Who killed Twin Peaks?

For legions of David Lynch fans world­wide, the events unrav­el­ling in the log­ging town of Twin Peaks are only ever part­ly as inter­est­ing as those reput­ed to have tak­en place behind the cam­era, most of which cen­tre on the uncon­ven­tion­al meth­ods of the show’s rene­gade director.

One exam­ple con­cerns Lynch’s deci­sion to cast wild-haired set dress­er Frank Sil­va as Bob, the malev­o­lent spir­it respon­si­ble for Lau­ra Palmer’s mur­der. Dur­ing film­ing of the pilot’s clos­ing scene, Frank was acci­den­tal­ly caught in the mir­ror behind Laura’s moth­er (Grace Zabriskie) as the cam­era framed her scream­ing face. Lynch stopped the DP from set­ting up a sec­ond take, telling him the first one would be fine.

Watch that scene now and you can freeze-frame the moment that the char­ac­ter of Bob first took form in Lynch’s mind – a blurred shape, grey and fer­al, hov­er­ing between two worlds in the griev­ing Palmer home. It’s a neat insight into the process­es that informed Lynch’s vision, and that helped define Twin Peaks as one of the most influ­en­tial tele­vi­sion events of all time.

But the show’s begin­nings were less than aus­pi­cious. Lynch and co-writer Mark Frost had met in 1986, and already had a pair of unpro­duced screen­plays behind them when they were told there was inter­est from ABC in a tele­vi­sion show. Their pitch to the net­work was vague: Frost recalls Lynch spend­ing the major­i­ty of their meet­ing describ­ing – with suit­ably jazzy hand ges­tures – the way the wind whis­pered in the pine forests sur­round­ing the town. When ABC com­mis­sioned a pilot, the pair saw it as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­found expec­ta­tions and inject a dose of mad­ness into the mainstream.

“We didn’t approach it as a tele­vi­sion show,” says Frost. ​“Remem­ber that we were com­ing out of a decade in which the tone of major tele­vi­sion was set by shows like Dal­las, shows that David and I wouldn’t be caught dead watch­ing. It felt like we’d been led into the big machine inside a Tro­jan horse, and that seemed all the more rea­son to make Twin Peaks as strange and sub­ver­sive as we pos­si­bly could.”

Writ­ing took place at Frost’s home in LA, Mark typ­ing while David lay on the psy­chi­a­trist-style couch and bat­ted ideas off the walls (he pro­fessed to be unable to type). Cast­ing adhered to a typ­i­cal­ly Lynchi­an anti-process: Dana Ash­brook was required to stand on the roof and bark like a dog, a role he lat­er reprised as a jail-bound Bob­by Brig­gs; Richard Beymer and Russ Tam­blyn were cast as Ben Horne and Lawrence Jaco­by sim­ply because it tick­led David to see the for­mer arch-ene­mies of West Side Sto­ry reunit­ed on screen; and roles were reg­u­lar­ly adapt­ed to fit actors that Lynch par­tic­u­lar­ly liked (meet­ing Joan Chen led to him rewrit­ing the Ital­ian maid Gio­van­na, orig­i­nal­ly pen­cilled for his then-part­ner Isabel­la Rosselli­ni, as the Chi­nese Josie Packard).

Cast and crew assem­bled in late ​’89 in the loca­tion town of North Bend, Wash­ing­ton, and film­ing of the pilot took place over a win­ter of record-break­ing bleak­ness; of bliz­zards and freez­ing fogs that reg­u­lar­ly post­poned shoots and added to the sense of oth­er­world­li­ness per­me­at­ing the set.

“David’s way of work­ing was unlike any­thing I’d encoun­tered at the time,” says Kim­my Robert­son, who played squeaky sheriff’s sec­re­tary Lucy Moran. ​“He was med­i­tat­ing every after­noon, and he’d con­duct exer­cis­es to get cast mem­bers on the same wave­length. I remem­ber a lot of us start­ed hav­ing strange dreams. It was def­i­nite­ly a dif­fer­ent con­scious­ness to your aver­age tele­vi­sion set.”

But if there was a sense of being part of some­thing spe­cial, there was also a nag­ging con­cern that the end result would be too left­field for the con­ser­v­a­tive com­mis­sion­ers at ABC.

“We were amazed they were giv­ing David Lynch two hours on tele­vi­sion,” says Kyle MacLach­lan, who played FBI Agent Dale Coop­er. ​“We saw it as the inmates over­run­ning the town, and we knew it would be fan­tas­tic, but we didn’t think it would get picked up because it seemed so incomprehensible.”

Kyle’s con­cerns were unfound­ed; after mixed reac­tions to test screen­ings of the pilot, ABC com­mis­sioned sev­en episodes – a par­tial vote of con­fi­dence that proved they were as edgy as excit­ed to be work­ing with Lynch – and reluc­tant­ly agreed to the director’s con­di­tion of com­plete cre­ative free­dom from the network.

Shoot­ing relo­cat­ed to a for­mer ware­house in the San Fer­nan­do Val­ley that Lynch had decked with tim­ber and stone, allow­ing cast and crew to pass from the Dou­ble R Din­er to the grand foy­er of the Great North­ern Hotel in a few easy steps. Guest direc­tors were cher­ry picked to over­see indi­vid­ual episodes, but Lynch and Frost con­tin­ued to write the show, which descend­ed into a mael­strom of drug tak­ing, under­age sex and super­nat­ur­al evil so dark that many feared it would be axed before it was aired.

Those fears dis­si­pat­ed on 8 April, 1990, when the word-of-mouth buzz sur­round­ing Twin Peaks saw the pilot score the sort of view­ing fig­ures usu­al­ly reserved for the Super Bowl. The show’s pop­u­lar­i­ty snow­balled as the sea­son pro­gressed: its lay­ered mys­ter­ies com­bined with a Thurs­day night slot to make it per­fect water-cool­er con­ver­sa­tion for office work­ers the fol­low­ing morn­ing, a fact played up by a slew of pub­lic­i­ty posters claim­ing, ​‘If you miss it tonight, you won’t know what everyone’s talk­ing about tomorrow.’

Not that watch­ing it was any guar­an­tee of under­stand­ing it. Not even cast mem­bers were wise to the show’s deep­est secrets: actors were giv­en scripts for their scenes only, and would gath­er in an LA bar each Thurs­day to watch the show en masse and mar­vel at its twists and turns with hordes of admir­ing locals. The­o­ries abound­ed, rumour mills went into over­drive, and a tele­phone help line (voiced by Kim­my Robert­son in char­ac­ter) was set up to sat­is­fy those who couldn’t wait a week for fur­ther clues.

“I remem­ber about halfway through the air­ing of the first sea­son some­one came in and dumped on my desk maybe 500 pages of inter­net chat­ter about the show – and this was at a point where the inter­net was only just emerg­ing as some­thing peo­ple used for basic com­mu­ni­ca­tion,” says Frost. ​“But here were these entire forums ded­i­cat­ed to explor­ing just one aspect of plot­ting, some­thing that had tak­en maybe 15 min­utes to think up. That was the point when I realised this had become more than just a tele­vi­sion show, that we’d tapped into a col­lec­tive unconscious.”

Before long, ​‘Peaks­ma­nia’ had turned into a bona fide cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non. Shops couldn’t stock enough cher­ry pie; women were spot­ting car­ry­ing logs in trib­ute to the cryp­tic Log Lady; and soror­i­ty hous­es held mock Lau­ra Palmer funer­als in which swathes of girls would wrap them­selves in plas­tic and lay down for hours on end.

Else­where, the female leads of Twin Peaks lined up for the cov­er of Rolling Stone, while Lynch found him­self cel­e­brat­ed as a genius on the front of Time mag­a­zine. MacLach­lan, for his part, was dragged on to Sat­ur­day Night Live, guest host­ing an episode that sent up wack­i­er aspects of the show. The audience’s laugh­ter con­cealed their hope, how­ev­er mis­guid­ed, that Kyle would some­how slip up and answer the ques­tion on everybody’s lips: who killed Lau­ra Palmer?

That ques­tion on which the show’s ear­ly suc­cess had been found­ed even­tu­al­ly led to its down­fall. ABC want­ed the mys­tery of Laura’s mur­der resolved quick­ly – some sug­gest they were scep­ti­cal of sus­tain­ing pub­lic inter­est in the sub­ject, oth­ers that they feared draw­ing it out would lead to riot­ing or copy­cat killing. Either way, they com­mis­sioned a sec­ond sea­son of 22 episodes on one con­di­tion: that Lynch reveal the killer’s iden­ti­ty at the first avail­able opportunity.

The mur­der was some­thing nei­ther Lynch nor Frost want­ed resolved. Solv­ing the mys­tery was, in Lynch’s words, ​“killing the goose that laid the gold­en eggs.” The pair had gone to extreme lengths to keep the culprit’s iden­ti­ty a secret, from num­ber­ing scripts to writ­ing and occa­sion­al­ly shoot­ing fake scenes. When they final­ly capit­u­lat­ed, they filmed the unmask­ing of three sep­a­rate killers before tack­ing one on to the end of the episode and send­ing it to edit. Only then did they sit down with actor Ray Wise and tell him that his char­ac­ter, Leland Palmer, had mur­dered his daugh­ter – a rev­e­la­tion that Wise was reluc­tant to accept, not least because it was fol­lowed by his character’s death and exit from the show.

In some ways, Ray was the lucky one. Lynch and Frost lost inter­est in the wake of the rev­e­la­tion – Lynch tak­ing a break from direct­ing with Frost turn­ing his atten­tions to Sto­ryville – leav­ing the final 12 episodes in the hands of guest writ­ers and direc­tors who strug­gled to regain the momen­tum lost by Leland’s con­fes­sion. The show became char­ac­terised by odd­ball cameos (David Duchovney as a cross-dress­ing FBI agent) and sto­ry­lines (Ben Horne’s cam­paign to save the local pine weasel), mak­ing a self-par­o­dy of its once sub­tle sense of the macabre and edg­ing it clos­er in tone to the main­stream soap operas it had pre­vi­ous­ly outmoded.

As audi­ence fig­ures plum­met­ed, ABC shift­ed the show to a grave­yard Sat­ur­day night slot in a bare­ly con­cealed effort to has­ten its end, and a sense of alien­ation took root among a cast that had so recent­ly been more like a family.

“I remem­ber sit­ting in my dress­ing room,” says Kim­my Robert­son, ​“lis­ten­ing through the wall to Cather­ine Coul­son (the Log Lady) call­ing David and beg­ging him to come back. I remem­ber a sense of pan­ic and a def­i­nite feel­ing of aban­don­ment. It was as though God had put us in Eden and then left us to fend for ourselves.”

Lynch returned to over­see the end of the sec­ond sea­son, rewrit­ing and direct­ing a final episode cul­mi­nat­ing in a series of cliffhang­ers that he hoped would com­pel ABC to com­mis­sion a third sea­son. But it was too lit­tle too late. The net­work seemed hap­py to be rid of a show that it had nev­er known quite what to do with, and for many cast mem­bers it was a cur­tain that came down with an audi­ble sigh of relief.

Like any major event, the effect Twin Peaks had on those involved in its cre­ation was far from uni­form. Some, like Kim­my Robert­son, swore alle­giance to its mem­o­ry, attend­ing annu­al fes­ti­vals and mak­ing them­selves avail­able to fans; oth­ers, like Michael Ontkean (Sher­iff Tru­man), refused to speak about the expe­ri­ence, gri­mac­ing when it came up in inter­views and seem­ing to blame the show for the sub­se­quent down­turn in their careers. Even MacLach­lan tried to dis­tance him­self from his char­ac­ter, request­ing only a bit part in Lynch’s 1992 pre­quel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, a movie received with hos­til­i­ty even by some hard­core fans for its heavy-hand­ed drama­ti­sa­tion of the last days of Lau­ra Palmer’s life.

And yet the lega­cy of Twin Peaks seems bare­ly to have dimin­ished in the decades since the town beau­ty was first found on the river­bank wrapped in plas­tic. It reg­u­lar­ly tops lists of the best shows of all time, and its influ­ence can still be felt in more sus­tained tele­vi­sion suc­cess sto­ries like Lost and The Sopra­nos, many of which might not exist were it not for Lynch’s vision of a world in which art­house movie mak­ing and main­stream tele­vi­sion worked hand in hand.

“Twin Peaks was too far ahead of its time,” says Char­lotte Stew­art, who played Bet­ty Brig­gs. ​“It was a com­plete­ly immer­sive expe­ri­ence filled with incred­i­ble char­ac­ters and creepy secrets, and it had this dreamy qual­i­ty thanks to its bizarre dia­logue and haunt­ing sound­track. But it was a show that demand­ed view­ers approach it with an open mind, and it expect­ed them to pay atten­tion. Nowa­days those things are tak­en for grant­ed with ground-break­ing tele­vi­sion, but back then I don’t think peo­ple were ready for it.”

This arti­cle was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in Lit­tle White Lies 31: The Car­los Issue.