"I'll see you again in 25 years," murdered homecoming queen Laura Palmer warbles to FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper in the eerie, extra-dimensional Black Lodge, her lips curved into a knowing grin. The scene unfolds toward the end of "Beyond Life and Death," the finale of "Twin Peaks" season 2, which aired June 10th, 1991 on ABC. And that bit of dialogue — seemingly just fodder for geeky water cooler debate, at worst a dreamlike narrative dead-end — wound up way more prescient than writer/showrunner/co-creator Mark Frost ever could have imagined.
In September 2015, acclaimed filmmaker/Frost's co-conspirator David Lynch began filming "Twin Peaks: The Return," a Showtime limited series that continues the surreal story of Agent Cooper (often under the guise of Dougie Jones – long story) and his evil doppelgänger, along with the quirky denizens of the fictional, titular Washington town. Oh, and given that this is a Lynch-Frost production, there's also a messy FBI investigation, an atomic explosion, terrifying hobo "woodsmen," a mysterious glass box that traps a demon-like figure, a horrifying arm-wrestling match, a chirping woman with no eyes, and a mutant frog-moth, among dozens and dozens of other mind-boggling mysteries and plot threads.
Frost already had his hands full co-writing "The Return," which he and Lynch originally started conceptualizing in 2012. But in an effort to build on their momentum, he decided to expand the Twin Peaks canon with a pair of novels: last year's "The Secret History of Twin Peaks" and the newly released "Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier."
"I'd been nurturing and thinking about ["The Secret History"] all the way back to when the series was on the air — going back in time and telling the whole history of the region, folding in all these different streams of information and mythology that informed the show and expanded the universe of the place where the show exists," he says.
"The Final Dossier" — framed as a series of FBI documents compiled by agent/Blue Rose Task Force recruit Agent Tammy Preston — is less sprawling in scope but equally essential for fans, expanding on some of the lingering mysteries from both The Return and the original series.
Frost spoke to Salon about "The Return's" most left-field scenes (like the "119" girl), his writing process with Lynch, Agent Cooper's innate heroism, the possibility of a fourth season, and how the "Twin Peaks" canon is sort of like The Beatles' "White Album."
You and David wrote the The Return together, and you left after that to start work on "The Secret History of Twin Peaks." I also know that David did some additional writing after that point. Then, of course, you also wound up writing this new book, "The Final Dossier." Could you help straighten out that timeline? And what was your ultimate goal in writing these books?
It coincided with the making of the show. We'd finished the shooting scripts in the spring of 2015, and my plan all along was to try to do a couple books in conjunction with the show. I knew ["The Secret History"] was going to come out before the series aired, so I also wanted to follow it up with a book that was able to answer, to some extent, a lot of the questions people might've had that had been unaddressed by the series, and then to build a little on what the new series had done narratively. So that's why I split them into two. The second book was written after production — the first six months of this year. I was writing the first book in conjunction with production. I was there about 40 percent of the time for production, but the rest of the time I had a hard deadline I had to meet. Obviously it was a pretty big book, so that took a lot of time and effort.
I'd like to talk about how your books fall into the "Twin Peaks" canon. David obviously wasn't involved in either of them, but did you have any discussions with him about what subjects you would — and perhaps could — cover? Did he just say, "Do whatever you want?"
It was a clear division of labor. I certainly didn't want the first book to give away anything that was pertinent to enjoying the series. That's why the two-book structure was gonna work. We gave each other creative license to do whatever we wanted: him with directing and me with writing the books.
You were the showrunner of the original "Twin Peaks," and you've arguably had more influence over this franchise than anyone. But should David's non-participation affect how fans approach the books? There's obviously some room for debate on this, but what are your thoughts? Should we consider the books an equal part of "Twin Peaks" universe?
Look, they are to me. [laughs] Lynch-Frost Productions did the series, but I wasn't involved with "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me" [Lynch's critically panned 1992 film prequel], and frankly, David wasn't that involved with most of season 1 — he was off making [his 1990 film] "Wild at Heart." I think the analogy I would use is, "This is like the Beatles' "White Album." There are Paul songs; there are John songs; there are Beatles songs." But they're all ultimately on the album. That's how people should think about it.
As I understand it, David continued to write scenes for "The Return" after you two finished the script, but he always sent over the material to get your approval before shooting. Is that correct?
Yeah, that's a very good description of how it happened. He would send me things, and I'd give him some feedback, and we'd leave it at that. You have to respect your partner's ability to do their work. The scenes were good, and it worked out fine.
I know one of the things you loved about writing "The Secret History" is getting to apply some of your novel-writing skills toward "Twin Peaks." Since you'd already stretched that particular muscle with the last book, was it a bit easier for you to write "The Final Dossier?"
I don't think I could have written the book 25 years ago. That's really when I began my career in publishing, and 13 or 14 books later I felt I was really ready to take that on — both from a form and content point of view. It was a real challenge, and it was one that I really enjoyed. Also I think having the narrative voices of those characters more firmly in my head made it a little easier [on "The Final Dossier"].
In "The Final Dossier," you write about Cooper's obligation toward saving women in jeopardy — and his troubled mother, who suffered mental and physical abuse. Is that an element of his character you'd had in mind all along, even throughout the show — Cooper's "white knight syndrome"?
That was referenced in the book we did the first time around [1991's "The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes," written by Frost's brother Scott, who also penned two Twin Peaks episodes]. That book did a lot, probably more than any other single thing, in establishing Cooper's psychological history. I just took a little thread and elaborated on it [in "The Final Dossier"]. In looking at him, that's a fundamental part of this character that's present in almost every action we see him take. It makes psychological sense, and that's ultimately what you're looking for.
Agent Preston is one of the most significant new characters in "The Return," and she's even more crucial to both "The Secret History" and "The Final Dossier."
She was created in the scripts first, and I felt that, given the ground I wanted to cover in the new book, and given her relationship to Cole and the fact that she's new to the whole narrative and the Blue Rose team, it made the most sense for her to be the person to learn as she goes and be the stand-in for us, as it were, without bringing a lot of preconceptions to what she's discovering.
In the show, we're never 100 percent clear on objectives of Cooper's evil doppelgänger, better known as "Evil Cooper." We know he doesn't want to be pulled back into the Black Lodge; we know he wants to find Philip Jeffries and Major Briggs; we know he wants to know about Judy; we know he wants coordinates. He also carries around that playing card with the evil symbol on it. In the book, Agent Preston seems to suggest a couple loose theories about where he's headed, and they're pretty intriguing. Should we follow her instincts?
Remember: Those are all written from her perspective in the story. She's part of the FBI unit that's trying to piece this together. Just to hold the logic, you've gotta go back and recreate, when she was writing the dossier, "What did she know and when did she know it?" And the audience is privy to things about Evil Coop that the FBI agents themselves haven't figured out yet. Everything is limited by her perspective and what they know by that point. They might discover things later on that don't fall within the purview of the moment in which she's writing this. It doesn't mean she's correct. She's just doing her job by running scenarios and trying to make sense of a very puzzling situation. In this case, the audience is actually ahead of her.
While there's still room for interpretation, the book gives us some extra closure on Audrey's fate. In a situation like that, where you elaborate on a really crucial scene from the show, is that something you and David discussed? Did you just decide you wanted to run with your own interpretation?
I would just say that what's in the book is just me responding to what's in the scripts. And I'll leave the rest to the reader.
Annie Blackburn appears in the book, and we learn a lot more about her story. She didn't however, appear in the show. Did you and David just not find a natural way to include her in the script, or did you want to save her for the book?
I think it's kind of a combination of both those ideas. She just kinda didn't come up in a lot of the conversations about where we needed to get to. And I felt a sort of narrative responsibility to answer the question that people have been asking for 25 years. [laughs]
In The Final Dossier, we learn that Laura Palmer's murder was never solved, and everyone's memory about the case is very fuzzy. In the show, Cooper appears to rescue Laura from her own death, an act that creates this altered reality with Richard, Linda, and Carrie Page. So "Laura"'s murder was never solved, which means Laura exists — but clearly not the same Laura.
I don't want to take you by the hand here and lead you to what it meant. Here's the point to take from it: The actions that Cooper takes have consequences, and they're unforeseen and unanticipated, and they open the door to all other sorts of strange and perhaps enigmatic things taking place.
You can't blame me for trying, right? It's not every day I get to grill the co-creator of "Twin Peaks."
[laughs] I don't blame you at all, believe me.
The coordinates are one of the running plot threads throughout the new season. In "Part 17," Evil Coop is transported from Jack Rabbit's Palace to a room inhabited by The Fireman – a space some fans have speculated could be the fabled "White Lodge." Is that an accurate label?
I don't want to over-interpret it for people, but if they're theorizing leads them there, that's certainly a valid point of view.
Obviously you and David share a core creative sensibility, but you also diverge a lot too — and that's part of the beauty of the show. Your narrative strengths balance out his surrealism. Were there any plot threads that you vetoed, or vice versa? Did you feel 100 percent comfortable with the final script by the end of it?
I was 100 percent comfortable. In the end, what matters is that people found a lot to like and a lot to intrigue them and a lot to mull over and consider. That's what you wanna do. You always want to leave people thinking and talking and considering what it is they've seen.
"What year is this?" feels destined to become one of those iconic final lines from a series, right up there with "Where's Annie?" Did you guys have to bat that one around much?
That was always the final line. That was in the script, and that was, I think, a great place to end it. But I think it isn't until you see a line like that onscreen that you know it makes perfect sense and that it's really the perfect place to leave it.
Even days after it aired, "Part 8" was already being hailed as one of the greatest TV episodes of all-time. Did you have any sense when you were writing it that it would be a game-changer?
Yeah, absolutely. [laughs] The idea obviously — or, well, not obviously — was that we'd never done anything close to what you might describe as a "Twin Peaks" origin story, [showing] where this pervasive sense of darkness and evil had come from. On the page, we wrote it in great detail. I think it was maybe 12, 15 pages. But as we were putting down the descriptions, I knew David was going to take that as the blueprint for something extraordinary. He ran with it and elevated it to a whole other level.
I think a lot of fans would love to check out that script and see how much detail was on the page. There are things like the atomic explosion that goes on 10-15 minutes at a time.
Yeah, the atomic explosion was probably half a page as written, but I knew that, in David's hands, it could run as long as 10 or 12 minutes, and it would be riveting. It was certainly a narrative departure from what we had done before. There was no question about that. But it needed to stand apart, and it needed to blow your mind. So mission accomplished.
That episode really helps deepen the mythology by expanding on the woodsmen and the convenience store. Did you spend a lot of time figuring out the mythology beforehand, or did those kinds of ideas evolve naturally as you wrote?
I would say it evolved as we wrote it. Now some of those things were part of the mythology that David introduced in "Fire Walk With Me." The woodsmen and the convenience store first appeared there, and it became a way of folding those into the overall mythology of the show. And I think there's a mutual enriching that took place with those scenes and the way they bleed into the world we're presenting. They expand the scope of the show mythologically. A lot of our discussions had to do with things like that – the things we talked about before we started writing. Goodness, we spent almost a year talking about stuff before we even wrote the first line.
I think a lot of fans were shocked at how crucial "Fire Walk With Me" — and, in particular, David Bowie's character from the film, Phillip Jeffries — became to the show. Did you spend a lot of time developing his story before you started writing?
Yes, and obviously he plays a huge role in unlocking the mysteries at the end. When you have such an indelible personality as David Bowie playing the part, I was very enthusiastic about helping to articulate exactly he meant to the overall narrative.
I know David sought out Bowie's approval to expand on the character.
Exactly right. I can't remember if David spoke to him directly or if it was done through emails, but he got Mr. Bowie's blessing to recreate the character and have somebody try to personify him vocally. [Lynch told Pitchfork that Bowie granted him permission to use his footage from "Fire Walk With Me," but he insisted they re-dub his lines with a voice actor. "I think someone must have made him feel bad about his Louisiana accent," the director said. "But I think it's so beautiful."]
It's a shame, of course, that he was too sick at that point to reprise his role, but it's amazing how you managed to work around the casting issue by using archival footage, voice dubbing, and, well, turning Jeffries into a machine that sort of looks like a tea kettle.
David found a fascinating way to do that visually, and I thought that was pretty cool. I have to tip my hat to David as a director. He's incredibly resourceful when shooting at responding to things as they happen and making the most of them. It's the hallmark of any great director, and David is particularly adept at that.
He also found a creative way to re-cast "The Arm" after original actor Michael J. Anderson declined to participate. In that case, did he just have to jump that creative hurdle after you'd finished writing?
David was responding with both of those instances to events that happened long after the scripts were finished. Certainly he ran the ideas by me, but I trusted his ability implicitly to make something extraordinary happen there, and he certainly crossed that threshold pretty easily.
In a recent Entertainment Weekly interview, David said that he came up with the character of Freddie — and his magical green gardening glove — "a long time ago" and just decided it worked in this story. A lot of people have criticized that storyline and character — it's definitely bizarre to have BOB defeated by this random guy who drops by at the last minute. In "The Final Dossier," Agent Preston writes, "Don't even get me going right now on that oddball Cockney kid with the green glove" — almost as if she too is criticizing that plot element.
I haven't seen any of the feedback, but I'll just give you a three-word answer: "deus ex machina."
Can you comment at all on why that random woman from "The Return" shouts "119"?
Uhhhh…no. [laughs]
I'm a member of this "Twin Peaks: The Return" Facebook group — I don't know if you're aware of it, but there are thousands of members, and the "119" woman seems to fascinate people.
I'm not aware of it. I actually cancelled my Facebook account after the events of the last year, but give them my best regards. [laughs] I'll give you one possible thing to think about [with the "119" woman]: The people who have one foot in the other world have a pronounced tendency to speak backwards.
We know Evil Cooper was trying to catch this entity in the glass box in New York City, but there's a lot mystery surrounding this creature. We saw it credited as "The Experiment," but it also looks almost identical to "Mother," the creation floating around after the nuclear explosion. It seems there is a direct correlation between these creatures and "Joudy"/Judy. Are we on the right track there?
I would say continue that line of thinking.
Hawk goes into the woods in episode 2, and it appears he's hunting for The Black Lodge, but that scene feels a bit random after what we'd seen so far. Was this a flash-forward? Was it written in that spot of the script?
That was written. To sum it up, it just says, "Hawk is on the case." You have to remember that he'd been to that place before 25 years ago, so maybe he's refreshing his memory.
There are all kinds of random visual things — possibly continuity errors or deliberately disorienting edits — that occur throughout the show. One that picked up a lot of buzz happened at the very end of "Part 13," with the glitch in Big Ed's reflection as he's drinking coffee and eating soup.
I heard about that, and I have to admit I didn't notice it. I'm not sure what fans are referencing there, to be honest. All I'll say is that might be a literal tempest in a teacup. [laughs]
Another weird moment: In "Part 7," Bing — played by David's son, Riley Lynch – storms into the Double R and asks, "Has anyone seen Billy?" After that moment, the customers in the diner change completely. Do you know if that was intentional?
I do, and I'd say that's a question for David. I don't know what the intention was there.
Now the important question: Did Albert Rosenfield find true love with Constance, the coroner? Was it real?
We'll never know. It might have been true love. It might have been a passing fancy in a midnight dream. But at least he got to dream.
"The Final Dossier" obviously wraps up some loose ends and gives fans some narrative closure, while obviously still leaving some mysteries up in the air. Do you feel like you've closed a door on "Twin Peaks" in some way?
I didn't really think of it like that. You sort of don't think of it that way. You just say, "Here's what I know. I hope it adds to your interest and appreciation of the world we created, and you take it from there."
It took you and David years to put this latest season together. And we all know that if there's going to be any continuation of this — whether it's another season, a movie — that it'll probably be awhile. But have you and David had any discussions at all about what form it would take or whether you'd want to do it at all?
I think the best answer here is "no comment."
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