David Lynch is a slave to his own ideas. As odd as that may sound, the filmmaker has never been one to explain his work, or even dive deep into how certain scenes or lines were created. Instead, he credits “ideas.” And when it came to the revival of “Twin Peaks,” the director can’t explain where the genesis of the ideas came from. They just presented themselves and that was that.
In a new interview with Deadline, he tries to explain. “Ideas came,” Lynch says. “I guess you could just say…I always say ideas dictate everything. Ideas came, and this is what the ideas presented. Just focusing on ‘Twin Peaks,’ these things came out for us, and there they were.”
Lynch also took the time to discuss the past incarnations of the famous series. Particularly, he was asked which episodes he feels are the most “Twin Peaks.” “For me,” he explains, “the pilot—the original pilot—is ‘Twin Peaks,’ and this one here is ‘Twin Peaks.’”
When asked why he doesn’t think Season 2 fits the “Twin Peaks” bill, he says, “Well, what happens in television, I think, is, there are different directors, different writers, and it’s just the way things go. It drifts away. This hopefully brought it back into a true world of ‘Twin Peaks.’”
Another controversial part of the “Twin Peaks” mythology is the ‘Fire Walk With Me’ movie. Upon its release, the film wasn’t very well received. However, Lynch feels that nowadays, fans are starting to come around on the prequel. And to illustrate that, he uses another film in his filmography, “Dune:”
“With ‘Dune,’ I sold out on that early on, because I didn’t have final cut, and it was a commercial failure, so I died two times with that. With ‘Fire Walk With Me,’ it didn’t go over well at the time, but I loved it so I only died once, for the commercial failure and the reviews and things. But, over time, it’s changed. So now, people have revisited that film, and they feel differently about it. When a thing comes out, the feeling in the world—you could call it the collective consciousness—is a certain way, and so it dictates how the thing’s going to go. Then the collective consciousness changes and people come around. Look at Van Gogh: the guy could not sell one painting and now nobody can afford them.”
Now that his time with the “Twin Peaks” revival has come and gone, the big question remaining is what’s next for Lynch? “I have a box of ideas, and I’m working with producer Sabrina Sutherland, kind of trying to go through and see if there’s any gold in those boxes,” says the filmmaker.
One thing is for sure, his next project probably won’t be a feature film. “Feature films have fallen on hard times these days. And it’s sad, but it’s the reality. I always say now, cable television is the new arthouse. People have freedom and can make a continuing story. It’s pretty beautiful, but it’s not the big screen, so there’s a little bit of sorrow in the picture and a little bit of sorrow in the sound,” he explains.
For “Twin Peaks” fans, in particular, the question is if Lynch will have the itch to go back to the series. When asked, he replied, “Well, for right now, you could say I don’t want to talk about that.”
However, all hope isn’t lost. One person attached to “Twin Peaks” that’s definitely willing to talk about a new series is Kyle MacLachlan. The actor was also asked by Deadline if he’d be down for another round of “Twin Peaks.”
“I think those kinds of things are certainly possible. I think we’re all just waiting on David to have the spark of an idea to go forward. It’d be a great journey. I would drop everything to do that,” said the actor.
Well, if there’s one thing we know, if David Lynch gets an idea, there’s no stopping him.