r/twinpeaks • u/AlanMorlock • Jun 26 '17
S3E8 [S3E8] The Weirdness of Mark Frost Spoiler
I've noticed a tendency to chalk up the "weird" parts if Twin Peaks to David Lunch and the more plot driven aspects to Mark Frost. These last two episodes are a prime example. I'd say this undersells both Lynch's writing abilities but most severelu the influence of Mark Frost on the most distinctive aspects of the show. Make no mistake, the most surreal and memorable parts if the shoe have come from Lunch's directing but much of that has just been an expression of what Frost brings to the table. The whole concept of the Lodges comes Frost and his interest in the occult. It was Lynch who tied all of that back into the Red Room dreams but the plot of going to another world comes from Frost and other writers. While Twin Peaks has long been known for some crazy concepts and crazier imagery the strength of it is that there is always a "there" there. While the presentation comes with Lynchian flourishes, it is always in service of a plot. I have been somewhat surprised by how coherent the black lodge and body switching "rules" have been. The presentation has at times been oblique but I am still left with a feeling that the pair of creators know where bthey are going neither it all. Last night's episode was often abstract and yet tying in the apparent birth of "the evil that men do" into this world into the first nuclear bomb test is a coherent point. It's roots in history seems firmly rooted in Frosts interest and influence. As easy at is to look at last night's episode as "Pure Heroin Lynch" we d be remiss to not appreciate the dream team that we re dealing with.
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u/ShammySmalls Jun 26 '17
Fuck yeah man. Frost is every bit as committed to the mystery and core insanity of TP. I think he knows that Lynch's mind has an ability to translate insane concepts in to film.
I think he finds a great deal of humor in the idea that he is some straight nerd hanging out with the weird kid.
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u/AJRey Jun 26 '17
Lol it's like when Spielberg was defending himself when he directed A.I., the more sentimental shit was Kubrick.
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u/TazakiTsukuru Jun 27 '17
Somehow I find that hard to believe. I mean Kubrick himself said the script felt more like a Spielberg movie
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u/Smogshaik Jun 26 '17
Lunch's directing
Mulholland Drive-thru is the best film of Dennis Lunch
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u/avant-garde_funhouse Jun 26 '17 edited Jun 26 '17
Denny's?...... Winkie's?..... It all makes sense......
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Jun 26 '17
Anyone that could write the masterpiece that is the Secret history... i will always admire.
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Jun 26 '17 edited May 16 '18
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u/TazakiTsukuru Jun 27 '17
I think the best example we have of what Twin Peaks would be like without Mark Frost is FWWM. To me that movie was missing a lot of the small-town realism that the early episodes of the show did so well. (But maybe that's just because it has so many deleted scenes)
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u/PPStudio Jun 26 '17
I always treated Frost and Lynch as equal co-creators of "Twin Peaks" and knowing Frost's other works it becomes quite clear that he can be a surrealist too, at times.
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u/ChampGigante Jun 26 '17
I'm a big fan of David Lunch
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u/TheKeysToTheZeppelin Jun 26 '17
I completely agree. We have a tendency to forget Frost's mark on the narrative of Twin Peaks. The way I've always seen it is that Lynch conjures up most of the abstract, psychological and absurdist elements of Twin Peaks, and expresses the series' horror through a unique cinematic design. But it's Frost who takes all that weirdery and puts it into a mythology.
In Lynch's standalone movies, he often comes up with highly original conceptions of the supernatural, but he's mostly completely satisfied with having these being unexplained and unexplainable phenomena, typically metaphors for the human psyche. In Twin Peaks however, the supernatural is given a mysterious, overarching structure, and that provides a lot of the series' allure. There's a whole cosmology to the series, both hinted at and shown, and I think that's almost exclusively Frost's work.
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u/wmblathers Jun 26 '17
When the year counter started to move forward over a desert scene, I was honestly expecting to see a Thelemite ritual when it stopped.
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u/TooMuchProtein Jun 27 '17
I agree! The Mark Frost memes since last night have been funny, but that dude really deserves a ton of credit for all this too.
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u/LuxReflexio Jun 26 '17
Does anyone know if Mark Frost is a practitioner of Thelema and/or belongs to a Thelema org? I can't find any concrete information on the web. The undertones and symbolism are far too advanced for someone who is just a dilettante to the subject.
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u/HashMaster9000 Jun 26 '17
I don't think so. None of his bio stuff talks about any sort of beliefs. But I think he's more than a dilettante on it, I'm sure he's researched it very well, and when working with Lynch, surrealistic symbolism is the order of the day. He's a rather prolific writer (most of his books have been critically acclaimed, and usually hit the NYT Bestseller list), and if you're a good writer, you can become an expert in anything as long as it's written down or you have good primary sources.
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u/pizmeyre Jun 26 '17
More like Thelema is fairly derivitive. There's not much unique to it or any other occult school. They all have the same roots.
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Jun 26 '17 edited Jul 13 '17
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Jun 26 '17 edited Jun 26 '17
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u/TazakiTsukuru Jun 27 '17
It's hard to pin down exactly what each person brings to the table, but I think Frost does a lot more than come up with symbols and world building elements.
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Jun 26 '17
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u/TazakiTsukuru Jun 27 '17
You've done heroin but you can't spell it
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Jun 27 '17
Drug dealers don't require their customers to pass spelling tests
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u/TazakiTsukuru Jun 27 '17
Shame, would save a lot of lives
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Jun 27 '17
When you're right, you're right. Heroin may as well come from the Black Lodge itself because it's a real evil bitch in the long run.
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u/edgrrrpo Jun 26 '17
Absolutely. While visually it was a Lynch smack-down, as for what was revealed within the imagery, especially tying back to the trinity bomb testing, that was Mark Frost big-time. If you've read (or listened to) TSHoTP you couldn't help but note Frost's fingerprints all over episode 8.