Can Twin Peaks Take You Too Far?

The term ‘fan‘ is well known to be an abbreviation of ‘fanatic‘ but it’s become so lexicographically linked with ‘enjoying something a great deal’ that almost everyone in Western culture considers themselves a ‘fan‘ of something. And although the ‘geek‘ may be the newer term for fans that go that little bit extra with cosplay for conventions, there’s always been this hint or vague threat – mostly from hysterical yet ironically bored local news – that fandom could lead to a dark side, or have sinister side effect. Director Adam Baran is using Kickstarter to explore a both worlds of Twin Peaks

“Well, this… I mean this doesn’t help”

Travis Blue embodies this in an amazingly ambivalent way as the trailer for ‘Northwest Passage’ reveals. ‘Northwest Passage‘ was the in-production title for Twin Peaks (though why the series needed to hide its name is beyond me since Lynch wasn’t exactly the type of director to attract swaths of his own fans at the time) and the documentary covers the experience of Travis whose fandom was geared directly to the flawed – and at the very start of series, posthumous – Laura Palmer.

“Man, it’s too bad we only have literally one picture of her while she was alive to use”

Though Sheryl Lee had little screen time as Laura Palmer (she did play her doppelganger cousin later in the series) the teenager found a strong connection to the murdered high school beauty queen. She was being terrorized by secrets forces and she used drugs and a dark night life to escape her perils, which is exactly what Travis did.

I’m assuming he avoided this place

The documentary’s intention seems to be to copy exactly what Twin Peaks explored in its themes – the combination and conflict between light and dark. For as much as the series provided Travis with an escape, it was also his entrance to some pretty hard drugs.

Lynch literally made the music mix on this so loud it uses subtitles. And you thought Nolan was bad

With any luck, the recent surge in news regarding Twin Peaks 18 episode order, David Lynch’s return, the cast support, and some generous Kickstarter funding, the documentary will get made, and this will give fans some more stuff to pore over including a book by Mark Frost covering the 25 year gap, and of course there’s still the massive amount of ‘missing pieces’ from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me to analyze. Especially David Bowie’s scenes…