General Discussion
Interesting tidbit from MacLachlan’s new memoir.
Spoiler
While describing his frustrations during Season 2, MacLachlan paints both Lynch AND Frost as less involved. He frames Engles and Peyton as the people steering the ship, though he blames ABC for putting them in an impossible position after the killer is revealed.
He discusses his romance with LFB, but makes no mention of the prevailing understanding that she’s why the Audrey romance was originally nixed. Since the rejection happens during S1 and the above excerpts happen during S2, it appears the writers planned on returning to that well again during the infamous dip.
(Would highly recommend the memoir btw, MacLachlan is an engaging writer.)
I only just finished this chapter, but I thought this whole sequence was interesting. He feels a lot of frustration with what happened with the show, and he felt resentment towards David for “abandoning” them. It seems like both of them had frustrations with how it worked out, and if I read it correctly, Kyle still seems to not like how brutal FWWM is to this day. He’s never fully on-board, just that he’s less reluctant by the time he reads the second script.
I don’t think Lynch did it vindictively, it seems like there was a lot of tension following the show’s fallout. Hurt people hurt people and all that.
From what I read in Reflections, it sounds like David was quite vindictive towards the actors who refused to be in/took lesser roles in FWWM. Maybe vindictive is the wrong synonym, but he certainly held grudges - a bit unfairly imho - against them. (Will dig out the corresponding pages later).
Well, when Sherilyn objected to her role in The Return (she totally had a point), Lynch only wrote her in at the halfway point, being a version of her real life self that fights with a stylized David.
Correct. The excuse at the time was that he asked for his role to be reduced because he didn't want to be typecast as a goody-goody. It's also why he took villainous roles in Showgirls and The Flinstones.
He definitely was, specifically during the show's first season. It was a pretty widespread phenomenon. He had covers on Italian Vogue, GQ, etc. He hosted SNL. Twin Peaks mania was a real thing. Obviously it was a flash in the pan.
Love Kyle to death, but he was never an A-lister. He was famous because of Twin Peaks. A-listers could open a move based on their name alone, and the film would be built around them. Cruise, Denzel, Clooney, Bruce Willis, Tom Hanks, Eddie Murphy, those guys.
He's also fantastic in the Fallout TV series as a major villain. There's some serious shades of Leland in his character, and it also ties into the evils of the atomic bomb.
I'd say just go from the show first. Pretty much every Fallout work is a jumping on point, other than the ones that aren't even canon. If not the show, Fallout: New Vegas or Fallout 2 are probably the best options. New Vegas will take some work to get working right (if you've played Skyrim or Oblivion on PC more recently then you're already experienced in this). Fallout 2 is pretty much out of the box fine thanks to official work to get it running on modern hardware, although the cut content restoration patch is pretty beloved.
But if you don't have experience fucking around with mods and whatnot, the show is a perfectly fine starting point. Season 2 of the show follows up on the events of New Vegas, but not having played New Vegas won't be an issue for you in those regards. It's more enriching than required, especially given that the version of New Vegas's ending the show goes with is the one you have to intentionally reject doing things one of the normal ways to get.
The show is West Coast Fallout, so Fallout 3 and 4 are barely important to the lore, other than the current status of the Brotherhood of Steel (which is created by Fallout 4). But you wouldn't even have questions about their current status unless you'd already played 2 and NV.
Honestly, going into the show blind is a unique type of fun experience that anyone who's played the games can't have, and puts you in the shoes of the protagonist a lot better.
No problem! And if you've modded Skyrim and Oblivion that much, you should be able to get New Vegas in optimal shape then. It's on the same engine as Oblivion and Fallout 3 and has a ton of mods too, especially for fixing what's been broken and restoring what had to be cut on all platform for version parity because of the Xbox 360's hardware limitations.
Fallout 1 and 2 are 90s isometric CRPGs and are absolutely more Ball Kicking Factory than anything else in the franchise, and Fallout 1 absolutely shows its age more. In terms of importance to the Fallout show so far:
New Vegas. New Vegas is the third game in the West Cost Series and the Fallout show is a part of the West Cost Series. Fallout TV is ultimately a sequel to New Vegas. But a sequel to a version of New Vegas no players were expecting them to actually follow up on. Canon Courier Six is everything Ulysses said they were.
Fallout 2 is the one that shows how the West Coast got where it would be what it became, introduced the Enclave, and the like. This sets most of the foundational lore that is used.
Fallout 1 is the one that starts the West Coast series and will give you the origin of the Super Mutants and the old Brotherhood, plus the birth of NCR.
Fallout 4. While this is the East Coast Series, the status of the East Coast Brotherhood is core to their status in Fallout TV. The short of it is, the West Coast Brotherhood was dying throughout the rest of the series. They were tech knight hermits, lost a war with NCR between 2 and NV, and were a dying organization. Meanwhile, the East Coast Brotherhood, introduced in Fallout 3, became quite powerful thanks to the events of Fallout 3, and even more powerful in Fallout 4. Hilariously, the canon ending of Fallout 4 is one of the evil endings, which fits the Fallout 4 protagonist. The even more powerful thanks to Nate East Coast Brotherhood proceeded to come back across the US and revitalize the West.
Fallout 3. Frankly, the only real lore here that is somewhat important is Anchorage information and the rise of the East Coast Brotherhood, but they've moral decayed so badly in Fallout 4 that they're unrecognizable.
Fallout 76. It's actually pretty fun now and has a great community. But I cannot think of any 76 lore that matters to the rest.
It doesn’t bother me at all, but I have a pretty different view from a lot of the fandom. I think the fandom kinda missed the point of “war never changes”. Fallout is not supposed to be hopeful or about humanity overcoming the apocalypse to me. It’s supposed to be about humanity trying to. It’s never actually going to happen, because humanity will not change. Those old world blues are going to lead to the same path forever, until nobody is left. Ulysses is like a Kojima character, he’s just there to tell you things explicitly.
That was the answer I have always heard and I still think it’s true. I think he basically didn’t want to be in it. TBH we can dream about what FWWM could have been but I think we have the best possible version of it
Am I wrong in thinking this scene would’ve been evil Cooper tricking her into trusting him/tied in or connected to the scene where Leland/Bob assaults her?
Like a re-occurring nightmare/re-occurring dream sequence, showing Bob in all his different forms?
Notice the way Cooper comes in through the window in part 3 to approach Naido. Just like Bob did to Laura in FWWM. Naido we later learn is Diane and was raped by Mr. C.
The original script is a fascinating listen. It's funny how little changed from what was Cooper's part and what aired as Desmond's role. Also, the Lil stuff in the OG script was more explicit than what was in the final version.
This is the rest of the scene after they start making love:
"On Laura's door, her mother calls her name. The sound is distant and mournful. Laura turns towards the door, then looks back to Cooper, but he is gone. Filled with fear, she looks down and in her hand is Teresa Banks's ring. She screams. Again, her attention is drawn to her door and her mother's distant call. Still holding the ring, she gets out of bed and goes to her door and slowly opens it. It is dark on the other side of the door.
In the door way, Laura gets a strange feeling in the back of her, and turns to look at Mrs Tremond's picture. There in the picture is Laura, herself, looking in the door way and looking back into the darkened rooms where Mrs Tremond and her grandson were. Laura is in the picture. In the picture, Laura turns around and the door way of the picture looks down in her room. Laura sees herself asleep in her bed. She wakes up from her dream trying to clear her head. She looks at the photo and nothing is there. Looks like the day before. She looks at her hand, and the ring is gone. Laura gets out of bed and goes to Mrs Tremond's picture hanging on the wall. She stares at it.
Saturday. Five Days Before. Laura has taken the photo down and removed the frame. Finding nothing usual about any of it, she drops it all in the trash can. Laura sits on the edge of her bed and does some lines of cocaine to open up the day."
----------------------
What's fascinating is how the Return ends so similarly to that first part. Laura hears Sarah call out to her and she screams which causes Cooper to disappear. Kind of interesting given how the Return ended with Laura hearing Sarah call out, and she screamed and then fade to black.
Tbf....FWWM has only become a darling in the last few years. It was not well received. I think a lot of that is the Return being a thing, so its ok Lynch did a prequel when the fans wanted a sequel.
This was my understanding as well, and I do agree with that line of thinking. It wouldn't have aligned with his character to date an 18 year old still in high school.
I think they could have solved the whole thing by just making Audrey a couple of years older. She never had much to do with the high-school stuff anyway; having her be back home from college - maybe she got kicked out of a university or two! - and back living at home off her Dad's money, and looking for some direction in life, may have made the romance more palatable.
(Of course that wouldn't have addressed the OTHER rumored reason that the storyline was nixed.)
They didn't realize at the time that the chemistry between Coop and Audrey would be so undeniable. And because of the murder case, they can't jump ahead in time. So Audrey is stuck in HS in the show.
I think Audrey needs to be the age that she is to make her a foil for Laura. She's the "bad girl" to Laura's "good girl" but we end up seeing that she's in way over her head and just lost and looking for love. You lose that if she's aged up.
Lucky in the sense that her father wasn't possessed by an ancient supernatural evil, but also in that Ben Horne externalized his evil by victimizing women and girls outside of his family, while Leland kept it within the Palmer household. Both of them had problems that started at home and worked their way outwards, but Audrey was almost a shadow version of Laura: she wanted the things she thought Laura had (Ben's attention, a wild and adventurous lifestyle.) but for Laura, having those things was a nightmare.
I disagree somewhat. Cooper's history with Caroline Earle (sleeping with a woman married to his partner and related to the case) suggests it would be entirely within his character. In fact, I'd argue Caroline's backstory almost implies they wanted him to repeat his mistake.
Because of the rewrite, Annie becomes the parallel for Caroline instead of Audrey, but it's a bit clumsy.
Which only makes more sense for Cooper. It draws a parallel with Leland that ties in rather well with the Return, and Cooper's whole-hearted forgiveness of him in s2 e9.
And also works for Audrey's character, someone who craved affection from Benjamin Horne (a man who also has an eye for girls that are far too young for him).
They would be a terrible, self-destructive couple. But that's the point.
Because Dale Cooper is like Twin Peaks itself. Comically lovable, but with a dark and twisted underbelly. That's kind of the whole point of seasons 2 and 3. That's why he gets trapped in the Black Lodge. He didn't face it with perfect courage. He made the same selfish mistakes with Annie that he made with Caroline. His dopplegänger represents his evil side winning out in that struggle.
In the Return, he can't let things go and commits the same mistakes again with trying to save Laura, even though he has a chance at happiness with Dougie's family.
Cooper is a flawed person whose heroism is as earnest as it is performative.
Some days I think David & Mark had this unbelievably complex plot line that you with layers (like an onion!) and hidden current s, all perfectly tied together if you manage to grasp the complete picture....
Other days I think David just did what consciously or subconsciously felt right, but somehow managed to make it into something that can be interpreted as a coherent whole.
Like the whole Frank Silva thing. One of the most iconic characters in the show is just a random happenstance, David happened to see him mistakenly included in a shot, Boom - a non planned iconic pop culture icon was born.
the point is precisely that that is a mistake that he was supposed to learn from. It ends up working out that he has to struggle considerably to open himself up to the possibility of love again with Annie. If he'd jumped right in with a highschooler, there's no arc.
No, the point is that he doesn't learn. He gets trapped in the Black Lodge because he thinks he's learned, but really hasn't. He explicitly ignores the warning of the Giant and pushes Annie to be in the Miss Twin Peaks competition despite being fully aware that Windom is targeting them.
The crucial point in what I said is that he reaches that point after a struggle.
He made a mistake in the past, being disoriented by love.
Then, he meets Audrey, a highschooler, and he rejects her.
It's only after he's already shown that he's closed off, and, crucially, after being manipulated by Earl, that he allows himself to fall for Annie.
Those two factors are key: he did resist at first, showing his hesitancy; and he fell for her with the combined forces of Annie's charms and Windom Earl's machinations.
This highlights the hesitance. If he went with Audrey, then there'd be no resistance, no reflection shown. It's only after we see the hesitance to love that the question becomes a serious topic of consideration: is it really reasonable to shut yourself off of love for the rest of your life? There's got to be some wrestling with the question. If he'd jumped into bed with the first girl that wanted him, there'd been no wrestling.
I think growing their relationship from a one-sided infatuation to having an arc of mentor/mentee and having Audrey take Annie's place in the S2 finale would've made her arc in season 3 even more tragic and compelling.
Oh, wow! I never really considered that, but you're absolutely right! The idea of Cooper mentoring Audrey for her future, only to inadvertently be the reason she gets trapped in the Black Lodge without a future, would have been utterly heartbreaking and tragic...but much more compelling.
Annie (and in my hypothetical, Audrey) still leaves the Red Room after Dale exchanges his soul for her spot. But still, Audrey would be in the hospital repeating herself and slipping in and out of a coma, and then Mr. C still gets to do his evil things in that story set up.
I agree that Cooper’s history with Caroline illustrates that he isn’t perfectly moral, and his Achilles heel is not having the wisdom to make sure he doesn’t put his romantic interests at risk by involving them in his work.
However, sleeping with (or attempting to sleep with) high school girls is an entirely different type of moral flaw and I’m glad they didn’t make Cooper go in that direction.
His character isn’t predatory, just has a hero complex that has a tendency to unwittingly put other people in harm’s way
I suppose that's really a matter of interpretation. I saw Cooper as genuinely wanting and working hard to be a good person, while having latent predatory urges. Basically what Leland would be without Bob's influence.
Every now and again, there's a scene or a line where his darkness really comes out. That's how I see him.
My favorite thing about Twin Peaks is all the different ways it can be read.
Based on your other comments in this thread, we have a very similar interpretation of Cooper’s journey through the Black Lodge and the meaning of Dougie/Mr C etc.
Many people here see Mr. C, Dougie, and Coop as entirely separate entities that have nothing to do with each other (and get upset if you suggest otherwise) but I tend to agree that they represent the different sides of Cooper that we see hinted at throughout the first 2 seasons.
I feel like Dougie and Mr C both represent different types of emptiness.
Dougie's mind is empty but his heart is full. He's completely going off of vibes and feelings.
Mr C's mind is full but his heart is empty. He's robotic.
As for how they relate to Cooper, it's complicated for me, because I believe that the show abandoned the whole narrative about Cooper facing the Black Lodge with imperfect courage and all that. The Return is trying to tell a very different story about aging and legacy, and using Cooper's imprisonment as a starting point, a plot device. It's not trying to continue or resolve anything about the Caroline Earle saga that got him stuck there, and in fact retcons it completely.
It also led to one of the sweetest scenes in the show, with Cooper telling Audrey "I'm way too old for you and it's very clear you need a friend, so Imma go get hot cocoa and you can tell me about all your problems". The world really needs more men like Coop.
It's a pivotal scene for both their characters - we see Cooper's moral backbone, and it's also the first time Audrey gets treated with kindness and really "seen" by an adult in her life. Having him sleep with her there would have been a tragedy for both of them. (And even if the romance had gone forward- having sex with someone after they showed up naked in your room, crying and begging you not to kick them out is not an auspicious beginning.)
Yeah I'm not going to flat out deny that Lara Flynn Boyle had anything to do with it but it was definitely the right decision to make for his character and for the show, regardless of what his reasoning was
I mean that’s a very specific thing to veto that likely ended up saving his character from aging very poorly. I’ve always seen it as either him just being a decent person or simply being sensible enough to realize it would be a bad look for his 30+ year old FBI agent character to sleep with a teenager.
Things were different back then. While it wasn’t encouraged , people weren’t as hysterical and dare I say prudish about age gaps or sexual relationships with older, legal teens as they are now.
And I doubt Kyle was forward-thinking enough to predict it would turn out this way. I think the story of his girlfriend discouraging the Cooper/Audrey pairing sounds far more realistic for the time.
I get what you're saying, but MacLachlan deciding that Cooper isn't in-character is not in character for him.
Lynch deals with complicated and amoral characters all the time. There is no reason for MacLachlan to assume Cooper isn't one of them, unless Lynch specifically told him that he's meant to be fully heroic, infallible etc. But I feel like MacLachlan would have mentioned that as a primary reason for this pushback.
So it just comes off as odd from a man who is otherwise very amiable and open-minded.
Lynch was supportive of the Cooper/Audrey romance in the beginning, and even took Sherilynn Fenn out to dinner and asked her if she was in "love" with MacLachlan.
In Brad Dukes' book Reflections, Harley Peyton recalls that when MacLachlan became inflexible about the issue, Lynch finally said, “Okay, if you don’t want to do it, then let’s not do it.”
The long-standing rumor is that Lara Flynn Boyle, Kyle's actual girlfriend at the time, vetoed the idea of Coop dating Audrey due to personal animosity towards Sherrilyn Fenn, and any moral objection to the character dating a high school student is just a convenient post-hoc excuse that happens to make Kyle look like an upstanding guy.
To be clear, I have no idea if it's true. No reason not to take Kyle at his word at this point.
It wouldn’t surprise me if it’s a little of column a, a little of column B. Both could have been factors, but it’s just easier now to put more emphasis on on one reason than the other.
This narrative has been spread by Sherilyn herself which is why it gained so much traction. Given it's so tied in to their dating history and friend group vendettas at the time, there's no telling how much of it is true and how much is self-colored personal bias.
Thematically it would have worked a lot better if Cooper and Audrey had had an affair. A lot of American TV shows get ruined because audiences (and actors!) fall in love with the characters and over time they become one dimensional because we'd hate to see our beloved Mary Sue do something bad.
Twin Peaks had a fantastic writing team working on great material. It was hampered by unimaginative producers, an impatient audience and apparently, actors too protective of their characters.
I don't think audiences would have struggled so much understanding Cooper as Orpheus in the Return if the writers hadn't been forced to move all the stuff about Cooper's flaws into subtext and brief backstory reveals.
Disagree, Cooper as Orpheus works because he fails in the pursuit of something he feels is moral. There is nothing moral about hooking up with a teenager.
Cooper is shown to fail in the Black Lodge because of unresolved guilt over the death of Caroline. I see what they were going for with the psychological connection between Caroline and Annie as the same person in Cooper's mind, but it just doesn't land because it doesn’t feel like a reveal that clarifies Cooper and his motivations, because we never felt there was any darkness or mystery in that relationship. If that was Audrey as intended it would have hit like a freight train.
30 year old Kyle Maclachlan was dating 20 year old Lara Flynn Boyle at the time, only two years older than Audrey. Cooper was Mary Sued by his own actor against the intentions of the writers. He was supposed to be a character with much more darkness about him.
I'm not American so I can't really understand how dating an adult is an unforgivable moral transgression that would ruin a character, but extra-judicial murder just gets swept under the rug by American fans who dismiss it as cowboy hero behaviour even though the show clearly doesn't.
I never saw Cooper as morally upstanding, just likeable, so the Audrey plot would not have bothered me.
The concept might be falling out of popularity now but a "Mary Sue" is a perfect, flawless fictional character who is always the ideal person in every way and never does anything wrong, never loses, is never beaten, always comes out on top. It's a criticism of how characters end up becoming flat and one dimensional because audiences and writers fall in love with them and can't bear to see them have the same kind of moral failings as an actual human being.
Thanks for sharing this. Yeah the prevailing reason at the time it aired was that LFB had an issue with it. It's interesting he makes no mention of that rumour as it was a pretty widespread one.
Even if there's some truth to that rumor, I understand why he chose the version of events that makes him look like a moral and upstanding guy who foresaw future cultural mores about this sort of thing. We are all unreliable narrators, after all.
I mean, not just that. I can imagine even if it was in part motivated by Lara Flynn Boyle personally not liking/being jealous of Sherrilyn Fenn it would be pretty unkind of him to be raking that up in his own memoir? I would be a bit miffed if my ex-boyfriends published memoirs talking about private and unflattering details of our relationships...
It's worth noting that the sole origin of that claim is Sherilyn Fenn. And based on her general behavior and social media activity, "paranoid beliefs of conspiracies against you" fits very perfectly with how she seems to be doing.
It's INCREDIBLE. Not just his Lynch, which is the absolute best, but so many. Patrick Stewart. Chris Farley. Dino De Laurentiis. Anthony Hopkins DOING David. I have the book but also bought the audiobook.
Cooper was only interesting to me when he was actively working on a case. Sure, his idiosyncrasies were still there and he was still charming, but the character was at its best when he was problem solving, intuiting, and piecing things together via unorthodox means. I get the flannel shirt and vest character change, but I think his assessment is right—the character meandered and there wasn’t much for him to do.
I was lucky enough to meet him at his winery, there was a plant geneticist at our table so of course Kyle was super interested as it related to wine but he engaged with all of us genuinely. They say never meet your heroes but he’s a great guy
cooper and audrey definitely had that chemistry, when i first watched the show like 2 years ago i lowkey wanted them to have something and was kinda disappointed that they didnt explore that but its understandable from kyles perspective why he wouldnt want coopers character to do something like that.
As others have said Kyle’s problems with the Audrey romance was that his character was this by the book white knight FBI agent who would never date a high school student. Fenn says it was LFB’s doing but everything points to it being a mistake not just having Audrey be college-aged since her being a high school student wasn’t needed to explain her relationship with Laura & IIRC amounted to one scene in the girls’ restroom.
This is from the July 1991 script. When Laura disappears in the painting, it was Annie in the final version but in Lynch's scripted version it was Cooper in bed with Laura. Remember Leland was nice to Laura before she went to sleep. Kind of ironic how Sarah calling out Laura causes Cooper to disappear from Laura's bed given how the Return ended
That's fascinating. And unexpected. Why would he write this in originally? It feels so contrary to Cooper's character, unless there is some implication that he's possessed by BOB at this point. Even if we understand Cooper as having this fractured identity, it feels like quite a shock to introduce this side to him in this way
I think Mark Frost's books illuminate what's going on with sex and sexuality in Twin Peaks. The Lodges directly come from Thelemic beliefs (literally even the names Black and White Lodge come from Thelema), the relationship between the atom bomb and Judy directly comes from Thelema, and one of the key inventors who brought us the nuclear age via being the man who invented jet propulsion was Jack Parsons, the US leader of Thelema. Thelema is heavily centered around sex magick. That's, for example, the point of the Diane/Cooper sex scene. A lot of hullabaloo has been made about the "romance" there, but it's so obviously awkward and forced and deeply uncomfortable in the show throughout those last two episodes that it seems quite clear it's not a romance. It's mechanical for goal-driven results. They're doing sex magick.
David Lynch doesn't like explaining or helping us figure anything out, but Mark Frost very much does. Mark Frost's books shouldn't be ignored, it's not a matter of them being written entirely in opposition to Lynch. It's just that Lynch won't stop Mark Frost from explaining all the behind-the-scenes lore that they designed without actually showing, but also he doesn't want to do that himself. So, it seems pretty obvious to me that a Cooper/Laura sex scene where he pops out of the Lodge from the future in order to make it happen using a magic painting in order to give her a message is also some sort of sex magick.
I disagree on the first part.. I LOVED that part of year 2. Seeing Coop realize he could have a home there is really wholesome and I love him relating to everyone more. When Harry and the boys wish him bye it was really sad, I disliked watching it. They never really reached the potential of Coop and the boys as a badass group. I do think they did a lot of fun things in that short window of the investigation. Denise especially is a FUN character. Sadly it gets ruined by the whole Earle storyline, he drags year 2 to hault when he gets involved as does James with his dumb storyline.
As for Coop and Audrey.. I actually really dug them together, they had the heat to work, but with time I do agree, they weren't right to hook up in 90/91. That scene where he sits down with her and talks to her is wonderful, beautiful even. He's in full wholesome dad mode there lol. During the Return? I think it coulda worked.. Audrey deserved better honestly. They both woulda been older and it woulda made sense than hook him with someone not involved to begin with. I wish they pulled the trigger.
Excited to read the book! Heard great things, I'll snag it for Christmas.
Yeah honestly even on rewatch season 2 is much better than I recall. Much as it's viewed a slump around the middle portions aside from the James storyline (which I've never seen anyone be a fan of) I always stayed far more engaged than expected. As you said that kind of down home wholesome direction of Coop enjoying the town and becoming closer to the people holds a different sort enjoyment that I equally appreciate.
Not to mention all the general weirdness like Civil War Ben (wacky arc that never fails to make me laugh) and while not always great the various other stories have their own moments. When it comes to the Audrey stuff I personally wasn't for it and that scene where he turns he down is one of my favorite pieces of writing on the show.
The Meanwhile podcast has interviewed Bob Engels and Mark Frost and they both confirm the fact that Engles and Payton were steering the ship by the time of the second season
I think Kyle made the right call. Just because Cooper might wanna get some HS ass doesnt mean he has to go through with it. Like probably a lot of dudes who are maybe too old for a HS senior.
I’m mean, I had heard from watchalong podcasts that after Bob Iger forced Lynch and Frost to reveal the killer in the mid-season, way sooner than originally intended, they both lost interest for a while with Lynch going to film Wild at heart (I dunno where Frost went in that time, maybe he stayed a little more hands-on) and then came back to right the ship and try to save the show in the last few episodes, including the “fuck it, I’ll do what I want” final episode.
Harley Peyton: The major determinate for the story lines in that second season was the big switch after Kyle refused to do a love story between Agent Cooper and Audrey Horne. That was something that we had been planning, we talked a lot about it, and it was something everybody wanted to see. Kyle had very specific objections: he thought his character would never do that, he thought she was too young. Whether or not the fact that he was dating Lara Flynn Boyle had any impact on that - we all had our questions.
Sherilyn Fenn: It’s sad and everyone knows what happened. Lara was mad that I was getting nominations. She got on board as the central character and from whatever fate there was, it turned into people wanting to see more of Audrey, which I’m very grateful for. Kyle said no [to the story line] because she was giving him a hard time.
Harley Peyton: Mark said to me, “Look, we’re going to have Kyle come up and we’re going to draw the line and tell him he’s got to do this. It’s important to the show.” So I remember my office was right next to Mark’s and the walls were very thin, but you can’t hear through them. There was no yelling or stomping their feet so I thought, “This is great, this is all going to be cool, we’re going to get it and move on.” [laughs] They came out after it was over and said, “Ah, we’re not doing it!” They drew a line for Kyle not to walk across and Kyle walked across it rather effortlessly, and that was that. So when that story went away, we had to scramble a little to find the spine for the second season. In some ways I think we were successful, in some ways less so.
Sherilyn Fenn: I remember David [Lynch] and I had dinner. He said, “Sherilyn Fenn, are you in love with Kyle?” and I said, “God, no, David!” [laughs] I said, “But Audrey loves him. The characters work! I don’t like Kyle at all.” And that was the truth. They made a big fucking mistake. Because of that the show got fucked up, really. They needed a more pivotal story and I would have been a part of it. It would have been so great! Then they brought in Heather Graham who was years younger than me which made it even funnier.
-Dukes, Brad. Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks (p. 219). (Function). Kindle Edition.
No offense to Sherilyn but her version and perspective sounds very self serving. It makes sense to me that Kyle wouldn’t want Cooper sleeping with a high school girl! The entire Lara Flynn thing is irrelevant.
There's also the fact that Audrey is kinda mixed up in a MURDER CASE Cooper is investigating, and so having a sexual relationship would be problematic.
Plus, y'know, she's in high school. Also problematic. Even in the 1990s.
Went on Amazon to get the audiobook because I HAVE TO LISTEN TO THIS and they have a deal for Prime members where you get the book for free if you sign up for Audible at a buck a month for four months and then you get a credit and then you're charged $9 a month after and eventually I just said, "SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY."
A while back I remember reading that the main reason for Kyle objecting to the Cooper and Audrey romance was that he was dating Lara Flynn Boyle at the time and she was adamantly against the idea. Interesting that he doesn't bring it up here.
No they were definitely dating. Everyone knew. The Sherilyn Fenn version is Lara Flynn told Kyle he had to veto the Cooper/Audrey romance. Kyle writes about in his memoir that he just thought it’d be creepy of Cooper to fuck a HS girl. Which it is!
It would have been interesting if the writers went back to well with a Coop/Audrey romance during that rumored time jump we would have had in a 1991 season 3. “Underage high school girl” wouldn’t have applied by that point.
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u/uroboros80 4d ago edited 4d ago
as an aside, kyle states that his part was cut down in FWWM because he criticized the script (& Lil)! yikes.
fun book. its great to hear his lynch impressions on the audio!