Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces
Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces is a 2014 feature-length compilation of deleted and extended scenes from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, a 1992 film directed by David Lynch and written by Lynch and Robert Engels. Several scenes from Fire Walk with Me—a film that serves as a prequel to the television series Twin Peaks (1990–1991), created by Mark Frost and Lynch—were left unused in order to keep the film at a two-hour and fifteen minute running time. The Missing Pieces comprises the unused footage from Fire Walk with Me, piecing together the deleted scenes to make a feature-length film.
Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces | |
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Directed by | David Lynch |
Produced by | Gregg Fienberg |
Written by |
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Based on | Twin Peaks by Mark Frost David Lynch |
Starring | |
Music by | Angelo Badalamenti |
Cinematography | Ron Garcia |
Edited by | Mary Sweeney |
Production company |
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Distributed by |
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Release date | July 16, 2014 (Vista Theatre) |
Running time | 91 minutes |
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Language | English |
Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces features the cast of Fire Walk with Me, including Sheryl Lee, Moira Kelly, David Bowie, Chris Isaak, Harry Dean Stanton, Ray Wise, Kyle MacLachlan, and Mädchen Amick. Due to the expanded content, The Missing Pieces expands upon the fictional investigation into the murder of Teresa Banks (Pamela Gidley), as well as the last seven days in the life of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee), a popular high school student in the fictional Washington town of Twin Peaks. The Missing Pieces also includes scenes that feature characters from the television series that were excluded from Fire Walk with Me, such as Josie Packard (Joan Chen), Ed Hurley (Everett McGill), and Nadine Hurley (Wendy Robie).
Plot
Late at night, after performing the autopsy on the body of Teresa Banks, FBI Agents Sam Stanley and Chet Desmond discuss how much time had passed since they entered the morgue. They visit Hap's Diner, where Teresa once worked the night shift as a waitress, and question the diner's owner about Teresa. When the FBI seeks to move Teresa's body from the town of Deer Meadow to Portland, Sheriff Cable of Deer Meadow engages in a fight with Desmond and loses. Later, Special Agent Dale Cooper is shown in a doorway in the Philadelphia headquarters of the FBI talking to his secretary Diane. Next, Cooper meets Sam Stanley after Desmond went missing.
Agent Phillip Jeffries is shown checking into a hotel in Argentina. Jeffries is then seen vanishing when entering an elevator. He emerges from a different elevator several years later on the other side of the world and discusses the things that he saw in-between worlds. Later, the Black Lodge spirits, the Man from Another Place and Killer Bob, are shown residing above a convenience store.
One year later in Twin Peaks, Bobby Briggs and Mike Nelson discuss the fact that they owe Leo Johnson $5,000 and that their cocaine supply is running low. After going to school, Laura Palmer is horrified when she discovers pages ripped out of her diary. As she runs downstairs, she bumps into her mother, Sarah Palmer, who just got done grocery shopping. Laura asks to use the car, claiming she forgot her books.
Later, the Palmer family is having dinner when Leland Palmer attempts to teach his family how to introduce themselves and say their names in Norwegian, as Benjamin Horne is having a delegation of Norwegians arriving in a week and Leland wants his family to be able to introduce themselves properly. The family end up laughing together.
One night, Laura sneaks out of her house and meets a trucker in his truck and exchanges sex for drugs. Later, Laura is shown at the Double R Diner preparing to make the Meals on Wheels deliveries. Ed Hurley and Nadine Hurley enter the diner for coffee. When Nadine sees Norma Jennings working at the counter, she angrily makes Ed leave with her. When Shelly Johnson sees Laura staring at the place where Mrs. Tremond and her grandson were standing, Laura tells her that she cannot make the deliveries and runs off. Norma tells Shelly to do Laura's route. Norma begins to cry in a booth. Ed reenters the diner and apologizes.
Dale Cooper, trapped in the Black Lodge/Red Room, is shown talking to the Man from Another Place. When Laura discovers that BOB is her father, she runs crying to her best friend Donna Hayward's house.
At the Packard Saw Mill, Dell Mibbler complains to Josie Packard and Pete Martell that their two-by-fours are not exactly two inches by four inches. This causes Josie to become anxious and Pete to become irritated, who tells him that at Dell's bank the dollar is not worth the same as it used to be, which causes Dell to apologize.
Laura Palmer goes up the stairs and begins to hear the voice of BOB, coming from the ceiling fan. She slowly begins to become possessed by BOB, only to have her mother Sarah interrupt the possession. Sarah begins to have a nervous breakdown and Laura attempts to comfort her. Leo is later shown verbally and physically abusing his wife Shelly, and forces her to clean the kitchen floor.
One night, Laura and Donna go with two strangers that the former met at the Roadhouse, as they drive drunk and high on cocaine across the Canadian border to a night club. Teresa Banks pieces together information about her client who backed out earlier, and realizes it was Laura's father. She calls him in an attempt to blackmail him. Sheriff Harry S. Truman and his deputies, Andy and Hawk meet to discuss catching a local drug dealer.
After Bobby killed a crooked cop the night before, he meets Laura at her locker at school and asks her to hide $10,000 in her safety deposit box. Laura antagonizes Bobby about the situation, which makes him angry. Bobby goes into the woods and discovers that the drugs he almost got killed over were nothing but baby laxatives. Dr. Lawrence Jacoby calls Laura and questions why she has not called or visited him recently. Laura shows disgust in her facial expression and says that she made audio tapes for him.
On the night of her death, Laura is having dinner with her mother, fully aware that her father is BOB. Feeling disgusted with her father and herself, she asks if she can go to Bobby's house. Major Briggs reads aloud from the Book of Revelation to his wife Betty. Lucy, Andy and Truman are shown at the Sheriff's Station. Later that night, Laura climbs out her bedroom window to meet James Hurley, one last time, she hides in the bushes outside her house as her father approaches the front door. Leland sees her, and follows her. The Log Lady is shown clenching her log as she hears the screams of Laura's murder.[1]
Epilogue
Two scenes take place after the end of the original television series. The first scene depicts Annie Blackburn being wheeled into the hospital after her encounter with Dale Cooper in the Black Lodge. She is wearing the ring Laura Palmer and Teresa Banks wore before their deaths until a nurse steals the ring off her finger. In the next scene, Dr. Hayward and Sheriff Truman hear Cooper/Bob smash his head against the mirror. The doppelgänger, still cackling "How's Annie?", hears them and lies on the floor. Dr. Hayward says that Cooper should go right back to bed. The doppelganger replies, "But I haven't brushed my teeth yet."
Cast
- Sheryl Lee as Laura Palmer
- Ray Wise as Leland Palmer
- Kyle MacLachlan as Special Agent Dale Cooper
- Mädchen Amick as Shelly Johnson
- Dana Ashbrook as Bobby Briggs
- Phoebe Augustine as Ronette Pulaski
- David Bowie as Special Agent Phillip Jeffries
- Joan Chen as Josie Packard
- Eric Da Re as Leo Johnson
- Don S. Davis as Major Garland Briggs
- Mary Jo Deschanel as Eileen Hayward
- Miguel Ferrer as Special Agent Albert Rosenfield
- Warren Frost as Dr. Will Hayward
- Pamela Gidley as Teresa Banks
- Harry Goaz as Deputy Sheriff Andy Brennan
- Heather Graham as Annie Blackburn
- Michael Horse as Deputy Sheriff Tommy "Hawk" Hill
- Chris Isaak as Special Agent Chester Desmond
- Moira Kelly as Donna Hayward
- Peggy Lipton as Norma Jennings
- David Lynch as Bureau Chief Gordon Cole
- James Marshall as James Hurley
- Everett McGill as Ed Hurley
- Jack Nance as Pete Martell
- Michael Ontkean as Sheriff Harry S. Truman
- Jürgen Prochnow as Woodsman
- Wendy Robie as Nadine Hurley
- Kimmy Robertson as Lucy Moran
- Harry Dean Stanton as Carl Rodd
- Charlotte Stewart as Betty Briggs
- Kiefer Sutherland as Special Agent Sam Stanley
- Russ Tamblyn as Dr. Lawrence Jacoby
- Lenny Von Dohlen as Harold Smith
- Grace Zabriskie as Sarah Palmer
- Frances Bay as Mrs. Tremond / Mrs. Chalfont
- Catherine E. Coulson as Margaret Lanterman / "The Log Lady"
- Michael J. Anderson as The Man from Another Place
- Frank Silva as Killer BOB
- Walter Olkewicz as Jacques Renault
- Al Strobel as Phillip Michael Gerard / MIKE
- Gary Hershberger as Mike Nelson
Production
Several scenes from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me had to be cut from the final product to keep the movie at a two-hour and fifteen minute running time. This film comprises the unused footage from Fire Walk with Me. Lynch pieced together all of the deleted scenes to make a feature-length film. This film shows a closer look into investigation into the murder of Teresa Banks and expands on the last seven days in the life of Laura Palmer, a popular high school student in the fictional Washington town of Twin Peaks, and has scenes that feature characters from the television series that had their scenes deleted from the final version of Fire Walk with Me. The production companies for the film are Absurda and MK2 Diffusion. The film was distributed by CBS/Fox Home Video and MK2 Diffusion.
The shooting script features several additional scenes that were never shot, including a conversation between Pete Martell and Big Ed Hurley at Big Ed's Gas Farm, a lunchtime picnic at which Sheriff Truman serenades Josie Packard and discusses why he would never eat fish eyes, and a rendezvous between Laura Palmer and Ben Horne at Johnny Horne's birthday party. This last scene was dropped due to actor Richard Beymer's reluctance to play it, because of the intimacy implied between his character and the 17-year-old Laura Palmer, as well as the fact that in the scene, Ben supplies Laura with cocaine.
Release
The Missing Pieces premiered on July 16, 2014, in Los Angeles' Vista Theatre before being released as a part of Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery on Blu-ray.[1]
Critical reception
Jace Lacob[2] noted how The Missing Pieces is not a typical "film" but is rather a collection of different moments that each capture a variety of emotions stating:
As Missing Pieces goes on, it begins to coalesce into something… it's not quite a film in its own right, but rather a series of vignettes that capture stolen moments. Some give us a deeper portrait of Laura and those around her — laughter at a family dinner table, a woman crying in an empty diner, the Log Lady (Catherine Coulson) hearing Laura's screams echo through the night, electricity crackling through power lines. It adds up to something alternately funny and heartbreaking, terrifying and uplifting. There's a rare humor and a raw horror at play here, subtly shifting the tone of Fire Walk with Me in the process.
He then goes on to say that while the film does not solve any of the mysteries surrounding Twin Peaks, it offers a different perspective for the intentions that Lynch had for Fire Walk with Me and gives a greater appreciation for Sheryl Lee's performance as Laura, noting:
Missing Pieces may not pull back the curtain on the larger mysteries of Twin Peaks or give us a definitive look at what happens to Cooper after his possession (other than his presence in the Black Lodge and him comforting Laura, whose spirit has arrived there — more time shifts!), but what these deleted and extended scenes do is give us a deeper appreciation both for what Lynch's maligned film set out to do and for the incredibly nuanced and powerful performance achieved by Lee here. Laura isn't a character in Twin Peaks, but rather an emblem. Here, Lee gives television's most famous dead girl a profound sense of vulnerability, exploring both her flaws and her strength in the face of a harrowing experience.
References
- Diaz, Eric (July 19, 2014). "Review: Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces". Nerdist. Retrieved June 24, 2017.
- Lacob, Jace (July 17, 2014). ""Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces" Makes You See "Fire Walk with Me" in a Different Way". BuzzFeed. Retrieved July 4, 2017.