Subject: Re: The "backwards" speech & other effects
From: tneff@bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff)
Date: 1990-04-20, 00:33
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks

In article <1990Apr20.155028.5078@wam.umd.edu> dmb@wam.umd.edu (David M. Baggett) writes:
> >The speech was not simply played backwards.  If you'll go back and listen
> >again, you'll see (hear?) that you can still make out the words.  If each
> >word had just been played backwards it would sound like complete
> >gibberish.
> >
> >It sounds like they took each word and randomly reversed segments here and
> >there.  Not too many though.

No.  What you do is

  (a) have each actor record all his/her lines normally

  (b) play them back reversed - sounds like gibberish

  (c) have each actor LEARN that gibberish by heart! i.e., learn to
      make the right mouth noises to imitate his/her backwards speech

  (d) record THAT

  (e) play the result *in reverse*.  The result is garbled squishy
      sounding "speech."

As a side effect, a lot of the physical action in the dream sequence,
including (I suspect) the dancing, was reverse-filmed.  The shots
of Cooper were normal.

You notice how sick and sad and old and deflated Cooper looked in the
dream sequence, as though they had given his face a layer of Bisquick
batter.  That's ERASERHEAD stuff, boys and girls.  And this sequence was
the most horrifically pure bit of Lynch "wrongness" I have seen since
EH.  He seems to have a hotline to the essence of nightmare.  There are
really two special Lynch "modes": one where you say "GACK! tee-hee! you
are a sick pup Mister," and one where you say in a VERY small voice,
"oh.  oh no.  stop that..."