The Secret of Twin Peaks (Twin Peaks)

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Episode of the series Twin Peaks
title The Secret of Twin Peaks
Pilot (Alternate Title)
Original title pilot
Twin Peaks title.svg
Country of production United States
original language English
length 94 minutes
classification Season 1, Episode 1
1st episode overall ( list )
First broadcast April 8, 1990 on ABC
German-language
first broadcast		 September 10, 1991 on RTLplus
Rod
Director David Lynch
script David Lynch,
Mark Frost
production David J. Latt
music Angelo Badalamenti
camera Ronald Víctor García
cut Duwayne Dunham
occupation
chronology

Successor  →
traces into nowhere

The Secret of Twin Peaks (Original Title: Pilot ) is the pilot of the mystery television series Twin Peaks . It was broadcast for the first time by the American television station ABC on April 8, 1990 and in Germany on September 10, 1991 by RTLplus . The episode was written by series creators Mark Frost and David Lynch , while Lynch directed it himself. The pilot is about FBI agent Dale Cooper and Sheriff Harry S. Truman, who are investigating the murder of popular high school student Laura Palmer. Cooper believes the murder has a connection to another that happened the previous year. Furthermore, the episode sets the tone for the rest of the series and introduces various main and secondary characters as well as arcs. The pilot had the highest ratings of the entire series in the United States and has been praised by critics and fans. The original title was Northwest Passage , but it was later changed.

action

Laura Palmer's body washed up and wrapped in plastic is found in the small town of Twin Peaks ( Washington ), in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. FBI agent Dale Cooper is called in for assistance when Laura Palmer's classmate Ronnette Pulaski is found ill-treated. Cooper assumes a connection between Palmer's death and the death of the girl Teresa Banks, who was murdered not far from Twin Peaks the year before. He finds a small piece of paper with the letter "R" under Laura Palmer's fingernail and reports to Sheriff Harry S. Truman that he found the letter "T" under Teresa Banks' fingernails. Meanwhile, Laura's Palmer family and friends are trying to cope with the new situation and wonder how it came to this.

Assuming that the perpetrator is the same as the murder case from the previous year, Cooper begins an official investigation into the case. Meanwhile, the rebellious Audrey Horne ruins an imminent deal from her father Benjamin Horne; Sheriff Truman arrests Palmer's boyfriend, Bobby Briggs, who secretly meets with married dinner server Shelly; Palmer's best friend, Donna Hayward, and Palmer's secret affair, James Hurley, grow closer, and Laura's mother is haunted by a vision.

production

Concept and script

Snoqualmie Falls was one of the filming locations for the pilot episode.

David Lynch and Mark Frost presented the basic concept of the series to the American television station ABC in a ten-minute meeting with the head of the drama department , Chad Hoffman, during the strike of the Writers Guild of America, East in 1988 . The mystery of the murderer Laura Palmer was originally supposed to be in the foreground and later to play a subordinate role, while the audience got to know other residents of the place. The aim of Lynch and Frost was to combine a police investigation with a soap opera .

ABC liked the idea and asked Lynch and Frost to write a script for the pilot episode. Frost wrote the characters with more text, like Benjamin Horne, while Lynch was responsible for FBI agent Dale Cooper, in which Lynch used many of his own phrases. The original name of the series was Northwest Passage , set in North Dakota , but the fact that there are real-world locations called Northwest Passage led to the script change. The total cost of production for the pilot was $ 1.8 million. This included an agreement with ABC that an additional ending would be filmed so that this version could be sold to Europe as a completed film if the television series were not to be extended for a season. The film was shot in various locations in Washington state, such as Snoqualmie Falls , North Bend, Monroe, Fall City and Seattle . Only later were large parts of the series filmed in Los Angeles and the surrounding area. ABC's Robert Iger liked the pilot, but had a hard time convincing the other decision-makers at the station about Twin Peaks . Iger suggested showing the pilot to a more diverse and younger group, who then also rated him positively. ABC then commissioned seven more episodes for $ 1.1 million each. Some executives assumed the first episode would never air due to poor reviews from journalists and viewers. However, Iger planned the broadcast for the spring of 1990. He was able to convince the executives from New York City in a final telephone conference and thus pushed through the broadcast of the pilot film.

Improvised elements

David Lynch , co-writer and director of the 1990 pilot episode.

During the shoot, Lynch improvised parts of some scenes due to unplanned events. The best known was the accidental appearance of the set designer Frank Silva , who accidentally can be seen through a mirror at Sarah Palmer's vision at the end of the pilot. When Lynch saw Silva's face, he found the scene so good that he left it in the episode and hired Silva in the role of Bob, the mysterious tormentor of Laura Palmer.

While filming the scene in which FBI agent Dale Cooper examines Laura's body for the first time, a defective fluorescent lamp began to flicker on the ceiling, but Lynch decided not to replace it as he wanted to keep the disturbing effect it had created. In the same scene, a supporting actor misunderstands a sentence and thinks Cooper is asking for his name. He tells him his real name instead of the answer given in the script, and thus unsettles the actors around him. Lynch also left this moment in the final version of the pilot because he liked the lifelike and improvised dialogue.

Previews

Before ABC broadcast the pilot on television, it was previewed on February 10, 1990 at the Miami International Film Festival . Mark Frost summarized it as " Blue Velvet meets Peyton Place ". The film critic Roger Hurlburt, of the local daily Sun-Sentinel , wrote in his review: “The lynchy feeling of impending danger and perverse sexual undertones, coupled with excellent music, makes the Twin Peaks pilot film work almost too well. You want to see everything in a row. But the series could disappoint due to its deliberately sluggish narrative, brutality, sex with violence and a hint of something else ... something deadly, previously unseen and probably hideous. "

In April another screening was shown at the Museum of Broadcasting in Hollywood . Media analyst and advertising manager Paul Schulman said afterwards that he doesn't think the series has a chance. It is too uncommercial and too radically different from what viewers are otherwise used to.

publication

Audience numbers and awards

Kyle MacLachlan and Lara Flynn Boyle at the 1990 Emmy Awards.

The two-hour pilot, including commercial breaks, was the most-watched film during the 1989/90 US television season with 34.6 million viewers. In Los Angeles, the pilot was the second most-watched show of the week with 29% of viewers. In first place was a terribly nice family with 34% of the audience. In the following episode, Tracks in Nowhere , the viewership dropped to 23.2 million. Media such as the New York Times and local radio stations announced that the series had managed to attract a loyal fan base. A radio station reported, however, that many viewers were shocked by the sometimes sexual undertone or the food scene.

The pilot was nominated for a total of six awards at the 1990 Primetime Emmy Awards , including Best Director for a Drama Series for David Lynch, Best Actor in a Drama Series for Kyle MacLachlan as Dale Cooper, and Best Screenplay for a Drama Series for Mark Frost and Lynch. He won an award for Best Costume Design in a Series ( Patricia Norris ) and Best Editing ( Duwayne Dunham ). The pilot episode won a Peabody Award that same year .

The international version of the pilot has a completed storyline and is 20 minutes longer.

In Germany, RTLplus secured the rights to the pilot film and the series in a bidding war with ARD . The synchronized original version of this was broadcast for the first time on September 10, 1991 at 8:15 p.m.

reception

Originally, Thursday night slots were bad for soap operas, as The Denver Clan and the short-lived offshoot The Colbys - The Empire only had poor audience ratings. Twin Peaks also ran at the same time as the successful sitcom Cheers .

The first reviews of the pilot were positive. Washington Post's Tom Shale wrote that Twin Peaks confuses viewers with styles that television rarely tries. In the New York Times , John J. O'Connor wrote that Lynch enjoys the standard genre form but adds its own strange subtleties.

Diana White of the Boston Globe recognized that the pilot is "the movie that changes television." Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly gave the episode an "A +", the highest rating. Although he highly praised the story and Lynch's directorial work, he was sure that because of the confusing plot, it would not be a ratings success. David Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun compared the pilot to the works of Alfred Hitchcock . In addition, the camera work is very close to what he understands as art. Jen Chaney of the Washington Post named the film one of the best series pilots in television history in 2007.

Der Spiegel saw many overlaps in the pilot with Lynch's previous works such as Blue Velvet , Eraserhead and Wild at Heart and described him as a "little television miracle".

In 1997, the TV Guide magazine listed the pilot as 25th of the 100 best episodes of all time.

Further distribution

Due to licensing problems, the US version of the pilot (94 minutes long) was never offered for sale there until 2007. The European version (116 minutes) was released on VHS and Laserdisc years earlier . This version was broadcast as a separate television film in some European countries . It is largely identical to the original version except for the last scenes in which the murderer of Laura Palmer is revealed. Both versions of the pilot can be found in the Twin Peaks - Definitive Gold Box Edition DVD Edition (2007) and the Twin Peaks - The Whole Secret Blu-ray Edition (2014). Lynch was so pleased with the additional material in the European version that he used parts of it in later dream sequences by Cooper.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mark Frost, David Latt, Johanna Ray, Sheryl Lee, Ray Wise, Kimmy Robertson, Joan Chen, Kyle MacLachlan, Gary Hersheberger, Catherine E. Coulson, Michael Horse, Duwayne Dunham. (2007). Northwest Passage: Development of the Pilot  (DVD). CBS Home Entertainment.
  2. ^ Richard B. Woodward: When 'Blue Velvet' Meets 'Hill Street Blues' . In: The New York Times . The New York Times Company, New York City April 8, 1990, chap. 2 , p. 31 , col. 1 (English, nytimes.com [accessed May 15, 2017]).
  3. ↑ a b David Lynch, Kyle MacLachlan, Mädchen Amick, Harry Goaz. (2007). A Slice of Lynch  (DVD). CBS Home Entertainment.
  4. ^ Troy Patterson, Jeff Jensen: Our Town . In: Entertainment Weekly . Time Inc. , New York City 2000, pp. 101 (English).
  5. ^ Graham Fuller, A Town Like Malice: Maverick Director David Lynch Had Made a Bizarre Soap Opera for American Television . In: The Independent . Independent News & Media, London November 24, 1989 (English).
  6. ↑ Michel Chion : David Lynch . British Film Institute , London 1995, ISBN 0-85170-457-3 , pp. 100 (English).
  7. ↑ Duwayne Dunham. (2002). Audio commentary of the pilot episode  (DVD). Universal home entertainment.
  8. ↑ Secrets From Another Place , Featurette in the Twin Peaks Definitive Gold Box Edition . DVD released October 2007 (CBS Home Entertainment).
  9. ↑ Roger Hurlburt: Tv Pilot A Gory Soaper. In: Sun-Sentinel. Tronc, February 10, 1990, accessed May 16, 2017 .
  10. ^ A b c Matt Roush: High Hopes for Twin Peaks . In: USA Today . Gannett , McLean, Virginia April 26, 1990 (English).
  11. ↑ Rick Du Brow: Twin Peaks' Bow Garner's Lofty Ratings. In: Los Angeles Times . Tronc, April 10, 1990, accessed May 16, 2017 .
  12. ↑ Jeremy Gerard: A 'Soap Noir' Inspires a Cult and Questions. In: The New York Times . The New York Times Company, April 26, 1990, accessed May 16, 2017 .
  13. ↑ Awards Search. Twin Peaks - 1990. In: emmys.com . Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, accessed May 16, 2017 .
  14. ^ "Twin Peaks" for the Premiere Episode (ABC). In: peabodyawards.com . National Association of Broadcasters , 1990, accessed May 16, 2017 .
  15. ↑ a b Fish in a coffee cup . In: Der Spiegel . No. 37 , 1991 ( online - September 9, 1991 ).
  16. ↑ Tom Shale: Troubling, Transcendent 'Twin Peaks' . In: The Washington Post . Nash Holdings LLC, Washington, DC April 8, 1990, p. G1 (English, washingtonpost.com [accessed May 16, 2017]).
  17. ^ John J. O'Connor: A Skewed Vision of a Small Town In 'Twin Peaks' . In: The New York Times . The New York Times Company, New York City April 6, 1990 ( nytimes.com [accessed May 16, 2017]).
  18. ^ Diana White: It's Not Just a Series, It's a Lifestyle . In: The Boston Globe . Affiliated Publications, Boston April 10, 1990 (English).
  19. ↑ Ken Tucker: Read EW's original 1990 review of Twin Peaks. In: Entertainment Weekly . Time Inc. , April 6, 1990, accessed May 16, 2017 .
  20. ↑ David Zurawik: ABC's new 'Twin Peaks' series dares to be different . In: The Baltimore Sun . No. 166 . Times Mirror Company, Baltimore April 7, 1990, TV and Radio Week, p. 3–4 (English, google.de [accessed on May 16, 2017]).
  21. ↑ Jen Chaney: Taking Another Trip to Twin Peaks . In: The Washington Post . Nash Holdings LLC, Washington, DC October 30, 2007 (English).
  22. ↑ Special Collector's Issue: 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time . In: TV Guide . NTVB Media, New York City June 28, 1997 (English).
  23. ↑ Twin Piques Who Did It? The Answer May be Tonight . In: The Sacramento Bee . The McClatchy Company , Sacramento May 23, 1990 (English).