From uwvax!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uunet!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!mcgill-vision!quiche!zeke Fri Oct 12 19:55:09 CDT 1990 Article 3892 of alt.tv.twin-peaks: Path: uwvax!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uunet!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!mcgill-vision!quiche!zeke >From: zeke@quiche.cs.mcgill.ca (Eric SHAMASH) Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks Subject: Stephen Nicholls - C.P. Message-ID: <5169@quiche.cs.mcgill.ca> Date: 5 Oct 90 02:16:02 GMT Distribution: na Organization: SOCS - Mcgill University, Montreal, Canada Lines: 151 WARNING: SEMI LONG... Disclaimer: The following was reprinted without permission. (The article appeared before episode 8) LOS ANGELES (CP) - Click. Testing one, two. Diane: It's 8:47 a.m., Los Angeles, Calif. I'm standing outside the Century Plaza Hotel, where directly ahead of me is a table full of gooey doughnuts. >From the way they've been stacked so meticulously, I'd say that I'm about to enter the world of Twin Peaks. That's not a town, Diane. Not a real onem anyway. It's a TV show. Sort of a murder-mystery soap opera spoof. Really blew away the critics this past spring. Not to mention millions of viewers who were left asking "who killed Laura Palmer?" Bit strange, though. Might even say it's set a new benchmak for that overused adjective, quirky. If you haven't watched the show, Diane, you've surely seen the volumes of press about it: analysis on the rampant duality, magazine layouts with complex character charts. Been think-pieced to death. Now they've got Twin Peaks T-shirts and coffee mugs, a soundtrack album, a line of cherry pies, a published version of Palmer's diary. There's even a cassette of the show's FBI agent, Dale Cooper, making tape-recorded memos to his unseen secretary. Next thing, folks will be stealing Cooper's style. Oh well, Diane, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, plagiarism must be homage. On to the news conference. Click. 9:42, Diane. Session's over. Executive producer Mark Frost was characteristically coy about what will happen this year. He said that the writers never intended to reveal Palmer's killer last season. If the show hadn't been renewed this season, they'd have made a movie to conclude the series. He insited they knew all along who the murderer was, despite rumours to the contrary. He also said that even after the Palmer murder is solved, Cooper will be hanging around Twin Peaks to work on other crimes. Click. Diane, I'm entering a hotel dining room for what's billed as breakfast with the Twin Peaks cast. The room has been decorated with a woodsy motif - bearskin rug, a chair made from animal horns. Cast members are scattered at tables throughout the room. Reporters are milling around doing off-the-cuff interviews. You know, Diane, a good indication of how hot a star is is how many reporters he or she can draw. Kyle MacLachlan, who plays Agent Cooper, is being swarmed. No surprise there. There's also a knot of male reporters around sultry Sherilyn Fenn, who plays Audrey Horne. Curious, nobody is tlking to Piper Laurie. Click. Diane, I'm standing directly behing MacLaughlan's left shoulder. His head is bobbing back and forth as questions fly at him from all sides. He hasn't touched his breakfast - scrambled eggs and hash browns - and his coffee looks cold. Pity. He's fiddling with something - a pack of Marlboros. Looks younger than Cooper, from what I can see of his face. Round wire-rimmed glasses. A booking but decidedly boyish look. Let me see if I can sneak in a question. Mr. MacLaughlan, Agent Cooper seems almost like a superhero. Does he have a tragic flaw? "It's there. It may take its time coming out. It's starting around the edges there a little bit, I think. Not exactly sure what direction it's going to go, but it's going to come out this season." The mystery builds. Click. Diane, I've spotted Frost. Not hard really. With white pants and a peacock coloured floral shirt, he stands out against the woodsy grain like a neon plam among northwest pines. Mr. Frost, a lot of people felt betrayed and angry by the ending last year when Laura Palmer's murder wasn't solved. Did you expect that reaction? "No. If I had, I might have done something different. That people cared so much to feel those kinds of emotions was kind of amazing. And I also think they'll get over it." Click. I'm talking to Bob Iger now, the big cheese at ABC. Mr. Iger, one problem with Twin Peaks was that it was hard to jump in if you weren't watching from the beginning. "One of the things that will be addressed in this coming season is to taler it to make it a little more accessible to the non-regular viewer. There will be more shows where there will be some closure to the story line. Certain story lines will stretch over two or three episodes instead of seven or eight." But isn't there a danger of loosng its cultish following? "No, it's never going to loose it's personality." Here, here. Click. [] CRITICS RAVE; VIEWERS STAY AWAY While Twin Peaks was a darling of the critics, it wasn't a stellar performer in ratings. Last season's much-hyped premiere was watched in nearly 20 million homes in the United States. By the end of the season, the show had slumped to 9.7 million. A similar drop occured in Canada. In southern Ontario, for example, 520,000 viewers tuned in for the premiere, and 310,000 to the last episode, Global Television said. The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences also ran hot and cold with Twin Peaks. The series was nominated for 14 emy awards, but took home only two: editing and costuming. * * * Paraphenalia available to Peak Freaks: [] An audio tape, the Twin Peaks Tapes of Agent Cooper, contains excerpts from the FBI agent's recorded memos to his secretary Diane - both those from the show and others. The tape includes such gems of Cooperian philosophy as "Leasing may be the fast track to affluence, but equity will keep you warm at night." [] The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer is a paperback version of the diary that the troubled homecoming queen left behind. The book is rife with sex, drugs, more sex, an abortion, morbid poetry and references to a mysterious violating entity called BOB. [] Soundtrack from Twin Peaks contains two versions of the opening theme, plus all the background tunes. [] The Twin peaks theme, or Falling as it's called when words are set to it, appears on the Julee Cruise album Floating Into The Night. [] Twin Peaks is a fictional town of 51,200 about two hours from Spokane, Wash., "five miles south of the Canadian border, 12 miles west of the state line." That puts it in either Idaho or Washington. * * * Some Twin Peaks trivia: [] Cooper has five black suits - "one for each day of the week." [] Laura Palemer was born on July 22, 1972. Palmer's "identical" cousin, Madelaine, is actually four years older. [] BOB shows up in the oddest places - Palmer's diary, Big Ed's gas pump, even as a credit ("Special Thanks to BOB") on the Julee Cruise album. [] [END OF ARTICLE] (- by STEPEN NICHOLLS, (C.P.) 09-30-90) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Eric Shamash (514) 340-1959 ||*(0 o)* "No matter how zeke@quiche.cs.mcgill.ca __ /// || \(c)/ thin you slice it, {...}!uunet!musocs!quiche \\\/// || | - | it's still baloney..." zeke%calvin@musocs.bitnet \\_/ || U ack pfffft...! - B. Breathed. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------