Twin Peaks, 25 years later!

It will happen, it’s official, it will happen!

Coming inside The Great Northern for the first time was a strange experience. It was Easter Day 1993 and I was there with a KIRO TV crew, covering the Easter brunch. Well, not me covering, I was a one day intern with reporter Bob Branom and camera man John Sherman. And The Great Northern wasn’t of course The Great Northern, but Salish Lodge.

To me though, a Twin Peaks fan, it was The Great Northern. The dark place with the dark people and the dark music sitting at the top of the impressive and somewhat scary waterfall. But Salish Lodge at Easter brunch was filled with happy families dressed up in bright colors having waffles with maple syrup. And the sun was shining through the cascades of water spraying from Snoqualmie Falls, creating rainbows.

Twin peaks was on air 1990 and 1991, so arriving in Seattle 1993, the world of Twin Peaks was still fresh and vibrant. Finding that Double R Diner actually existed (although the real name was Mar-T Café, now Tweede’s) and even the cherry pies, made the world even more real. Since then my visits to Snoqualmie and North Bend are uncountable, it was the given field trip with all our visitors from Sweden, and Trouble & Trouble in front of Snoqualmie Falls at different ages is a cute chronological through their lives.

Over the years a return of Twin Peaks has off and on been speculated about. The final episode didn’t give any real answers but kind of left us hanging, so there was definitely room for anyone with desires for the TV series, to wish for a sequel. And the real Twin Peaks nerds keep the interest alive with visiting the annual convention taking place in Snoqualmie and North Bend every summer. 

So can you imagine the exaltation when Showtime executives on Tuesday confirmed that Twin Peaks will be back and David Lynch will direct all episodes, with the production doing some shooting in Washington state in September?!!! 

In October 2014, it was announced that Twin Peaks would return for a limited series, but things didn’t work out and in April David Lynch jumped off the train to a future probable success, at least a lot of attention. Twin Peaks fans were incensed and the show’s cast began voicing support for Lynch’s vision of the revival on social media. And eventually, he jumped on the train again.

So is co-creator Mark Frost and Angelo Badalamenti who composed the film score  which by the way was written before the scenes were shot as a guide for the actors (!). 18 episodes are planned and they will probably be ready in 2017, or maybe even 2016.

Do you remember the dancing dwarf in Agent Cooper’s dreams? And the final episode with the little man slowly swinging among the red velvet curtains? The actor was Little Jimmy Scott, a jazz singer with an unusual high pitch voice, a contra alto. In summer 1995 I interviewed Jimmy Scott. He was just the sweetest man, welcoming me in a bathrobe and a turban around his head, a man who thought fondly about his character in Twin Peaks. Jimmy Scott died in 2014, so he won’t be in the new script, and the cast is still a secret. 

One thing is clear though, Kyle MacLachlan will return as Agent Cooper. Did you know he is a native Washingtonian himself, born i Yakima, east of the Cascades, the mountains where Twin Peaks has it’s home? And that the cherry pies was not in the script to start with? Lynch found Mar-T’s Café while scouting for locations, he and Kyle MacLachlin loved the interior, the pies and the coffee. And the rest is TV history.