Subject: Re: Finally saw "The Movie" (European release?)
From: boyajian@ruby.enet.dec.com (The fox so cunning and free)
Date: 1992-02-06, 00:36
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks

In article <2080@keele.keele.ac.uk>, csd15@seq1.keele.ac.uk (G.M. Friel) writes...

} It should be remembered that this film was made as pilot for what was
} at the time a potential tv series. The film wasn't intended to summarise
} the whole of the series in the first place! After all it hadn't even been
} made at the time. The ending which was put on was just to make the film
} (sort of) complete (probably just in case the series never got off the
} ground).

I think you're a bit confused here. The pilot movie was originally filmed
as it was broadcast on TV as part of the series. The American ABC network
had already committed to a series, so there wasn't really a question of
it never getting off the ground.

The reason the extra material was added to make the film stand alone was
because of marketing concerns. Many American TV series pilots are released
abroad as standalone films, and plans were to do the same with TWIN PEAKS.
At the time, there were no plans to run the actual series outside of the
US and Canada. So Lynch/Frost was obligated to provide a solution to the
murder mystery, and what they came up with was done quick-and-dirty.

So the home video version was an after-the-fact creation, and not planned
from the start.

} Also, as you probably noticed, the first episode of the first series was
} just an extended version of the film, only with a different ending.

By "first episode of the first series", I assume you mean the 2-hour pilot?
(It's actual just referred to as "the pilot" or Episode #0. What is called
Episode #1 is actually the first hour-long episode. That's even the way
Lynch/Frost designated it.)

If so, you have it backward. The "film" is an extended version of the pilot,
not vice versa. The pilot is approximately 95 minutes long, and the "film"
is about 115 minutes long.

} In fact the final scene of the film wasn't even used in the series.

If by "final scene of the film", you mean the section labelled "25 Years
Later", then you are dead wrong. That whole section -- as well as part's
of the One-Armed Man's dialogue and Bob's dialogue -- was used as part of
Cooper's dream sequence at the end of Episode #2.

-- "Great thing about the military: even though you know that they know that nobody knows what the hell they're doing, everybody pretends that that ain't so." --- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC, "The Mill", Maynard, MA) boyajian@ruby.enet.dec.com