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Laura in TWIN PEAKS (dir. Lynch, 1990-92) x Lolita in LOLITA (dir. Kubrick, 1962)

Also, consider TWIN PEAKS, LOLITA, & VERTIGO: in the back end of all three stories, the male protagonist ends up at the doorstep of the female protagonist, who now lives under a different name, in a different life— Laura as Carrie Page x Lolita as Mrs. Richard T. Schiller x "Madeline" as Judy Barton

Four shots from TWIN PEAKS directed by David Lynch, and two tweets.

Also, Laura has this postcard on her desk in THE MISSING PIECES:

Jack Nance in TWIN PEAKS pilot (1990) x ERASERHEAD (1977): It's always seemed to me no accident that TWIN PEAKS opens with Laura Palmer's body being found by a man best known in Lynch's work for playing a father who kills his child amidst a strange dreamscape...

In both works, the body of the child ultimately killed by the father is tightly wrapped in a layer of outer covering. They're the hidden (temporarily) made visible; bundles of fear and torment buried, erased from the land of the living.

The parallel mirror-image framing of the two BOB reveals in TWIN PEAKS (Ep. 14 x Ep. 29), each culminating in an identical turn over the left shoulder to the camera. It seems fitting that these reveals should be accompanied by a breaking of the fourth wall; the illusions have been shattered.

The construction of these scenes should feel familiar, as they parallel the similar setup of the very first moments of TWIN PEAKS' pilot: Josie gazes into the mirror at her reverse image (painting it with makeup, itself a type of illusion-making), then turns over her left shoulder to the camera.

Note the cat statuette in: TWIN PEAKS, S2E7 (1990, dir. Lynch, wr. Frost) x LOLITA (1962, dir. Kubrick, wr./adapting Nabokov) x THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY (1945, dir./wr. Lewin, adapting Wilde) A short post on this point of influence, which I haven't seen discussed before...

These scenarios are roughly parallel: in each case, the pictured character (villain) is contemplating a monstrous course of action: Leland, killing Maddy; Humbert, killing Charlotte; Dorian, giving up his soul in exchange for a conscience-avoidant "foul dream[] of sensual life."

While the cat statuette has no role in Wilde's novel, the film quotes a Wilde poem to explain its use of the statuette as a kind of mystical totem gifting Gray eternal youth in exchange for his soul, awakening a "bestial sense" that leads him to discard any moral scruples...

As a result, all of Gray's increasing moral degradation is made visible in his portrait, while he himself remains spotless, eternally young & beautiful. The portrait thus arguably acts somewhat as BOB does for Leland in TP: as a kind of moral alibi, a displacement of conscience.

Meanwhile, in LOLITA, a similarly conscience-avoidant role is arguably played, in part, by the character of Quilty. As in GRAY, LOLITA's story ends with the destruction of this figure—and fittingly, Quilty is killed behind a portrait, making the analogy to GRAY even stronger...

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY (1961, Ingmar Bergman) x THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS... (1871, John Tenniel for Lewis Carroll). While Bergman's title is very close to Carroll's, it has an independent, Biblical origin—and yet the similarity of these sequences is striking, suggesting clear influence...

PERSONA (1966, Bergman) x THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, & WHAT ALICE FOUND THERE (1871, Tenniel's original illustration for Carroll of Alice facing her reverse image & moving thru the mirror). This iconic image from PERSONA likewise seems to be clearly influenced by Carroll & Tenniel's ALICE works...

It seems fitting Carroll should inspire Bergman; both shared an interest in what lies beneath individual & social veneers, exploring it w/ elliptical, fantastical art. In the case of PERSONA, the exploration includes ALICE-esque touches of mirrors, mushrooms, madness, tea, & more...

Carroll's works have cast a long cultural shadow, & it's common to see their influence in classic films—including, seemingly, in works by Hitchcock, Rivette, Polanski, & more. Below, echoes in Kubrick's THE SHINING (whose source book by King expressly references ALICE, fwiw).

Given that TWIN PEAKS begins with rabbit references & ends with an enigmatic Alice, it's natural to impute to it an influence by Carroll's works. (But a further exploration of that topic will have to wait for another day.)

SUBLIME ETERNAL LOVE (Lynch, 2024) x TWIN PEAKS (Lynch, 2017)

The layered vocals/imagery of his new album with Chrystabell, CELLOPHANE MEMORIES, seemingly continues Lynch's longtime interest in the theme of doubles; of a multiplicity of the self.

From the latest issue of The Wire mag: "Chrystabell ascribes the music's layered, dimensional feel to Lynch's exploratory post-production process, using film editing software to refract & overlap multiple vocal takes."

Lynch on CELLOPHANE MEMORIES: "Cellophane is transparent. You see through one layer & you get another layer, & you see through that & you see another. Something about this music, when you listen to it, starts ringing bells of the past."

Longtime Lynch audio/music collaborator Dean Hurley: "[David] would do things like take a piece of audio, slow it down by two octaves, & throw it in the timeline of a scene just to see what comes out. Or he'd say, 'Cut that section in half somewhere & flip it around...' He has such a thirsty mind."

All quotes above are from the most recent issue of The Wire, mag (available for order here: https://www.thewire.co.uk/issues/486).

A few more interesting quotes from the issue:

Hurley on Lynch's daily work ethic: "Art practice, for him, is very rooted in a 1950s, regimented, get up, put on your suit, go to work kind of thing... He wants to set up collisions & get into a conversation w/ the thing he's making."

Conan O'Brien on TWIN PEAKS: "This show came on that was unlike anything you'd ever seen before. When the pilot ended, everyone's face fell off. It was an obsession. It changed everything.... You saw what a TV show could be...I remember being electrified.... It's all any of us thought about."

SPOILERS / INTENSITY WARNING: The ending sequences of THE BEAST (2023, dir./wr. Bonello) x TWIN PEAKS (2017, dir. Lynch, wr. Lynch/Frost) x I SAW THE TV GLOW (2024, dir./wr. Schoenbrun) [I put a "Maturity" warning on because I wasn't sure how to put it behind a spoilers / intensity warning like I can on Twitter...]

Bonello on TWIN PEAKS (2017): "It's an incredible journey. The duration combined with the fact that he pushes all his obsessions as far as possible makes it for me his greatest work. It's one of the greatest cinematographic objects of the 21st century, well beyond Mulholland Dr."

Schoenbrun on TWIN PEAKS (2017): "the most cathartic and rich experience of watching media that I’ve had in my adult life." On Ep. 29: "[it] was lodged in my subconscious. It had this unresolved cliffhanger of an ending that was very, very disturbing....part of the inception of ‘ISTTVG’ is wanting Dale Cooper to get out of the lodge."

TWIN PEAKS (2017) || Part 18 x Part 8. "This would look nice on your wall." Post on this painting above the bed in P18's motel, & how it evokes specific desert imagery from P8…

While the P18 desert painting features v. similar imagery to that of P8, it's not identical, & imagery of an empty desert is arguably generic enough to make any similarities incidental & not worth further comment. So why consider them linked? Well, b/c of further similarities...

Most overtly, the P18 motel sequence features the same song by The Platters, "My Prayer," that is also prominently featured in the 1956 segment of P8...

It's worth noting that the P8 desert scene that features similar desert imagery to the P18 painting is the same one where the Woodsmen materialize out of thin air. Is there, then, some suggestion of a kind of symbolic link being drawn between Cooper in P18 and the Woodsmen?

Notably, Cooper's line here—"turn off the light"—plays with the same "light" concept featured in the primary Woodsman's main line of dialogue (outside of his "poem"), "got a light?"

The connection between Coop & Diane in P18 itself arguably evokes the scenes between the Girl & Boy in P8's 1956 segment. To start, they both meet outside among trees & are framed similarly at times (as here, w the female character viewed over the male character's right shoulder)

In both, the male character asks the female character for a kiss, and again, they're framed similarly. (They arguably also share this with P1's Sam & Tracey sequence—another segment of the show w/ an apparent specific link to the show's mysterious "Judy" figure/concept, fwiw...)

After Coop & Diane sleep together, he wakes sleeping on his left side, framed similarly to the sleeping Girl from P8. Both sleeps are transformative—he wakes in a new space, by "Judy's" diner, & is called a new name, while she is violated by a creature seemingly birthed by Judy.

The remainder of P18 also shares significant elements with P8, exploring similar or the same abstractions & metaphors...

Ofc, the $1m question is what these overlapping concepts & imagery amount to; what, if anything, they might most fruitfully be said to symbolize, & how they fit together. As this all ties in to similar overarching questions about the entire TP saga, it's beyond the scope of this post, alas...

TWIN PEAKS, S2E1 (1990, dir. David Lynch) x PERSONA (1966, dir. Ingmar Bergman) Note the image mirrored here is the beginning of one of the most symbolically potent sequences of Bergman's film, the moment of disjunction when the film literally breaks down & erodes from within...

It's also perhaps worth noting that the modern term "persona" comes directly from the Latin word for a theatrical mask—as in, the precise item that Audrey is sporting in this scene: