Half of Twin Peaks Is About Coffee Anyway
I recently mentioned to a bartender that I was watching all of Twin Peaks again. She laughed, but it wasn't a "that's cute" laugh; it was more of a "Christ, you make some terrible decisions" laugh. Bringing David Lynch up in a conversation tends to elicit either laughs or confused shrugs, and then, very rarely, hushed admiration.
I can't help but love the man. The second episode of Season 2 begins with Cooper lecturing Albert on the history of Tibet while sitting at a table eating breakfast; one of the men is on the left half of the screen, the other is on the right. Behind them, dead center, throughout the entire scene, is a four-man barbershop quartet in full costume. Just sort of standing there, humming quietly, smoking and drinking coffee. I know that Lynch was only periodically involved with the show at that point, but he left pretty obvious footprints when he was.
Mulholland Drive, which is among my favorite films, was originally intended to be a television series, if more dramatic and polished than Twin Peaks. ABC was actually looking forward to the project and threw a good deal of money at it; in return, Lynch threw them some of what is now Mulholland Drive, at which time they burst into tears of confusion and desperation, then begged him to leave them alone. The French intervened, because they revere Lynch like a god, and with StudioCanal's help the film was finished, recut, and released as we know it. I love the film, and I know that ABC's series wouldn't have been nearly as dark and sinuous, but I still often wonder what a second Lynch series would have been like--starring the goddamned brilliant Naomi Watts, no less.
In reading up on whatever bewildering philosophy it is that informs Lynch's work, I was interested to discover that he sells his own brand of coffee. This is news to me; the only thing I remember from my last visit to his site, some years ago, was a bunch of films about bees. Perhaps he was selling bees.
