Fire Walk With Me
Encyclopedia
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me is a 1992 American psychological
horror
film directed by David Lynch
and written by Lynch and Robert Engels
. The film can be viewed as both prologue
and epilogue
to the television series Twin Peaks
(1990–91), created by Lynch and Mark Frost
. The film revolves around the investigation into the murder of Teresa Banks (Pamela Gidley
) and the last seven days in the life of Laura Palmer
(Sheryl Lee
), a popular high school student in the fictional Washington town of Twin Peaks, of which these two connected murders were the central mysteries of the television series. Additionally, the film's convoluted narrative references and clarifies Agent Dale Cooper
's (Kyle MacLachlan
) fate in the series finale
. Thus, the film is often considered a prequel
, however, it also has features more typical of a sequel
.
Most of the television cast returned for the film, with the notable exceptions of Lara Flynn Boyle
who declined to return as Laura’s best friend Donna Hayward
(she was replaced by Moira Kelly
), and Sherilyn Fenn
due to scheduling conflicts. Also, Kyle MacLachlan
, who starred as Special Agent Dale Cooper
in the TV series, was reluctant to return out of fear of getting typecast, so his presence in the film is smaller than originally planned.
Fire Walk with Me was greeted at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival
with booing and jeers from the audience and met with negative reviews in the United States. The film fared poorly in the United States
at the box office, partially because it was released almost a year after the television series was canceled (due to a sharp ratings decline in the second season), partially due to its incomprehensibility to the uninitiated and the fact that the film only appeals to a subset of the viewers of the Twin Peaks series. However, it was a commercial hit in Japan
.
) calling Agent Chester Desmond (Chris Isaak
) about the mysterious murder of Teresa Banks in the town of Deer Meadow. Cole introduces Chester to his new partner, Sam Stanley (Kiefer Sutherland
), and they receive clues from Lil the dancer. While Chet explains most of the clues given by the appearance of Lil to Sam, he does not explain the blue rose. After difficulty with the local police force, Desmond and Stanley eventually view Teresa's body at a morgue, realizing that her ring is missing and that a letter "T" has been placed under her fingernail. Desmond and Stanley learn about the victim's recent past from the town residents. Stanley leaves Deer Meadow after he finishes his part in the investigation, while Desmond remains behind. Desmond later vanishes after picking up Teresa's ring in the trailer park where she lived.
The following day at FBI headquarters in Philadelphia, long-lost Agent Phillip Jeffries (David Bowie
) re-appears. He questions Dale Cooper's identity before telling Cole about a meeting he witnessed in a dream. As he explains, we see images of the Man from Another Place
, BOB
, Mrs. Chalfont, and her grandson. Jeffries begins to scream and disappears as we see shots of electrical lines. Desmond is reported missing and Agent Dale Cooper
(Kyle MacLachlan
) is sent to Deer Meadow to investigate his disappearance. He sees the words "Let's Rock" on the windshield of Desmond's car. The clues to Teresa Banks' murder lead to a dead end. Cooper is certain her killer will strike again.
One year later in Twin Peaks, high school homecoming queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee
) and Donna Hayward
(Moira Kelly
) return to school. Laura takes cocaine
and secretly meets with James Hurley (James Marshall
).
After school, Laura talks with Donna about the difference between Hurley and Laura's actual boyfriend, Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook
). When Donna questions what it would be like to fall in space, if one would slow down after a while or go faster and faster, Laura replies "Faster and faster. And for a long time you wouldn't feel anything. And then you'd burst into fire. And the angels wouldn't help you because they've all gone away."
Later that day, Laura realizes pages are missing from her secret diary and tells her friend, the agoraphobic Harold Smith (Lenny Von Dohlen
), about it. She claims BOB took the pages. Harold tells Laura that BOB is not real. Laura argues that BOB is real and says that he told her that if she doesn't let him be her, he will kill her. When Harold argues, Laura says "Fire Walk With Me", her face changing color. Returning to normal and visibly shaken, Laura gives Harold her diary to keep. She leaves, stating she does not know when, or if, she will return.
Meanwhile, Cooper tells fellow agent Albert Rosenfield (Miguel Ferrer
) he believes the killer will strike again and describes the appearance of who he believes the victim will be. During her Meals on Wheels
rounds, Laura sees Mrs. Chalfont (Frances Bay
) and her grandson. Chalfont gives Laura a painting, and her grandson informs Laura that the "man behind the mask" is in Laura's room. Laura runs home, where she sees BOB. After Laura rushes outside in terror, she sees her father, Leland
(Ray Wise
), emerge from the house. Laura then realises her father could be BOB.
Later that evening, when the Palmer family is about to eat, Leland, upon seeing the half-heart necklace, menaces Laura and questions her about her "lovers." Looking at her finger, Leland insinuates there is dirt underneath the nail. Later, Leland sits on the edge of his bed and suddenly begins to weep. He goes into his daughter's bedroom and tells her that he loves her. After he is gone, Laura looks to a picture of an angel on her wall, asking if Leland is really BOB.
Remembering the painting she received from Chalfont that she left on the front lawn, Laura goes outside to get it. After hanging it on her wall, she falls asleep. She dreams about entering the Black Lodge
and about a ring. Suddenly Cooper enters the room and we see the Man from Another Place. He tells Cooper that he (the Man from Another Place) is "the arm" and he utters an Indian Whooping sound. The Man from Another Place offers the ring to Laura but Cooper tells her not to take the ring. Laura finds Annie Blackburn (Heather Graham) next to her in bed, covered in blood. Annie tells Laura in her diary that "the good Dale" (Cooper) is trapped in the Black Lodge and can't leave. Laura sees the ring in her hand and is frightened. Hearing the muffled cry of her mother, Laura goes to her bedroom door. She is suddenly in the painting. When she turns she sees herself sleeping peacefully in her bed.
Laura awakens in the morning, and the ring is gone from her hand. Disturbed, she removes the painting from her wall. Meanwhile, Bobby, Leo, and Jacques Renault discuss drug scores. Bobby first phones Leo asking to score more drugs, but Leo hangs up on him. Bobby then calls Jacques at the Roadhouse who agrees to send someone to meet with him in "two days midnight at the sound of sawing wood."
That evening, Laura is ready to go to the Roadhouse when Donna tells her of her wish to accompany her, but Laura says she's not invited. As Laura is about to enter the bar, she encounters the Log Lady. Inside the bar, Jacques introduces Laura to two men. The group is about to leave for the Pink Room to have sex, but Donna shows up and wants to come too; impressed by her "audition" kiss, they let her.
In the Pink Room, Laura discusses Teresa Banks' murder with Ronette Pulaski (Phoebe Augustine), mentioning the girl's hopes of becoming rich by blackmailing someone, then engages in oral sex
with the men. Laura is distraught seeing Donna topless and making out with one of the men, and takes her home. The next morning, Laura tells Donna that she doesn't want Donna to become like her.
Leland arrives, becomes blank faced and has a memory of Ronette and Laura laughing on a bed together. Leland takes Laura to breakfast. On the way there, MIKE
(Al Strobel), the one-armed man, shouts madly at Leland from his pick up truck during a traffic jam at the stoplight in town. Mike accuses Leland of stealing corn. He tells Laura "The look on her face when it was opened… There was a stillness like the formica table top." He shouts at Leland that "the thread will be torn". Showing Laura the ring, Mike attempts to tell her that her father is BOB but both Leland and Laura scream, preventing her from hearing.
Leland pulls into a gas station parking lot to gather his wits and recalls his affair with Teresa. After having set up a foursome with Teresa's friends, Leland had fled in fear, discovering that Laura was one of them. This led to Teresa discovering who her "John" really was. Leland was the man she was blackmailing.
Sensing a change in her father's behaviour, Laura questions him about seeing him on the day she found BOB looking for the diary. Later that night, Laura realizes that the ring she saw was the same one from her dream. Leland remembers killing Teresa.
The next night, Laura and Bobby take cocaine in the woods, and Jacques sends a drug messenger who is the Sherriff's deputy from Deer Meadow, carrying an enormous amount of cocaine. The messenger takes out a gun intending to kill him, but Bobby shoots him and futilely tries to bury him as Laura laughs, high on drugs.
The following morning, James worries about Laura taking drugs. Leland gives Sarah Palmer valium to sedate her. After she drifts off to an undisturbed sleep, Leland walks into the hallway to turn on the fan. BOB comes through Laura's window and begins raping her. She realizes that BOB has taken over her father.
The next morning, distraught, she warns Leland to stay away from her. Upset over the realization her father is actually BOB, Laura can't concentrate at school. Laura later refuses sex with Bobby, and he finally realizes that Laura was using him to get the cocaine. Still caring for Laura and sensing her pain, Bobby gives her his own drugs. The Angel in Laura's painting disappears.
In the woods. Laura tells James "his Laura" is gone. Screaming that she loves him, Laura runs away from James deeper into the woods. Laura meets Ronette, Jacques, and Leo, and they hold an orgy
in Jacques' cabin as Leland watches from outside. Jacques wants to have hard sex, and ties Laura up. Leland attacks Jacques outside, and Leo flees in panic. Leland takes Laura and Ronette, both bound, to the train car.
Meanwhile, Mike realizes that BOB/Leland is about to kill again and chases after him. As he is tying Laura up a second time, she asks Leland if he is going to kill her. He does not answer. Leland places a mirror in front of her. She screams after seeing her reflection turn into BOB. BOB is real. He tells Laura that he wants her.
Ronette prays. She breaks down stating that she is not ready because she is "dirty". Suddenly an angel appears in the train car as all actions stop. The angel causes both Ronette and Laura's hands to become unbound. Hearing Mike outside begging to be let in, Ronette, now free, is able to help him open the door. When Leland sees Ronette trying to let him in, he knocks her unconscious and kicks her out of the train car. Mike is able to use this moment to throw in his ring. Laura, whose hands are also free now, wears the ring, preventing BOB from becoming her. Angered that he can't be her, BOB kills her as he promised by stabbing her repeatedly.
BOB/Leland places Laura's body in the lake. As her corpse drifts away, BOB/Leland enters the Black Lodge, where he encounters Mike and the Man from Another Place (who is seated at Mike's left side as the aforementioned "arm"). They tell BOB that they want all their garmonbozia ("pain and sorrow"). BOB heals Leland's wound.
Laura's body washes up on the lake shore where it is found by the Sheriff's department the following morning. Laura's spirit later sits in the Black Lodge, and notices Agent Cooper at her side, who has a hand on her shoulder. Laura looks deeply saddened until her angel appears, and she begins to cry, and then laugh. The film ends with Laura's face in white.
was canceled only a month when David Lynch
announced he would be making a movie with French company CIBY-2000 financing what would be the first film of a three-picture deal. However, on July 11, 1991, Ken Scherer, CEO of Lynch/Frost productions, announced that the film was not going to be made because series star Kyle MacLachlan
did not want to reprise his role of Special Agent Dale Cooper
. A month later, MacLachlan had changed his mind and the film was back on.
The film was made without Twin Peaks series regulars Lara Flynn Boyle
, Sherilyn Fenn
, and Richard Beymer
. At the time, these absences were attributed to scheduling conflicts, but in a 1995 interview, Fenn revealed that the real reason was that she "was extremely disappointed in the way the second season got off track. As far as Fire Walk with Me, it was something that I chose not to be a part of." Fenn's character was cut from the script, Boyle was recast with Moira Kelly
, and Beymer's scenes were not filmed. In a September 2007 interview, Beymer claimed that he did not appear in any scenes shot for the movie, although his character, Benjamin Horne, appeared in the script.
Kyle MacLachlan's reluctance was also caused by a decline of quality in the second season of the show. He said "David and Mark [Frost] were only around for the first season… I think we all felt a little abandoned. So I was fairly resentful when the film, Fire Walk with Me, came around." Although he agreed to be in the film, MacLachlan wanted a smaller role, forcing Lynch and co-writer Robert Engels to re-write the screenplay so that the Teresa Banks murder was investigated by Agent Chester Desmond and not by Cooper as originally planned. MacLachlan ended up working only five days on the movie.
Another missing figure from Twin Peaks was co-creator Mark Frost. The relationship between Lynch and Frost had become strained during the second season and after the series ended. Frost went on to direct his own movie, Storyville
(1992), and was unable to collaborate with Lynch on Fire Walk with Me.
David Bowie had this to say about his part of the movie: "They crammed me. I did all my scenes in four or five days, because I was in rehearsals for the (1991 Tin Machine
) tour. I was there for only a few days."
Principal photography
began on September 5, 1991 in Snoqualmie, Washington
and lasted until October of the same year, with four weeks dedicated to locations in Washington, and another four weeks of interiors and additional locations in Los Angeles, California
. When shooting went over schedule in Seattle, Washington
, Laura's death in the train car had to be shot in Los Angeles on soundstage during the last day of shooting, October 31.
Actress Sheryl Lee
, who played Laura Palmer, also echoed these sentiments. "I never got to be Laura alive, just in flashbacks; it allowed me to come full circle with the character." According to Lynch, the movie is about "the loneliness, shame, guilt, confusion and devastation of the victim of incest. It also dealt with the torment of the father– the war within him."
, where it was greeted with booing from the audience and met with almost unanimous negative reviews. According to Roger Ebert
from The Chicago Sun-Times, the film was met with two extremes, one side being overall positive, while the other side being the exact opposite. Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino
, who was also in attendance, confessed in a 1992 interview, "after I saw Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me at Cannes, David Lynch had disappeared so far up his own ass that I have no desire to see another David Lynch movie until I hear something different. And you know, I loved him. I loved him."
Even the CIBY-2000 party at Cannes did not go well. According to Lynch, Francis Bouygues (then head of CIBY) was not well liked in France
and this only added to the film's demise at the festival. After the Cannes showing, Lynch said "It was a little bit of a sadness, […] You'd like to have everybody there, but (their characters) didn't have a bearing on the life of [Laura Palmer]".
U.S. distributor New Line Cinema
released the film in America on August 28, 1992. The film flopped in the United States
, partially because it was released almost a year after the television series was cancelled due to a sharp ratings decline in the second season and partially due to its incomprehensibility to the uninitiated. It grossed a total of USD$1.8 million in 691 theaters in its opening weekend and went on to gross a total of $4.1 million in North America
.
According to the Internet Movie Database
, despite its poor critical and commercial response, Fire Walk with Me gained attention at awards time. The film was nominated for five Saturn Awards and two Independent Spirit Awards
, including Sheryl Lee
being nominated for Best Actress. The only awards won by the film were for Angelo Badalamenti
's musical score
, which won a Spirit Award, a Saturn Award, and a Brit Award.
, which assigns a normalized
rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream film critics, reported that there were "generally unfavorable reviews", with an average
score of 28% based on 16 reviews.
The film holds a 62% rating on Rotten Tomatoes
, with 31 of 50 critics giving the film a positive review. The site wrote of the critics' consensus: "For better or worse, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is every bit as strange and twisted as you'd expect from David Lynch".
from The New York Times
wrote, "Mr. Lynch’s taste for brain-dead grotesque has lost its novelty". Fellow Times film critic Vincent Canby
concurred, "It's not the worst movie ever made; it just seems to be".
In his review for Variety
magazine, Todd McCarthy said, "that Laura Palmer, after all the talk, is not a very interesting or compelling character and long before the climax has become a tiresome teenager". USA Today
gave the film one-and-a-half stars out of four, calling it, "a morbidly joyless affair".
Rolling Stone
magazine's Peter Travers
wrote, "And though the movie ups the TV ante on nudity, language and violence, Lynch's control falters. But if inspiration is lacking, talent is not. Count Lynch down but never out". In her review for the Washington Post, Rita Kempley described the film as a "perversely moving, profoundly self-indulgent prequel".
from the British magazine, Sight & Sound
stated: "The film’s many moments of horror … demonstrate just how tidy, conventional and domesticated the generic horror movie of the 1980s and 1990s has become". Mark Kermode
hailed the film as Lynch's "masterpiece".
Slant Magazine
gave the film a four out of four stars, listing it in their '100 Essential Films' list.
In the book Lynch on Lynch, Chris Rodley described the film as "brilliant but excoriating," writing that "By the time Lynch unveiled Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me in 1992, critical reaction had become hostile, and only now is the movie enjoying a degree of cautious but sympathetic critical re-evaluation. It is, undoubtedly, one of Lynch's cruellest, bleakest neighbourhood visions, and even managed to displease die-hard fans of the series. … In exposing the very heart of the TV series, Lynch was forced to accept that he was unlikely to return to the town of Twin Peaks again."
In 2002, a French distribution company called MK2 began negotiations with Lynch to include the missing scenes, properly edited and scored, in an upcoming Special Edition DVD. This has yet to appear. Most of the deleted scenes feature additional characters from the television series who ultimately did not appear in the finished film. Lynch has said that “I had a limit on the running time of the picture. We shot many scenes that– for a regular feature– were too tangential to keep the main story progressing properly. We thought it might be good sometime to do a longer version with these other things in, because a lot of the characters that are missing in the finished movie had been filmed. They’re part of the picture, they’re just not necessary for the main story." According to Lynch, had the movie included these scenes, it "wouldn’t have been quite so dark. To me it obeyed the laws of Twin Peaks. But a little bit of the goofiness had to be removed."
In 2007, DVDrama.com reported that MK2 was in final negotiations with Lynch about a new two-disc special edition that would include 17 deleted scenes hand-picked by the director himself. It had been tentatively scheduled for release on October 17, 2007, but MK2 subsequently opted instead to re-release a bare-bones edition of Fire Walk with Me, citing a new version including the deleted scenes has been put on hold indefinitely. In November 2008, Lynch said the following regarding deleted scenes from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me:
A Blu-ray
release of the film slated for 2009 in the UK has been delayed indefinitely. Paramount Pictures
(which has DVD distribution rights to the TV series) acquired the rights in Germany and most of the world excluding the US, UK, France, and Canada. Paramount released their DVD in 2007. The DVD was a port straight from the MK2 French edition.
It was released on Blu-ray in France on November 3, 2010 by MK2.
It will be released on Blu-ray in Australia by Madman Entertainment
on February 8, 2012, marking the 20th anniversary of the films theatrical release.
Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost
posted on his Twitter that there is a possibility that the deleted scenes will be released as part of a Blu-ray version of the Twin Peaks Definitive Gold Box Edition.
in particular, with women, as Martha Nochimson wrote in her book on Lynch's movies, "He surmises that the enthusiasm of the Japanese women comes from a gratification of seeing in Laura some acknowledgment of their suffering in a repressive society." Released under the title, Twin Peaks: The Last Seven Days of Laura Palmer, it was greeted with long lines of moviegoers at theaters.
In retrospect, Lynch has said “I feel bad that Fire Walk With Me did no business and that a lot of people hate the film. But I really like the film. But it had a lot of baggage with it. It’s as free and as experimental as it could be within the dictates it had to follow."
The film’s editor Mary Sweeney
said, "They so badly wanted it to be like the T.V. show, and it wasn’t. It was a David Lynch feature. And people were very angry about it. They felt betrayed." For her part, Lee is very proud of the film, saying, "I have had many people, victims of incest
, approach me since the film was released, so glad that it had been made because it helped them to release a lot."
After Fire Walk with Me was released, Lynch reportedly planned two more films that would have continued and then concluded the series' narrative. But in a 2001 interview, he said that the Twin Peaks franchise is “dead as a doornail.”
list of the 50 best film soundtracks ever in 2011.
The climactic scene of the film and the closing credits are accompanied by excerpts from the Agnus Dei of the Requiem in C Minor by Luigi Cherubini
. This music is not included on the CD.
Psychological thriller
Psychological thriller is a specific sub-genre of the broad ranged thriller with heavy focus on characters. However, it often incorporates elements from the mystery and drama genre, along with the typical traits of the thriller genre...
horror
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
film directed by David Lynch
David Lynch
David Keith Lynch is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound...
and written by Lynch and Robert Engels
Robert Engels
Robert Engels is an American born writer, producer, and director as well as being a professor of screenwriting at Cal State Fullerton.-Biography:...
. The film can be viewed as both prologue
Prologue
A prologue is an opening to a story that establishes the setting and gives background details, often some earlier story that ties into the main one, and other miscellaneous information. The Greek prologos included the modern meaning of prologue, but was of wider significance...
and epilogue
Epilogue
An epilogue, epilog or afterword is a piece of writing at the end of a work of literature or drama, usually used to bring closure to the work...
to the television series Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks is an American television serial drama created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. The series follows the investigation headed by FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper , of the murder of a popular teenager and homecoming queen, Laura Palmer...
(1990–91), created by Lynch and Mark Frost
Mark Frost
Mark Frost is an American novelist, television/film writer, director, who is best known as a writer for the TV show Hill Street Blues and co-creator of the show Twin Peaks.-Personal life:...
. The film revolves around the investigation into the murder of Teresa Banks (Pamela Gidley
Pamela Gidley
Pamela Catherine Gidley is an American actress and model.-Early life:Gidley was born in Methuen, Massachusetts but was raised in Nashua, New Hampshire and the youngest of the family with four older brothers...
) and the last seven days in the life of Laura Palmer
Laura Palmer
Laura Palmer is a fictional character from the television series Twin Peaks, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. Her death was the catalyst for the events of the series...
(Sheryl Lee
Sheryl Lee
Sheryl Lee is an American actress. She came to international attention for her performances as Laura Palmer and Maddy Ferguson on the 1990 cult TV series Twin Peaks and in the 1992 film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me...
), a popular high school student in the fictional Washington town of Twin Peaks, of which these two connected murders were the central mysteries of the television series. Additionally, the film's convoluted narrative references and clarifies Agent Dale Cooper
Dale Cooper
FBI Special agent Dale Bartholomew Cooper is a fictional character from the television series Twin Peaks, portrayed by Kyle MacLachlan. He is the lead protagonist of the series, and briefly appears in the prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me....
's (Kyle MacLachlan
Kyle MacLachlan
Kyle Merritt MacLachlan is an American actor. MacLachlan is best known for his roles in cult films Blue Velvet as Jeffrey Beaumont, Showgirls as Zack Carey, as Paul Atreides in Dune, and Ray Manzarek in the Oliver Stone film The Doors...
) fate in the series finale
Beyond Life and Death
"Episode 29", also known as "Beyond Life and Death", is the 30th and final episode of the mystery television series Twin Peaks. It first aired on June 10, 1991.-Plot synopsis:...
. Thus, the film is often considered a prequel
Prequel
A prequel is a work that supplements a previously completed one, and has an earlier time setting.The widely recognized term was a 20th-century neologism, and a portmanteau from pre- and sequel...
, however, it also has features more typical of a sequel
Sequel
A sequel is a narrative, documental, or other work of literature, film, theatre, or music that continues the story of or expands upon issues presented in some previous work...
.
Most of the television cast returned for the film, with the notable exceptions of Lara Flynn Boyle
Lara Flynn Boyle
Lara Flynn Boyle is an American film and television actress best known for her performances as Laura Palmer's best friend Donna Hayward in Twin Peaks and Assistant District Attorney Helen Gamble in The Practice...
who declined to return as Laura’s best friend Donna Hayward
Donna Hayward
Donna Hayward is a fictional character from the television series Twin Peaks, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost.Donna is the best friend of Laura Palmer, and after her death she is obsessed with finding out who killed her and why, with the help of James Hurley,...
(she was replaced by Moira Kelly
Moira Kelly
Moira Kelly is an American actress. She is best known for playing single mother Karen Roe on the teen drama One Tree Hill. She also directed two episodes of the series: "Resolve" and "I Slept with Someone in Fall Out Boy and All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me"...
), and Sherilyn Fenn
Sherilyn Fenn
Sherilyn Fenn is an American actress and filmmaker. She came to international attention for her performance as Audrey Horne on the 1990 cult TV series Twin Peaks...
due to scheduling conflicts. Also, Kyle MacLachlan
Kyle MacLachlan
Kyle Merritt MacLachlan is an American actor. MacLachlan is best known for his roles in cult films Blue Velvet as Jeffrey Beaumont, Showgirls as Zack Carey, as Paul Atreides in Dune, and Ray Manzarek in the Oliver Stone film The Doors...
, who starred as Special Agent Dale Cooper
Dale Cooper
FBI Special agent Dale Bartholomew Cooper is a fictional character from the television series Twin Peaks, portrayed by Kyle MacLachlan. He is the lead protagonist of the series, and briefly appears in the prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me....
in the TV series, was reluctant to return out of fear of getting typecast, so his presence in the film is smaller than originally planned.
Fire Walk with Me was greeted at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival
1992 Cannes Film Festival
- Jury :*Gérard Depardieu *John Boorman *Carlo Di Palma *Jamie Lee Curtis *Joële Van Effenterre *Lester James Peries *Nana Djordjadze *Pedro Almodóvar *René Cleitman...
with booing and jeers from the audience and met with negative reviews in the United States. The film fared poorly in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
at the box office, partially because it was released almost a year after the television series was canceled (due to a sharp ratings decline in the second season), partially due to its incomprehensibility to the uninitiated and the fact that the film only appeals to a subset of the viewers of the Twin Peaks series. However, it was a commercial hit in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
.
Plot
The film opens with Gordon Cole (David LynchDavid Lynch
David Keith Lynch is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound...
) calling Agent Chester Desmond (Chris Isaak
Chris Isaak
Christopher Joseph "Chris" Isaak is an American rock musician and occasional actor.-Early life:Isaak was born in Stockton, California, the son of Dorothy , a potato chip factory worker, and Joe Isaak, a forklift driver. Isaak's mother is Italian American, originating from Genoa...
) about the mysterious murder of Teresa Banks in the town of Deer Meadow. Cole introduces Chester to his new partner, Sam Stanley (Kiefer Sutherland
Kiefer Sutherland
Kiefer Sutherland is an English-born Canadian actor, producer and director, best known for his portrayal of Jack Bauer on the Fox thriller drama series 24 for which he has won an Emmy Award , a Golden Globe award , two Screen Actors Guild Awards and two Satellite...
), and they receive clues from Lil the dancer. While Chet explains most of the clues given by the appearance of Lil to Sam, he does not explain the blue rose. After difficulty with the local police force, Desmond and Stanley eventually view Teresa's body at a morgue, realizing that her ring is missing and that a letter "T" has been placed under her fingernail. Desmond and Stanley learn about the victim's recent past from the town residents. Stanley leaves Deer Meadow after he finishes his part in the investigation, while Desmond remains behind. Desmond later vanishes after picking up Teresa's ring in the trailer park where she lived.
David Bowie
David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
) re-appears. He questions Dale Cooper's identity before telling Cole about a meeting he witnessed in a dream. As he explains, we see images of the Man from Another Place
Man from another place
The Man from Another Place is a fictional character from the television series Twin Peaks, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. He is an inhabitant of the Black Lodge, a realm of pure evil. Early on in the series, The Man gives Agent Dale Cooper clues to apprehending The Man's nemesis, BOB...
, BOB
Bob (Twin Peaks)
Killer BOB is a fictional character in the American Broadcasting Company television series Twin Peaks, a supernatural crime series about an investigation of the death of popular teenager, Laura Palmer. He is a demonic entity who feeds on fear and pleasure...
, Mrs. Chalfont, and her grandson. Jeffries begins to scream and disappears as we see shots of electrical lines. Desmond is reported missing and Agent Dale Cooper
Dale Cooper
FBI Special agent Dale Bartholomew Cooper is a fictional character from the television series Twin Peaks, portrayed by Kyle MacLachlan. He is the lead protagonist of the series, and briefly appears in the prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me....
(Kyle MacLachlan
Kyle MacLachlan
Kyle Merritt MacLachlan is an American actor. MacLachlan is best known for his roles in cult films Blue Velvet as Jeffrey Beaumont, Showgirls as Zack Carey, as Paul Atreides in Dune, and Ray Manzarek in the Oliver Stone film The Doors...
) is sent to Deer Meadow to investigate his disappearance. He sees the words "Let's Rock" on the windshield of Desmond's car. The clues to Teresa Banks' murder lead to a dead end. Cooper is certain her killer will strike again.
One year later in Twin Peaks, high school homecoming queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee
Sheryl Lee
Sheryl Lee is an American actress. She came to international attention for her performances as Laura Palmer and Maddy Ferguson on the 1990 cult TV series Twin Peaks and in the 1992 film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me...
) and Donna Hayward
Donna Hayward
Donna Hayward is a fictional character from the television series Twin Peaks, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost.Donna is the best friend of Laura Palmer, and after her death she is obsessed with finding out who killed her and why, with the help of James Hurley,...
(Moira Kelly
Moira Kelly
Moira Kelly is an American actress. She is best known for playing single mother Karen Roe on the teen drama One Tree Hill. She also directed two episodes of the series: "Resolve" and "I Slept with Someone in Fall Out Boy and All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me"...
) return to school. Laura takes cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
and secretly meets with James Hurley (James Marshall
James Marshall (actor)
James Marshall is an American actor, best known for playing the character James Hurley in the cult television series Twin Peaks and its 1992 prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and for his role as PFC Louden Downey in A Few Good Men.Marshall was born James David Greenblatt on January 2,...
).
After school, Laura talks with Donna about the difference between Hurley and Laura's actual boyfriend, Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook
Dana Ashbrook
Dana V. Ashbrook is an American actor, perhaps best known for playing Bobby Briggs on the cult TV series Twin Peaks and its 1992 prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.-Personal life:...
). When Donna questions what it would be like to fall in space, if one would slow down after a while or go faster and faster, Laura replies "Faster and faster. And for a long time you wouldn't feel anything. And then you'd burst into fire. And the angels wouldn't help you because they've all gone away."
Later that day, Laura realizes pages are missing from her secret diary and tells her friend, the agoraphobic Harold Smith (Lenny Von Dohlen
Lenny Von Dohlen
Lenny Von Dohlen is an American film and stage actor, best known for his performance as the agoraphobic Harold Smith in Twin Peaks and the architect Miles Harding in the film Electric Dreams. Von Dohlen currently resides in New York and Los Angeles.-Early years:Lenny Von Dohlen was born in...
), about it. She claims BOB took the pages. Harold tells Laura that BOB is not real. Laura argues that BOB is real and says that he told her that if she doesn't let him be her, he will kill her. When Harold argues, Laura says "Fire Walk With Me", her face changing color. Returning to normal and visibly shaken, Laura gives Harold her diary to keep. She leaves, stating she does not know when, or if, she will return.
Meanwhile, Cooper tells fellow agent Albert Rosenfield (Miguel Ferrer
Miguel Ferrer
Miguel José Ferrer is an American actor and voice actor who is often cast as a villain. His notable roles include Bob Morton, a supporting character in RoboCop , the short tempered FBI agent Albert Rosenfield in Twin Peaks, and Dr...
) he believes the killer will strike again and describes the appearance of who he believes the victim will be. During her Meals on Wheels
Meals on Wheels
Meals on Wheels are programs that deliver meals to individuals at home who are unable to purchase or prepare their own meals. The name is often used generically to refer to home-delivered meals programs, not all of which are actually named "Meals on Wheels"...
rounds, Laura sees Mrs. Chalfont (Frances Bay
Frances Bay
Frances Bay was a U.S.-based Canadian character actress, best known for playing quirky, elderly women on film and television...
) and her grandson. Chalfont gives Laura a painting, and her grandson informs Laura that the "man behind the mask" is in Laura's room. Laura runs home, where she sees BOB. After Laura rushes outside in terror, she sees her father, Leland
Leland Palmer
Leland Palmer is a fictional character from the television series Twin Peaks, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. He also appears in the prequel, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me....
(Ray Wise
Ray Wise
Raymond Nicolas "Ray" Wise is an American actor, known for his roles as Leland Palmer in Twin Peaks, as Leon C. Nash, right-hand henchman to villain Clarence Boddicker in the science fiction classic RoboCop, and recently as the Devil in the CW television series Reaper.-Life and career:Wise was...
), emerge from the house. Laura then realises her father could be BOB.
Later that evening, when the Palmer family is about to eat, Leland, upon seeing the half-heart necklace, menaces Laura and questions her about her "lovers." Looking at her finger, Leland insinuates there is dirt underneath the nail. Later, Leland sits on the edge of his bed and suddenly begins to weep. He goes into his daughter's bedroom and tells her that he loves her. After he is gone, Laura looks to a picture of an angel on her wall, asking if Leland is really BOB.
Remembering the painting she received from Chalfont that she left on the front lawn, Laura goes outside to get it. After hanging it on her wall, she falls asleep. She dreams about entering the Black Lodge
Black Lodge
The Black Lodge is a fictional setting featured in the television series Twin Peaks. It is an extradimensional place which seems to include, primarily, the "Red Room" first seen by Agent Cooper in a dream early in the series...
and about a ring. Suddenly Cooper enters the room and we see the Man from Another Place. He tells Cooper that he (the Man from Another Place) is "the arm" and he utters an Indian Whooping sound. The Man from Another Place offers the ring to Laura but Cooper tells her not to take the ring. Laura finds Annie Blackburn (Heather Graham) next to her in bed, covered in blood. Annie tells Laura in her diary that "the good Dale" (Cooper) is trapped in the Black Lodge and can't leave. Laura sees the ring in her hand and is frightened. Hearing the muffled cry of her mother, Laura goes to her bedroom door. She is suddenly in the painting. When she turns she sees herself sleeping peacefully in her bed.
Laura awakens in the morning, and the ring is gone from her hand. Disturbed, she removes the painting from her wall. Meanwhile, Bobby, Leo, and Jacques Renault discuss drug scores. Bobby first phones Leo asking to score more drugs, but Leo hangs up on him. Bobby then calls Jacques at the Roadhouse who agrees to send someone to meet with him in "two days midnight at the sound of sawing wood."
That evening, Laura is ready to go to the Roadhouse when Donna tells her of her wish to accompany her, but Laura says she's not invited. As Laura is about to enter the bar, she encounters the Log Lady. Inside the bar, Jacques introduces Laura to two men. The group is about to leave for the Pink Room to have sex, but Donna shows up and wants to come too; impressed by her "audition" kiss, they let her.
In the Pink Room, Laura discusses Teresa Banks' murder with Ronette Pulaski (Phoebe Augustine), mentioning the girl's hopes of becoming rich by blackmailing someone, then engages in oral sex
Oral sex
Oral sex is sexual activity involving the stimulation of the genitalia of a sex partner by the use of the mouth, tongue, teeth or throat. Cunnilingus refers to oral sex performed on females while fellatio refer to oral sex performed on males. Anilingus refers to oral stimulation of a person's anus...
with the men. Laura is distraught seeing Donna topless and making out with one of the men, and takes her home. The next morning, Laura tells Donna that she doesn't want Donna to become like her.
Leland arrives, becomes blank faced and has a memory of Ronette and Laura laughing on a bed together. Leland takes Laura to breakfast. On the way there, MIKE
Mike (Twin Peaks)
MIKE is a fictional character in the TV series Twin Peaks, portrayed by Al Strobel.-Character overview:MIKE is an inhabiting spirit similar to the series' primary villain, BOB, who was his partner in serial murder...
(Al Strobel), the one-armed man, shouts madly at Leland from his pick up truck during a traffic jam at the stoplight in town. Mike accuses Leland of stealing corn. He tells Laura "The look on her face when it was opened… There was a stillness like the formica table top." He shouts at Leland that "the thread will be torn". Showing Laura the ring, Mike attempts to tell her that her father is BOB but both Leland and Laura scream, preventing her from hearing.
Leland pulls into a gas station parking lot to gather his wits and recalls his affair with Teresa. After having set up a foursome with Teresa's friends, Leland had fled in fear, discovering that Laura was one of them. This led to Teresa discovering who her "John" really was. Leland was the man she was blackmailing.
Sensing a change in her father's behaviour, Laura questions him about seeing him on the day she found BOB looking for the diary. Later that night, Laura realizes that the ring she saw was the same one from her dream. Leland remembers killing Teresa.
The next night, Laura and Bobby take cocaine in the woods, and Jacques sends a drug messenger who is the Sherriff's deputy from Deer Meadow, carrying an enormous amount of cocaine. The messenger takes out a gun intending to kill him, but Bobby shoots him and futilely tries to bury him as Laura laughs, high on drugs.
The following morning, James worries about Laura taking drugs. Leland gives Sarah Palmer valium to sedate her. After she drifts off to an undisturbed sleep, Leland walks into the hallway to turn on the fan. BOB comes through Laura's window and begins raping her. She realizes that BOB has taken over her father.
The next morning, distraught, she warns Leland to stay away from her. Upset over the realization her father is actually BOB, Laura can't concentrate at school. Laura later refuses sex with Bobby, and he finally realizes that Laura was using him to get the cocaine. Still caring for Laura and sensing her pain, Bobby gives her his own drugs. The Angel in Laura's painting disappears.
In the woods. Laura tells James "his Laura" is gone. Screaming that she loves him, Laura runs away from James deeper into the woods. Laura meets Ronette, Jacques, and Leo, and they hold an orgy
Orgy
In modern usage, an orgy is a sex party where guests engage in promiscuous or multifarious sexual activity or group sex. An orgy is similar to debauchery, which refers to excessive indulgence in sensual pleasures....
in Jacques' cabin as Leland watches from outside. Jacques wants to have hard sex, and ties Laura up. Leland attacks Jacques outside, and Leo flees in panic. Leland takes Laura and Ronette, both bound, to the train car.
Meanwhile, Mike realizes that BOB/Leland is about to kill again and chases after him. As he is tying Laura up a second time, she asks Leland if he is going to kill her. He does not answer. Leland places a mirror in front of her. She screams after seeing her reflection turn into BOB. BOB is real. He tells Laura that he wants her.
Ronette prays. She breaks down stating that she is not ready because she is "dirty". Suddenly an angel appears in the train car as all actions stop. The angel causes both Ronette and Laura's hands to become unbound. Hearing Mike outside begging to be let in, Ronette, now free, is able to help him open the door. When Leland sees Ronette trying to let him in, he knocks her unconscious and kicks her out of the train car. Mike is able to use this moment to throw in his ring. Laura, whose hands are also free now, wears the ring, preventing BOB from becoming her. Angered that he can't be her, BOB kills her as he promised by stabbing her repeatedly.
BOB/Leland places Laura's body in the lake. As her corpse drifts away, BOB/Leland enters the Black Lodge, where he encounters Mike and the Man from Another Place (who is seated at Mike's left side as the aforementioned "arm"). They tell BOB that they want all their garmonbozia ("pain and sorrow"). BOB heals Leland's wound.
Laura's body washes up on the lake shore where it is found by the Sheriff's department the following morning. Laura's spirit later sits in the Black Lodge, and notices Agent Cooper at her side, who has a hand on her shoulder. Laura looks deeply saddened until her angel appears, and she begins to cry, and then laugh. The film ends with Laura's face in white.
Cast
- Sheryl LeeSheryl LeeSheryl Lee is an American actress. She came to international attention for her performances as Laura Palmer and Maddy Ferguson on the 1990 cult TV series Twin Peaks and in the 1992 film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me...
as Laura PalmerLaura PalmerLaura Palmer is a fictional character from the television series Twin Peaks, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. Her death was the catalyst for the events of the series... - Ray WiseRay WiseRaymond Nicolas "Ray" Wise is an American actor, known for his roles as Leland Palmer in Twin Peaks, as Leon C. Nash, right-hand henchman to villain Clarence Boddicker in the science fiction classic RoboCop, and recently as the Devil in the CW television series Reaper.-Life and career:Wise was...
as Leland PalmerLeland PalmerLeland Palmer is a fictional character from the television series Twin Peaks, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. He also appears in the prequel, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.... - Mädchen AmickMädchen AmickMädchen Amick is an American actress best known for playing Shelly Johnson on the cult television series Twin Peaks and its 1992 prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.-Early life:...
as Shelly JohnsonShelly JohnsonShelly Johnson is a fictional character from the television series Twin Peaks, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost, and created in mid-casting specifically for actress Mädchen Amick, after they liked her audition, but didn't have any parts left.... - Dana AshbrookDana AshbrookDana V. Ashbrook is an American actor, perhaps best known for playing Bobby Briggs on the cult TV series Twin Peaks and its 1992 prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.-Personal life:...
as Bobby Briggs - Phoebe Augustine as Ronette Pulaski
- David BowieDavid BowieDavid Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
as Phillip Jeffries - Eric Da ReEric Da ReEric Da Re is an American actor who is primarily famous for playing the notorious criminal Leo Johnson on the cult TV show, Twin Peaks and its prequel, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.- Biography:...
as Leo Johnson - Miguel FerrerMiguel FerrerMiguel José Ferrer is an American actor and voice actor who is often cast as a villain. His notable roles include Bob Morton, a supporting character in RoboCop , the short tempered FBI agent Albert Rosenfield in Twin Peaks, and Dr...
as Albert Rosenfield - Pamela GidleyPamela GidleyPamela Catherine Gidley is an American actress and model.-Early life:Gidley was born in Methuen, Massachusetts but was raised in Nashua, New Hampshire and the youngest of the family with four older brothers...
as Teresa Banks - Heather Graham as Annie Blackburn
- Chris IsaakChris IsaakChristopher Joseph "Chris" Isaak is an American rock musician and occasional actor.-Early life:Isaak was born in Stockton, California, the son of Dorothy , a potato chip factory worker, and Joe Isaak, a forklift driver. Isaak's mother is Italian American, originating from Genoa...
as Special Agent Chester Desmond - Frances BayFrances BayFrances Bay was a U.S.-based Canadian character actress, best known for playing quirky, elderly women on film and television...
as Mrs. Tremond - Moira KellyMoira KellyMoira Kelly is an American actress. She is best known for playing single mother Karen Roe on the teen drama One Tree Hill. She also directed two episodes of the series: "Resolve" and "I Slept with Someone in Fall Out Boy and All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me"...
as Donna HaywardDonna HaywardDonna Hayward is a fictional character from the television series Twin Peaks, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost.Donna is the best friend of Laura Palmer, and after her death she is obsessed with finding out who killed her and why, with the help of James Hurley,... - Peggy LiptonPeggy LiptonPeggy Lipton is an American television actress. She played "Julie Barnes" in The Mod Squad, and Norma Jennings in Twin Peaks.- Personal life and background :...
as Norma Jennings - David LynchDavid LynchDavid Keith Lynch is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound...
as Gordon Cole - James MarshallJames Marshall (actor)James Marshall is an American actor, best known for playing the character James Hurley in the cult television series Twin Peaks and its 1992 prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and for his role as PFC Louden Downey in A Few Good Men.Marshall was born James David Greenblatt on January 2,...
as James Hurley - Jürgen ProchnowJürgen ProchnowJürgen Prochnow is a German actor. His most well-known roles internationally have been as the sympathetic submarine captain in Das Boot , Duke Leto Atreides I in Dune , the minor, but important role of Neo-Stalinist dictator General Ivan Radek in Air Force One and the villain Maxwell Dent in...
as Woodsman - Harry Dean StantonHarry Dean StantonHarry Dean Stanton is an American actor, musician, and singer. Stanton's career has spanned over fifty years, which has seen him star in such films as Paris, Texas, Kelly's Heroes, Dillinger, Alien, Repo Man, The Last Temptation of Christ, Wild at Heart, The Green Mile and The Pledge...
as Carl Rodd - Kiefer SutherlandKiefer SutherlandKiefer Sutherland is an English-born Canadian actor, producer and director, best known for his portrayal of Jack Bauer on the Fox thriller drama series 24 for which he has won an Emmy Award , a Golden Globe award , two Screen Actors Guild Awards and two Satellite...
as Agent Sam Stanley - Lenny Von DohlenLenny Von DohlenLenny Von Dohlen is an American film and stage actor, best known for his performance as the agoraphobic Harold Smith in Twin Peaks and the architect Miles Harding in the film Electric Dreams. Von Dohlen currently resides in New York and Los Angeles.-Early years:Lenny Von Dohlen was born in...
as Harold Smith - Grace ZabriskieGrace ZabriskieGrace Zabriskie is an American actress. She has appeared in many popular American films but, she is best known for her work in television. She is perhaps best known for her roles in the television series Twin Peaks, Seinfeld, and Big Love.-Early life:Zabriskie was born in New Orleans, Louisiana...
as Sarah Palmer - Kyle MacLachlanKyle MacLachlanKyle Merritt MacLachlan is an American actor. MacLachlan is best known for his roles in cult films Blue Velvet as Jeffrey Beaumont, Showgirls as Zack Carey, as Paul Atreides in Dune, and Ray Manzarek in the Oliver Stone film The Doors...
as Special Agent Dale CooperDale CooperFBI Special agent Dale Bartholomew Cooper is a fictional character from the television series Twin Peaks, portrayed by Kyle MacLachlan. He is the lead protagonist of the series, and briefly appears in the prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.... - Gary Hershberger as Mike NelsonMike (Twin Peaks)MIKE is a fictional character in the TV series Twin Peaks, portrayed by Al Strobel.-Character overview:MIKE is an inhabiting spirit similar to the series' primary villain, BOB, who was his partner in serial murder...
Production
Twin PeaksTwin Peaks
Twin Peaks is an American television serial drama created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. The series follows the investigation headed by FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper , of the murder of a popular teenager and homecoming queen, Laura Palmer...
was canceled only a month when David Lynch
David Lynch
David Keith Lynch is an American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor. Known for his surrealist films, he has developed his own unique cinematic style, which has been dubbed "Lynchian", and which is characterized by its dream imagery and meticulous sound...
announced he would be making a movie with French company CIBY-2000 financing what would be the first film of a three-picture deal. However, on July 11, 1991, Ken Scherer, CEO of Lynch/Frost productions, announced that the film was not going to be made because series star Kyle MacLachlan
Kyle MacLachlan
Kyle Merritt MacLachlan is an American actor. MacLachlan is best known for his roles in cult films Blue Velvet as Jeffrey Beaumont, Showgirls as Zack Carey, as Paul Atreides in Dune, and Ray Manzarek in the Oliver Stone film The Doors...
did not want to reprise his role of Special Agent Dale Cooper
Dale Cooper
FBI Special agent Dale Bartholomew Cooper is a fictional character from the television series Twin Peaks, portrayed by Kyle MacLachlan. He is the lead protagonist of the series, and briefly appears in the prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me....
. A month later, MacLachlan had changed his mind and the film was back on.
The film was made without Twin Peaks series regulars Lara Flynn Boyle
Lara Flynn Boyle
Lara Flynn Boyle is an American film and television actress best known for her performances as Laura Palmer's best friend Donna Hayward in Twin Peaks and Assistant District Attorney Helen Gamble in The Practice...
, Sherilyn Fenn
Sherilyn Fenn
Sherilyn Fenn is an American actress and filmmaker. She came to international attention for her performance as Audrey Horne on the 1990 cult TV series Twin Peaks...
, and Richard Beymer
Richard Beymer
George Richard Beymer, Jr. is an American actor known for playing Tony in the 1961 film version of West Side Story and Ben Horne on the 1990 television series Twin Peaks.-Life and career:...
. At the time, these absences were attributed to scheduling conflicts, but in a 1995 interview, Fenn revealed that the real reason was that she "was extremely disappointed in the way the second season got off track. As far as Fire Walk with Me, it was something that I chose not to be a part of." Fenn's character was cut from the script, Boyle was recast with Moira Kelly
Moira Kelly
Moira Kelly is an American actress. She is best known for playing single mother Karen Roe on the teen drama One Tree Hill. She also directed two episodes of the series: "Resolve" and "I Slept with Someone in Fall Out Boy and All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me"...
, and Beymer's scenes were not filmed. In a September 2007 interview, Beymer claimed that he did not appear in any scenes shot for the movie, although his character, Benjamin Horne, appeared in the script.
Kyle MacLachlan's reluctance was also caused by a decline of quality in the second season of the show. He said "David and Mark [Frost] were only around for the first season… I think we all felt a little abandoned. So I was fairly resentful when the film, Fire Walk with Me, came around." Although he agreed to be in the film, MacLachlan wanted a smaller role, forcing Lynch and co-writer Robert Engels to re-write the screenplay so that the Teresa Banks murder was investigated by Agent Chester Desmond and not by Cooper as originally planned. MacLachlan ended up working only five days on the movie.
Another missing figure from Twin Peaks was co-creator Mark Frost. The relationship between Lynch and Frost had become strained during the second season and after the series ended. Frost went on to direct his own movie, Storyville
Storyville (film)
Storyville is a 1992 film directed by Mark Frost and starring James Spader.-Plot:Cray Fowler, a young candidate for the United States Senate is filmed with a hooker as blackmail. As he investigates, Fowler discovers some family secrets involving his father and their political careers....
(1992), and was unable to collaborate with Lynch on Fire Walk with Me.
David Bowie had this to say about his part of the movie: "They crammed me. I did all my scenes in four or five days, because I was in rehearsals for the (1991 Tin Machine
It's My Life Tour
The Tin Machine It's My Life Tour opened on 5 October 1991 after two warm-up shows, one press show and three trade-industry shows. The concert tour itinerary took in twelve countries and sixty-nine performances, a larger outing than the low-key Tin Machine Tour of 1989...
) tour. I was there for only a few days."
Principal photography
Principal photography
thumb|300px|Film production on location in [[Newark, New Jersey]].Principal photography is the phase of film production in which the movie is filmed, with actors on set and cameras rolling, as distinct from pre-production and post-production....
began on September 5, 1991 in Snoqualmie, Washington
Snoqualmie, Washington
Snoqualmie is a city next to Snoqualmie Falls in King County, Washington. The city is home to the Northwest Railway Museum. The population was of 10,670 at the 2010 census...
and lasted until October of the same year, with four weeks dedicated to locations in Washington, and another four weeks of interiors and additional locations in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
. When shooting went over schedule in Seattle, Washington
Seattle, Washington
Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...
, Laura's death in the train car had to be shot in Los Angeles on soundstage during the last day of shooting, October 31.
Themes
Lynch wanted to make a Twin Peaks film because, as he claimed in an interview, "I couldn’t get myself to leave the world of Twin Peaks. I was in love with the character of Laura Palmer and her contradictions: radiant on the surface but dying inside. I wanted to see her live, move and talk. I was in love with that world and I hadn't finished with it. But making the movie wasn't just to hold onto it; it seemed that there was more stuff that could be done," and that he was "not yet finished with the material".Actress Sheryl Lee
Sheryl Lee
Sheryl Lee is an American actress. She came to international attention for her performances as Laura Palmer and Maddy Ferguson on the 1990 cult TV series Twin Peaks and in the 1992 film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me...
, who played Laura Palmer, also echoed these sentiments. "I never got to be Laura alive, just in flashbacks; it allowed me to come full circle with the character." According to Lynch, the movie is about "the loneliness, shame, guilt, confusion and devastation of the victim of incest. It also dealt with the torment of the father– the war within him."
Release
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me received a reaction quite the contrary to the television series. The film was entered into the 1992 Cannes Film Festival1992 Cannes Film Festival
- Jury :*Gérard Depardieu *John Boorman *Carlo Di Palma *Jamie Lee Curtis *Joële Van Effenterre *Lester James Peries *Nana Djordjadze *Pedro Almodóvar *René Cleitman...
, where it was greeted with booing from the audience and met with almost unanimous negative reviews. According to Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
from The Chicago Sun-Times, the film was met with two extremes, one side being overall positive, while the other side being the exact opposite. Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
, who was also in attendance, confessed in a 1992 interview, "after I saw Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me at Cannes, David Lynch had disappeared so far up his own ass that I have no desire to see another David Lynch movie until I hear something different. And you know, I loved him. I loved him."
Even the CIBY-2000 party at Cannes did not go well. According to Lynch, Francis Bouygues (then head of CIBY) was not well liked in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and this only added to the film's demise at the festival. After the Cannes showing, Lynch said "It was a little bit of a sadness, […] You'd like to have everybody there, but (their characters) didn't have a bearing on the life of [Laura Palmer]".
U.S. distributor New Line Cinema
New Line Cinema
New Line Cinema, often simply referred to as New Line, is an American film studio. It was founded in 1967 by Robert Shaye and Michael Lynne as a film distributor, later becoming an independent film studio. It became a subsidiary of Time Warner in 1996 and was merged with larger sister studio Warner...
released the film in America on August 28, 1992. The film flopped in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, partially because it was released almost a year after the television series was cancelled due to a sharp ratings decline in the second season and partially due to its incomprehensibility to the uninitiated. It grossed a total of USD$1.8 million in 691 theaters in its opening weekend and went on to gross a total of $4.1 million in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
.
According to the Internet Movie Database
Internet Movie Database
Internet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million...
, despite its poor critical and commercial response, Fire Walk with Me gained attention at awards time. The film was nominated for five Saturn Awards and two Independent Spirit Awards
Independent Spirit Awards
The Independent Spirit Awards , founded in 1984, are awards dedicated to independent filmmakers. Winners were typically presented with acrylic glass pyramids containing suspended shoestrings representing the paltry budgets of independent films. In 1986, the event was renamed the Independent Spirit...
, including Sheryl Lee
Sheryl Lee
Sheryl Lee is an American actress. She came to international attention for her performances as Laura Palmer and Maddy Ferguson on the 1990 cult TV series Twin Peaks and in the 1992 film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me...
being nominated for Best Actress. The only awards won by the film were for Angelo Badalamenti
Angelo Badalamenti
Angelo Badalamenti is an American composer, known for his movie soundtrack work for director David Lynch, notably Blue Velvet, the Twin Peaks saga and Mulholland Drive...
's musical score
Film score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
, which won a Spirit Award, a Saturn Award, and a Brit Award.
Critical reception
MetacriticMetacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
, which assigns a normalized
Standard score
In statistics, a standard score indicates how many standard deviations an observation or datum is above or below the mean. It is a dimensionless quantity derived by subtracting the population mean from an individual raw score and then dividing the difference by the population standard deviation...
rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream film critics, reported that there were "generally unfavorable reviews", with an average
Weighted mean
The weighted mean is similar to an arithmetic mean , where instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others...
score of 28% based on 16 reviews.
The film holds a 62% rating on Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, with 31 of 50 critics giving the film a positive review. The site wrote of the critics' consensus: "For better or worse, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is every bit as strange and twisted as you'd expect from David Lynch".
Negative reviews
Among the negative reviews, Janet MaslinJanet Maslin
Janet Maslin is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for The New York Times. She served as the Times film critic from 1977–1999.- Biography :...
from The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
wrote, "Mr. Lynch’s taste for brain-dead grotesque has lost its novelty". Fellow Times film critic Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.-Life and career:...
concurred, "It's not the worst movie ever made; it just seems to be".
In his review for Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
magazine, Todd McCarthy said, "that Laura Palmer, after all the talk, is not a very interesting or compelling character and long before the climax has become a tiresome teenager". USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
gave the film one-and-a-half stars out of four, calling it, "a morbidly joyless affair".
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
magazine's Peter Travers
Peter Travers
Peter Travers is an American film critic, who has written for, in turn, People and Rolling Stone. Travers also hosts a celebrity interview show called Popcorn on ABC News Now and ABCNews.com.-Career:...
wrote, "And though the movie ups the TV ante on nudity, language and violence, Lynch's control falters. But if inspiration is lacking, talent is not. Count Lynch down but never out". In her review for the Washington Post, Rita Kempley described the film as a "perversely moving, profoundly self-indulgent prequel".
Positive reviews
Among the positive reviews, Kim NewmanKim Newman
Kim Newman is an English journalist, film critic, and fiction writer. Recurring interests visible in his work include film history and horror fiction—both of which he attributes to seeing Tod Browning's Dracula at the age of eleven—and alternate fictional versions of history...
from the British magazine, Sight & Sound
Sight & Sound
Sight & Sound is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute .Sight & Sound was first published in 1932 and in 1934 management of the magazine was handed to the nascent BFI, which still publishes the magazine today...
stated: "The film’s many moments of horror … demonstrate just how tidy, conventional and domesticated the generic horror movie of the 1980s and 1990s has become". Mark Kermode
Mark Kermode
Mark Kermode is an English film critic, musician and a member of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. He contributes to Sight and Sound magazine, The Observer newspaper and BBC Radio 5 Live, where he presents Kermode and Mayo's Film Reviews with Simon Mayo on Friday afternoons...
hailed the film as Lynch's "masterpiece".
Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine is an online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York Film Festival.- History :...
gave the film a four out of four stars, listing it in their '100 Essential Films' list.
In the book Lynch on Lynch, Chris Rodley described the film as "brilliant but excoriating," writing that "By the time Lynch unveiled Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me in 1992, critical reaction had become hostile, and only now is the movie enjoying a degree of cautious but sympathetic critical re-evaluation. It is, undoubtedly, one of Lynch's cruellest, bleakest neighbourhood visions, and even managed to displease die-hard fans of the series. … In exposing the very heart of the TV series, Lynch was forced to accept that he was unlikely to return to the town of Twin Peaks again."
Home media
Lynch originally shot over five hours of footage that was subsequently cut down to two hours and fourteen minutes. The footage nearly appeared on New Line's Special Edition DVD in 2002, but was nixed over budgetary and running-time concerns.In 2002, a French distribution company called MK2 began negotiations with Lynch to include the missing scenes, properly edited and scored, in an upcoming Special Edition DVD. This has yet to appear. Most of the deleted scenes feature additional characters from the television series who ultimately did not appear in the finished film. Lynch has said that “I had a limit on the running time of the picture. We shot many scenes that– for a regular feature– were too tangential to keep the main story progressing properly. We thought it might be good sometime to do a longer version with these other things in, because a lot of the characters that are missing in the finished movie had been filmed. They’re part of the picture, they’re just not necessary for the main story." According to Lynch, had the movie included these scenes, it "wouldn’t have been quite so dark. To me it obeyed the laws of Twin Peaks. But a little bit of the goofiness had to be removed."
In 2007, DVDrama.com reported that MK2 was in final negotiations with Lynch about a new two-disc special edition that would include 17 deleted scenes hand-picked by the director himself. It had been tentatively scheduled for release on October 17, 2007, but MK2 subsequently opted instead to re-release a bare-bones edition of Fire Walk with Me, citing a new version including the deleted scenes has been put on hold indefinitely. In November 2008, Lynch said the following regarding deleted scenes from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me:
… Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me is owned by a company called MK2 in France. And I spoke to them a couple of months ago. … I've spoke to them several times about this. … I think it will happen, but maybe the financial crisis is … affecting that in some way. I'm not sure what's going on. I'm pretty sure there's 17 scenes in that at least but it's been a while since we've looked into that.
A Blu-ray
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
release of the film slated for 2009 in the UK has been delayed indefinitely. Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
(which has DVD distribution rights to the TV series) acquired the rights in Germany and most of the world excluding the US, UK, France, and Canada. Paramount released their DVD in 2007. The DVD was a port straight from the MK2 French edition.
It was released on Blu-ray in France on November 3, 2010 by MK2.
It will be released on Blu-ray in Australia by Madman Entertainment
Madman Entertainment
Madman Entertainment is an Australian company that distributes international films as well as Japanese anime and manga in Australia and New Zealand. The company is owned by Funtastic Limited and is one of the major entertainment companies in Australia. It employs 130 people and has an annual...
on February 8, 2012, marking the 20th anniversary of the films theatrical release.
Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost
Mark Frost
Mark Frost is an American novelist, television/film writer, director, who is best known as a writer for the TV show Hill Street Blues and co-creator of the show Twin Peaks.-Personal life:...
posted on his Twitter that there is a possibility that the deleted scenes will be released as part of a Blu-ray version of the Twin Peaks Definitive Gold Box Edition.
Legacy and sequel
According to cinematographer Ron Garcia, the film was popular in JapanJapan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
in particular, with women, as Martha Nochimson wrote in her book on Lynch's movies, "He surmises that the enthusiasm of the Japanese women comes from a gratification of seeing in Laura some acknowledgment of their suffering in a repressive society." Released under the title, Twin Peaks: The Last Seven Days of Laura Palmer, it was greeted with long lines of moviegoers at theaters.
In retrospect, Lynch has said “I feel bad that Fire Walk With Me did no business and that a lot of people hate the film. But I really like the film. But it had a lot of baggage with it. It’s as free and as experimental as it could be within the dictates it had to follow."
The film’s editor Mary Sweeney
Mary Sweeney
Mary Sweeney is an American film editor and producer best known for collaborating with the avant-garde American film director, David Lynch...
said, "They so badly wanted it to be like the T.V. show, and it wasn’t. It was a David Lynch feature. And people were very angry about it. They felt betrayed." For her part, Lee is very proud of the film, saying, "I have had many people, victims of incest
Incest
Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...
, approach me since the film was released, so glad that it had been made because it helped them to release a lot."
After Fire Walk with Me was released, Lynch reportedly planned two more films that would have continued and then concluded the series' narrative. But in a 2001 interview, he said that the Twin Peaks franchise is “dead as a doornail.”
Soundtrack
The soundtrack placed at #1 on an NMENME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
list of the 50 best film soundtracks ever in 2011.
Track listing
- "Theme from Twin Peaks-Fire Walk with Me" 6:40
- "The Pine Float" 3:58
- Jimmy ScottJimmy ScottJimmy Scott , aka "Little" Jimmy Scott, is an American jazz vocalist famous for his unusually high contralto voice which is due to Kallmann's syndrome, a very rare genetic condition. The condition stunted his growth at four feet eleven inches until, at age 37, he grew another 8 inches to the...
- "Sycamore Trees" 3:52 - "Don't Do Anything (I Wouldn't Do)" 7:17
- Thought Gang - "A Real Indication" 5:31
- Julee CruiseJulee CruiseJulee Cruise is an American singer, and actress.With a distinctive, airy voice, Cruise has recorded three albums, but is probably best known for the lead vocal on "Falling," the theme song for the cult U.S. television series Twin Peaks...
- "Questions in a World of Blue" 4:50 - "The Pink Room" 4:02
- Thought Gang - "The Black Dog Runs at Night" 1:45
- "Best Friends" 2:12
- "Moving Through Time" 6:41
- "Montage from Twin Peaks: Girl Talk/Birds in Hell/Laura Palmer's Theme" 5:27
- "The Voice of Love" 3:55
The climactic scene of the film and the closing credits are accompanied by excerpts from the Agnus Dei of the Requiem in C Minor by Luigi Cherubini
Luigi Cherubini
Luigi Cherubini was an Italian composer who spent most of his working life in France. His most significant compositions are operas and sacred music. Beethoven regarded Cherubini as the greatest of his contemporaries....
. This music is not included on the CD.