TWIN PEAKS Explained: Owls, Coffee, and Cherry Pie

His return from an intergalactic journey to a small, quintessentially American town, brought to life by the director’s childhood memories, proved to be a triumph. Once again, Lynch could tell stories about a place he knew and understood, and the audience rediscovered his talent for creating worlds hovering between dream and reality, capable of swiftly transforming into a violent nightmare. Twin Peaks

In Lynch’s reality, the bugs crawling beneath the pristine green lawns of Blue Velvet are a potent metaphor for how the filmmaker perceives the world around us.

It doesn’t matter if the view outside our windows is a concrete jungle or a dense thicket of Douglas firs like the one Agent Cooper admired upon entering the town of Twin Peaks, located near the Canadian border. We must always remember that the owls are not what they seem, and that behind every bed’s headboard, the terrifying and wild face of Bob might one day appear, waiting for our moment of weakness.

La Dolce Vita?

The year 1986 brought many changes for Lynch. On one hand, there was the media attention and recognition from peers, fueled by the premiere of Blue Velvet.

Another Oscar nomination for Best Director, inclusion among the best screenwriters at the Golden Globes, praise from critics, and Woody Allen stating that the story of Dorothy Vallens was the best film he had seen all year, including Hannah and Her Sisters.

On the other hand, Lynch’s emotional nature once again put a strain on his family life. His affair with Isabella Rossellini was no longer a secret, and passionate photos from the set of Blue Velvet had already been reprinted in dozens of tabloids. Mary Fisk, the director’s then-partner, did not take the situation well and harbored deep resentment toward her husband for a long time. The couple divorced in 1987, but even before the legal proceedings were finalized, Lynch moved from Virginia, located on the East Coast, to Los Angeles, one of the most famous cities on the West Coast.

Among the fallout from the marital disputes was the irreversible loss of over twenty minutes of unpublished Eraserhead footage, which Mary Fisk unknowingly threw away while cleaning the house after Lynch moved out. In wars, innocent victims always suffer, and in this case, Henry Spencer was the casualty.

In California, Lynch purchased the Johnson House, a modernist building designed by Lloyd Wright, the son of one of the most important architects of the 20th century, Frank Lloyd Wright. Despite its size, Lynch did not ask Rossellini to leave New York and move to Los Angeles. Due to their professional commitments, the couple preferred to maintain separate lives. However, this didn’t mean they only saw each other on special occasions. Lynch was a frequent guest at Rossellini’s home, and they were often spotted boating together around Long Island. Thanks to Rossellini’s connections, Lynch was introduced to Leo Castelli, one of the most influential contemporary art dealers. Castelli had worked with renowned artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, and after meeting Lynch, who had never abandoned painting, the gallery owner agreed that his works were remarkable and organized a prestigious exhibition featuring Lynch’s paintings.

For the son of a forester who once gave up everything to move to Europe and study painting under Oskar Kokoschka, this was a dream come true.

Lynch’s relationship with Rossellini also made one of his dreams come true. In 1987, the American visited her on the set of Nikita Mikhalkov’s Dark Eyes, where Marcello Mastroianni played the lead male role. During the visit, while filming in Italy, Lynch mentioned at dinner with Rossellini and Mastroianni that he had always dreamed of meeting Fellini. The next morning, a car sent by Mastroianni was waiting at Lynch’s hotel door, arranged to take him to Cinecittà, Italy’s largest film studio, where Fellini was filming Intervista. Lynch spent the entire shooting day on set, and Fellini invited him to lunch with Anita Ekberg. For Lynch, this was a pivotal moment, as he had always found something in Fellini’s cinema that resonated with his own artistic vision.

The surreal worlds of Fellini, where a melancholic blend of memories, reflections on life, and seemingly trivial, comedic, and even grotesque scenes merge into a complex portrait of humanity, share much in common with Lynch’s American dreams and nightmares. There must have been a bond between the two creators because a few years later, after Lynch and Rossellini had separated, and Lynch was in Italy shooting a commercial with Tonino Delli Colli, the renowned cinematographer who had also worked with Fellini, the master agreed to receive him in the hospital, from which he would never emerge. Lynch recalls that Fellini sat in a wheelchair, holding his hand throughout their conversation, lamenting that cinema was changing and no longer what it used to be. Two days after their meeting, Fellini fell into a coma from which he never awoke. Lynch was thus one of the last people to have the privilege of discussing Fellini’s greatest love—cinema.

The year 1987 was significant for Lynch for at least two other reasons. At the request of the French magazine Figaro, which, on its tenth anniversary, asked a group of renowned filmmakers to create a short film on the theme “France as seen by…,” Lynch made his first full-fledged comedy. The Cowboy and the Frenchman is a twelve-minute play on stereotypes about Americans and French people, featuring Harry Dean Stanton, Frederic Golchan, and Jack Nance. In addition to Lynch, filmmakers such as Werner Herzog, Andrzej Wajda, Jean-Luc Godard, and Luigi Comencini were asked to contribute.

Another reason 1987 stood out for Lynch was his decision to take a role in Tina Rathborne’s film Zelly and Me. He starred in the lead male role, acting alongside his partner Isabella Rossellini. Before this project, Lynch had generally avoided appearing on screen, and the idea of playing a major role in a film filled him more with dread than excitement. Though Zelly and Me was neither a commercial nor an artistic success, it can be seen as a subtle and sensitive portrayal of the real-life relationship between two people, rather than fictional characters, immortalizing the bond between Lynch and Rossellini, making it a film worth remembering.

Toward the Canadian Border

After returning from the set of Dark Eyes, Lynch was contacted by a producer from Warner Bros.

who informed him that they wanted to discuss the possibility of making a film about the last days of Marilyn Monroe’s life. The production was intended to be a loose adaptation of the biography Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe by Anthony Summers. Since both the blonde beauty icon and Elvis Presley were childhood heroes of Lynch, the director quickly agreed to review the studio’s concept. Lynch’s fascination with Monroe reportedly ran so deep that he once won an auction to acquire a piece of red velvet that had been part of the curtain behind her during the famous 1956 calendar shoot.

Given that Lynch saw Monroe’s story as one of a girl who appeared to live a happy life, only for dark forces to begin creeping under her door, and considering that velvet has always been one of the director’s fetishes, one could speculate whether that calendar shoot might have been the foundation for the creation of a certain Red Room. Following this train of thought, the post-mortem photographs of Marilyn Monroe that surfaced in the media and appeared in some editions of Summers’ book may have lodged themselves in Lynch’s memory, only to resurface later on the grey beaches of Twin Peaks.

The screenplay for the film about Monroe was to be written by Mark Frost, who revered Summers’ book to an almost cult-like degree.

It was at Warner Bros. that Lynch and Frost first met, and after a brief conversation, they immediately clicked. When the Monroe project was rejected by the studio for political reasons—neither Lynch nor Frost wanted to soften the book’s message or ignore the strong suggestions of a connection between Monroe’s death and her alleged affairs with the Kennedy brothers—the two men remained in contact. Their next project, titled The Lemurians, was conceived as a television series. They were particularly encouraged to try their hand in the relatively new medium by Tony Krantz, a producer who appreciated Frost’s TV work (Hill Street Blues) and Lynch’s filmography, especially Blue Velvet.

The Lemurians was about two detectives investigating mysteries involving the interference of paranormal forces in our everyday world. These unwanted intruders and incomprehensible forces were linked to Jacques Cousteau’s sea explorations, where, during one of his expeditions, he accidentally uncovered a passage to a sunken continent—the mythical Lemuria. The two took their idea for the series to NBC, where executives politely listened to their pitch but quickly dismissed any chance of production. Detectives and paranormal beings would have to wait until 1993 for the debut of The X-Files.

Frost and Lynch, however, were not willing to give up. During a lunch together on Wilshire Boulevard, Lynch proposed creating a comedy called One Saliva Bubble. While working on the screenplay, the men, thanks to the kindness of Dino De Laurentiis, were given a small room in one of his residences. Lynch recalls that while writing, he and Frost would roll on the floor in laughter, thinking the script was one of the funniest things they had ever come up with. The premise was quite unusual: a large bubble was to hit a computer, causing a malfunction, which in turn made a satellite orbiting Earth send a beam capable of swapping personalities. The victims of the glitch were the residents of a small American town.

A man henpecked by his wife would switch bodies with a local gangster, while a group of tough guys would find themselves in the bodies of Chinese acrobats, and so on. Pretty strange, but then again, this was Lynch and Frost. Despite the involvement of Steve Martin and Martin Short, who agreed to take on the lead roles, One Saliva Bubble also failed to gain traction with producers. This led to yet another shared meal, this time at Du-par’s, located at the corner of Laurel Canyon and Ventura in Los Angeles. During the meal, they began discussing a girl found washed ashore wrapped in plastic. This conversation would soon change television history.

She Is Dead, Wrapped In Plastic

The creation of Twin Peaks, which in its early development was titled The Northwest Passage, was shaped by many of Lynch and Frost’s previous experiences.

It’s impossible to ignore the elements that connect the series to their earlier joint projects. Venus Descending, the story about the last days of Marilyn Monroe, closely mirrors the story of Laura Palmer. The evil forces intruding into the known world from places that should never have been discovered by humans evoke The Lemurians. The detective storyline is also linked to that project. The absurd humor at the core of One Saliva Bubble is reflected in the eccentric behavior of various characters and the fetishization of seemingly trivial activities (the famous cherry pie and coffee, the recurring motif of donuts devoured by law enforcement).

Twin Peaks also reflects influences that go beyond the creators’ joint work. Dale Cooper himself has something in common with Perry Mason, the title character of a series Lynch watched as a child. In the show, which aired in the late 1950s and 1960s, Mason was a lawyer and detective who solved cases without using weapons, relying solely on the power of deduction and keen insight. In Lynch’s imagination, Mason’s image was naturally distorted, resulting in one of the most iconic characters in television history. The structure of the town of Twin Peaks was also reportedly influenced by a joint viewing of Peyton Place by Lynch, Frost, and Krantz. They rented a screening room in Beverly Hills to watch Mark Robson’s film, which told the story of a small town dominated by a looming mill, reflecting the surreal and somewhat melodramatic atmosphere of Lynch and Frost’s series. What’s more, there are significant similarities between characters in Peyton Place and Twin Peaks.

Some of the characters inhabiting the town visited by Agent Cooper are references to figures from earlier stages of the creators’ work. The Man From Another Place has much in common with Ronnie Rocket, the character around whom Lynch’s never-made film was supposed to revolve. The One-Armed Man, Mike, is a tribute to the series The Fugitive, starring David Janssen. The killer pursued by a doctor wrongfully accused of murder, like Mike, was missing a limb.

However, from the idea at Du-par’s to the realization of the series, the Snoqualmie Falls—one of the most recognizable sights of Twin Peaks—had carried tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of gallons of crystal-clear water. The first meeting at ABC’s offices took place about three months after the conversation about the dead girl washed ashore. Lynch and Frost entered the meeting with Chad Hoffman, the head of drama series, armed only with that idea and a brief outline of how the story might develop. Initially, the murder of Laura and the investigation to find her killer were the central focus of the series. Over time, however, the idea evolved, largely thanks to Mark Frost, who was responsible for developing most of the characters.

The show expanded to focus on the many residents and their issues, which were exposed by the disruption of their monotonous lives caused by Laura’s death. Despite the limited information, Chad Hoffman commissioned a script for the pilot. This decision may have been influenced by the Writers Guild of America strike, which severely disrupted the lives of TV and film producers for much of 1988. In such circumstances, an intriguing idea and two determined creators eager to bring it to television were worth their weight in gold.

From the meeting with Hoffman, things moved quickly. Lynch and Frost carefully discussed the direction of their project, and within nine days, they completed the script for a pilot episode as long as a feature film. They took the finished script back to ABC, where Brandon Stoddard, head of entertainment, ordered a two-hour pilot for the series, which could potentially air by the end of 1989. Additionally, the creators agreed to shoot two versions of the premiere episode—one for the U.S. market and another for international audiences. The latter would not only be longer but would also have to resemble a closed story more than the American version. This was reportedly a precaution to safeguard the network from losing money in case the pilot turned out to be the first and last episode.

If that happened, what would have gone to the world wouldn’t be a TV series, but rather a film made by David Lynch for ABC, ensuring the studio recouped its investment. The debut of Twin Peaks was ultimately allocated just over four million dollars.

The completed pilot was, of course, returned to the studio, where it received a positive reception from Robert Iger, who convinced the decision-makers to present it to focus groups consisting of younger, more open-minded viewers. Their positive reaction ultimately led the network to order seven additional episodes and declare that if the first season proved successful, more episodes would be commissioned. Twin Peaks was set to air on American television in the spring of 1990.

A lot of work was still done during the production of the pilot episode. From the beginning, Lynch and Frost agreed that part of the filming should take place in northern Washington state. They chose the small town of Snoqualmie, located less than 200 kilometers from where Kyle MacLachlan, the actor playing Agent Cooper, was born and raised. By chance, the crew also found an old and worn-out sawmill that was scheduled for modernization after filming, to update it for modern wood processing. Lynch recalls that the highest-paid person working among the tons of felled trees was a strange-looking woman who would approach the drying logs and tap them with a stick. A brief inspection supposedly allowed her to determine the best use for each tree.

The Log Lady would have surely found a kindred spirit in her.

Most of the interiors in the series were built in film studios in Los Angeles, but that doesn’t mean that Washington’s forests and coastlines didn’t challenge the film crew. Lynch recalls that during the filming of the pilot, it was so cold that he decided to visit a specialty mountaineering clothing store. The salesperson offered him pants that, according to his assurances, would keep him warm even during a Mount Everest climb. Although the outfit was so expensive that Lynch was offered a payment plan, it turned out that during the nighttime shoots, even these high-altitude pants didn’t quite do the job. This makes Sheryl Lee’s (Laura Palmer) heroic performance even more admirable—almost naked and covered in gray dye, she allowed herself to be repeatedly wrapped in plastic and laid on the cold gravel by the icy water.

And speaking of Sheryl Lee, it’s worth mentioning how Frost and Lynch assembled the rest of the cast. After the success of Blue Velvet, casting Kyle MacLachlan for the project was a mere formality. From the start, Lynch said what he continues to say to this day—Kyle was simply born for the role.

Additionally, the role of Cooper is, in a sense, a development of Jeffrey Beaumont from Blue Velvet, a character who, with youthful naivety, tried to track down the owner of a severed ear. However, many more members of Lynch’s film family appeared in the series. The privilege of discovering Laura’s body and uttering the famous line “She is dead, wrapped in plastic” went to Jack Nance. The role of the Log Lady was played by Catherine Coulson, Nance’s ex-wife and a longtime friend of Lynch.

Everett McGill, who played Ed Hurley, had been introduced to Lynch on the set of Dune. The directing team included Caleb Deschanel, Tim Hunter (school friends), Diane Keaton (an acquaintance), and Tina Rathborne (director of Zelly and Me). Among the editors was Mary Sweeney, one of Lynch’s most loyal friends and future wife, while Angelo Badalamenti composed the music, becoming a near-permanent fixture in Lynch’s world since Blue Velvet.

Other characters were cast through auditions or through the kind of happenstance typical of Lynch’s projects. For instance, Harry Goaz, who played Officer Andy Brennan, met Lynch in a taxi before a Roy Orbison concert. It wouldn’t be remarkable, except for the fact that Goaz was driving the taxi. After a brief conversation, Lynch told him to contact his casting coordinator as soon as he got home. Frank Silva, beloved by fans for his role as the demonic Bob, initially worked on the set as a part of the scenic crew. As fate would have it, he accidentally appeared in the frame during a scene shot at the Palmer house, and Lynch felt he was a perfect fit for this world, thus creating the character of Bob.

Michael J. Anderson got his role in a similar way. While editing the second version of the pilot’s ending, Lynch left CFI studios in Los Angeles and approached his car. It was a scorching day. When he touched the hot metal of his car, a vision of a wildly red room and a small man speaking backward appeared to him. Since Lynch had met Anderson when planning Ronnie Rocket, the character from the Red Room quickly took shape with the features we know from the most mysterious scenes of the series. It’s easy to see that Agent Cooper has much in common with Lynch himself. Both often let intuition and wild visions overpower reason.

The marketing machine for Twin Peaks was already in motion long before its television premiere. The pilot was shown to influential critics, who immediately hailed it as a revolution in television.

When April 8, 1990, finally arrived—the day of its ABC debut—some magazines dedicated entire pages to Twin Peaks, a highly unusual practice for a series that had yet to be tested with an audience. Lynch himself loved the world he created with Mark Frost, but he was anxious about how it would fare on television. The director lamented the poor sound quality of home TVs, the ability to adjust screen settings (which allowed for tampering with the image), and the commercials that interrupted the show three times per episode, pulling viewers out of the series’ world.

However, all his concerns proved unfounded. Twin Peaks was a huge success. After April 8, 1990, all of America was asking the question: Who killed young and innocent Laura Palmer?

Into the Night

Laura’s murder was undoubtedly the driving force behind Twin Peaks. Viewers couldn’t be thrown into the deep end too quickly, and the murder mystery served as a hook to draw them into a game where everyone tried to solve the crime on their own. However, there have been countless stories about crime and the search for a culprit, so the show’s phenomenon can’t be traced solely to this element of its structure. The question “Who killed Laura Palmer?” quickly became a slogan that brought hordes of new fans to the series, but after the initial excitement subsided, it’s clear that Lynch and Frost lured everyone in with a perfectly sharpened hook.

Laura’s death was important, but it soon became apparent that it wasn’t the central focus of the story. With each episode, viewers realized that the investigation, while still present, was overshadowed by the prosaic realities of daily life. But when you see the world through David Lynch’s eyes, everything becomes strange and mysterious. Twin Peaks can be called a crime drama, a soap opera, or even a postmodernist variation blending both genres, but that’s merely a game of categorizing the show into film theory boxes. In essence, the story of the small town, surrounded by a sea of Douglas firs, is another journey beneath the lawn we first saw in Blue Velvet.

In one of the most violent scenes from Blue Velvet, the demonic Frank Booth takes Jeffrey Beaumont on what he calls a “ride.” The speeding car hurtles down a dark road toward impenetrable blackness, with Jeffrey sitting inside, witnessing Booth’s bouts of madness and fury. In the context of Twin Peaks, this scene takes on special significance because Lynch and Frost are doing the same thing to the viewers as Booth does to Beaumont. The only difference is that we ask for the ride, and the car moves more slowly, allowing us to notice more details and contemplate what lurks in the darkness yet to be explored. It’s no coincidence that Julee Cruise sings Into the Dark on the show’s soundtrack.

When Laura’s battered body washes ashore in Twin Peaks, something breaks. It’s no longer possible to hide secrets or maintain the myth of small-town paradise. Night is coming, and in Lynch’s world, nighttime is when even the walls of your own home can’t protect you. Night seeps through every crack, penetrating the smallest crevices. It cannot be stopped.

The murderous Bob is an embodiment of the obsession that drives Lynch’s entire body of work. From a young age, even before venturing into the woods with his father, Lynch sensed that something lurked among the majestic trunks of trees.

The pests that his father hunted on their countless expeditions attacked the forest from within, but without them, nothing would be the same. Lynch knew as a child that without them, the robins, symbolizing goodness and love in Blue Velvet, would most likely fly away in search of another place, leaving everyone to suffer and experience pain. In the sequence that opens every episode of Twin Peaks, a robin also appears. From the start, we should understand that the evil lurking among the Douglas firs is not left unchecked. In Lynch’s world, there is always a real counterbalance to it. Even when it gets very dark, the hope for a sudden burst of light never dies.

Although it may sound controversial, Lynch never delved too deeply into symbolism. His films appeal more to emotions and sensitivity than to intellect. For this reason, I treat all elaborate analyses of Twin Peaks with great caution. Dissecting the meaning of specific words, gestures, objects, and motifs seems to me not so much fruitless as unnecessary. Lynch has always been more concerned with the feelings and impressions that his images evoke in viewers.

When creating the world of Twin Peaks, did Lynch know that owls were considered symbols of evil and death among many Native American tribes? Perhaps. But this information isn’t crucial to the audience’s experience. It may enrich the context and help explain the connection between the nocturnal predators and Bob, but that’s all. Even without this fact—and without many of the details mentioned here—Twin Peaks remains a fully communicative work. What matters is that, like Agent Cooper, we allow ourselves to be guided by emotions, feelings, and impressions, rather than rational analysis of the clues left by the show’s creators.

Most of us have likely experienced entering a forest at night and felt that irrational fear that comes from leaving the lit path and stepping into a space shrouded in darkness. That’s what Twin Peaks is all about. In Lynch’s world, life is an ongoing oscillation between light and darkness. Everyone enters the night at some point. Some people manage to find their way back to the light, while others, like Laura Palmer, lose their way and are consumed by the darkness forever.