In The Trees
This is my "Twin Peaks" edition of my How I Fell In Love With: series, but I wanted to give it a different title. "In The Trees" was the title of the Twin Peaks fanzine that I published for several issues back in late 1991 (if memory serves), around the time that the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me was released. By that point, I was a certified peaksfreak. I carried my official Twin Peaks residence card, issued by The Twin Peaks Gazette. I lived on Enthwistle but I don't recall my "address." I could talk endlessly about the show and trivia related to it, and often I did (whenever someone would listen).
Let's back up though, shall we. April 5, 1990. I was a seventh grader at Paradise Middle School, living on a farm in rural western Kansas. For some reason that night, my dad was eagerly awaiting the premiere of a new television show, which was really odd for my dad. Usually he paid little attention to television unless it was sports or Johnny Carson. To this day I don't know how he had heard about Twin Peaks, or what about it had caught his interest. But I was there when he and my mom tuned in for the pilot episode. My attention level was typical of a thirteen year old, and I vaguely recall myself leaving the room several times during the telecast to go fight in the hallway with my brother.
My parents, I think under the mistaken assumption that it was a mini-series rather than a full series, tuned in for the next two episodes in anticipation of the answer to the question that seemed to be on the whole country's mind: Who Killed Laura Palmer. After the bizarre dream sequence in the third episode, my parents began to lose interest while conversely I became more intrigued. I think I caught on, early in the game, that the show wasn't so much about who killed Laura Palmer, but rather it was about the town, it's inhabitants, and the mystery surrounding it all. I was OK with things not making sense. It was the first time I saw something on television that dared to stray so far away from the normal bounds of reality yet without seeming hokey or cheesy.
I tuned in for all the remaining episodes of that short first season, having to tape one of them and watch it when I got home from the 8th grade graduation ceremony that May. After the season finale with it's many cliffhangers, I was officially obsessed. I bought books, magazines, any merchandise I could find.
I think the pinnacle of my excitement was the premiere of season two. I had been watching the re-runs all summer, reading up on the cast and crew, and was delighted by Kyle MacLachlan's appearance as host on the season premiere of Saturday Night Live, where the cast did an excellent parody of the series.
The two-hour season premiere, directed by David Lynch, was perhaps one of the weirdest episodes in the series. Everything about it had me dazzled. The weirder things got, the more excited I became. The fact that the show was losing audience members in droves only made it more appealing to me. I knew that the mainstream wasn't ready to deal with the new off-the-wall concepts that the show was delving into and it felt almost like they were catering to me rather than to a mass market.
During that second season, I lived and breathed for Twin Peaks. I waited as patiently as a 14 year old can wait for each new episode, at one point even discovering that the episodes were shown a day or two earlier on some random satellite feed that I was able to get with our huge dish in the frontyard.
I felt the pain of the hiatus late in the second season and the uncertainty with the show's future. I feared the worst, and when the two-hour series finale aired on June 10, 1991, it was a very bittersweet occasion. That episode, with it's mind-blowing last segment in the Red Room, was something I watched over and over again that summer. I didn't want to let go. But eventually I had to.
Luckily for me, it wasn't too long after the series cancellation that Fire Walk With Me, the movie, was announced. So I had something to look forward to, trailers to videotape off the TV, articles to cut out of magazines, etc. I even took it upon myself to start writing a script for the "third season" of the show, which I was hoping would come to fruition after my anticipated sucess of the feature film.
It was around this time that I began to correspond with Peaks fans around the country, and even some overseas. We would talk about our favorite moments, characters and quotes from the show. Ultimately I decided to create my own fanzine for the show, using some of the more obscure press clippings I had dug up on microfilm at the nearby university library, along with my own "insights" and ideas, all designed with care and vinyl sticky letters and photocopied at a local grocery store's pay machines.
Looking back, I think college was the time my fascination with the world of Twin Peaks began to finally fade away, as so many things do once you finally have things like a job, college papers and rent to deal with. I also retained a fondness for the show, but my collection of Twin Peaks VHS tapes and memorabelia began to collect dust on my shelves until ultimately, I actually ended up selling many of the items on eBay to fund my transcontinental move to Los Angeles after college. Whatever was left I packed in a box in my parent basement.
I believe it was 2001 when the first season was finally released on DVD, delivering a crisp clean picture and audio that was better than I'd ever seen it before. However, because my heart really always belonged more to the second season, I decided not to watch the whole thing until I could watch the whole series from beginning to end. Little did I know that it would be over five years before that would happen.
So here we are today, April 2007, and Season two was released on DVD yesterday, the 3rd. Of course I was first in line to buy it. I already breezed through the first season in the past two weeks and last night I sat down on the couch with the curtains closed, lights off, and watched the first episode of season two. It was a magnificent experience.
Well, I realize in this blog I've mainly just given an account of my timeline with Twin Peaks and haven't actually delved into much of the complexities of the show or my feelings about it. Let this serve as an introduction, because I feel there is more I need to discuss but this has become rather lengthy, so for now I shall sign off.
Let's back up though, shall we. April 5, 1990. I was a seventh grader at Paradise Middle School, living on a farm in rural western Kansas. For some reason that night, my dad was eagerly awaiting the premiere of a new television show, which was really odd for my dad. Usually he paid little attention to television unless it was sports or Johnny Carson. To this day I don't know how he had heard about Twin Peaks, or what about it had caught his interest. But I was there when he and my mom tuned in for the pilot episode. My attention level was typical of a thirteen year old, and I vaguely recall myself leaving the room several times during the telecast to go fight in the hallway with my brother.
My parents, I think under the mistaken assumption that it was a mini-series rather than a full series, tuned in for the next two episodes in anticipation of the answer to the question that seemed to be on the whole country's mind: Who Killed Laura Palmer. After the bizarre dream sequence in the third episode, my parents began to lose interest while conversely I became more intrigued. I think I caught on, early in the game, that the show wasn't so much about who killed Laura Palmer, but rather it was about the town, it's inhabitants, and the mystery surrounding it all. I was OK with things not making sense. It was the first time I saw something on television that dared to stray so far away from the normal bounds of reality yet without seeming hokey or cheesy.
I tuned in for all the remaining episodes of that short first season, having to tape one of them and watch it when I got home from the 8th grade graduation ceremony that May. After the season finale with it's many cliffhangers, I was officially obsessed. I bought books, magazines, any merchandise I could find.
I think the pinnacle of my excitement was the premiere of season two. I had been watching the re-runs all summer, reading up on the cast and crew, and was delighted by Kyle MacLachlan's appearance as host on the season premiere of Saturday Night Live, where the cast did an excellent parody of the series.
The two-hour season premiere, directed by David Lynch, was perhaps one of the weirdest episodes in the series. Everything about it had me dazzled. The weirder things got, the more excited I became. The fact that the show was losing audience members in droves only made it more appealing to me. I knew that the mainstream wasn't ready to deal with the new off-the-wall concepts that the show was delving into and it felt almost like they were catering to me rather than to a mass market.
During that second season, I lived and breathed for Twin Peaks. I waited as patiently as a 14 year old can wait for each new episode, at one point even discovering that the episodes were shown a day or two earlier on some random satellite feed that I was able to get with our huge dish in the frontyard.
I felt the pain of the hiatus late in the second season and the uncertainty with the show's future. I feared the worst, and when the two-hour series finale aired on June 10, 1991, it was a very bittersweet occasion. That episode, with it's mind-blowing last segment in the Red Room, was something I watched over and over again that summer. I didn't want to let go. But eventually I had to.
Luckily for me, it wasn't too long after the series cancellation that Fire Walk With Me, the movie, was announced. So I had something to look forward to, trailers to videotape off the TV, articles to cut out of magazines, etc. I even took it upon myself to start writing a script for the "third season" of the show, which I was hoping would come to fruition after my anticipated sucess of the feature film.
It was around this time that I began to correspond with Peaks fans around the country, and even some overseas. We would talk about our favorite moments, characters and quotes from the show. Ultimately I decided to create my own fanzine for the show, using some of the more obscure press clippings I had dug up on microfilm at the nearby university library, along with my own "insights" and ideas, all designed with care and vinyl sticky letters and photocopied at a local grocery store's pay machines.
Looking back, I think college was the time my fascination with the world of Twin Peaks began to finally fade away, as so many things do once you finally have things like a job, college papers and rent to deal with. I also retained a fondness for the show, but my collection of Twin Peaks VHS tapes and memorabelia began to collect dust on my shelves until ultimately, I actually ended up selling many of the items on eBay to fund my transcontinental move to Los Angeles after college. Whatever was left I packed in a box in my parent basement.
I believe it was 2001 when the first season was finally released on DVD, delivering a crisp clean picture and audio that was better than I'd ever seen it before. However, because my heart really always belonged more to the second season, I decided not to watch the whole thing until I could watch the whole series from beginning to end. Little did I know that it would be over five years before that would happen.
So here we are today, April 2007, and Season two was released on DVD yesterday, the 3rd. Of course I was first in line to buy it. I already breezed through the first season in the past two weeks and last night I sat down on the couch with the curtains closed, lights off, and watched the first episode of season two. It was a magnificent experience.
Well, I realize in this blog I've mainly just given an account of my timeline with Twin Peaks and haven't actually delved into much of the complexities of the show or my feelings about it. Let this serve as an introduction, because I feel there is more I need to discuss but this has become rather lengthy, so for now I shall sign off.
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