What I didn't know I needed this week: watching David Lynch, Kyle MacLaughlan (or "Kale"), Madchen Amick (Shelly Johnson on the show), and post-production supervisor John Wentworth (or "JW" for short) sitting around with some pie and large coffee mugs talking about Twin Peaks. Lynch talks with such warmth and affection for everyone at the table that it can't help put aside the image one might have of Lynch as some madman auteur, for the memories that he had of creating the show, of little things that make everyone laugh (i.e. Madchen and Lynch reminiscing the time Gordon Cole got to kiss Shelly on the show, Cole of course was played by Lynch and she happened to be the only one he could hear without a hearing aid).
It's basically just sitting around and no bad words really spoken about much... well, maybe a slight allusion to the mystery of Laura Palmer that sort of got messed with in season 2. But there are many wonderful anecdotes here, from how Frank Silva got to play Bob (for Lynch it was just hearing someone on set tell Silva half-jokingly, who was the set dresser on the show at the time, not to lock himself in Laura's closet - just this made him ask Silva to play this weird guy hanging on to her bed for one panning shot, and the rest as they say is history), to how the show got to be so popular opposite Cheers(!) It's not an overly complicated thing to watch: if you like the show and have the blu-ray set or what have you and pop in one of the discs, you get to sit for 55 minutes with some great people being very... humane with one another, if that makes sense.
It's simply a nice thing to watch, and sometimes that's nice to take in, especially if you want to find out just how cold it was when shooting scenes like that pivotal one in the dark at night between Donna and James... oh, Donna and James, memories... Oh, and there's a very slight nod to almost give the special feature here a beginning and end as Lynch is by himself at this bar, and the camera closes in on his eyes, and then the others appear to him. Were they there all along? (This is a companion piece by the way to another special feature on the blu-ray set, Between Two Worlds, where Lynch, a few years after this was shot, sat down for a similar talk with Wise, Zabriskie and Lee, only there Lynch talks to the actors in character - that's not done here, but it's no less a special treat).
