It appears that Alfonso Cuarón, like many Playlist readers, is a fan of David Lynch, particularly his latest project, the “Twin Peaks” revival that recently aired on Showtime. Speaking with IndieWire, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker opened up about “Twin Peaks,” the medium of TV as a whole.
“I loved ‘Twin Peaks,’” Cuarón said. “I wish more shows were as bold as that.”
But just because the filmmaker fell in love with Lynch’s series doesn’t mean that we’ll see the “Roma” writer-director take another stab at the TV medium anytime soon. As you may or may not remember, Cuarón previously has worked twice in the TV realm, with a Spanish-language series “La Hora Marcada” and the short-lived NBC series “Believe.”
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He explained, “There are amazing expressions of narrative and character, but not that many cinematic experiences in the medium. At this point, the examples of those miniseries that I deeply admire more for narrative than filmmaking.”
And it’s that view of TV that made Cuarón enjoy “Twin Peaks” that much more. “You have this filmmaker who’s not constraining his narrative,” Cuarón said. “He’s just creating his world, and that world is not only story — it’s also his atmosphere, his cinematic approach. I love it. I love the ambiguity of it, the spookiness of it. I think it’s like wading through the subconsciousness of a very, very wacky mind.
The filmmaker goes on to talk about why narrative and characters are parts of films that studios aren’t interested in anymore. “Television offers an amazing opportunity for narratives, and character. Studios are completely afraid of those things. They’re somehow afraid they’re going to scare people away from the theaters or distract people from the visual effects,” he said.
As mentioned above, Cuarón is still reticent about venturing back into TV, at this time. However, the filmmaker does recognize that many of his peers are making the leap into serialized storytelling, and that excites him for the future. “There are some amazing writers and directors gravitating [towards] television, if we can still call it that,” he said. “It’s exciting. We’ll see how everything evolves.”
While we don’t have any TV series from Cuarón on the horizon, fans of his work will be happy to know that “Roma” is hitting theaters beginning on November 21 in select theaters before launching on Netflix on December 14.