Script Analysis - Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
I dug into the screenplay and reemerged with Whiteman machines, utility poles, and quite a bit more than you ever wanted to know about a prequel.
To honor the late David Lynch, I set out to examine Mulholland Drive through the lens of the screenwriter. It’s my favorite Lynch product and his most holistic, so why not do what I do best: take a look at the blueprint, diagram the various parts I find most interesting, and compare them to what ended up on screen. Problem was, once I got into it… it just wasn’t there. Not the movie—I could break that down for you six ways to Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times)—but the screenplay. The problem is, it might not exist.
You see, when I started analyzing the available screenplay of Mulholland Drive, the one that says 1/5/1999 on the cover, I didn’t realize it wasn’t the movie I was looking at, but the script for the unaired pilot. All the way back in ‘99, Lynch started work on a new TV series that featured an actress in trouble following a devastating car accident. With the greenlight from ABC, production began on a pilot episode that would serve as the opener for his next shot at a followup to Twin Peaks. And then, the unthinkable (albeit all too typical). Some executives watched a 90-minute rough cut and pulled the plug. Lynch was understandably wrecked, but the whiplash wasn’t all bad: in the following weeks, a friend of Lynch’s brought the idea of turning it into a movie back to Paris where, a year later, Canal+ climbed aboard to complete Mulholland Drive the feature film.
Thus, the script was rewritten with a new ending which would go on to garner Lynch Best Director at Cannes 2001. That’s history. What isn’t, is whether or not a complete version of the expanded final shooting script ever emerged. I’ve looked high and low, and sent emails as far as the Lynch archive at the Academy Museum. Alas, the feature version of Mulholland Drive still eludes me. So instead of giving you my analysis of a strong pilot script that was mangled into a lackluster pilot, I decided to do the same, but for another Lynch masterwork.
Today, we’re going to break down the script for Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.
The section I’ll be focusing on is the opening act, which some might consider the prologue to this prequel, rather than Act 1. After it, the film reverts back to something much more akin to your standard Twin Peaks TV episode, with the exception being the exclusion of most of the show’s beloved characters like Audrey, Sheriff Harry S. Truman, Hawk, et al, due to various cuts and scheduling issues, and the inclusion of Laura Palmer’s naked boobs. Giggity. To clarify, Fire Walk with Me focuses almost exclusively on Laura and Leland Palmer, whose cosmically evil incestuous tryst forms the backbone of the series’ investigation. Tonally, the film is more experimental, frightening, and graphic than any episode of the series this side of Twin Peaks: The Return, and a large part of that is established within the film’s first thirty or so minutes.
In fact, following a credits sequence over blue static that ends with a scream and the destruction of a TV, both which are not in the screenplay, we open somewhere and some-when that is not Twin Peaks either.
The first spoken dialogue comes from Mr. Lynch himself, in the then-role of FBI Regional Bureau Chief Gordon Cole:
COLE: GET ME AGENT CHESTER DESMOND IN FARGO, NORTH DAKOTA.
The first thing you’ll notice is the use of all caps for his dialogue: anyone who has seen the show will recognize Cole’s trademark yell-speak, the result of unexplained work-related hearing loss that necessitates dual hearing aids. It’s a running joke throughout the show, one that gets immediate play as the film’s first visual gag, and it’s always a sign of successful writing when you can hear a character saying it in your head—but it isn’t the most important thing about the line. What it does, clearly and with motivation, is introduce a character we’ve never met before, situate him where we’ll see him next, and set us up to hear his purpose.
From a cold open, we’ve now got a who and a where. A little inference from the floating body of Teresa Banks gives us the what. Since the pursuit of a why is what we generally accept to be the nature of the mystery genre of which this film is a part, the only thing left for us to get the ball rolling, to incite the action, is the how. But, thanks to the direction established by the very first line, it’s already teed up. Of course, it wouldn’t be Lynch without some jokes first.
So here we are: in the familiarTwin Peaks universe, but it’s a different mystery with a different victim and a different lead investigator (at least for now). Pacing and tone are established and re-connected to the larger series, but we’re revved and ready for something the same and different—and it’s only page two! By both measures of serialized TV and one-off cinema, this is damn fine screenwriting.
The following scene takes place at the airport in Portland* where Agent Desmond (Chris Isaak) meets his assigned partner, Sam Stanley (Kiefer Sutherland), as well as Chief Cole, who introduces a peculiar woman identified only as Lil. For brevity and clarity, I’ve added to it the “payoff” scene that follows moments later.
COLE: (plowing ahead) YOUR SURPRISE, CHET. HER NAME IS LIL.
LIL walks to them from another room. She goes into a contorted dance.
LIL’S DANCE
Things we notice.
-- She makes a sour face.
-- She walks in place.
-- She puts one hand in her pocket and makes a fist with the other.
-- While she is doing this, she blinks both eyes.
-- She is wearing a red wig.
At one point during this Cole adds a sentence.
COLE: SHE’S MY MOTHER’S SISTER’S GIRL.
[Later on when Agents Desmond and Stanley are driving]
DESMOND: We’re heading into a difficult situation.
STANLEY: How do you figure?
DESMOND: I’ll explain it to you. Do you remember Lil’s dance?
As Desmond explains we --
INTERCUT WITH:
FLASHBACK: LIL’S DANCE
In slow motion.
ON LIL’S SOUR FACE
DESMOND: Lil was wearing a sour face.
STANLEY: What do you mean?
DESMOND: Her face had a sour look…. that means we’re going to have trouble with the local authorities. They are not going to be receptive to the FBI.
ON LIL BLINKING BOTH EYES
DESMOND: Both eyes blinking means where is going to be trouble higher up… the eyes of the local authority. A sheriff and a deputy. That would be my guess. Two of the local law enforcers are going to be a problem.
ON LIL PUTTING ONE HAND IN HER POCKET AND ONE IN A FIST
DESMOND: If you noticed she had one hand in her pocket which means they are hiding something, and the other hand made a fist which means they are going to be belligerent.
ON LIL WALKING IN PLACE
DESMOND: Lil was walking in place which means there’s going to be a lot of legwork involved.
WE SEE COLE PUTTING HIS FINGERS IN FRONT OF HIS FACE AND SAYING LIL IS HIS SISTER’S GIRL.
DESMOND: Cole said Lil was “his mother’s sister’s girl.” What is missing in that sentence? The Uncle.
STANLEY: Oh, the uncle is missing.
DESMOND: Not Cole’s Uncle but probably the sheriff’s uncle is in federal prison.
STANLEY: So the sheriff has an Uncle who’s committed a serious crime.
ON LIL’S RED WIG
DESMOND: Right, which is probably why Lil was wearing a red wig meaning we are heading into a dangerous situation. Let me ask you something, Stanley, did you notice anything about the dress?
STANLEY: The dress she was wearing had been altered to fit her. I noticed a different colored thread where the dress had been taken in. It wasn’t her dress or she must have lost some weight.
DESMOND: Gordon said you were good. The tailored dress is our code for drugs. Did you notice what was pinned to it?
STANLEY: A blue rose.
DESMOND: Very good, but I can’t tell you about that.
Stanley rides along quietly for awhile.
STANLEY: What did Gordon’s tie mean?
DESMOND: What? That’s just Gordon’s bad taste.
I typed this all up because it looks better than a bunch of screenshots, and it feels good to have such strong work flow through your fingertips, even if it’s not your own. Above, we have what Lynch might call his “Eye of the Duck” scene:
In another filmmaker’s hands, the scene above might be a simple statement: “Agent Desmond, the local authorities will not be cooperative with the FBI because the Sheriff’s uncle is in federal prison.” But where’s the fun in that?
Instead, we receive our briefing by denouement, told through the art of interpretive dance. One might suggest the form this scene takes doesn’t serve a function, per se, other than to clue you into the fact that you’re watching a work by the one and only David Lynch. True, it is quirky and idiosyncratic in a way that might fall flat in the hands of another storyteller. But while this kind of symbol-reading never reappears in the film, and neither does Lil, its function goes beyond mere signature: Lil’s dance and Chet’s interpretation is Lynch’s way of signaling to the audience that, if Teresa Banks’s killer is to be found, it won’t be with words. Instead, if it is to be unlocked, the keys to this mystery lie in symbols, gestures, and perceiving what isn’t there. Keep your eyes peeled. But also: not everything is a clue. Sometimes it’s the setup for a joke.
*The scene heading reads INT. SECURITY LOUNGE OF THE AIRPORT, but in the film, it takes place on the tarmac. As I compared the script to what ended up on screen, I was continually impressed by Lynch’s sense of economy. The above scene might be extra, but did it need to take place in an extra room? No? Then let’s keep it moving. The following scenes go Tarmac → Car → Local PD, without so much as an establishing shot of the DEER MEADOW SHERIFFS STATION listed in the script. Do we understand where we are, when Agents Desmond and Stanley appear in the reception area, stared down by an unhelpful deputy? Great. Get rid of everything else.
INT. TINY MORGUE - DAY
Teresa’s body is on the platform in the middle of the room. Stanley hangs his recorder on the hooks at the end of the autopsy table and puts on rubber gloves. Desmond opens Teresa Banks file.
DESMOND: (reading) Teresa Banks lived at the Canyon Trailer Park for a month. We’ll check that. And worked as a waitress at Hap’s Truck Stop. Worked the Night Shift. Good place for dinner when we’re thru here, Sam.
[Later:]
As Desmond is doing this, Stanley takes out his SPECIAL MACHINE. Desmond looks up from his work and notices.
STANLEY: Solved the Whiteman Case with this.
DESMOND: That’s what I heard.
STANLEY: No one could find those splinters without a machine like this. And no one has a machine like this.
Stanley picks up her left hand.
INSERT: BANKS LEFT HAND
In Stanley’s hand.
ON THE SCENE
STANLEY: There appears to be a contusion under the ring finger of her left hand.
DESMOND: Oh.
Stanley peers underneath the fingernail.
STANLEY: A laceration.
Stanley brings over his “Whiteman” instrument. Works the left hand under it.
DESMOND: Accidental?
STANLEY: Agent Desmond, would you hold up the finger for me. There’s something up there.
He gets whatever it is with a long set of tweezers.
DESMOND: What is it?
STANLEY: It is a piece of paper with the letter “T” imprinted on it. Take a look.
Desmond comes around and takes a look.
INSERT: THE LETTER “T.”
On a piece of paper.
CLOSEUP: DESMOND
Pondering what he has seen.
ON THE SCENE
We move across to a clock on the wall that reads: 5:04.
DISSOLVE TO:
THE SAME CLOCK
It now reads 3:33. Stanley zips up a regulation body bag around Teresa.
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. MORGUE - LATE NIGHT
Desmond and Stanley come out of the morgue.
STANLEY: Geez, Agent Desmond, it’s three-thirty in the morning. Where are we going to sleep?
It’s a pretty big sequence, so we’ll take it in pieces.
“Teresa Banks lived at the Canyon Trailer Park for a month. We’ll check that. And worked as a waitress at Hap’s Truck Stop. Worked the Night Shift. Good place for dinner when we’re thru here, Sam.”
Agent Desmond establishes the next two scenes in a natural and motivated way. We no longer need to explain the trailer park, nor the restaurant, when we see them, but we know where the detectives are headed.
As Desmond is doing this, Stanley takes out his SPECIAL MACHINE. Desmond looks up from his work and notices.
This special machine, as delineated by the CAPS but not described, becomes a problem for the Props department, allowing Lynch and co-writer Robert Engels to “kick the can down the road” so to speak. My guess is that there was an idea for Agent Stanley to have some special technological ability, but they couldn’t quite figure it out on the page, as evidenced by:
STANLEY: Solved the Whiteman Case with this.
Agent Sam Stanley’s “Whiteman Case” gets brought up at least three times in the screenplay, but the mentions of it are absent from the film. It’s likely this was a bit of subplot/backstory that sounded good for a character who didn’t end up being important enough to justify it. Nevertheless, the good folks at Twin Peaks Blog did some impressive detective work to identify the make and model of the modified “Tellurometer / Hydrodist” device that appears as a prop in the film. When Agent Stanley says “No one has a machine like this,” he means it.
Stanley peers underneath the fingernail.
In the script, a bit of INSERT / ON THE SCENE / CLOSEUP craftsmanship keeps the reading on the page clear as we move back and forth between shots of Teresa’s hand under the Whiteman Instrument’s magnifying glass and the two detectives in the room. In the film, however, a close-up shows us Teresa’s fingernail as it’s removed in order for Stanley to discover the paper letter “T” beneath. It’s an abject and visceral punch-up the filmmakers likely discovered after the fact, when they were shooting their inserts, and it speaks to a fundamental axiom of screenwriting: if it works on the page, it can be made even better through the camera.
We move across to a clock on the wall that reads: 5:04. […] It now reads 3:33. Stanley zips up a regulation body bag around Teresa.
A screenwriting question that pops up time and time again is, how do you show the audience that time has passed? For an editor, it’s often as simple as a dissolve, which magically gives the feeling of sand through an hourglass, say. On the page, you could say “INT. TINY MORGUE - LATER,” but Lynch and Engels here do the elegant thing and show, rather than tell, using the clock. In the film, their clever device is collapsed into a single shot of the clock, which opens the scene. Do we need to see it twice to know that these guys have been at it for awhile? Despite Lynch’s immovable approach to pacing, he and longtime editor Mary Sweeney knew how to cut a scene down to its barest ingredients.
Following the morgue scene, we visit the aforementioned Hap’s Truck Stop diner, where…
A GUY in the room is working on a light that keeps buzzing and shorting out. He doesn't really know what he's doing so he is poking at the wiring.
In the script, this brief moment introduces us to the decrepit greasy-spoon and its appropriately oleaginous manager, Jack, before the conversation begins. But in the film, it bookends their conversation, with a few minor, major changes:
In the center is JACK, on his left is the “GUY in the room” (uncredited), and on the right is the addition of a second, uncredited man who resembles the “Woodsmen” who appear at various times during Fire Walk with Me and Twin Peaks: The Return. Not much is explicitly known about these disheveled cosmic apparitions, other than that they seem to use electricity as a conduit between dimensions. Is the Woodsman-like figure above, who sits halfway between one room and a sealed door to nowhere, telegraphing this ability to the audience? Do the other characters even know he’s there? And why is he staring directly into the camera, as if implicating the audience in the knowledge of his presence? He’s not in the script, so, ‘fuck if I know.
What I do have a suggestion for is a line of dialogue that appears to be a clue, but is in fact a simple, if dated, non-sequitur.
JACK: Now, her name is Irene and it is night. Don’t take it any further than that. There’s nothing good about it.
In sending the detectives over to his waitress who knew the victim, Hap’s manager Jack appears to be warning them, while foreshadowing the convo to come. In all likelihood, this is just a groan-worthy reference to an old song.
You see it in the gentle eye-roll on Kiefer Sutherland’s face: like the name tag on Jack’s shirt that says “Say Hello to Jack” with the “Hello” crossed out and “Goodbye” written in its place, this is a wry old-timer who likes to play games, not unlike Mr. Lynch himself. Whether he has any connection to Lynch’s later short, What Did Jack Do?, or if the lyrics to “Goodnight, Irene” (“I asked your mother for you / She told me that you was too young / I wish dear Lord that I'd never seen your face / I'm sorry you ever were born” … “Good night Irene and good night Irene / I guess you're in my dreams”) have anything to do with Laura Palmer, is anyone’s guess. In the script, the joke setup has its payoff after the detectives leave the diner and catch Irene in the parking lot, but the punchline—STANLEY AND DESMOND: Thanks. Irene. Good ... (catch themselves) Good morning.—doesn’t seem to have made the final cut.
Another lost gag appears at the CANYON TRAILER COURT where Teresa resided before her untimely death. After Agents Stanley and Desmond rouse manager Carl (Harry Dean Stanton) from his slumber, then examine Teresa’s trailer, Desmond says, “Thanks for your help, Carl. Sorry we woke you up.”
CARL: That’s alright. I was having a bad dream. I was dreamin’ about a joke with no punchline.
It’s classic Lynch, equal parts dad-joke and cosmic nightmare, and one can only imagine its delivery from the deadpan Stanton, but alas… That entire scene plays differently in the film.
Before the woman appears, we get a gliding shot that approaches the door of the trailer, accompanied by a whooshing sound, followed by a quick fade-out, which gives the feeling that it’s coming from someone’s first-person POV. Is it the strange, dirty woman’s POV? Is she a human woman at all? It’s not in the script, and neither is the subsequent tilt-shot down a utility pole, accompanied by the sound The Arm makes during Agent Cooper’s first trip inside the Red Room. It’s described as an “Indian Whooping sound” in the script, but the entire utility pole thing is absent, as is trailer park manager Carl’s response to the strange woman’s appearance. “You see, I’ve already gone places,” he tells a perplexed and perhaps perturbed Agent Desmond. “I just want to stay where I am.” Given the existentially-horrified look that blossoms on Stanton’s face, can you blame him?
Above’s reappearance of Deputy Cliff is cut, as are Agent Desmond’s fisticuffs with the belligerent Sheriff Cable. Perhaps it broke the tension, perhaps it didn’t end up photographing well, but it doesn’t feel like a loss because eliding it speeds us up to the critical moment from the prequel’s prologue: Agent Desmond sends Agent Stanley back to Portland with the corpse of Teresa Banks, then returns to the trailer park to do one last bit of snoopin’:
Desmond walks over and around Cliff’s red trailer. He gets a strange feeling. He looks past Teresa’s trailer to the edge of the trailer park, where he sees a HAND appear in the window of a trailer. Then the hand disappears.
Desmond walks to that trailer. He knocks on the door but no one answers. He looks under the trailer and sees a mound of dirt with a small indentation at the top. In the indentation is Teresa Banks’ ring. As he reaches out and touches it, he disappears.
In the film, that line “He gets a strange feeling,” is visualized by Agent Desmond looking up at the same utility pole. In the shot of his POV, there’s a bug on the lens. I don’t think it means anything, but it does look pretty cool, like a UFO.
We don’t see Agent Desmond disappear in the film, and instead see him reaching down to touch the ring, followed by a dramatic fade to black. When we pick back up, Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) is on the case. Allegedly, to avoid being typecast, MacLachlan kept his contributions to the film at a minimum, shooting for only five days of the eight-week production. He made them count.
In the script, his first appearance is in Gordon Cole’s office in Philadelphia, where he is dispatched to Deer Meadow to probe the disappearance of Agent Desmond. Then it’s off to Agent Stanley’s apartment for further briefing, and finally, he visits the trailer park, the last known location of the vanished agent.
But in the film, Coop’s appearance opens with an eerie sequence that plays with security cameras coincides with the apparition of the lost Agent Phillip Jeffries (David Bowie). Jeffries appears in the film as-written, although his brief introduction in, and subsequent teleportation back to Buenos Aires, doesn’t. What also doesn’t appear as-written is the subsequent “dream sequence,” which I hesitate to call a dream sequence because what is and isn’t a dream across Lynch’s oeuvre is kind of like, the big question.
But back to the screenplay: on the banks of WIND RIVER, NEAR DEER MEADOW, “Cooper stares into the stream” where the body of Teresa Banks was discovered.
COOPER: (dictating into his recorder) Diane, it’s 4:20 in the afternoon. I am standing here at Wind River where they found the body of Teresa Banks. Diane, this case has got a strange feeling for me. Not only has Agent Chester Desmond disappeared but this is one of Cole's Blue Rose cases. The clues that were found by Agent Desmond and Agent Stanley have led to dead ends. The letter below the fingernail gives me the feeling that the killer will strike again. But like the song says," ... who knows where or when."
More wordplay, a second song reference—except this time, the lyrics are definitely related:
It seems we stood and talked like this before
We looked at each other in the same way then
But I can't remember where or when
The clothes you're wearing are the clothes you wore
The smile you are smiling you were smiling then
But I can't remember where or when
Some things that happen for the first time
Seem to be happening again
And so it seems that we have met before
And laughed before and loved before
But who knows where or when?
FADE OUT.
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Thanks for reading.
Fantastic read ✨
Great in-depth work!