Twin Peaks

For the hills in San Francisco, see Twin Peaks, San Francisco, California.

Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks opening title screen
Created by	David Lynch & Mark Frost
Starring	Kyle MacLachlan Michael Ontkean Mädchen Amick Dana Ashbrook Richard Beymer Lara Flynn Boyle Joan Chen Sherilyn Fenn Warren Frost Piper Laurie Sheryl Lee Peggy Lipton James Marshall Everett McGill Jack Nance Kimmy Robertson Ray Wise
Opening theme	"Falling" by Angelo Badalamenti
Country of origin	United States
No. of episodes	30 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producers	Mark Frost David Lynch
Running time	0:48
Original release
Network	ABC
Release	April 8, 1990 – June 10, 1991

Twin Peaks is an American Emmy Award-nominated, Peabody and Golden Globe-winning television serial drama created by David Lynch and Mark Frost, which first aired in the United States on April 8, 1990 and ended on June 10, 1991. The show is set in the fictional town of Twin Peaks in northeast Washington state; the primary filming took place in northwest Washington. The central plot line tells the story of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (played by Kyle MacLachlan) and his investigation of the murder of a popular local teenage schoolgirl and homecoming queen, Laura Palmer (played by Sheryl Lee), whose body was found on a riverbank, wrapped in plastic. Although the series was created by Lynch and Frost, the majority of episodes are credited to different writers and directors. The show was co-produced by Aaron Spelling's production company and ran for 30 episodes over two seasons.

Twin Peaks initially aired in the United States on the ABC Network, and in its first season was one of the most successful television programs on ABC. Declining ratings in the second season led to the series being cancelled. Despite the series' eventual declining performance with audiences, Twin Peaks quickly became a pop culture touchstone and spawned a film prequel, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, released in 1992. The series also later inspired several television series in different ways, including Northern Exposure; Wild Palms; American Gothic; Eerie, Indiana; The X-Files; Carnivàle; Lost; and Night and Day. Many of these series have been referred to as "the next Twin Peaks", either before their run or after popular success.

Due to its success in the mid to late '90s, Bravo re-aired Twin Peaks in the U.S. from 2003-2004. Also, NBC Universal's horror-themed cable channel Chiller, which launched on March 1, 2007 is currently airing Twin Peaks. It was voted one of TV Guide's "Top 25 cult shows" at #20 and one of the "Top 50 Television Programmes of All Time" by the same guide at #45.

Casting

Twin Peaks features members of the loose ensemble of Lynch's favorite character actors, including Jack Nance, Kyle MacLachlan, Grace Zabriskie and Everett McGill. It is also notable for the casting of several veteran actors who had long been absent from the screen, including 1950s movie stars Piper Laurie and Russ Tamblyn and former Mod Squad star Peggy Lipton.

Music

Composer Angelo Badalamenti, a frequent contributor to Lynch projects, scored the series and provides the leitmotif "Laura's Theme", the famous title theme and other evocative pieces to the soundtrack. A handful of the motifs were borrowed from the Julee Cruise album Floating Into the Night, which was written in large part by Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch, and was released in 1989. This album also serves as the soundtrack to another Lynch project, "Industrial Symphony No. 1", a live Cruise performance also featuring Michael J. Anderson (the Man from another place"). The song "Falling" (sans vocals) became the theme to the show, and the songs "Rockin' Back Inside My Heart", "The Nightingale," "The World Spins," and "Into the Night" (found in their full versions on the album) were used as Cruise's Roadhouse performances, during the show's run.

In 1992 techno artist Moby sampled the Twin Peaks theme for his UK top ten hit track "Go".

Response

Premise

Twin Peaks started life as an offbeat project for David Lynch and Mark Frost. They filmed the pilot with an agreement with ABC that they would shoot an additional "ending" to it so it could be sold directly to video in Europe as a feature if the TV show was not picked up.

During the first season, it was the search for Laura Palmer's killer that served as the engine for the plot and caught the public's imagination, although the creators admitted this was largely a macguffin; Each episode was really about the interactions between the townsfolk. The unique (and often bizarre) personalities of each citizen formed a web of minutae which ran contrary to the quaint appearance of the town. Adding to the surreal atmosphere was the recurrance of Dale Cooper's Lovecraftian dreams, in which the FBI Agent is given clues to Laura's murder in a supernatural realm that may or may not be of his imagination.

The first season contained only eight episodes (including the pilot episode), and was considered technically and artistically revolutionary for television at the time, geared toward reaching the standards of film. It has been said that Twin Peaks started the accomplished cinematography now commonplace in today's television dramas. Lynch and Frost maintained tight control over the first season, handpicking all of the directors, with some that Lynch had known from his days at the American Film Institute (i.e., Caleb Deschanel and Tim Hunter) or referrals from someone he knew.

Its ambitious style, paranormal undertones, and engaging murder mystery made Twin Peaks a surprising hit. Its quirky characters, particularly Kyle MacLachlan's special agent Dale Cooper, were unorthodox for a supposed 'crime drama', as was Cooper's method of interpreting his dreams to solve the crime.

Following the cliffhanger finale of the first season, the show's popularity reached its zenith, and "Peaksmania" seeped into mainstream popular culture (such as Saturday Night Live, in which Kyle Maclachlan hosted and performed a sketch that parodied the show). Twin Peaks sweeped the Emmy Awards in 1990 with eight nominations, although it failed to win one.

Declining ratings

With the unpopular resolution of the show's main drawing point (Laura Palmer's murder) and with the story lines becoming more obscure and drawn out, public interest finally began to wane and "Peaksmania" seemed over. This discontent, coupled with ABC changing its timeslot over a number of occasions, led to a huge drop in ratings after being the most watched television programming in the USA in 1990. On February 15, 1991, ABC announced that the show had been put on "indefinite hiatus", a move which usually leads to cancellation.

This wasn't quite the end, though, as there was still a large enough fanbase for viewers to begin an organized letter-writing campaign, dubbed C.O.O.P (Citizens Opposed to the Offing of Peaks). The campaign was successful, and ABC agreed to another six episodes to finish the season.

In the final episodes, Agent Cooper was given a love interest, Annie Blackburn (Heather Graham), to replace the intended story arc with Audrey Horne. The series finale did not sufficiently boost interest, and the show was not renewed for a third season, leaving an unresolved cliffhanger ending that continues to be debated.

David Lynch himself returned to direct the finale of the series, annoying a few of the actors and writers, as they had previously felt 'abandoned' by him. The writers, for their part, didn't appreciate his changes to their scripts.

Later, David Lynch, having been long unhappy with ABC's "meddling" during the second season, sold the whole show to Bravo for a small sum. Bravo began airing the show from scratch again, along with Lynch's addition of introductions to each episode by the Log Lady and her cryptic musings.

Plot Synopsis

File:Palmer Autopsy.jpg

Autopsy report of Laura Palmer

The series is set in 1989, with each episode — barring occasional exceptions — representing a single day in the chronology.

On the morning of February 23, in the town of Twin Peaks, Washington state, lumberjack Pete Martell discovers a naked corpse tightly wrapped in a sheet of clear plastic on the bank of a river. Following the arrival of Sheriff Harry S. Truman, his deputies, and Dr. Will Hayward on the scene, the body is discovered to be that of homecoming queen Laura Palmer, the most popular girl at the local high school. The news spreads among the town's residents, particularly Laura's family and friends. Meanwhile, just across the state line, a second girl, Ronette Pulaski, is found walking along the railroad tracks in a fugue. Since Ronette was discovered across the state line, the FBI (Special Agent Dale Cooper) is called in to investigate. Cooper's initial examination of Laura's body reveals a tiny typed letter 'R' inserted under her fingernail. He recognizes this as the "calling card" of a killer who took the life of Teresa Banks a year earlier in a town located "in the southwest corner of the state" (revealed in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me to be Deer Meadow).

Cooper quickly establishes that Laura's character and relationships are not as they first appear, and that she's far from the wholesome homecoming queen that those closest to her believed her to be. It is revealed that Laura was two-timing her boyfriend Bobby Briggs with sullen biker James Hurley, a fact known to Laura's best friend Donna Hayward. Cooper also finds traces of cocaine in Laura's diary, indicating a drug habit she shared with Bobby. Meanwhile, Donna and James begin an investigation of their own into Laura's death, and find themselves embarking on a romantic relationship with each other.

Laura's cousin Maddy Ferguson arrives to stay with Laura's parents prior to the funeral. Maddy, who resembles Laura closely, befriends Donna and James and helps them in their efforts to find the killer — even impersonating Laura at one point to fool Laura's psychologist, Dr. Lawrence Jacoby.

During his investigation, Cooper stays at the Great Northern Hotel owned by the Horne family. The Hornes' sultry daughter Audrey develops a crush on Cooper that initially appears to be mutual. However, Cooper later rebuffs her advances, on the grounds that she is a high schooler and she is involved in the case he is working on. With Audrey's help, Cooper traces Laura's cocaine usage to a brothel called One-Eyed Jack's, which Audrey later infiltrates on Cooper's behalf. It is revealed that Laura had also been working as a prostitute there.

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Agent Cooper, The Man from Another Place, and Laura Palmer in the "red room" of Cooper's dream, later revealed to be part of the Black Lodge.

Cooper also experiences a bizarre dream, in which he sees a one-armed man called Mike, who chants a strange poem: "Through the darkness of future past / The magician longs to see / One chants out between two worlds / Fire walk with me." Mike tells Cooper about another man called Bob, and how they went "killing together." Bob also appears as a man with long grey hair, dressed in denim, who swears to Cooper, "I will kill again." As the dream continues, Cooper finds himself twenty-five years older, sitting in a mysterious red-curtained room. It is here he meets the diminutive Man From Another Place who intones clues to Cooper in the form of strange phrases and then proceeds to dance to a jazzy beat. Also present is the spirit of Laura Palmer, who kisses Cooper and then whispers into his ear the name of her killer. When he awakes, Cooper is unable to recall the killer's name. (Lynch enhanced the profoundly surreal nature of these scenes by having the actors recite their lines backward, and then reversing the recording.)

Cooper and the local police force are then able to track down Mike, whose full name is Phillip Michael Gerard. Gerard appears to be nothing more than a shoe salesman and claims to know nothing of the Bob that Cooper describes. However, it eventually becomes clear that Gerard is possessed by an "inhabiting spirit" (the true 'Mike') who reveals to Cooper and his colleages the true nature of Bob - Bob is a fellow inhabiting spirit who has possessed someone in Twin Peaks "for over forty years."

File:Kyle MacLachlan Twin Peaks.jpg

Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan)

Cooper is also visited by an apparition of a mysterious Giant who provides him with further clues in the murder investigation. All this information that Cooper has gained from psychic and empirical means, including the mysterious utterances of an eccentric local woman known as The Log Lady, leads him to a number of suspects; but when he discovers the existence of Laura's second, secret diary, he realizes that therein lies the key to solving the mystery. Harold Smith, a local man who was one of Laura's confidants, holds this diary. The secret diary reveals that from a very early age Laura was abused by a figure called 'Bob', and that her use of drugs and sex are the means she has used to numb herself and escape from him.

On the night before she is to leave town, Maddy is brutally murdered by Laura's father, Leland, who is revealed as the man who is possessed by 'Bob'. Cooper and Truman apprehend him, and as they interrogate the crazed Leland, it becomes clear that Leland has little to no memory of his grotesque actions while under Bob's influence. After confessing to two murders, Bob forces Leland to smash his own head against the wall of his cell. As Cooper and Truman rush to his side, Leland's memories of what he has done return to him, and in his dying moment, Leland claims to see Laura. However, as Cooper and the others note, if Bob has truly left Leland's body, it means his spirit is now loose in the woods of Twin Peaks.

With the murder investigation concluded, Cooper is then all set to leave Twin Peaks when he is framed for drug trafficking by the criminal Jean Renault and is temporarily suspended from the FBI. Renault holds Cooper responsible for the death of his brother Jacques, who was murdered by a grieving Leland Palmer when Jacques was under suspicion for Laura's murder.

After Renault is killed in a shoot-out with police and Cooper is cleared of the charges, his former FBI partner and mentor Windom Earle comes to Twin Peaks to play a deadly game of chess with Cooper, in which each piece of Cooper's that he takes means someone dies. As Cooper explains to Truman, during his early years with the FBI alongside Earle, Cooper had begun an affair with Earle's wife, Caroline, while she had been under his protection as a witness to a federal crime. Earle went mad and killed Caroline, tried to gut Cooper with a knife, and was subsequently committed to a mental institution. Now having escaped and come to Twin Peaks, Earle hides out in the woods so he may go about plotting his revenge scheme.

As this is going on, Cooper continues to try to track down the origins and whereabouts of Bob, and learns more about the mysteries of the dark woods surrounding Twin Peaks. It is here he learns of the existence of the White Lodge and the Black Lodge, two mystical extradimensional realms whose gateways reside somewhere in the woods and which are occupied by spirits, that appear in Cooper's dreams and visions (metaphorically referred to as owls - "The owls are not what they seem"). Cooper also falls in love with a new girl in town, Annie Blackburn.

When Annie wins the Miss Twin Peaks contest, Windom Earle kidnaps her and takes her to the Black Lodge, which Cooper realises has been Earle's goal all along. The Black Lodge then is revealed to be the place where Bob, the Little Man From Another Place and the Giant come from, and where the red-curtained room of Cooper's dream is located. Cooper follows Earle into the Lodge and has a set of bizarre encounters with doppelgangers of dead characters, including Caroline Earle and Leland Palmer. During Cooper's journey, Windom Earle is 'killed' by an enraged Bob, but Annie's fate is unclear. Cooper then tries to escape, but cannot find the exit in the nonlinear path of the Black Lodge. He is also chased by his own smiling doppelganger as he tries to find a way out. The doppleganger catches him, and Cooper returns to the woods, unconscious. He awakens in his room at the Great Northern Hotel and says "I wasn't sleeping," in an ominous tone of voice. In the final shot of Twin Peaks, Cooper slams his forehead into the bathroom mirror, and his reflection is that of Bob.

Following the cancellation of Twin Peaks, series co-creator David Lynch created a feature film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, that detailed the last week of Laura Palmer's life, as well as subtly expanding on the events of Cooper's fate in the series finale.

Origins

File:Palmer Homecoming.jpg

Laura Palmer as homecoming queen (Sheryl Lee)

A producer at Warner Brothers wanted Lynch to direct a film about the life of Marilyn Monroe, based on the book The Goddess. Lynch recalls in the Lynch on Lynch book that he was "sort of interested. I loved the idea of this woman in trouble, but I didn't know if I liked it being a real story." Mark Frost was hired to write the screenplay. Even though this project was dropped by Warner Brothers, Lynch and Frost became good friends, and wrote a screenplay entitled One Saliva Bubble, with Steve Martin attached to star in it. However, this film was not made, either.

Lynch's agent, Tony Krantz, had been trying to get the filmmaker to work on TV since Blue Velvet, but he was never really that interested in the idea. "So one day Mark and I were talking at Du Pars, the coffee shop on the corner of Laurel Canyon and Ventura, and, all of a sudden, Mark and I had this image of a body washing up on the shore of a lake," Lynch remembered in an interview. Lynch and Frost pitched the idea to ABC in a 10-minute meeting with the network's drama head, Chad Hoffman, with nothing more than this image and a concept, according to the director: "The mystery of who killed Laura Palmer was the foreground, but this would recede slightly as you got to know the other people in the town and the problems they were having...The project was to mix a police investigation with a soap opera. We had drawn a map of the city. We knew where everything was located and that helped us determine the prevailing atmosphere and what might happen there."

ABC liked the idea, and asked Lynch and Frost to write a screenplay for the pilot episode. Originally, the show was entitled Northwest Passage and set in North Dakota, but the fact that a town called Twin Peaks really existed (much like Lumberton in Blue Velvet) prompted a revision in the script. However, even though ABC's Bob Iger liked the pilot, he had a tough time persuading the rest of the network brass. Iger suggested showing it to a more diverse, younger group, who liked it, and the executive subsequently convinced ABC to buy seven episodes at $1 million apiece. Some executives figured that the show would never get on the air. However, Iger planned to schedule it for the spring. The final showdown occurred during a bi-coastal conference call between Iger and a room full of New York executives — Iger won, and Twin Peaks was on the air.

Production info

The creation of Bob

Frank Silva was a set decorator who worked on the pilot episode. One day, when he was moving furniture in Laura Palmer's bedroom, a woman remarked to Silva not to get locked in the (Laura Palmer's) room. The image of Silva trapped in the room sparked something in Lynch who then asked Silva if he was an actor. Silva replied "yes" and Lynch told him that he had a part in the film. Silva accepted and Lynch shot footage of him behind Laura's bed with no real idea of what he would do with it.

When Lynch shot the scene of Sarah Palmer's frightening vision, Silva's reflection was accidentally caught in the footage. Silva can be seen in the mirror behind Sarah Palmer's head. Lynch was made aware of this accident but decided to keep Silva in the scene.

Mike, the One-Armed Man

Mike's appearance in the pilot episode was only originally intended to be a "kind of homage to The Fugitive. The only thing he was gonna do was be in this elevator and walk out." However, when Lynch wrote the "fire walk with me" speech, he imagined Mike saying it in the basement of the Twin Peaks hospital – a scene that would appear in the European version of the pilot episode and surface later in Agent Cooper's dream sequence. Mike's full name, Phillip Michael Gerard, is also a reference to Deputy Gerard, a character in The Fugitive.

The Man from Another Place

Lynch met Michael J. Anderson in 1987. After seeing him in a short film, Lynch wanted to cast the actor in the title role in Ronnie Rocket, but that project failed to be made. While editing the alternate ending of the foreign version of the pilot episode, an idea occurred to Lynch on his way home one day: "I was leaning against a car - the front of me was leaning against this very warm car. My hands were on the roof and the metal was very hot. The Red Room scene leapt into my mind. 'Little Mike' was there and he was speaking backwards... For the rest of the night I thought only about The Red Room."

Laura Palmer

To save on money, Lynch intended to cast a local girl from Seattle "just to play a dead girl." The local girl ended up being Sheryl Lee. "But no one - not Mark, me, anyone -- had any idea that she could act, or that she was going to be so powerful just being dead." Indeed, the image of Lee wrapped in plastic became one of the show's most enduring and memorable images. And then, while Lynch shot the home movie that James takes of Donna and Laura, he realized that Lee had something special. "She did do another scene -- the video with Donna on the picnic -- and it was that scene that did it." As a result, Sheryl Lee became a semi-regular addition to the cast appearing in flashbacks as Laura and becoming a recurring character - Maddy, Laura's cousin who also becomes another victim of Bob.

Episode list

Main article: List of Twin Peaks episodes

Themes

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Note found in the train car.

As with much of Lynch's other work (notably Blue Velvet), Twin Peaks explores the gulf between the veneer of small-town respectability and the seedier layers of life beneath it. Each character from the town leads a double life. The show further resembles Lynch's previous and subsequent work in that it is difficult to place in a defined genre: stylistically, the program borrows the unsettling tone and supernatural premises of horror films, and simultaneously offers a bizarrely comical parody of American soap operas with a campy, melodramatic presentation of the morally dubious activities of its characters. Finally, like the rest of Lynch's oeuvre, the show represents an earnest moral inquiry distinguished by both weird comedy and a deep vein of surrealism.

A popular feature of the series was Frost and Lynch's use of repeating and sometimes mysterious motifs — trees, water, coffee, donuts, owls, ducks, fire — and numerous embedded references to other films and TV shows, such as The Twilight Zone (mysteriously malfunctioning electrical equipment), and The Patty Duke Show (the phenomenon of identical cousins).

Improvisation

At several points during the filming, Lynch improvised by incorporating on-set accidents into the story. The most notable of these occurred when set decorator Frank Silva was accidentally filmed in a mirror in Laura Palmer's bedroom. When David Lynch saw Silva's face, he liked it so much he kept it in the show, and cast Silva as 'Bob', the mysterious tormentor of Laura Palmer.

During the filming of the scene in which Cooper first examines Laura's body, a malfunctioning fluorescent light above the table flickered constantly, but Lynch decided not to replace it since he liked the disconcerting effect that it created. Also, during the take, one of the minor actors misheard a line and, thinking he was being asked his name, he told Cooper his real name instead of saying his line, briefly throwing everyone off balance. Lynch was reportedly pleased with the lifelike, unscripted moment in dialog and kept the 'mistake' in the final cut:

ATTENDANT: I have to apologize again for the fluorescent lights. I think it's a bad transformer.

COOPER (Kyle MacLachlan): That's quite all right.

TRUMAN (Michael Ontkean): Agent Cooper, we did scrape those nails when we brought her in.

COOPER: Here it is. There it is. Oh my God, here it is!

TRUMAN: What?

COOPER (to attendant): Would you leave us, please?

ATTENDANT: Jim.

COOPER: Uh...would you leave us alone, please?

ATTENDANT: Oh. Certainly.

Invitation to Love

Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn)

Invitation to Love is a fictional soap opera in Twin Peaks. It is seen briefly on TV screens in all but the first of seven episodes of the first season and was shot in the Ennis House.

The show acts as a commentary on events unfolding in Twin Peaks itself, often highlighting some of the more outlandish or melodramatic elements of the show. The most obvious example of this "show within a show" commentary can be found when Maddy Ferguson, the near-identical cousin of Laura Palmer, first arrives in Twin Peaks. Just before Maddy first appears on the show, an episode of Invitation to Love is shown in which it is revealed that there are identical twin characters in Invitation to Love who are played by the same actress, much as Maddy and Laura Palmer are almost identical and are both played by Sheryl Lee. It is also implied in the brief snippet of the show that is shown that Jade and Emerald, the two characters in Invitation to Love, are characters with very different personalities, much as sweet and innocent Maddy is diametrically opposed to the dark and secretive Laura in Twin Peaks.

Another example can be found in the final episode of the first season, when Leo Johnson is shot in a dramatic fashion and a similar event is shown happening to the character of Montana in Invitation to Love. Both shootings involve the character who has been shot lying down and slowly dying.

There is one last and final reference in one episode of the second season (audio only).

Invitation characters

• Jared Lancaster, soap patriarch and owner of "The Towers." Aging father to Emerald and Jade. Played by "Evan St. Vincent" (Peter Michael Goetz).
• Chet, geeky husband to Jade and keeper of Jared's will. He is played by the fictional actor "Martin Hadley" (Lance Davis).
• Montana, an aggressive, rapacious bully who schemes with Emerald to gain ownership of The Towers. He is played by "Jason Denbo" (Rick Giolito).
• Emerald, seductive, manipulative twin sister to Jade. Schemes with Montana to end her father's life and collect the inheritance. Played by "Selina Swift" (Erika Anderson).
• Jade, sweeter, more innocent twin to Emerald who tries to save her father's life. Wife of Chet. Also played by "Selina Swift" (Erika Anderson).

Characters

Grouping	Name	Description	Played by
The FBI	Special Agent Dale Cooper	Investigates the murder of Laura Palmer, unothodox detective, falls in love with Twin Peaks and all its rural life, fascinated with the paranormal	Kyle MacLachlan
	Albert Rosenfeld	Abrasive forensics expert, whose façade hides a spiritual nature	Miguel Ferrer
	Chester Desmond	Investigates murder of Teresa Banks, mysteriously disappears	Chris Isaak
	Sam Stanley	Forensics specialist, assists Desmond in the investigation of Teresa Banks' murder	Kiefer Sutherland
	Phillip Jeffries	Long lost FBI agent who knows of the Lodges and their inhabitants	David Bowie
	Roger Hardy	Agent working for Internal Affairs who temporarily suspends Cooper from the FBI.	Clarence Williams III
	Gordon Cole	Stone-deaf Regional Bureau Chief, known to shout constantly	David Lynch
	Diane	Cooper's never-seen secretary; when Cooper speaks into his tape recorder each episode, the intended recipient is Diane	(never seen or heard)
Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department	Sheriff Harry S. Truman	Lover of Josie Packard	Michael Ontkean
	Deputy Andy Brennan	Dorky sidekick, lover of Lucy	Harry Goaz
	Deputy Hawk, Tommy Hill	Native American, expert tracker	Michael Horse
	Lucy Moran	Ditzy receptionist, on and off lover of Deputy Andy Brennan	Kimmy Robertson
	Cappy	Rarely-seen young, male assistant at the police station, possibly another deputy	Ron Kirk
The Palmers	Laura Palmer	Murder victim and the center of the story, Laura Palmer connects almost everyone in Twin Peaks	Sheryl Lee
	Leland Palmer	Laura's father, known for his compulsive singing and dancing	Ray Wise
	Sarah Palmer	Laura's psychic mother	Grace Zabriskie
	Maddy Ferguson	Laura's identical-looking cousin	Sheryl Lee
The Haywards	Doctor William Hayward	The doctor of Twin Peaks, assists on the autopsy of Laura Palmer	Warren Frost
	Eileen Hayward	Doctor Hayward's wheelchair bound wife	Mary Jo Deschanel
	Donna Hayward	Laura's best friend, lover of James Hurley	Lara Flynn Boyle
	Harriet Hayward	Donna's younger sister	Jessica Wallenfels
	Gersten Hayward	Donna's youngest sister	Alicia Witt
The Hornes	Benjamin Horne	Wealthy businessman, owns Great Northern Hotel, Horne's Department Store and a brothel on the Canadian border	Richard Beymer
	Jerry Horne	Ben's playboy brother and business partner	David Patrick Kelly
	Sylvia Horne	Ben's constantly angry wife	Jan D'Arcy
	Audrey Horne	Ben's sultry teenage daughter	Sherilyn Fenn
	Johnny Horne	Ben's mentally handicapped son, tutored by Laura	Robert Bauer III
Packard/Martell Family	Josie Packard	Widowed sawmill owner with a dark past, lover of Sheriff Truman, tutored by Laura	Joan Chen
	Andrew Packard	Late Ex-owner of the Packard Sawmill and Ex-husband of Josie	Dan O'Herlihy
	Catherine Packard Martell	Sister of Andrew, schemes with secret lover Ben Horne to burn down the sawmill	Piper Laurie
	Pete Martell	Long-suffering husband of Catherine, fishing enthusiast	Jack Nance
The Briggs	Major Garland Briggs	Intelligent and gifted Air Force officer involved in Project Blue Book, deep space monitoring, and the woods surrounding Twin Peaks	Don S. Davis
	Betty Briggs	Unassuming and loving wife and mother	Charlotte Stewart
	Bobby Briggs	Rebellious teenager, captain of the football team, boyfriend of Laura Palmer, secret lover of Shelly Johnson	Dana Ashbrook
The Hurleys	Big Ed Hurley	Owner of Big Ed's Gas Farm, secret lover of Norma Jennings	Everett McGill
	Nadine Hurley	Ed's one-eyed, mad, curtain drape-obsessed wife	Wendy Robie
	James Hurley	Ed's nephew, secret love of Laura Palmer, lover of Donna Hayward	James Marshall
The Jennings	Norma Jennings	Double R Diner owner, lover of Big Ed Hurley, organizer of Meals on Wheels with Laura	Peggy Lipton
	Hank Jennings	Norma's husband, paroled criminal, conspirator with Josie Packard	Chris Mulkey
	Annie Blackburn	Younger sister of Norma, an ex-nun with a troubled past	Heather Graham
The Johnsons	Leo Johnson	Brutish trucker and drug-runner, had a sexual relationship with Laura Palmer	Eric Da Re
	Shelly Johnson	Abused young wife of Leo, waitress at Norma's diner, secret lover of Bobby Briggs	Mädchen Amick
The Milfords	Mayor Dwayne Milford	Long time mayor of Twin Peaks, has an ongoing feud with his brother Dougie	John Boylan
	Dougie Milford	Publisher of the Twin Peaks Gazette local newspaper, known to marry often	Tony Jay
	Lana Budding Milford	Seductive fiancee of Dwayne and widow of Dougie, known to charm almost any man that's around her	Robyn Lively
The O'Reillys	Black Rose/Blackie O'Reilly	The madame of One Eyed Jacks	Victoria Catlin
	Nancy O'Reilly	Blackie's sister, lover of Jean Renault	Galyn Gorg
The Renaults	Jacques Renault	Canadian croupier, drug-runner, and bartender at the Roadhouse. Had sexual relationship with Laura Palmer	Walter Olkewicz
	Jean Renault	Oldest and most dangerous Renault brother, veteran criminal, insurance agent.	Michael Parks
	Bernard Renault	Youngest Renault brother, mules drugs over the border	Clay Wilcox
Others	Margaret Lanterman ("The Log Lady")	Mystic, widow who divines through a log she carries with her everywhere	Catherine E. Coulson
	Windom Earle	Psychotic but brilliant ex-partner of Cooper, desires the powers of the Lodges	Kenneth Welsh
	Dr. Lawrence Jacoby	Eccentric former psychiatrist of Laura with an obsession for Hawaii	Russ Tamblyn
	Thomas Eckhardt	Former business partner of Andrew Packard, obsessively in love with Josie Packard	David Warner
	Jones	Thomas Eckhardt's assistant	Brenda Strong
	Emory Battis	Store manager of Horne's Department Store, recruits girls from the perfume counter to work at One Eyed Jack's	Dan Amendola
	Harold Smith	Agoraphobic horticulturist, Laura's Meals on Wheels friend	Lenny Von Dohlen
	Denise/Dennis Bryson	Cross-dressing DEA agent who investigates drug allegations against Dale Cooper	David Duchovny
	Dick Tremayne	Pretentious employee of Men's Department at Horne's, ex-lover of Lucy	Ian Buchanan
	Mike Nelson	Bobby's best friend, high school wrestling champ, ex-boyfriend of Donna.	Gary Hershberger
	Phillip Gerard, AKA "The One-Armed Man"	A one-armed shoe salesman inhabited by the once evil spirit of Mike (Man From Another Place).	Al Strobel
	Ronette Pulaski	Ex-employee of One Eyed Jacks and Horne's Department Store, was with Laura the night she died	Phoebe Augustine
	Evelyn Marsh	Rich woman who James Hurley runs into, and who is beaten by her husband	Annette McCarthy
	Teresa Banks	First victim, found almost exactly one year before the murder of Laura Palmer	Pamela Gidley
	Roadhouse Singer	Angelic singer at the Roadhouse, known for her dream-like voice	Julee Cruise
	The Elderly Room Service Waiter	Elderly bellhop at the Great Northern who appears to have some kind of link to the White Lodge and the mysterious goings on in Twin Peaks.	Hank Worden
Lodge Inhabitants	Bob	Malevolent spirit similar to Mike, haunts the woods and inhabits humans	Frank Silva
	The Man From Another Place	Enigmatic dwarf. A spirit, like Bob, inhabits Phillip Gerard, the one-armed shoe salesman, consumer of garmonbozia	Michael J. Anderson
	The Giant	A supernatural giant who appears at key moments and provides Cooper with cryptic clues.	Carel Struycken
	Mrs. Tremond / Chalfont	Connected to the Lodges, Pierre's grandmother, intentions unknown	Frances Bay
	Pierre Tremond / Chalfont	Also connected to the Lodges, intentions unknown	Austin Jack Lynch

Video and DVD releases

The two-hour pilot episode, first screened on TV in the US, was also released on video in some European territories in 1989 as a stand-alone story. This was because no television network agreed to air the series. The European version is 20 minutes longer than the TV pilot with a different ending added to bring closure to the story. Cooper, Truman, Hawk, and Andy find Bob, who admits to Laura's murder, and then is shot by Mike, the one-armed man. The Red Room dream sequence that ends episode 2, where Cooper encounters the Little Man From Another Place and Laura Palmer, was originally shot for this film. Lynch was so happy with the material that he incorporated part of it into the second episode of the regular series (that is, the third episode shown in the U.S. including the pilot) as a dream Cooper has about the case. This version of the pilot was also offered by Warner Home Video in the United States, resulting in a rights entanglement which prevented the broadcast version of the pilot being released. The broadcast version of the pilot has still not received a legitimate U.S. video release of any sort, but rumors persist that in late 2007 a complete Twin Peaks box set including the pilot will see a release (the European box set of season one already includes the pilot episode, though in video quality inferior to the regular episodes).

On December 18th, 2001, the first season (episodes 1-7, minus the pilot) of Twin Peaks was released on DVD in Region 1 for the very first time by Republic Pictures (through Artisan Entertainment, now part of Lions Gate Entertainment). The box set was noted for being the first TV show to have its audio track redone in DTS. The region 1 release was heavily criticized for not including the key pilot episode, which could not be included due to the fact Lynch sold the rights to it to Warner Home Video in order to facilitate its video release in Europe. When the series was released on video in the US (twice by Worldvision Home Video), the pilot episode was excluded both times. In turn, Warner Home Video released the pilot on video however, it was actually the European version and was labelled as having "bonus footage". The televised pilot episode is included in the UK (region 2) DVD release from Universal Home Entertainment, but as of summer 2006 it is not yet known whether this version of the pilot (which ties in with the rest of the series) will ever be released to DVD in North America, or if the version released there will be the version with an extra 20 minutes of footage. A DVD collection of Season One was released in Australia by Paramount Pictures, in 2001, and in 2006, Season 2 was released by the same distributor in two parts: Season 2, Collection 1 and Season 2, Collection 2. In addition, the entire series was released in Australia in a box set collector's edition, and is set for a June - July, 2007 release date.

The DVD box set is known to have production errors, which cause many DVD players to freeze. One known track glitch occurs during the opening credits of Episode 2. Another glitch occurs 15 minutes into Episode 4, during Donna and Audrey's scene in the girls' high school lavatory. The European DVD box set of season two has an audio flaw where in episode 12 the center and right channel have been flopped.

The release of Season Two was complicated by the sale of Republic Pictures, the successor-in-interest to Worldvision Enterprises (the series' former distributor), to Paramount/Viacom in 1998; the transition of home video rights; and the later 2006 split of Viacom into two separate companies. Also, David Lynch oversaw the transfer from video to DVD personally, but was delayed by the production of his new film, Inland Empire. The first season was released to DVD on Artisan Entertainment, the video licensee for Republic, but Artisan/Lions Gate's rights expired in September 2005, and thus were transferred to Paramount. As a result of the 2006 corporate split of CBS and Viacom, CBS Studios (which ended up with Republic Pictures' and Spelling Entertainment's TV holdings) now owns the rights to the Twin Peaks series, with CBS Television Distribution handling syndication.

The second season release was postponed several times, from September 2004, to early 2005, to September 2005, to early 2006. Season Two was finally released in the United States and Canada on April 3 2007 via Paramount Home Video/CBS DVD, which now acts as home video distributor.

In Germany, Season 2 was released in two parts on separate dates in April 2007, Part 1 went on general release on January 4, 2007, including the 'normal' TV pilot episode.

North American rights to the Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me film are owned by New Line Cinema, a division of Time Warner (which also owns Warner Bros.), and is available on video and DVD through New Line. In Canada, the DVD was distributed through Alliance Atlantis, which holds all Canadian rights to the New Line library.

Cover Art	DVD Name	Ep #	Release Date	Additional Information
File:Twin Peaks Season 1.jpg	Season 1	7	December 8 2001	Directors' Audio Commentaries On-Camera Interviews with the Cast Additional Interviews with Cinema and Television Experts Archival Materials from the Fanzine for "Twin Peaks" - Wrapped In Plastic; the official Twin Peaks magazine Log Lady Introductions Written synopsis of pilot episode
File:TwinPeaksS2.jpg	Season 2	22	April 3 2007	Interactive Interview Grid Behind the Scenes with Kyle MacLachlan, Madchen Amick, Sherilyn Fenn, David Duchovny, and more Season 2 "Log Lady Introductions" Insights by Caleb Deschanel, Duwayne Dunham, Todd Holland, Tim Hunter, Stephen Gyllenhaal, and Jennifer Lynch

Re-airings

In the mid-'90s, Bravo re-aired Twin Peaks in the U.S..

NBC Universal's horror-themed cable channel Chiller, which launched on March 1st, 2007 is airing Twin Peaks for the first time on television in close to a decade. The series airs Thursdays and Saturdays at 8PM Eastern & 11PM or 11:30PM (depending on the length of the film that precedes it).

Books

Main article: Books of Twin Peaks

Many books have been written from or about the television show Twin Peaks. During the show's second season, Pocket Books released three official tie-in books, each authored by the show's creators (or their family) which offer a wealth of backstory.

Location

The towns of Snoqualmie and North Bend, in Washington, which were the primary filming locations for Twin Peaks, are only about an hour drive from the town of Roslyn. This town was the set of the series Northern Exposure, which debuted the same year, and also focused on the eccentric populace of a small northwestern town. A scene in the Northern Exposure first season episode "The Russian Flu" was shot at Snoqualmie Falls which was also featured in the opening titles sequence of Twin Peaks.

The background behind the actors of Invitation to Love is not a studio set but the interior of the Ennis House, an architectural landmark of Frank Lloyd Wright in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles.

In pop culture

Twin Peaks was widely seen as one of the defining shows of the 1990s, despite its brief run. The series has inspired numerous other television shows, which have parodied or paid homage to Twin Peaks. Long-running animated television show, The Simpsons, has even had multiple episodes with Twin Peaks-related subject matter, spoofs and references — in "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" which parodies the famous 'Red Room' scene and "Lisa's Sax" which shows Homer watching a Twin Peaks episode in a flashback. The thrash/speed metal band Anthrax wrote a song and released a video entitled "Black Lodge" from their Sound of White Noise album. This track was also produced by Angelo Badalamenti. Also, the grindcore band FDISK recorded 3 songs based on the series. Finnish doom-death metal band Swallow the Sun included a song called Ghost of Laura Palmer on their album Ghosts of Loss. The influence can be seen on other levels in other popular media: books, songs, film, and even video games and comic books. The series was spoofed in Scary Movie (2000) and Men in Black II (2002), and has spawned several imitations, due to its success, such as Northern Exposure; Wild Palms; American Gothic; Eerie, Indiana; The X-Files; Carnivàle and Night and Day. DJ Shadow sampled and used the words "It is happening again", as said by the Giant in episode 15, at the end of the track "What Does Your Soul Look Like, Pt. 1".

Film adaptation

File:FWWM US poster.jpg

Official US movie poster

Main article: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me was a flop compared to the huge success of the series, which is common with most film adaptations of successful television series. The film was released in 1992 (as Twin Peaks: The Movie in some countries), and was directed by Lynch. The film can be viewed as both prologue and epilogue to the series, and tells of the investigation into the murder of Teresa Banks and the last seven days in the life of Laura Palmer (Lee), a popular high school student in the small Washington town of Twin Peaks. These two connected murders were the central mysteries of the television series. Thus the film is often called a prequel, but it is not intended to be viewed before the series and also has sequel qualities. This is particularly apparent in the scenes in which Dale Cooper is seen to be physically present in the Black Lodge, somewhere he does not arrive until the TV series final episode. These parts of the film, then, might take place after the series. Most of the television cast returned for the film, with the notable exceptions of Lara Flynn Boyle who declined to return as Laura’s best friend Donna Hayward (she was replaced by Moira Kelly), and Sherilyn Fenn due to scheduling conflicts. Also, Kyle MacLachlan, who starred as Special Agent Dale Cooper in the TV series, was reluctant to return so his presence in the film is smaller than originally planned.

Ken Scherer, CEO of Lynch/Frost productions, announced that the film was not going to be made because series star Kyle MacLachlan did not want to reprise his role of Special Agent Dale Cooper. A month later, MacLachlan had changed his mind and the film was back on albeit without series regulars Lara Flynn Boyle and Sherilyn Fenn due to scheduling conflicts. In a 1995 interview, Fenn revealed that the real reason she didn’t do the film was that she "was extremely disappointed in the way the second season got off track. As far as Fire Walk With Me [is concerned], it was something that I chose not to be a part of." Fenn’s character was cut from the script and Boyle was recast with Moira Kelly. Even though MacLachlan agreed to be in the film, he only wanted a smaller role, forcing Lynch and co-writer Robert Engels to re-write the screenplay so that Agent Chester Desmond investigated the murder of Theresa Banks and not Agent Cooper as originally planned. MacLachlan also resented what had happened during the second season of the show. "David and Mark were only around for the first season... I think we all felt a little abandoned. So I was fairly resentful when the film, Fire Walk With Me, came around." He ended up only working five days on the movie. The relationship between Lynch and Mark Frost had become strained during the second season and after the series ended, Frost went on to direct his own movie, Storyville, and was unable to collaborate with Lynch on Fire Walk With Me.

Lynch decided to make a Twin Peaks movie because, as he said in an interview, "I couldn’t get myself to leave the world of Twin Peaks. I was in love with the character of Laura Palmer and her contradictions: radiant on the surface but dying inside. I wanted to see her live, move and talk." Actress Sheryl Lee also echoed these sentiments. "I never got to be Laura alive, just in flashbacks, it allowed me to come full circle with the character." According to Lynch, the movie was about, "the loneliness, shame, guilt, confusion and devastation of the victim of incest. It also dealt with the torment of the father – the war in him." Filming began on September 5, 1991 in Snoqualmie, Washington and lasted three months. Fire Walk With Me was greeted at the Cannes Film Festival with booing from the audience and met with almost unanimously negative reviews. General audiences felt cheated because the film advertised music and movie stars like David Bowie and Jürgen Prochnow which actually had tiny performances (Jürgen Prochnow appeared only in a short dream sequence with a fake beard, clapping his legs) hardly justifying a screen credit.

Even the CIBY-2000 party at Cannes did not go well. According to Lynch, Francis Bouygues (then head of CIBY) was not well liked in France and this only added to the film’s demise at the festival. The film flopped in the United States, partially because it was released almost a year after the television series was canceled (due to a sharp ratings decline in the second season) and partially due to its incomprehensibility to the uninitiated. Many people, especially critics, found the film stylish but bewildering. Janet Maslin in her review for the New York Times wrote, "Mr. Lynch’s taste for brain-dead grotesque has lost its novelty." Fellow Times film critic Vincent Canby concurred, "It's not the worst movie ever made; it just seems to be." In his review for Variety magazine, Todd McCarthy said, "that Laura Palmer, after all the talk, is not a very interesting or compelling character and long before the climax has become a tiresome teenager." The film also disappointed many devotees of the TV series due to its darker tone, lack of humor and absence of resolution to the series’ cliff-hanger ending.

U.S. distributor New Line Cinema released the film in America on August 28, 1992 with no advanced press screenings which did not endear it with critics. However, Kim Newman gave the film one of its rare positive reviews in Sight & Sound magazine. "The film’s many moments of horror... demonstrate just how tidy, conventional and domesticated the generic horror movie of the 1980s and 1990s has become." In its opening weekend, Fire Walk With Me grossed a total of $1,813,559 in 691 theaters. As of April 3 2007, the film has grossed a total of $4,160,851 in North America.

According to the film’s cinematographer, Ron Garcia, the film was very popular in Japan -- in particular, with women, as Martha Nochimson wrote in her book on Lynch's movies, "He surmises that the enthusiasm of the Japanese women comes from a gratification of seeing in Laura some acknowledgment of their suffering in a repressive society." In retrospect, Lynch felt bad that the film "did no business and that a lot of people hate the film. I really like the film. But it had a lot of baggage with it." The film’s editor Mary Sweeney said, "They so badly wanted it to be like the T.V. show, and it wasn’t. It was a David Lynch feature. And people were very angry about it. They felt betrayed." Lee is very proud of the film, saying, "I have had many people, victims of incest, approach me since the film was released, so glad that it had been made because it helped them to release a lot."

As with other prequel films, the film establishes or omits facts and events, one might have expected to reflect in the TV series, e.g. Bobby Briggs' killing of a drug messenger or how Laura Palmer got into possession of drug money. In addition the prequel reveals the murderer of Teresa Banks and Laura Palmer, a revelation that does not occur before the middle of season two.

Trivia

• In the long-running series NYPD Blue, actors Nicholas Turturro and Gordon Clapp referred to their comedy scenes together as "Twin Peaks", in reference to the series.

• On the Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends episode, "Infernal Slumber", Mac's brother wakes up and is going to tell his mom that he has people over, but they convince him he is really dreaming. During this scene, Bloo walks over to Terrence holding a log and is talking backwards. This is a reference to Margaret Lanterman ("The Log Lady") and the dream sequences with the Lodge Inhabitants who talk backwards.

• In the video game, Max Payne, there is a tv series called Address Unknown that plays during the game on certain tvs. This show makes many references to Twin Peaks such as the red curtains and tiled floor, evil twins and the backward talking.

• Moby used a sample of "Laura Palmer's Theme" in his 1991 dance track, "Go".

• Despite claiming to be a "Small Town" and often giving the appearance of a small town with maybe several thousand residents, the sign in the beginning of every episode reads "Welcome to Twin Peaks, Population 51,201" making it in fact a rather large town.

• In an episode of The Simpsons, entitled Who Short Mr Burns?, a spoof the Twin Peaks dream sequence featuring Lisa Simpson and Chieff Wiggum.

Further reading

• Tropiano, Stephen (2000). TV Towns. New York, NY: TV Books L.L.C. ISBN 978-1-57500-127-2.

External links

• Twin Peaks at IMDb
• TwinPeaksFestival.com The yearly Twin Peaks Festival
• Twin Peaks at the Encyclopedia of Television
• A Guide to Twin Peaks An interactive guide to 'Twin Peaks', includes reviews of each episode and the prequel film
• Highly detailed timeline of the show from twinpeaks.org
• Map: Unofficial Filming Locations of Twin Peaks
• InTwinPeaks.com Twin Peaks filming locations, then and now
• Second Season of Twin Peaks DVD ...Information about release of second season of Twin Peaks on DVD
• "Welcome to the TP Time Warp. Where Are They Now? Fire Walk with the Cast of Twin Peaks", by Paige Wiser. Chicago Sun-Times. April 15, 2007.
• The Twin Peaks Wiki