioned that Season 1 and 2 are now available to be licensed for public screening. The opportunity to see the rest of “Twin Peaks” on the big screen is coming your way. Says Hinkle, “We are going to try to get 1 and 2 scheduled with another screening of ‘The Return’ … by the time David Lynch’s 80th birthday rolls around in January of next year.”
A stronger
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