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The Secret History of Twin Peaks

(SPOILERS) I never got around to reading The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, as I think I rather unfairly dismissed it as little more than a cryptic cash-in. I also managed to wrong-foot myself with this latest secret edition, a precursor to forthcoming the third season, which I assumed would be something of a gap-filler for the intervening 25 years, rather than an exploration of the near-200 prior to the pilot. It has been suggested that the return of Twin Peaks will be tonally much closer to Fire Walk with Me than the oft-whimsical show itself. That may prove to be the case, but if so, it raises the question of how that will balance with this volume. Because Fire Walk with Me was all David Lynch, whereas The Secret History of Twin Peaks is all Mark Frost.

More than that, it has the kind of conspiratorial coherence – in terms of threading actual conspiracies rather than loosely threading together the essences of a vague idea - that one might have expected of The X-Files if it could have been bothered to plan anything out in advance, or behind. Or if it hadn’t been overseen by Chris Carter.

And somehow, it all appears to make sense, almost as if Lynch and Frost always had this in mind, even though, as we know, the former’s whacked out on whackedness. I mean, since there was no mention of UFOs or Project Bluebook, or even a suggestion thereof, hitherto in Lynchdom, it was a fair bet that Major Briggs’ strange fascination was all Frost. And, while “The owls are not what they seem” is just the sort of thing Lynch would have dreamt up while drinking a hot cup of joe, connecting it to masonry is definitely Frost’s thing.

And so, he joins an engrossing series of dots from the Lewis and Clark expedition (masons), to the various forms of the Illuminati, to taking in the disappearing giant skeletons in the Smithsonian (clearly designed to evoke Carel Struycken’s Giant), to all manner of E.T.s and including Roswell, White Sands, Area 51 (the alien focus not precluding their being interdimensional, which is much more Peaksy), L Ron Hubbard, Aleister Crowley (two lodges of black and white magicians), Timothy Leary, ayahuasca, Watergate (Nixon was onto those UFOs, and even had a Grey in his basement), Jack Parsons and the Babalon Working, Bohemian Grove, and suddenly the child abuse at the centre of Twin Peaks takes on a more overarching, ritualistic theme, bricks stacking around the netherworld invading one man’s psyche.

What’s most impressive here is how fluid Frost’s refashioning is. Positing itself as written by Major Briggs (although the FBI annotator concludes it’s down to Coop at one point), The Secret History ends not long after the second season cliffhanger, so maintaining an air of suspense over what happened next, and offers very little insight into those we know from the show, such that it’s almost a sop that there are accounts of trouble at mill, Josie Packard, and Big Ed (the most we get of additional info is that Audrey survived the bank explosion, which killed Andrew and Pete, also that “bad” Coop paid a call on Briggs just before his journal ends, leaving the latter in an anxious state – as for the absence of Annie from Season Three, she ain’t here either, although Frost has apparently specified there are reasons for this).

Rather, it takes one of the least interesting strands of the show, the feud between the Milford brothers, and weaves a whole backstory regarding Douglas Milford (Tony Jay) and his involvement in all manner of arcane activities, triggered, it seems, by an encounter in the woods (such an event also later marked the Log Lady).

While Frost resists forming conclusions – that would be tantamount to revealing who killed Laura Palmer – he weaves such a compelling tapestry that, as stated, you’d almost believe they had all this in mind from the outset. It’s so tight that the frequently saggy interludes of Season Two are banished from the mind. Frost even makes time for Fire Walk with Me characters, from the disappeared agents Chester Desmond and Sam Stanley to Carl Rodd and, most enticingly, Phillip Jeffries.

There are also some very funny bits, such as the mock-up of Dr Jacoby’s mind-expanding “The Eye of God: Sacred Psychology and the Aboriginal Mind” (so glad Russ Tamblyn is making a return).

It’s quite possible, nay likely, that most of what’s on offer here will be entirely tangential to the dozen-and-a-half episodes arriving in a few months’ time, but it nevertheless provides a fascinating underpinning of all things Twin Peaks, one that expressly links the world of Lynch to the outside conspirasphere. Because, let’s face it, the Project Bluebook part of the original never exactly screamed for attention. Now, whatever connects the lodges in the woods to whatever’s out there in the universe appears to have been tagged as central. Oh, and leading us directly into the series, the annotations are made by Agent Tamara Preston, who will be played by Amy Shiels.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

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Poor Easy Breezy.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.

Joker (2019)
(SPOILERS) So the murder sprees didn’t happen, and a thousand puff pieces desperate to fan the flames of such events and then told-ya-so have fallen flat on their faces. The biggest takeaway from Joker is not that the movie is an event, when once that seemed plausible but not a given, but that any mainstream press perspective on the picture appears unable to divorce its quality from its alleged or actual politics. Joker may be zeitgeisty, but isn’t another Taxi Driver in terms of cultural import, in the sense that Taxi Driver didn’t have a Taxi Driver in mind when Paul Schrader wrote it. It is, if you like, faux-incendiary, and can only ever play out on that level. It might be more accurately described as a grubbier, grimier (but still polished and glossy) The Talented Ripley, the tale of developing psychopathy, only tailored for a cinemagoing audience with few options left outside of comic book fare.

So you want me to be half-monk, half-hitman.

Casino Royale (2006)
(SPOILERS) Despite the doubts and trepidation from devotees (too blonde, uncouth etc.) that greeted Daniel Craig’s casting as Bond, and the highly cynical and low-inspiration route taken by Eon in looking to Jason Bourne's example to reboot a series that had reached a nadir with Die Another Day, Casino Royale ends up getting an enormous amount right. If anything, its failure is that it doesn’t push far enough, so successful is it in disarming itself of the overblown set pieces and perfunctory plotting that characterise the series (even at its best), elements that would resurge with unabated gusto in subsequent Craig excursions.

For the majority of its first two hours, Casino Royale is top-flight entertainment, with returning director Martin Campbell managing to exceed his excellent work reformatting Bond for the ‘90s. That the weakest sequence (still good, mind) prior to the finale is a traditional “big” (but not too big) action set piece involving an attempt to…

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Batman (1989)
(SPOILERS) There’s Jaws, there’s Star Wars, and then there’s Batman in terms of defining the modern blockbuster. Jaws’ success was so profound, it changed the way movies were made and marketed. Batman’s marketing was so profound, it changed the way tentpoles would be perceived: as cash cows. Disney tried to reproduce the effect the following year with Dick Tracy, to markedly less enthusiastic response. None of this places Batman in the company of Jaws as a classic movie sold well, far from it. It just so happened to hit the spot. As Tim Burton put it, it was “more of a cultural phenomenon than a great movie”. It’s difficult to disagree with his verdict that the finished product (for that is what it is) is “mainly boring”.

Now, of course, the Burton bat has been usurped by the Nolan incarnation (and soon the Snyder). They have some things in common. Both take the character seriously and favour a sombre tone, which was much more of shock to the system when Burton did it (even…

I'm reliable, I'm a very good listener, and I'm extremely funny.

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)
(SPOILERS) When I wrote my 23 to see in 2019, I speculated that James Cameron might be purposefully giving his hand-me-downs to lesser talents because he hubristically didn’t want anyone making a movie that was within a spit of the proficiency we’ve come to expect from him. Certainly, Robert Rodriguez and Tim Miller are leagues beneath Kathryn Bigelow, Jimbo’s former spouse and director of his Strange Days screenplay. Miller’s no slouch when it comes to action – which is what these movies are all about, let’s face it – but neither is he a craftsman, so all those reviews attesting that Terminator: Dark Fate is the best in the franchise since Terminator 2: Judgment Day may be right, but there’s a considerable gulf between the first sequel (which I’m not that big a fan of) and this retcon sequel to that sequel.

They literally call themselves “Decepticons”. That doesn’t set off any red flags?

Bumblebee (2018)
(SPOILERS) Bumblebee is by some distance the best Transformers movie, simply by dint of having a smattering of heart (one might argue the first Shia LaBeouf one also does, and it’s certainly significantly better than the others, but it’s still a soulless Michael Bay “machine”). Laika VP and director Travis Knight brings personality to a series that has traditionally consisted of shamelessly selling product, by way of a nostalgia piece that nods to the likes of Herbie (the original), The Iron Giant and even Robocop.

Look, the last time I was told the Germans had gone, it didn't end well.

1917 (2019)
(SPOILERS) When I first heard the premise of Sam Mendes’ Oscar-bait World War I movie – co-produced by Amblin Partners, as Spielberg just loves his sentimental war carnage – my first response was that it sounded highly contrived, and that I’d like to know how, precisely, the story Mendes’ granddad told him would bear any relation to the events he’d be depicting. And just why he felt it would be appropriate to honour his relative’s memory via a one-shot gimmick. None of that has gone away on seeing the film. It’s a technical marvel, and Roger Deakins’ cinematography is, as you’d expect, superlative, but that mastery rather underlines that 1917 is all technique, that when it’s over and you get a chance to draw your breath, the experience feels a little hollow, a little cynical and highly calculated, and leaves you wondering what, if anything, Mendes was really trying to achieve, beyond an edge-of-the-seat (near enough) first-person actioner.

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Repo Man (1984)
In fairness, I should probably check out more Alex Cox’s later works. Before I consign him to the status of one who never made good on the potential of his early success. But the bits and pieces I’ve seen don’t hold much sway. I pretty much gave up on him after Walker. It seemed as if the accessibility of Repo Man was a happy accident, and he was subsequently content to drift further and further down his own post-modern punk rabbit hole, as if affronted by the “THE MOST ASTONISHING FEATURE FILM DEBUT SINCE STEVEN SPIELBERG’S DUEL” accolade splashed over the movie’s posters (I know, I have a copy; see below).

This is one act in a vast cosmic drama. That’s all.

Audrey Rose (1977)
(SPOILERS) Robert Wise was no stranger to high-minded horror fare when he came to Audrey Rose. He was no stranger to adding a distinctly classy flavour to any genre he tackled, in fact, particularly in the tricky terrain of the musical (West Side Story, The Sound of Music) and science fiction (The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Andromeda Strain). He hadn’t had much luck since the latter, however, with neither Two People nor The Hindenburg garnering good notices or box office. In addition to which, Audrey Rose saw him returning to a genre that had been fundamentally impacted by The Exorcist four years before. One might have expected the realist principals he observed with The Andromeda Strain to be applied to this tale of reincarnation, and to an extent they are, certainly in terms of the performances of the adults, but Wise can never quite get past a hacky screenplay that wants to impart all the educational content of a serious study of continued existence in tandem w…

You guys sure like watermelon.

The Irishman aka I Heard You Paint Houses (2019)
(SPOILERS) Perhaps, if Martin Scorsese hadn’t been so opposed to the idea of Marvel movies constituting cinema, The Irishman would have been a better film. It’s a decent film, assuredly. A respectable film, definitely. But it’s very far from being classic. And a significant part of that is down to the usually assured director fumbling the execution. Or rather, the realisation. I don’t know what kind of crazy pills the ranks of revered critics have been taking so as to recite as one the mantra that you quickly get used to the de-aging effects so intrinsic to its telling – as Empire magazine put it, “you soon… fuggadaboutit” – but you don’t. There was no point during The Irishman that I was other than entirely, regrettably conscious that a 75-year-old man was playing the title character. Except when he was playing a 75-year-old man.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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