proximoception

Just read some Vanity Fair piece about how the True Detective 2 debacle makes the journalist worried about Twin Peaks, since Lynch and Frost apparently have full creative control over the relaunch, with the Showtime brass not even allowed to tell them how many episodes - Lynch is directing them all at once like a movie and will then edit the huge lump into hour-long chapters. Fire Walk With Me is brought up as the worst case scenario.

I did not know they had that much control. This could be really good.

And while Fire Walk With Me was a couple notches too far in the Inland Empire direction at points it still has loads of amazing scenes. And even the overstuffed nightmare cabin and the crazy Bowie scene were thoroughly memorable (as was most of Inland Empire).

And Lynch knows it's on tv - different venue. And a major corporation is bankrolling it and knew what was in the scripts when they accepted it. Plus Frost presumably has more input since it's a tv show he's been working on for years and years while Lynch was off doing his solo stuff. One does not sense that Frost's was the guiding hand in Fire. (Appropriately.)

And Lynch and Frost both know how the film was received (and the finale of the show, to the extent that was received at all). And Lynch knows how Inland Empire was - which must have had something to do with his abandoning directing for so long. This is his last shot at reshaping his legacy, or at least needs to be seen that way. And while since it's Lynch that shot will need to be way out there, he'll also want it to be seen and remembered by a lot of people. Fire and the finale were angry, doubling-down-on-the-art responses to the pushback that happened when he'd tried to go commercial - or rather, had successfully done so then been interfered with - but this is different. He and Frost have received this shot because a viably-sized audience has acclaimed them into it. There's nothing to kick against. It's like an afterlife do-over of a great, on average much much less than once in a lifetime opportunity that in its original iteration had been quickly sabotaged (and maybe to some degree self-sabotaged). Whereas now it pretty much can't be. Till this news I'd feared the sequel would be overcautious fan service. Well, no I didn't - but I did fear the Lynch quotient would be more in the 30-50 percent range. I'd much prefer to that that it be 90+ like in Fire, but it sounds like it will be 66.6, which for a work of this length is probably best of all. The thought of a hypothetical ten hour version of Mulholland Drive makes me ... very ambivalent.

And if nothing else they've both had 25 years to brood on what this could be. Pizzolatto had, what, months? And was alone alone in the writing. Doubt he will be next year.

The Mirror -> Tree of Life, aspects of Fanny and Alexander

Didn't love it despite that, but it was surprisingly watchable given how much life-saving equipment it threw overboard.

Eraserhead -> Upstream Color?

Don't want latter to be the case, but the isolated demiurge figure and parasitic hierarchy of economic exploiters both fit - and while these are around in later Lynch basic human (reproductive) identity is never again the topic. Can't think where else Carruth might have got them, though who knows, maybe there's a mutual ancestor. Or that fading stirrer of rumors coincidence, which nevertheless must be at work somewhere in the world even now. Though, y'know, worms.

Lynch's film, which I saw long enough ago to remember little about, is finally just a guilt/anxiety nightmare and its counter-gnosis of escape, relatable enough, impressively executed, and to the right sensibility pretty amusing, but not moving - because self-castigating? It's kind of amazing Mel Brooks saw in Lynch someone right for The Elephant Man. That's some deep seeing.

Maybe best to view Carruth's film as an answer. What you might tell Henry to help it make sense.