Sunday, September 15, 2013
From the Vault: The Doors
BLOGGER'S NOTE: I'm re-posting this review, originally written when The Doors opened in 1991, as part of The Oliver Stone Blogathon occurring today through Oct. 6 at Seetimaar — Diary of a Movie Lover
Then lack of character development proves to be the major problem with this film. Near the beginning of the film, a 5-year-old Morrison vacations with his family in 1949 when they see the aftermath of a car wreck involving Navajos. The movie refers to the incident time and time again, apparently to explain why Morrison sets out on a path to self-destruction.
Alex Cox produced a much-better illustration of drugs sucking the life out of a talented individual in his 1986 film Sid & Nancy. Stone makes no secret of his admiration of Morrison, which makes me wonder how The Doors would have turned out if made by someone who didn't like Morrison since the resulting film comes off as spending 2 hours and 15 minutes with a truly repellent individual.
Val Kilmer does look and, in the live performance scenes, sound like Morrison, and his performance can't be faulted. Morrison comes off as a zonked-out prick and, since Stone worships him, you have to think that's an accurate portrayal. Then again, who's to say? The film creates a Morrison without any depth. It doesn't play him as a tortured artist or, in many ways, even a human being. He's just a doomed curiosity trapped in an extremely long music video — film as a hallucinogen, if you will.
The other members of The Doors may as well be cardboard cutouts for as much time and energy the film spends exploring them as individuals. Poor Kyle MacLachlan, trapped in a blond wig as Ray Manzarek, gets little more to do that sit at the keyboards, look concerned and occasionally defend Morrison in a DeForest Kelley-as-Dr. McCoy tone with lines such as, "Dammit, Jim's an artist."
The result comes off as even more despairing for the characters of Robby Krieger and John Densmore (Frank Whaley, Kevin Dillon), the other two members of the band. I don't know where Morrison and Manzarek met them. One scene, Ray suggests to Jim that they form a band. In the next, suddenly Krieger and Densmore complete the foursome.
Stone again finds himself trapped in the era of his obsession, namely the mid-1960s to the early 1970s, and, while the look rings true thanks to brilliant and stunning cinematography by Robert Richardson, the stilted dialogue borders on laughable, making me wonder if secret giggles lurk beneath the lines. On the plus side, Stone makes no assertions connecting the band to U.S. presence in Vietnam.
In many ways, the film reminds me of Tron, Disney's 1982 film about life inside a video game. That film looked great, but at its core offered nothing more than good graphics. The Doors stimulates visually, but doesn't engage the mind at all. In the end, it becomes nothing more than a meaningless assault on the senses about people who made good rock and roll between the sex and the drugs.
Stone, usually reliably opinionated, seems to lack a point of view here. He's neither defending Morrison nor chastising him. More importantly, the film lacks what much of Stone's work lacks — structure. When you go back and look at much of his body of work, Platoon, Wall Street and Born on the Fourth of July all fail to hold up on subsequent viewings, usually because of a lack of structure. Talk Radio remains the Stone film that holds up best because of its built-in structure of the radio broadcast. In The Doors, except for occasional reminders of the year, structure does not exist, just a drifting, mind-altering montage of events leading up to the inevitable discovery of Morrison in the bathtub. The most glaring example comes in a scene with Meg Ryan as Pamela, Morrison's "ornament." Jim finds Pam shooting heroin with another man and. in a rage, frightens her into a closet where he locks her in before setting the door ablaze. That's it. We hear no more about it. Twenty minutes later, Pam shows up at a recording studio. In the film's context, it's unclear that it's even the same time period as when he lit the fire and nothing explains her escape.
There are moments of fun, such as Crispin Glover's cameo as Andy Warhol and Stone's own brief ironic appearance as Morrison's UCLA film professor accusing Jim of being pretentious.
The Doors produced great music, but this film doesn't attempt to look behind the talent. Instead, it just shows an unpleasant man marching to his own beat on the way to his doom.
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Labels: 90s, Blog-a-thons, Kyle MacLachlan, Meg Ryan, Oliver Stone, Val Kilmer
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Monday, September 19, 2011
A Detective and a Pervert
By Jonathan Pacheco
There are critics out there who have no interest in watching any film more than once, but I’ve always been of the mind that a film worth watching is worth watching twice. So while I borderline-abhorred Blue Velvet when I first watched it back in college, I always knew it was a film I’d re-visit someday. Twenty-five years ago, David Lynch created a challenging, controversial and passionate film — that much I could tell even while I found it uncomfortable and uninteresting. I’m thankful that I did indeed take a second, fresh look at Blue Velvet because now I see the film in the context of Lynch’s entire career, which, for me, helps to illuminate the film’s strengths while it also shines a bright spotlight on its flaws.
College-age Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) returns home to Lumberton, a wholesome “Anytown, U.S.A.” seemingly stuck in the 1950s, to visit his ailing father. While walking through a field on his way back from the hospital, he spots a severed human ear hidden in the grass. With no regard for his own health, he picks the thing up with his bare hands and delivers it in a bag to Detective Williams (George Dickerson), a friend of Jeffrey’s father and himself the father of Sandy (the always-dependable Laura Dern), a cherubic high school beauty and the physical representation of love, goodness and virtue in Lynch’s film. With her help and a bit of inside information, Jeffrey decides to investigate the ear-severing himself, mostly out of thrill-seeking curiosity.
His strange, erotic journey eventually leads him into the arms of Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini), a nightclub singer under the control of Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), a local criminal with a knack for kidnapping, a gas inhalation addiction, a proclivity for depraved and violent sexual
abuse and a blue velvet fetish. He’s really something else. At one point, Sandy, speaking of Jeffrey almost in awe, confesses to him, “I don’t know if you’re a detective or a pervert.” By the end of the film, we can gather that Lynch wants us to believe he’s a bit of both, and in that sense he represents the film itself, which is simultaneously a neo-noir mystery and a twisted erotic tale. An intriguing mix, but one that Lynch can’t quite balance. Not to say that Blue Velvet is unsuccessful — seeing it again and having a better grasp of Lynch’s style and what I feel his intentions are, I “get” the director’s brand of zany humor as it comes across when mashed against visually and aurally nightmarish sequences and disturbing subject matter. When Lynch contrasts such polar opposites, when he includes jokes about “morning wood” in a film with scenes of sexual abuse, I know that it’s not to “take the edge off sex and violence” as Roger Ebert claimed in his highly unfavorable review. Instead, as we’ve seen throughout the years, Lynch works like a chemist, mixing elements at different doses, curious to see what reactions he can produce. His blend of ironic clichés with uncomfortable harshness is intentional and in no way cowardly, as Ebert implies.I feel, however, that the chemist is simply off on his measurements in this experiment. The way he juxtaposes the campy and the disturbing feels unrefined, showing promise, particularly in the opening and closing sequences, but also immaturity; just think back to some of those low-hanging radio gags. (And that’s not even getting into his awfully basic usage of color semiotics.) Compare his attempts here to, say, the two dance sequences of 2006's Inland Empire. Lynch’s intentions with that film and those sequences may not be the same as in Blue Velvet, but his success in creating moments bizarre enough to conjure his desired mix of emotions but not wacky enough to remove you from the film suggests a maturity and mastery of his now-patented approach.
And that’s the thing about watching Blue Velvet in 2011: though it contains its own triumphs — such as he funny, frightening and unreal scene at Ben’s place (a scene that does find just the right mixture of contrasting tones) or the absolutely full-throttle and deservedly iconic performance by Dennis Hopper — we’ve seen Lynch use many of the same techniques and ideas in his other films since this one, sometimes with greater success (Twin Peaks, with its comparable theme of the dark underbelly lurking beneath a wholesome society) and sometimes with similarly mixed results (the should’ve-been-brilliant Lost Highway, with its noir-ish peek into kinky sexuality and its consequential murder). Mulholland Drive, to me, represents a sort of culmination of all these attempts, and in some ways is the film that Blue Velvet perhaps could’ve been. It’s a mystery for both the characters and the viewer. It’s a romance of confusing and conflicting sexual thoughts and identities. It’s sleek, sexy, perplexing, frightening and unnerving in ways that Blue Velvet only showed the potential to be. And it all works in practically perfect harmony. I understand why Blue Velvet is considered a cult and beyond-cult classic, but seen in the context of Lynch’s greater works, it loses so much of its remarkableness, simply serving as an interesting case study in which one can see the development of the David Lynch we now know.
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Labels: 80s, Ebert, Hopper, Kyle MacLachlan, L. Dern, Lynch, Movie Tributes, Twin Peaks
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Thursday, April 08, 2010
"She's dead — wrapped in plastic"
By Edward Copeland
Those weren't the very first lines in Twin Peaks when it aired on ABC on this date 20 years, but when Pete Martell (Jack Nance) called Sheriff Harry S. Truman (Michael Ontkean) and spoke those words into the phone, they were the words that officially kicked off the series' central mystery, the mystery that was really only a small part of what made this such a special and landmark series and whose rushed conclusion urged by network executives, such as Ted Harbert and Bob Iger who suffered from attention deficit disorder, ultimately signaled the show's untimely demise. As Mark Frost, who co-created the show with David Lynch, often said, Twin Peaks was more about, "the journey than the destination." Rabid fans such as myself who'd never seen a show remotely like it on network television understood that. Unfortunately the suits at ABC who paid the bills didn't. (Harbert eventually was fired. Iger, following the good old Peter Principle, became chairman of Disney after it acquired ABC and Michael Eisner retired. These two were the same pair who also bungled My So-Called Life.) It was ahead of its time. If only HBO was the place for great dramas then... By the way, I'm assuming if you read this, you know the show, so there will be no spoiler warnings. Besides, after 20 years, if you don't know this stuff, you must have been hiding with Harold Smith inside his house, tending to his plants.
Over the past two decades, I've written countless things about Twin Peaks and made many references to it in other pieces. I try not to repeat myself too much and you'd think by now my thoughts on the show would have reached the bottom of its well, but I always find more to say. It's like great series that have come in its wake such as Deadwood, The Sopranos or The Wire: the depth is so great and the achievement so astounding, I never tire of discussing them. I suspect Breaking Bad will join that pantheon someday.
Since Twin Peaks' reputation now is that of a cult favorite, it is hard to remember that its premiere was a highly rated hit, thanks to a big promotional push emphasizing the "Who killed Laura Palmer?" mystery. The two-hour premiere certainly had more than its share of the quirks its fans would love and that would alienate
others, but it still scored well. ABC started making mistakes in terms of scheduling right away, figuring that if it scored so well they should try to use it as a giant killer and scheduled it opposite Cheers, one of the top-rated shows on the air and part of NBC's then-impenetrable Thursday night line-up. Despite this challenge, the second episode held up fairly well. What cost the series its fair-weather viewers was its third episode, the one that contained the series' classic dream sequence where Agent Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) first heard from a one-armed man named Mike (Al Strobel) about another man named Bob (Frank Silva) and learned the poem containing the famous phrase "fire walk with me" before Cooper saw himself 25 years older, seated in a red room beside a dancing dwarf (Michael J. Anderson) and someone who appeared to be Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). Oh and everyone spoke backwards and then had their words played forward to make their voices sound very odd, too odd for casual viewers and the ratings never recovered but the true fans were hooked forever. Still, for a brief time it held the zeitgeist with references everywhere from Saturday Night Live skits to nods on Northern Exposure and spoofs on The Simpsons. My own favorite coincidence, whether intended or not, came in the second season when Norma (Peggy Lipton) sought a divorce from her scumbag ex-con husband Hank (Chris Mulkey) so she could be with longtime love Big Ed (Everett McGill). Hank refused, calling her Ed's whore to which Norma replied, "I'd rather be his whore than your wife." This was the same season Billy Zane joined the cast as environmentalist entrepreneur John Justice Wheeler. Years later, Kate Winslet delivered Norma's line verbatim to Zane in the film Titanic.
For the Twin Peaks fans in my circle of friends at least, the show wasn't merely a cult favorite, it was the formation of an extended community. I honestly don't remember once the show's mystique took hold ever
watching it by myself. Most times involved a watch party, often with at least a box of doughnuts. This was no small feat considering the schedule calisthenics ABC put the series and its viewers through, often hiding it in the Saturday dead zone — and we were college age. Still, this was our show. There were many marathon viewings, drawing new addicts into the circle, catching up people who had fallen behind or giving friends visiting from abroad an early glimpse of the episodes that had yet to play overseas. When ABC finally dumped the final two episodes in the summer in one night, after most of us had graduated from college, many of us gathered at my parents' house for one last blowout with all the works: doughnuts spread out appropriately, cherry pie and damn fine cups of coffee. I've never been involved with another series that way. I'm sure others have, but I haven't.Many argued that perhaps Twin Peaks should have wrapped itself up as a miniseries with its initial eight episodes, ending with conclusions instead of the multiple cliffhangers that led to the series' second season, but
I say phooey. Yes, the first season was a thing of beauty of which I wouldn't change a thing but despite some aimless wandering and story missteps, I wouldn't have changed much about season two either. The ABC executives demanded that Lynch and Frost solve the murder of Laura Palmer in the season two premiere and they did. Of course, they didn't explain who or what it was that was killing Laura or what it meant as a comatose Ronette Pulaski (Phoebe Augustine) recalled BOB's brutal stabbing, but they didn't break their promise. It probably didn't matter: Iger already was spitting up blood when the season two premiere opened with a gunshot Agent Cooper lying on the floor of his hotel room, first having a slow, frustrating conversation with a decrepit old waiter (John Ford favorite Hank Worden) before having a vision of a giant (Carel Struycken) who offers the FBI agent three clues to the case.
The conventional wisdom is that once ABC pressured the showrunners to solve the mystery, which they did in the seventh episode and which they resolved in the ninth episode, Twin Peaks had nowhere to go. For about three episodes, it did seem to lack direction but even then it was fascinating to watch, especially the episode immediately after the demise of Leland Palmer (Ray Wise) and the revelation of his role in Laura's death. However, once other stories began to kick in and Cooper's deranged former partner Windom Earle (Kenneth Welsh) came to town, the show really started to pick up again and viewers realized how much larger the mystery of BOB was. Besides, other stories had yet to be resolved: Who shot Cooper? The fight between Catherine and Ben (Piper Laurie, Richard Beymer) over Ghostwood Estates, Bobby and Shelly (Dana Ashbrook, Madchen Amick) taking care of the invalid Leo (Eric DaRe) as part of an insurance scam, Nadine (Wendy Robie) believing she was back in high school,
joining the wrestling team and dating Bobby's friend and Donna's ex, Mike (Gary Hershberger). Now, there also were the stories worth fast-forwarding through: anything involving James (James Marshall) and most scenes involving Lucy, Andy and Dick Tremayne (Kimmy Robertson, Harry Goaz, Ian Buchanan), but the good far outweighed the bad. What really harmed the show was ABC's relentless mistreatment of the show, constantly changing its day and time and removing it from the airways for weeks at a time, testing the patience of even the most patient of fans. The final indignity came when, though it was all but certain there would be no third season, they dangled that idea out there so the writers had no opportunity to wrap things up in the final season two episodes and ABC then didn't even air those final
two episodes until they combined them as a two-hour block to burn off in the summer. In the beginning, the show at least had good humor about it, producing some hysterical promos about the time changes, including a Wizard of Oz spoof with MacLachlan waking from a dream about changing slots with various cast members including Piper Laurie and Michael J. Anderson gathered around his bed. Still, no series, no matter how large its fan base, can survive this kind of reckless scheduling, scheduling that makes it clear that network's only intention is to give it more than an ample reason to kill the show off and in the case of Twin Peaks, it was because the execs themselves didn't get it. Many series have suffered from this type of abuse, a most recent example being Scrubs which was first mishandled by NBC before getting the same schedule runaround from ABC for two more years. How that series lasted nine seasons is a minor television miracle that has more to do with the growing irrelevance of network television today than with any magic or huge ratings numbers that Scrubs drew itself.Earlier, when I did my "What if?" speculation about what would have happened if Twin Peaks had been an HBO series as opposed to an ABC one, I have to say that I don't know if the show would have been as good there. When I began watching the show and became an obsessive fan, I was not a huge David Lynch follower. It took
until much later for me to even start appreciating Blue Velvet and when you compare the series with its feature film prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, perhaps the limits placed on Lynch by the standards of network television is part of what made the series even stronger and a limit-free channel such as HBO might have encouraged Lynch and Frost to go too far. While ABC definitely screwed the show over, I have to think that by keeping the reins on Lynch, they forced him to be more creative to get around their restrictions and a better series resulted. When Lynch (incredibly) agreed to work on another potential series with ABC which they ended up not even airing after he filmed the pilot, he was able to re-edit it, film new material and release Mulholland Drive as a movie and I still believe that is his best feature film. When HBO did attempt a series that was somewhat in the Peaks vein, Carnivale, it didn't really work for me. Alright, enough bellyaching about how the show was mistreated or dreaming of what could have been. This should be a celebration of the show's 20th anniversary.
Now, Twin Peaks, because of its initial promotion, essentially is thought of as a mystery, but that's an oversimplification. There are plentiful elements of soap opera at his core (It even had a soap within a soap called Invitation to Love that could often be seen on characters' TVs), a healthy dose of romance, the
supernatural, and more than its fair share of flat out creepiness. What it doesn't get enough credit for is just how damn funny it was. Its comedy ran the gamut from broad slapstick, to macabre humor, from double entendres to just plain well-written dialogue with unexpected one-liners that come out of nowhere. There was the time when Catherine stumbled upon a bound and gagged Shelly tied up in an area of a mill she'd been lured to and as Shelly screamed incoherently, Catherine replied, "I can't understand a word you're saying. You have a thing in your mouth." One of my personal favorites came late in the much maligned second season when Windom Earle abducted Major Briggs (Don S. Davis) and was interrogating him. In the midst of his barrage of questions, Earle asked Briggs what the capital of North Carolina was. Briggs answered Raleigh, of course, to which Earle replied, "Fat lot of good that'll do me." In fact, in addition to the odd characters and the characters clearly written for comic relief, many of the performances were played primarily as great comic ones. MacLachlan's
brilliant Dale Cooper had his moments of seriousness and pathos, but his work was primarily a comic creation. Check out the shooting range scene from season one if you doubt me. The same can essentially be said of Beymer's Ben Horne (especially when teamed with David Patrick Kelly as brother Jerry) and Laurie's Catherine Martell. There's no doubt when it comes to Nance's Pete Martell. Try delivering the line, "There was a fish in the percolator" with dead seriousness. Goaz and Robertson's Lucy and Andy were meant as comic relief purely, even if they often fell flat. Robie's Nadine certainly had a tragic side, but she still was damn funny. The Log Lady (Catherine E. Coulson) and Davis' Major Briggs played it straight, but they produced a lot of laughs. Perhaps other than MacLachlan the other greatest comic performance of the series belongs to Miguel Ferrer in the recurring role of FBI Agent Albert Rosenfeld. Every time he appeared, it was a delight and he often had the ability to surprise as well. I'd also be remiss if I forget to mention the brief guest appearances by David Duchovny as Dennis/Denise Bryson, the transvestite DEA agent. One of my fantasies always was for a Twin Peaks/X-Files crossover since Don S. Davis played Scully's military man father on the other series. Briggs disappeared for three days in season two and was known to vanish before: Perhaps he led a double life and the Black Lodge was a natural X-file for those other FBI agents. Now if you'll excuse Ben Horne, it's time to give Little Elvis a bath.
For a series that was full of great performances, for me the greatest one deserves a paragraph all his own
and that is Ray Wise as Leland Palmer. His work ran the full spectrum of emotions, beginning as a grieving father, so overwrought that he begins compulsively dancing (something that is treated as both sad and funny simultaneously) then, when he mistakenly believes the authorities have fingered one Jacques Renault (Walter Olkewicz) as Laura's killer, he turns vigilante killer. Overnight, his hair turns white and he begins to add singing to his repertoire. How Wise was denied an Emmy nomination for his work in the second season is one of the largest outrages in an award that is practically nothing but outrages at this point. In the span of three episodes, we learn that Leland is possessed by an inhabiting spirit and that's what BOB is and that BOB used Leland as the vehicle to rape and murder his own daughter, something he tries to recreate by killing her lookalike cousin Maddie (also Sheryl Lee). Wise gets to play funny (practicing golf in his living room and singing "Surrey With a Fringe on the Top" while driving his convertible all
over the road) evil (when BOB speaks through him once he is captured) and, once BOB exits him, a mortified, saddened man in his dying moments, realizing the horror of the crimes he has committed, the worst being against his own daughter. It was a performance of wonder. Perhaps the greatest tribute to Wise's work and to the character of Leland Palmer is that, even though Leland was possessed, he was still someone who brutally murdered several people and drugged his own wife so he could rape his own daughter, yet we were still sad to see him die and missed him as a character. I doubt real-life serial killers who commit incest would earn that sympathy, if any, and they shouldn't, because they won't have BOB as a legal defense. Last year, for the second of two seasons, Wise got to strut his acting stuff again in a comic wonder as the Devil himself in Reaper, but alas that show was short-lived as well. Wise appeared in the awful feature film Rising Sun, but he provided the one moment of enjoyment for me in that film playing a senator who entertains at a party and then says, "I'm an old song and dance man from way back." Only a Peaks fanatic such as myself could truly appreciate that moment.
It goes without saying that Twin Peaks raised the standards of television, but it didn't do it in the way you might think. It didn't pave the way for more adventurous storytelling, better writing or better directing, the
way more recent acclaimed shows did. I think the real lasting impact of Twin Peaks is its look. It was a damn great-looking show, probably the best I'd seen on television up until that time and I think it made shows that came in its wake more conscious of trying not only to tell good stories but to present them in visually stunning ways. From the interiors of the Great Northern Hotel, to the strangeness of the Black Lodge, from the simplicity of the Double R Diner to the bright fluorescents of the high school, Peaks resembled no series that came before it. (I'd be remiss if I leave out the wonderful set of One Eyed Jack's as well.) That's not even counting the series' uncanny ability to make the woods full of Douglas firs and other aspects of nature both beautiful and menacing, often at the same time. Many series since have come close to that style, with the wonderful work of art director, set dressers and cinematographers, but to my eyes, the series that has looked consistently best (with the added plus of period costumes) is Mad Men. Then again, each series must draw on its own look. Breaking Bad does wonders with its New Mexico setting. The Sopranos went to any variety of settings from glitz to gutter and always chose the appropriate look and Deadwood made the dirt and mud look beautiful. Prior to Peaks, few shows seem to make that much effort. I can't speak for Lost, since I've never watched it.
Throughout the 30 episodes of Twin Peaks, which given the way the series was set up only covered a little more than a month of actual time, a mere 14 directors guided the show and most of the names were familiar
ones or would become so for both feature films and television. In addition to the obvious, co-creators David Lynch, who personally helmed six episodes himself, and Mark Frost, other directors included celebrated cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, who directed three episodes. His real-life wife, Mary Jo Deschanel, played Eileen Hayward, Donna's mother. Tim Hunter, who directed the acclaimed film River's Edge, filmed three episodes and is one of television's most dependable directors working on Homicide, House, Deadwood, Breaking Bad, Law & Order, Mad Men and Dexter. Lesli Linka Glatter directed four episodes and has gone to work on NYPD Blue, Freaks and Geeks, Gilmore Girls, The West Wing, ER, Mad Men and House. Todd Holland directed two episodes and then went in an entirely different direction, helming many episodes of The Larry
Sanders Show and Malcolm in the Middle as well as my favorite episode of My So-Called Life, "Life of Brian." One episode was directed by Graeme Clifford who directed Jessica Lange in Frances and edited The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Uli Edel, who most recently earned acclaim for The Baader Meinhof Complex, helmed an episode. Diane Keaton even got to direct an episode, even if it unfortunately was one heavy on the series' worst storyline, James' dull, predictable film noir tale that took place outside of Twin Peaks. James Foley, who made the great After Dark, My Sweet and the film version of Glengarry Glen Ross, also spent an hour in Twin Peaks. Still, the series always looked as if it came from the same place, no matter who was sitting in the director's chair. It was one long piece; no episodes seemed to be from another show.
As I said at the beginning, I've written a lot about Twin Peaks over the years and I try my best not to repeat myself, yet I feel I still could go on infinitely extolling the show's praises and recalling favorite moments from episodes. However, I couldn't forgive myself if I went through this long piece and did not devote any space to at least tipping my hat to the brief, but pivotal, work of the underrated Japanese actor Fumio Yamaguchi who played Tojamura in the Ghostwood Estates storyline. Yamaguchi said so much with so few words, always leaving an air of mystery about motive and identity. I salute you. Still, after 20 years, I feel I must recall a handful of my favorite moments from the series. In the two-hour premiere, the way grief was portrayed in a manner never seen on TV before. When Sarah Palmer (Grace Zabriskie) receives that call with the news of Laura's death and goes on her crying jag, we break for commercial, return to her and she's still wailing, leaving the viewer uncomfortable and uncertain
whether it is sympathy or laughter that is called for at this point. Then there are the unusual investigative techniques of Agent Cooper, but my favorite scene remains when he gives the sheriff's department a short lecture on his fascination with the Dalai Lama and Tibet followed by a rock-throwing experiment to eliminate potential suspects based on an initial in Laura's diary. The hike into the mountains the lawmen and Doc Hayward (Warren Frost, Mark's father, by the way) make to interview the Log Lady and find out what her log saw the night Laura was murdered, a scene punctuated with humor as when Andy reaches for a cookie before they've had their tea and the Log Lady scolds them, "Wait for the tea. The fish aren't running." The scene at Laura's graveside funeral, led first by Bobby calling them all hypocrites for ignoring the signs she was in trouble followed by a grieving Leland throwing himself on the coffin and the device lowering the casket into the grave
malfunctioning, making Leland ride it up and down like a ride. This is followed by a dark-humored scene at the diner where Shelly is making two old men crack up by re-creating the scene with her fingers and a napkin dispenser. Of course, who can forget the great trick Audrey (Sherilyn Fenn) pulled off to get a job at One Eyed Jack's: tying a cherry stem into a knot with her tongue. Leland's unusual first season behavior provided another great moment when he showed up at an important business function at the Great Northern and immediately began looking for someone to dance with him. Ben enlisted Catherine to save the day, but then Leland started having his spells where he hunches over grabbing his head and flinging his hands away from it, so Catherine imitates him and the rest of the dancers do the same, inventing a great new dance craze, emphasis on the craze. In the second season premiere, it's uncertain whether Sarah and Maddie were shocked more by Leland's hair suddenly being all-white or the fact he came bounding down the stairs that morning singing, "Mairzy Doats." Another great scene from that episode was when Cooper was being treated at the hospital after his shooting and Truman instructed Lucy to give him a rundown of what had happened. Forgive me for not remembering the proper order: Jacques Renault was murdered; Dr. Jacoby was attacked; Nadine attempted suicide; Leo Johnson was shot; the mill burned; Pete Martell and Shelly Johnson suffered smoke inhalation; Catherine Martell and Josie Packard (Joan Chen) are missing. To this list, Cooper responds, "HOW LONG WAS I OUT?" David Lynch himself directed what may be one of the most disturbing sequences in television
history but also ranks as a triumph of direction and editing. In the scene that reveals Leland as the killer and that he is possessed by BOB, we are confronted first by images of a drugged-out Sarah crawling down the Palmer stairs and seeing a vision of a horse. Meanwhile, the Log Lady tells Cooper and Truman that the owls are gathering at the Road House. There, Julee Cruise is performing, singing some of the many songs she's performed with lyrics by Lynch and music by the series' brilliant composer Angelo Badalamenti. Bobby Briggs is there. So are Donna (Lara Flynn Boyle) and James. Even the old waiter. As Cruise sings the haunting song "The World Spins," she vanishes and the Giant appears and tells Cooper, "It is happening again." Indeed it is. At the Palmer house, Maddie comes down the stairs smelling an unusual smell and she sees Leland as BOB for the first time and he proceeds to brutally beat her to death, telling her at one point, "You are going back to Missoula, MONTANA!" before slamming her head into the wall and placing another letter beneath another fingernail. Back at the Road House, the singer reappears, Bobby seems affected, Donna is bawling and James, as one would expect from that dimwit, seems clueless. The waiter crosses to Cooper and says, "I am so sorry." "The World Spins" continues and Cooper stares, wondering what clue he missed. It's a long, truly unsettling and amazing sequence and may be the best ever produced for television.
I think I better wrap this up before this ends up being longer than the health care reform bill, but I can't help it: My Twin Peaks obsession is a preexisting condition. I did it. I wrote the piece without even repeating myself about ideas of duality or references to Hitchcock's Vertigo or Preminger's Laura. Before I do one last tribute, I leave you with this reminder that you must never forget: the owls are not what they seem.
Twenty years is a long time and as you would expect, we were liable to lose some of the performers who appeared on Twin Peaks as those two decades passed. This might not be a complete list. I'm relying on IMDb and some don't even have birth information, let alone death information. Most who have died played minor roles, but three played pivotal roles in the series (one played a character who had already died on the show). So, now, to remember those who have left us since the series went off the air and the roles they played.
Hank Worden (the old Great Northern waiter) died Dec. 6, 1992
Royal Dano (Judge Sternwood) died May 15, 1994
John Boylan (Mayor Milford) died Nov. 16, 1994
Frank Silva (BOB) died Sept. 13, 1995
Jack Nance (Pete Martell) died Dec. 30, 1996
Jane Greer (Vivian Niles, Norma's mom) died Aug. 24, 2001
Ron Taylor (Coach Wingate) died Jan. 16, 2002
Royce D. Applegate (Rev. Brocklehurst) died Jan. 1, 2003
Dan O’Herlihy (Andrew Packard) died Feb. 17, 2005
James Booth (Ernie Niles) died Aug. 11, 2005
Tony Jay (Dougie Milford) died Aug. 13, 2006
Don S. Davis (Major Garland Briggs) died June 29, 2008
Frances Bay (First Mrs. Tremond) died Sept. 15, 2011
Ian Abercrombie (Tom Brockman) died Jan. 26, 2012
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Labels: Breaking Bad, Deadwood, Diane Keaton, Hitchcock, Homicide, House, Kyle MacLachlan, Larry Sanders, Law and Order, Lost, Lynch, Mad Men, Piper Laurie, Preminger, Ray Wise, The Simpsons, The Sopranos, The Wire, TV Tribute, Twin Peaks
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Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Twin Peaks Tuesdays: Episode 8
BLOGGER'S NOTE: Today, I'm beginning a new feature (or folly, depending how it goes). Since I finally got my hands on the new DVD release of Twin Peaks' second season, I've decided to pretend as if the show is airing once a week and will do episode recaps as if I'm watching them for the first time and they are airing for the first time. So please indulge me and pretend that we are suddenly back in the fall of 1990. I hope you Peaks fans out there enjoy this exercise.
By Edward Copeland
After a summer waiting for the return of David Lynch's spectacular, groundbreaking new series after a mere eight episode run last spring (the disparity in episode numbering stems from the fact that the very first episode was titled "Pilot" and the shows didn't start getting numbers until the second installment), Twin Peaks finally has returned with a two hour premiere directed by Lynch himself and filled with the show's signature deft mixture of offbeat humor, emotion and creepiness.
For those who forgot where we left off (and the only people who possibly could have forgotten were the ones who stopped watching the show), the series' main mystery of "Who killed Laura Palmer?" was just the main unanswered question as the first season finale fit the true definition of a cliffhanger with the following events
1. Someone attacked Dr. Jacoby in the park.
2. Laura's father Leland smothered drug smuggler Jacques Renault to death.
3. Leo tied up Shelly in the Packard Saw Mill and lured Catherine there, before setting it ablaze for Ben Horne; Pete braved the flames try to save his wife.
4. Leo found Bobby at home and was about to kill him when Hank Jennings shot Leo.
5. Audrey, undercover at One Eyed Jack's, was about to be discovered by her father who owns the Canadian brothel.
6. Big Ed discovered that Nadine had taken an overdose of pills in an attempt to commit suicide.
7. Bobby and Mike had framed James by putting cocaine in his motorcycle and he was arrested.
8. Lucy shocked Deputy Andy with the news that she's pregnant.
9. Agent Cooper opened his hotel room door at the Great Northern only to be shot three times.
Shew. That's a lot of loose ends to tie up and even with two hours, they don't get to most of them. First up, in a scene certain to delight fans and frustrate casual viewers, we begin with a wounded Coop (Kyle MacLachlan) lying on his hotel room floor as a decrepit waiter (played by veteran character actor Hank Worden) doesn't seem to notice the severity of his condition and is more intent on just delivering the milk Coop ordered and having him sign the bill. He also notices the phone that was left off the hook with Andy speaking on it when Cooper went to answer the door and the waiter was kind enough to hang it up. "I hung up the phone for ya," the decrepit old man
tells the prone and bleeding agent, who meekly replies, "OK." The waiter does take time to add as he's leaving, "I've heard about you" several times and gives Coop the thumbs up. It's funny and frustrating, but eventually it gives way to the introduction of another character who appears to be from another world, a giant (Carel Struycken) who delivers Cooper three puzzling clues and takes his ring, promising to return it once Coop learns that what he says is true: 1) there's a man in a smiling bag; 2) the owls are not what they seem; and 3) without chemicals, he points. He also tosses in "Leo locked inside a hungry horse" before vanishing and leaving Cooper bleeding on the floor.
The episode leaves Cooper as well, switching to the situation across the border at One Eyed Jack's where Ben Horne (Richard Beymer) is anxious to break in "the new girl," unaware that it is his own daughter Audrey (Sherilyn Fenn), sleuthing undercover hoping to find out more about Laura's murder. She does her best to fend off Ben's advances while his brother Jerry (David Patrick Kelly) is outside taunting One Eyed Jack's manager Blackie (Victoria Catlin) by denying her a needed fix of heroin. Soon though, Jerry comes knocking to inform Ben that a situation has arisen and Audrey escapes though Ben tells her as he leaves, "You know how to interest a man" and promises to come back. Before the brothers Horne have returned to the Great Northern, the still-bleeding Agent Cooper starts dictating to Diane on his tape recorder, hoping he left it on voice activation (The dialogue is contained on the audio cassettes of Cooper's notes put on sale earlier this year). Before Coop gets too far, Harry, Hawk and Andy (Michael Ontkean, Michael Horse, Harry Goaz) arrive and Cooper loses consciousness before awakening at the hospital, mumbling about the wood tick he was trying to get when he lifted his bulletproof vest that enabled his injuries.
Once awake, Harry asks Lucy (Kimmy Robertson, now listed in the main credits) to bring Cooper up to speed and she informs him that Leo (Eric Da Re) was shot and is in a coma, Nadine (Wendy Robie) took an overdose of pills and was in a coma, the mill burned, Shelly and Pete (Madchen Amick, Jack Nance) have smoke inhalation, Josie and Catherine (Joan Chen, Piper Laurie) are missing and that Jacques Renault (Walter Olkewicz) was murdered, prompting Cooper to understandbly ask, "How long was I out?" Doc Hayward (Warren Frost) tells Cooper that hospital hasn't seen this much activity since a fabled fire back in 1959. Despite Doc's objections, Cooper insists that he's well enough to get back on the job, merely asking for a couple hours to get dressed before they go to search Leo's house.
Meanwhile, things remain off-kilter at the Palmer household where Maddie (Sheryl Lee) tells her Aunt Sarah (Grace Zabriskie) that she had a dream about a certain part of the living room carpet before Leland (Ray Wise), apparently having had a restful night's sleep after smothering Jacques to death, emerges for the day energetically singing "Marzie Doats" and sporting a full head of white hair. Leland's good mood and singing follows him to the Great Northern, ready to return to work and even getting Ben and Jerry to dance along as he continues to sing. Later, Ben and Jerry find Hank Jennings (Chris Mulkey) standing in the dark of Ben's office and push him for answers as to why Leo isn't dead, whether Catherine could be and where are Josie's whereabouts. Hank tries to offer an explanation, but Ben reminds him that he and his brother are the brains and that he's merely a bicep who is to flex for them when he's told to.
Donna (Lara Flynn Boyle) is undergoing a personality change, having Maddie fetch Laura's sunglasses for her and turning dark and seductive as she wears them. She visits dim bulb James (James Marshall) in the jail and surprises him with her moves, including suddenly smoking cigarettes. James asks when she picked up the habit and Donna says she only smokes when she's tense. James, missing a lot of obvious reasons why she might be tense, asks when she got so tense to which she replies, "When I started smoking." Donna also receives a note urging her to check into the Meals on Wheels program in which Laura participated.
As the still recuperating Cooper resumes his investigative duties, the delightful asshole of an FBI agent, Albert Rosenfeld, (Miguel Ferrer) arrives to unload fresh new insults and to look into Dale's shooting. Ferrer's brief appearances in season one were a treat, but he's on fire upon his return as he alienates sweet Andy and tries to stifle a laugh as Cooper encounters Big Ed (Everett McGill) in the hospital, who tells of his history with Nadine and how she lost her eye. Albert also brings Coop some unwelcome news: his ex-partner Windom Earle, who went insane and was locked up in a mental hospital, has escaped. While still at the hospital, Coop also spots the late Jacques Renault hanging in a body bag that resembles a smile, answering one of the giant's first clues. Andy solves another puzzler for him when he discovers that Leo had been jailed in Hungry Horse, Montana, on the same day Teresa Banks was murdered, making him unlikely as Laura's killer.
One of the most touching scenes in the season two premiere happens when Major Briggs (Don S. Davis) encounters his son Bobby (Dana Ashbrook) at the Double R Diner. The major, who was portrayed in season one almost exclusively as a strict disciplinarian, shares with his son a calming dream he had about Bobby's future and how hopeful it made him. His sincerity almost brings the stunned Bobby to tears, though he's brought back to reality as he spots Hank and remembers that he saw him shoot Leo, though he keeps the information to himself.
The Palmers pay a dinner visit to the Haywards where Leland continues in his good mood as Doc grills him about the sudden change in his hair color. Leland can't explain it, but says he feels as if a giant burden has been lifted from his shoulders. He's still grieving for his slain daughter, but something has changed. He then proceeds to engage in another song, this time "Get Happy" with perhaps a potentially important lyric: Get ready for judgment day. As he sings though, Leland faints, much to Sarah's embarrassment and as Doc brings him back around, Leland is ready for the show to go on urging them to "Begin the Beguine."
Back at One Eyed Jack's, Audrey, having escaped her encounter with her father and endured a tongue lashing from Blackie, prays to Agent Cooper that he find the note she left him, which slid under the hotel bed when he was shot. As Cooper prepares to go back to sleep after his extremely long and eventful day, the giant pays him another visit to tell him that three people have seen "him," but only one his body and that person is ready to talk. The giant also tells Cooper he forgot something, presumably reminding him about Audrey's note. Back at the hospital, Ronette Pulaski (Phoebe Augustine) begins to stir out of her coma, having flashbacks to the Laura's murder in the train car and, in one of the most frightening, quickly edited sequences the series has produced yet, she relives the crime and sees horrifying glimpses of the long-haired man that popped up in Cooper's dream and Sarah's vision. I'm sure some will complain, but I found the second season premiere to be great and I'm grateful for the show's return.
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Labels: Kyle MacLachlan, Lynch, Piper Laurie, Ray Wise, TV Recap, Twin Peaks
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Friday, April 13, 2007
Trouble until the robins come
By Edward Copeland
My relationship with Blue Velvet — and no other word than relationship accurately describes my experiences with the film — has been a long and bumpy one. When I first saw it at a midnight showing in 1986, in a bad mood and dragging Wagstaff from a school dance, my only previous David Lynch experience had been Dune. I hadn't seen Eraserhead or The Elephant Man at that point and I hated Dune. (I knew I was in trouble when I went to see that movie and they handed me a page of definitions as I went into the theater. Was I supposed to memorize them before the film began? Did they think I brought a flashlight?) My initial reaction to Blue Velvet was equally harsh. Then, a few years later, came Twin Peaks and as I fell in love with that series, it led me to reassess Blue Velvet and eventually my thoughts on the film grew kinder. This week, I revisited the film again and my reaction was different once again. It really is sort of a silly movie, though it did lay the groundwork for Lynch's later, greater successes with similar material on Twin Peaks and with Mulholland Drive.
In his recent book Catching the Big Fish, Lynch wrote about the intuitive nature of his filmmaking and I believe that really shows in Blue Velvet and all his other works. In a way, looking at the film again in the context of his book, Blue Velvet really does seem to be less a stand-alone film than one chapter of a larger Lynch work in progress. (Regretfully, I still haven't had access to see INLAND EMPIRE to see how that plays in Lynch's artistic progression.) All the elements that I loved about Twin Peaks are there: the mix of the horrific, the humorous and the downright bizarre. What I found absent from Blue Velvet in this viewing that were corrected in his later works is that the characters are not drawn as sharply and some of the dialogue comes off as tinny and ludicrous. Kyle MacLachlan was great as Cooper on Twin Peaks, but when he has to deliver lines as Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet such as "Why are there people like Frank?" in a semi-hysterical tone, it's hard to take seriously or humorously. Laura Dern finds herself similarly hampered as high school girl Sandy, daughter of a police detective and Jeffrey's partner in amateur sleuthing.
Despite the awkward moments though, Blue Velvet still retains a lot of filmmaking power. Lynch's background as a painter really comes through in the beautiful and sometimes grotesque images he puts on his cinematic canvas. Be it the fabled opening shot from the picket fence and roses down through the bugs in soil or just odd and inexplicably compelling sequences such as Dean Stockwell, bearing a resemblance to Joel Grey as the MC in Cabaret, lip-synching Roy Orbison's "In Dreams," Lynch's visual vision is striking. As for the "mystery" at the center of Blue Velvet, in a way it portends "Who killed Laura Palmer?" in that the puzzle really almost is irrelevant to the film itself. The reason it didn't get the backlash that Twin Peaks eventually endured is that the movie does wrap up its story and the villain (Dennis Hopper) is front and center. Hopper really succeeds the most at balancing the dual nature of the story, making Frank both frightening and funny, whether explaining to Jeffrey that he doesn't want to get a love letter from him because it's a "bullet from a gun" or chastising Jeffrey's preference for Heineken with "Heineken! Fuck that shit — Pabst Blue Ribbon!"
So now, 21 years after I first saw Blue Velvet, my view of the film has transformed again and I think in a way it's something that Lynch expects. In Catching the Big Fish, he writes about his refusal to do DVD commentaries because he doesn't want to color a viewer's reaction and I think he expects viewers to find something new each time. In a way, that is what make Blue Velvet and most of Lynch's works so special — they defy easy categorization and final judgments. You can't slap any sort of rating scale on his work and expect it to stand. Any review of his work, unlike the movies of just about any other filmmaker, truly capture a moment of time. Today, I find Blue Velvet more goofy than good. Who knows what I will think if I watch it again in another five or 10 years, but I'm certain that I will watch it again in the future and that probably says more about its intrinsic worth than anything else. The biggest mystery in Blue Velvet is not its story but how one film can keep evolving in a viewer's perceptions more than 20 years after it was first made.
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Labels: 80s, Dean Stockwell, Hopper, Kyle MacLachlan, L. Dern, Lynch, Movie Tributes, Twin Peaks
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