TWIN PEAKS - SPEAKS AGAIN

By Irene S. Keene

When Soap Opera Weekly first reported on Twin Peaks in March 1990 (Vol.1 Issue 18), the article stated that "Twin Peaks .. is unlike any soap opera - day or night - you´ve ever seen." Even 10 years later, those words have proved to be an understatement.

TP´s two-hour pilot aired April 8, 1990 on ABC and went to series April 12, a co-creation of film director David Lynch (Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man) and television writer Mark Frost (Hill Street Blues). The show was a mélange of surreal images, haunting music and conventional soap opera plots. It was also peppered with references, sometimes playful, to all manner of popular culture.

TP became the show to watch. "If gave a frest approach to an old genre," says Frost (who was also the head writer and co-executive producer). "It combined the nighttime soap genre with a mystery story, and it also had a look and feel that was very much outside the normal television viewing experience." The mystery Frost refers to is, of course, the murder of high-school student Laura Palmer. FBI agent Dale Cooper, along with the viewing audience, pieced together clues that finally led to the reveal of Laura´s killer - her father, Leland.

"In the first year it was like riding an elevator up to the penthouse, Russ Tamblyn (Dr. Laurence Jacoby) observes. "And the next season it was like going down to the cellar. It was a fast ride." Despite a loyal fan base, TP´s Nielsen ratings were never high enough for advertisers. The last installment aired June 10, 1991 as a two-hour movie. But, as Tamblyn points out, ""In death it´s become even greater than in life." The feature film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me - a prequel to the series - was released in 1992. Cable´s Bravo network is currently rebroacasting the series. There are numerous publications and Web sites devoted to TP. It also paved the way for subsequent "quirky" series, such as Northern Exposure, Picket Fences, American Gothic and The X-Files. "America was ready for magic on their TV," Harry Goaz (Deputy Andy Brennan) says of the cultural experiment of TP. "And all of us actors were lucky we were the chosen ones. I really think it´s almost that mystical:"

RAY WISE (Leland Palmer)

TP viewers were given their strongest clue to Laura´s killer when her cousin Madeline Ferguson met an untimely demise. "The killing of Maddie was shot with three different actors," Wise explains. "It was Leland, Ben Horne (Richard Beymer) and Killer Bob (Frank Silva) doing it. So the three of us repeated that same stuff for that whole scene, and poor Sheryl Lee (Laura/Madeline) had to do it three times. I believe they brought someone in to help Sheryl at the end of the day, some sort of nurse."

Wise found out that Lelan was Laura´s killer while sitting with Lynch, Frost, Beymer and Lee in "a dark room that had a lava lamp in the corner," he explains. "I was totally crestfallen. I had been worried about it for weeks that it might be me. No. 1, I didn´t want to be the father who kills his own daughter, or the father who sexually molests his own daughter because I have a daughter of my own, and even playing a character like that really bothered me. And then my other concern was that it meant that I would be leaving Twin Peaks and all my friends, and I wasn´t crazy about that either. And I immediately said something like, 'Oh, expletive!' We all sort of laughed, and David said, 'But don´t worry about it, Ray; you´re going to go out in style. We´re writing you a last great show. It´s going to redeem the character of Leland and it´s going to be a beautiful thing.'"

Though his character died in the series, Wise reprised his role in the prequel feature Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Since then, he has appeared in feature films (Bob Roberts, Rising Sun) and was a series regular on Savannah (as Edward Burton). He will be seen in the upcoming romantic comedy Closing the Deal.

GRACE ZABRISKIE (Sarah Palmer)

In the TP pilot, Sarah Palmer let out a primal scream when she learned that something unspeakable has happened to her daughter, Laura. In one scene, pain - more physical than emotional - accidentally crossed over into real life. Leland and Sarah were arguing over a photograph of Laura and "the glass broke while we were shooting the scene, and I cut myself. We kept going, too. I didn´t stop and they didn´t know I was cut." Someone finally noticed. "I just remember David stopping everything, sitting me down and holding my hand in the air while they brought ice and bandaged me up. It was wild."

Zabriskie appeared in the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, as well as Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and Armageddon. She had a recurring role on Seinfeld as Mrs. Ross (the mother of George´s fiancee, Susan), and will be seen in the upcoming film Gone in Sixty Seconds, starring Nicholas Cage.

In addition to acting, Zabriskie is a writer as well as a visual artist, whose creations include wood lamps and inctricately designed wooden pen boxes, which she makes with her daughter, Marion Lane. Photos of their work are on their Web site, www.arthaus.com, where TP fans will find "Twin Peaks Character Series Boxes, as well as a couple inspired by the Lynch film Wild at Heart, in which Zabriskie appeared.

ERIC DA RE (Leo Johnson)

Da Re was working in production at Propaganda Films, through which David Lynch was making the TP pilot, when Lynch asked him to read with some actresses, Although Da Re had a couple of acting credits, he preferred working behind the scenes. "I didn´t want to do it, but I did it for him anyway," he says. "The next thing I knew, [I was cast]."

Da Re played Leo, a truck driver whose idea of relaxation was abusing his wife, Shelley. "It was a portrayal of an angry, abusive husband, and that was where I took it from."

Unlije the Johnsons, Da Re lives in domestic bliss with his wife, Keegan, a childbirth instructor and lactation consultant, and their 2-year-old son, Aidan. After TP, Da Re appeared in feature films, including Star Ship Troopers and Playing God, with fellow TP alumnus The X-Files´ David Duchovny (Dennis/Denise Bryson). "It´s an awful film," he says with a laugh.

Da Re keeps in touch with a few people from TP, including TV-wife Mädchen Amick (Shelley) and Kimmy Robertson (Lucy). "Whenever I see Sheryl Lee it´s like we´ve never missed a day," Da Re says. "Michael Horse (Tommy) I knew 12 years before I even did Twin Peaks. In fact, he´s how I met my wife."

WENDY ROBIE (Nadine Hurley)

"I really loved the episode where Nadine tries out [for the high school cheerleading squad], because she is so excited," recalls Robie of the emotionally fragile Nadine, who due to a trauma, thought she was an 18-year-old high school student, and experienced enhanced physical strength. "Not only did she become a cheerleader but she joined the wrestling team." Robie takes a little bit of credit for Nadine´s athletic endeavors "because I was a distance runner at school, and I run marathons. [The producers] would see me out there running, so they added Nadine´s athleticism to it."

Another favorite episode of Robie´s had Nadine come home from a wrestling meet only to catch her husband, Ed, in bed with another woman. "She crawled in with them, and showed them her trophy. It was really bizarre," Robie says, noting that Diane Keaton directed that episode. "I loved working with her because she´s brilliant and really understood the show. Your vision is a little skewed when you enter Twin Peaks. She caught that."

Following TP, Robie appeared in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and, most recently, on Party of Five as a book editor, and on an episode of Any Day Now. Last year she wrote a one-woman play called The Emancipation of Fanny Kemble, the true story of a 19-century actress and abolitionist who unwittingly married into a family of slave-holders. Robie tours with the play off and on. "Film and television is what pays the bills. Fanny Kemble is what I do from my heart."

RUSS TAMBLYN (Dr. Lawrence Jacoby)

When film veteran Tamblyn (Peyton Place, West Side Story, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers) was cast as psychiatrist Lawrence Jacoby on TP, he saw it as his opportunity to get in touch with nature.

"When we shot the pilot [in Snoqualmie, Wash.] I thought: I´m going to do Twin Peaks, all about the forest and everything." No such luck. "We were staying in a motel off the freeway," he explains with a laugh. "I didn´t have a car or anything."

Tamblyn may not have scalped any Douglas firs, but he did have a hand in shaping the good doctor´s image. "A lot of Dr. Jacoby´s stuff I made up," Tamblyn says, When Tamblyn couldn´t decide between two pairs of sunglasses, one with red lenses and the other with blue, "I held the one lens over one eye, and the other lens over the other eye. And then it just came to me: Aha, that´s it! Two different colored lenses. And then I elaborated even more on it and figured there were two sides of the brain. One side is academic and the other side is creative. So I wore the blue lens on the side of the brain that´s the creative side, to keep him cooled down. And the red lens was on the side of the academic side, the side that deals with facts and numbers and whatnot. And then when I went in and told David Lynch my theories, he said, 'I love it, but we won´t tell anybody.' He had a great thing for not wanting anyone to know."

That included Tamblyn. Lynch told Tamblyn while making the pilot that if TP went to series, "'Dr. Jacoby is going to be this really strange psychiatrist who takes advantage of women; he´s having affairs with them. He´s like a sexual pervert,'" Tamblyn recalls. "When we started the series there was an office scene where Agent Cooper asked Jacoby if he had an affair with Laura Palmer. He paused for a second, and then he said no. I remember that I had to find Lynch and ask him, 'What is it with Jacoby; did he or didn´t he [sleep with Laura]?' David said, 'No. I changed my mind. He didn´t.' So they changed my character. Instead of being this creepy guy, he actually was a nice guy. He actually cared for Laura Palmer, and was trying his best - as weird as he was - to help her out."

While Tamblyn, who began his career as a child actor, takes on an occasional acting assignment (he was seen in a recent cable televion remake of Inherit the Wind and played Dr. Hayden on Days of Our Lives), he prefers to spend hs time managing the career of his daughter Amber, who plays Emily on General Hospital. (When Tamblyn contacted this writer for our interview, he introduced himself as "Amber Tamblyn´s dad:") He´s also cooperating with a professor from the University of Arizona who has expressed interest in writing Tamblyn´s biography. Although the professor teaches media arts, he´s also an archeologist. "Which I thought was very funny, because he first wrote me a letter and said he´s an archeologist, [I thought]: Perfect. Somebody who digs up old bones."

MARY JO DESCHANEL (Eileen Hayward)

Of all the colorful Twin Peaks residents, Eileen appeared to be one of the more normal; she seemed a good wife and mother. But looks can be deceiving. "At the end [of the second season] there was a reference to the fact that Eileen had had an affair with Ben Horne years before," Deschanel says. The implication being that Donna Hayward and Audrey Horne were half sisters.

Since TP, Deschanel (whose previous credits include the feature films The Right Stuff and 2010) has worked intermittendly. "I´ve always taken a lot of time off because of my children," she says, referring to Zoe and Emily, her daughers with director/cinematographer Caleb Deschanel. But now that the girls are grown, she´s back in front of the camera. This summer filmgoers can see her in The Patriot, starring Mel Gibson. "I play Mrs. Howard - another wife and mother," she says with a laugh.

HARRY GOAZ (Deputy Andy Brennan)

After TP, Goaz traded showbiz for a saddle. A self-described "old hippie on a horse," Goaz is a rancher who divides his time between Texas and New Mexico; in the latter he lives in a town "of less than 25 people."

Goaz played Andy, the sensitive deputy who cried at the sight of corpses. Though frequently asked if he based his portrayal on Barney Fife (The Andy Griffith Show), Goaz says he didn´t have time to think about who Andy was, let alone compare him with anyone else. "I had just come out of The Loft, a theater lab in L.A., [when I got this part]. And not only that, I had to do the pilot in less than two weeks. I really didn´t know the texture of the show. The only thing I was told was that he cries."

As Andy, Goaz found himself in a triangle with Lucy and Dick, which he cites as his favorite storyline of the series. "In a way, it was so far removed from the tone of the rest of the show. I loved the whole show, but I guess I´m just prejudiced because I enjoyed working so much with Kimmy Robertson and Ian Buchanan. That Dick Tremayne was a horrible dandy," Goaz says with a laugh. "I think Ian knows this, and that´s why he played it so well." Aside from Robertson and Buchanan, Goaz stays in touch with Sheryl Lee. "We are the television pros," he says. As far as acting, Goaz hasn´t pursued it "because I haven´t really had opportunities. I´m sure I´ll be back." For now, though, there are plains to ride and cattle to herd.

KIMMY ROBERTSON (Lucy Moran)

When we last saw Lucy, the receptionist at the Twin Peaks Sheriff´s Department, she told her boyfriend, Andy, that she wanted him to be the father of her unborn baby (even though there was the possibility that it wasn´t his). "They are married in a house with knotty-pine walls," Robertson speculates. Robertson has remained a familiar face to film and television audiences. "I get recognized one-third from commercials, one-third for Twin Peaks and one-third for movies," says the actress, whose recent credits include Speed 2: Cruise Control and Stuart Little, and a candy commercial in which she pilfers sweets from a waiting room. "I was in Nordstrom just before Christmas trying to buy stockings. This girl said, 'I know who you are!' And I was waiting to see who I was. 'You were the [the voice of the] feather duster in Beauty and the Beast.' They are just so observant."

Robertson, who notes with mock indignation, "I´m the only one [from TP] who hasn´t been on the X-Files" (especially since "I used to date David Duchovny"), recently auditioned for a role on Providence.

Robertson says she and her TP colleagues had no idea the show would become "a phenomenon. Working with David Lynch was all of our dreams. That´s all we thought about. When you´re really doing something you love you don´t think about tomorrow or anything else. It was like sex."

MICHAEL HORSE (Deputy Tommy "The Hawk" Hill)

As a Native American actor who is usually cast as such, Horse is always appreciative when the role doesn´t cater to stereotypes. Such was the case with Tommy, who "was very insightful, very intelligent;" he recalls.

Although he often plays an officer of the law (he currently recurs as Deputy Blackwood on Roswell), Horse has played villains (Passenger 57) and has done comedy as well. "I did a guest shot on Thanks, and they said, 'Oh, we didn´t know you were that funny.' I´ve always been a comedic actor. I was a musician for years, and it´s bad enough going in front of a crowd that´s not responding to you, let alone doing comedy. Nothing like silence when a joke doesn´t work," he says with a laugh.

In addition to Roswell, Horse did a pilot for film director Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow) called Lost in Oz. "It´s based on one of the Wizard of Oz books after the wizard has left and everything is in chaos," he explains. The actor, an artist specializing in traditional Indian art, is also illustrating a children´s book written by his wife, Sandra, called Little Bear and the Red Pony (Kiva Publishing, Los Angeles), which is scheduled for release this summer.

Whatever project he undertakes, Horse says it has to appeal to him artistically. "I did a series for two years in Canada called North of 60 - it was a prime-time Indian drama and so well-written. Most of the things that come down here are very silly [portrayals of Native Americans]. That´s why Twin Peaks is so dear to me, because as a native person and as an artist, it was a piece of television history."

ROBYN LIVELY (Dana Budding Milford)

In trying out for the role of Lana, Lively drew upon her roots. "She was this beautiful, slightly dingy girl whom all the men doted over. I didn´t know much about the show, but I knew enough to know that beautiful girls are a dime a dozen," she recalls. "I thought I had to do something unique to get this part. Being the Georgia girl that I am, I decided to do the scene with a very syrupy Southern accent. I took a chance, and the rest is history."

One of the more interesting plot twists had Lana a contestant in the Miss Twin Peaks contest, performing her "contortionistic jazz erotica. I was not a dancer, and I thought: This is going to be a stretch - no pun intended;" Lively says. "It just ended up being this sassy little [dance] number in a gypsy outfit. It was funny."

Lively has since been seen as a series regular on Freshman Dorm, the prime-time soap Savannah (as Lane McKenzie Collins) and George & Leo. She appeared on Chicago Hope and gueststarred on an episode on The X-Files. Lively says that when X-Files star Duchovny reminded her that they worked together on TP, "I thought: We did? I had no recollection," she says with a laugh. "As soon as he told me whom he played, I remembered." Currently making the rounds for pilot seven, Lively is also enjoying her real-life role as newlywed: She married actor Bart Johnson (Hyperion Bay) in September.

IAN BUCHANAN (Dick Tremayne)

Dick managed the designer menswear department at Horne´s Department Store. He also managed to temporarily become between Lucy and Andy. "I was out the other night and a young couple came rushing up to me and said, 'Didn´t you do Twin Peaks?' I said yes," Buchanan recalls. "They said, 'We like the wine tasting with the bandage on the nose episode.' Dick had been bitten by a weasel, and, of course, he couldn´t actually tast wine without dipping his bandage in the wine."

Buchanan worked again with TP creators Lynch and Frost in the 1992 series On the Air. "We made seven episodes and they aired three," says Buchanan, who´s also guest-starred on The Larry Saunders Show, NYPD Blue and The Nanny. From 1993-´98 Buchanan, perhaps best known to soap viewers as the popular Duke Lavery on General Hospital, returned to daytime as James Warwick on The Bold and the Beautiful, a role for which he won a Daytime Emmy. He recently completed the film Nature Trail, a psychological thriller the describes as "a little Twin Peaks-ish."

The actor admits that during TP´s run he never really watched it. "I actually recently got the boxed set of tapes and I´ve just now seen the entire series. It´s really a good show," Buchanan says. "I can see what the fuss is all about."