Badge, Pencil and Brochure for the 1993 Twin Peaks Fest |
Next week, I’m travelling to Seattle, WA to attend the 2016
Twin Peaks Festival. I’m very much
looking forward to it and my anticipation had me remembering the first festival
I attended twenty-three years ago. The 1993 Twin Peaks Festival was the first
true fan festival. Unlike the 1992 “festival”—a promotional event organized by New Line
Cinema to promote the release of Fire
Walk With Me—the 1993 fest was managed and organized by Twin Peaks fans, Pat Shook to be
specific.
The festival was held
on August 13-15 and featured a number of wonderful guests including Al Strobel
(the One-Armed Man), John Boylan (Mayor Dwayne Milford), Jan D'Arcy (Sylvia
Horne), Frank Silva (Bob) and Catherine Coulson (the Log Lady). (Coulson arrived toting the original log from
the series; “I thought it was important for the log to return to its roots,”
she said).
The Schedule of Events |
The “Kick-Off Dinner” (now better known as the Celebrity Banquet) was held Friday night at the Issaquah Holiday Inn. Coulson and Boylan could not make the dinner,
but the other actors spoke briefly and answered questions. Jan D’Arcy spoke first, relating several
stories about her character. She
expressed disappointment that Sylvia Horne was basically “forgotten” by the show's
writers. When David Lynch returned to
shoot the final episode, he asked Jan why she hadn't been involved in more of
the shows. “Because they never called
me,” she said. So, he made sure that she
was in that last episode.
Jan D'Arcy at the Dinner (Al Strobel is on the right) |
Al Strobel treated everyone to a reading of his “Darkness of
Futures Past” poem. It was as powerful
live as it was on television—Strobel's deep, dramatic voice was captivating.
Strobel then related an amusing anecdote about the scene in FWWM where the One-Armed Man confronts
Leland and Laura in the car. “Originally,
David had a Dodge Charger, or something, all suped-up and had a stunt driver to
do the driving. And I said, ‘What about
my little Chinook camper? I can stunt
drive that.’ And he said, ‘Oh, okay.’ And so I drove the thing around—got it up on two
wheels, ruined a set of tires! And David
was having so much fun watching all this that he insisted on driving the camera
car! It was really great fun.”
Al Strobel's drove the Chinook to the Fest! (FWWM's biggest prop!) |
The showstopper of the night was Frank Silva. He recounted a number of fascinating stories
about his work on the show, and then took quite a few questions from the
audience. (For more about Frank Silva
and his appearance at the festival, see this post.)
Frank Silva Captivates (WIP editors Miller and Thorne are mesmerized). |
First thing I have to
say is that Bob was an accident. He was
never, ever there from day one. It was a
whole, unbelievable accident. It
basically happened during the original pilot. I was a crew member, the on-set
dresser in the art department. We were
doing the shot in Laura Palmer's bedroom.
I was tweaking the bedroom, and the camera was in the doorway. David was out in the hall, and he jokingly
said, "Frank, you'd better get out of there. You're going to get caught in the
camera." And I looked at David and
went, "Okay." And then, a
blood vessel kind of like burst in his head, and he said, "Frank! Get down at the end of the bed, just crouch
down there, and act scared!" And I
went, "What?!?" "Just act
scared!" And that was how Bob
began.
Frank Silva tells a scary story (Craig Miller watches warily) |
The only time that
David and I discussed Bob was when we were doing the Red Room scene in Twin
Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. We were talking about Bob as being the bad
seed of the group. It didn't matter to
him how much trouble he caused, whether it was in the limbo world, or whether
it was in the real world. He just didn't
care. He was an obnoxious punk. He doesn't care what kind of havoc that he
wreaks in any world. And he's out to
have fun. He doesn't care about the
consequences, doesn't worry about them.
But that's the only discussion we had about Bob, or how to play certain
scenes with restrained anger and stuff like that, but other than that, there
was nothing really discussed about Bob.
Al Strobel, Craig Miller, and Frank Silva |
Craig Miller from Wrapped
In Plastic gave a brief keynote speech.
Craig worked hard on this speech and was quite proud of it. He had the unenviable position of delivering
it after Frank Silva had spoken. Craig
ably delivered a wonderful and appropriate concluding address. Here’s a very
small part of it:
My sole qualification
for being here is that I collaborate with John Thorne in the publication of Wrapped
in Plastic, a magazine about David Lynch
and Twin Peaks. John and I both live in the vicinity of
Dallas, Texas. John and his wife did the
smart thing and flew up here. I decided to drive. I wanted to see the northwest
part of the country closer than an airplane window would allow. And, despite the extra time it took, I'm glad
I drove.
Because I got to see
lots of mountains up close. When I saw the mountain range outside of Denver, I
was astonished at just how—huge—they were compared to the city below. But it wasn't until I got to Utah that I was
profoundly struck by their immense power, their colossal volume. I was in awe.
I could barely keep my eyes on the road.
It was pretty dangerous!
I believe David Lynch
didn't forget these mountains, or the trees and the wind and the water.
I believe David Lynch
remembered nature's beauty and nature's dangerous power when he was creating Twin
Peaks with Mark Frost. After my drive
here, I will never view Twin Peaks
the same way again.
Jan D'Arcy, Al Strobel and Frank Silva Review the Fest Schedule |
On
Saturday, many fans spent the day sight-seeing and visiting various shooting
locations. That night, there was a screening of Fire Walk With Me at the North Bend movie theater. After the show, Frank Silva spent about 45
minutes outside the theater talking with fans and answering questions.
On Sunday, the final day of the Festival, Pat Cokewell,
owner of the Mar-T Cafe (RR Diner) in North Bend, spoke about some of her
experiences with David Lynch and the filming of the pilot and FWWM:
One of the first
questions people ask is, how did they find the Mar-T? My first contact was in February of
1989. We weren't very busy. I told the location scout, "You can use
it, but we're fixing to do some remodeling." But they said, "Oh, no, no, no, don't do
anything like that. We want it just like
it is."
The Mar T Cafe in 1993 |
About two weeks later,
they said that David Lynch will be up on the weekend and he'll decide. (They'd looked at another cafe, too.) So they came up, and they told us they wanted
to use it.
For those of us who
met David Lynch, he's a wonderful director.
You hear stories about directors yelling and screaming on the set, and
that did not happen for the four days that we had the privilege of having him
around the Mar-T. When he was not
working, he was talking to you.
When they came back to
do the movie, he came about 8:00 in the morning. That evening, he was still there when they
finished up about 10:00. He was still
his calm self. During the filming, he
would go over and show exactly how he wanted it done. He is a perfectionist. People would say, "Is he really as weird
as his shows?" No, he's not.
Pat Cokewell |
The pie thing—we
didn't know the pie thing was in there.
One night when they were filming, I gave the location person the key and
said, "You lock up, and I'll get it tomorrow." And she said, "Can we eat
pies?" And I said, "Yeah, just
mark it down." So I got back the
next morning—seventeen little marks!
We had one little lady
who made pies. We'd make about six per
day and twelve on the weekend. Well, it
started, and it grew, and it grew, and it grew.
There was no way that she could handle it. So we've have as many as four pie-makers
doing two shifts in there sometimes. One
day, when the second season started, we sold sixty pies from 11:00 until 8:00
that evening. That's three hundred sixty
slices!
The 1993 Festival had many great moments and started a
tradition that survives to this day. All
the organizers of the festival over the many years—from Pat Shook to Rob and Deanne Lindley—deserve credit for creating (and
sustaining) a unique and important event.
Twin Peaks fans everywhere owe
them a debt of gratitude.
pg game slot pocket games ได้ก้าวขึ้นมาเป็นหนึ่งในนวัตกรรมที่น่าติดตามในโลกของเกมสล็อตออนไลน์ pg slot เกมนี้ไม่เพียงทำให้ผู้เล่นตื่นเต้นและสนุกสนาน กราฟิกที่ทันสมัยและความคล่องตัว
ReplyDelete