There’s no telling which big tent movie might own the summer, but David Lynch has definitely owned the spring — the new Twin Peaks series is confounding viewers and sparking debate online, and Nashville fans of the man were recently treated to an expansive Lynch retrospective at the Belcourt Theatre. In the middle of all this it’s easy to forget that Lynch’s debut feature, Eraserhead, is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.

Here are a few words about the Eraserhead screening that I wrote for my coverage of the Belcourt’s Lynch retrospective in my weekly film column for The Contributor…

David Lynch’s debut feature influenced everyone from Stanley Kubrick to the Coen Brothers while throwing back to the naturalistic horrors of the Grand Guinol theater of 19th century Paris. Eraserhead is the most purely surrealistic film in Lynch’s oeuvre. The black-and-white movie has a timeless look, and while themes about abortion and the fear of intimacy occasionally surface, Eraserhead is an underwater dream of a film that announced Lynch as a director who was equally obsessed with the absolutely ordinary and the shockingly extraordinary.

Here’s the making of documentary, Eraserhead Stories. This version is slightly sped up and color shifted to avoid being taken down from YouTube, but the overall effect just makes it even weirder…

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Perhaps it’s just the coming, new Twin Peaks season, but it seems that all things Northwestern, surreal and Lynchian are in the air. The most recent iteration of this wave before the flood is a recent article by Leigh Anderson which collates instances of the series appearing in video game mode…

It sure is a boom time for the odd intersection of Twin Peaks with video games. There are game-y reimaginings everywhere, and a few commercial projects in recent years pay tribute to David Lynch’s 90s mystery television: 2010′s janky but beloved Deadly Premonition went heavy on the similarities, for example. In the just-released first episode of Life is Strange, set dreamily in the Pacific Northwest, a main character’s vehicle bears the license plate “TWN PKS”.

The 1990s make a good setting in general for modern games with unconventional goals. The trend toward creating more laid-back, sentimental experiences of reading and discovery — like the nostalgic Riot Grrrl story the Portland-based Fullbright Company told in Gone Home — means lots of developers might be seeking settings where physical technology (tapes, notebooks, VHS), ripe for rifling through, intersects with poignant generational angst.

I track my young adulthood through the 1990′s and I can’t think of a better summing-up of the slacker/bohemian culture of Generation X than trying to play “modern games with unconventional goals.” Twin Peaks still appeals to my generation because it still resonates with the weird idealism of that era, and it continues to win fans because, well, we were really on to something.

Or not. Agent Cooper would never fall for the straitjacket of belief and neither will I. The spice must flow.

The Welcome to Twin Peaks site has a great breakdown on the gameplay including this anxiety inducing description that left me reaching for my joystick…

A day in the FBI was never like this before! You are Special Agent Dale Cooper and you’ve found yourself trapped inside of the Black Lodge, a surreal and dangerous place between worlds.

Try as you might, you can’t seem to find anything but the same room and hallway no matter which way you turn. Worse yet, your doppelganger is in hot pursuit! You have no choice but to keep running through the room and hallway (or is it more than one?) and above all else, don’t let your doppelganger touch you! Your extensive physical training in the FBI will provide you a seemingly limitless supply of energy to run as long as necessary, but running out of breath is the least of your worries!

I don’t have an Atari 2600 anymore and this game was never actually available as a cartridge as it wasn’t produced until 2011. That said, the game master, Jak Locke, recreates vintage gameplay here while simultaneously immersing players in a thoroughly disorienting tour of Twin Peaks’s alternative reality.

Here’s a video from inside the Black Lodge…

Read the rest of the article and download the game for yourself at the Welcome to Twin Peaks link above…

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Sorry for the delay this week kids. I (the all seeing Ken), have been stricken with evil germs. What are you going to do uh?

This week: I actually don’t know…it’s all in American…But I think they talk about Black Eyed kids again…or was it the black eyed peas?, Something about Pigeons being terrorists?, How Twin Peaks is an all American cherry pie of a show?, Going to war again?…I dunno you listen.

Personnel – Joe Nolan, and Frater Isla

• Ghost News: Black Eyed Child is back! – Link
• 10,000 Chinese Pigeons Subjected to Cavity SearchesLink
• The Return of Twin Peaks Link
• ‘The Art of Future War Project’: Washington Hires ‘Call of Duty’ Creator Link
• Spooktober – The Goatman of Pope Lick Link
• Antarctica’s Melting Ice Causing Gravity to Change Link
• The Medium is the Message at 50 – Link

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Continuing with the scary October posts, and reveling in the announcement of the return of Twin Peaks, I found an example that distills the aesthetics of the original, providing a map back to the place where Laura Palmer and a beloved, bizarre television series were both killed.

While the mind reels at what David Lynch might do with a long form television series one is always uneasy when a beloved work of art gets a revisiting. I’d love to see the show re-invent itself — a lot of time has past since the last episode, and the hints that Kyle Maclachlan may be back for the new show, and the “25 Years Later” text in the series’ new lo-fi trailer, all necessitate a contemporary updating.

That said, fans also want Twin Peaks to feel like a familiar place, and they want the new season to feel like a continuation of the first two. Here’s the clip I found that boils down the nuances, techniques, actors, creators, places and characters that make this return a worthwhile one: breaking the fourth wall; the use of antiquated slang in place of contemporary profanity; sets that recall a timeless, mid-century America; an appearance by “David Finch,” “Laura” and a talking log; Diane’s tape recorder; suspenseful music, and a diner that serves “darn fine” pie.

Here is Sesame Street‘s darn fine version of Twin Beaks…

While most loved the first season, many loathed the second. Overall, I love the entire series thus far and I felt the end of the second season marked a return to form before its ill-timed end. I’d like to to see Lynch pick up the Wyndaham Earl storyline from the beginning as I never felt Earl got a chance to really show us the evil. Here’s looking forward to the darkest chapter of the story yet.

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First things first — I’m really sorry for that headline.

No, David Lynch’s countercultural coup of prime time television via the weird and wonderful Twin Peaks television series won’t be seen again soon on a television near you — Twin Peaks was a phenomenon of a time and a place that cannot be repeated. That said, what if it transformed and better outfitted itself for a contemporary audience? What if it mutated? What if it already has?

CNET has the story…

In the Black Lodge, Agent Cooper witnessed a backwards-talking version of Laura Palmer say in the final episode of “Twin Peaks” — “I will see you again in 25 years.” While the show ended with a big explosion and the terrifying demon of “Bob” possessing Agent Cooper, fans never expected to hear again from the citizens of that sleepy logging town full of intrigue.

By following the various Twitter handles of the show’s characters, the story unfolds through their online conversations. Fans can read the entire Season 3 story on the Enter The Lodge website, which collects character tweets in an easy-to-follow-along format.

In honor of this resurrection, here is a compilation of the show’s weirdest, scariest scenes. Number 4 gets my vote. What about yours?

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For fans of David Lynch’s classic cult TV show, Twin Peaks, the secrets of the Black Lodge and the Log Lady’s prophecies hold an endless fascination. But, in a show full of dark mysteries, the relationship between agent Dale Cooper and the never-seen “Diane” may be the most intangible of them all.

Lucky for us, YouTube may be able to shed some light on the pair’s deep connections. In 1990 Simon and Schuster released an audiobook of Agent Cooper’s recorded messages to his shadowy assistant, “Diane.” The release featured a number of the actual recordings from the TV show, but also collected original bits that shed light on Twin Peaks’s central mysteries. Everything here is read by Kyle MacLachlan in a performance that’s as silly, scary, absurd and obtuse as his unforgettable turn in the original series…

Collectors interested in owning the document for themselves can find it on Amazon for about $50.

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