section_path: Film career/1990–1999: Twin Peaks and film work
section_name: 1990–1999: Twin Peaks and film work
paragraph_text: 1990–1999: Twin Peaks and film work
  
  Lynch met the television producer Mark Frost and they started working together on a biopic of Marilyn Monroe based on Anthony Summers 's book The Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe, but it never got off the ground.: 156–157 : 85 While talking in a coffee shop, Lynch and Frost had the idea of a corpse washing up on a lakeshore, and went to work on their third project, first called Northwest Passage and then Twin Peaks (1990–91).: 157 A drama set in an eponymous small Washington town where popular high school student Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) has been murdered, Twin Peaks featured FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (MacLachlan) as the investigator trying to identify the killer, and discovering many of the townsfolk's secrets; Lynch said, "The project was to mix a police investigation with the ordinary lives of the characters." He later said, " worked together, especially in the initial stages. Later on we started working more apart." They pitched the series to ABC, which agreed to finance the pilot and eventually commissioned a season comprising seven episodes.: 157–159 Richard Corliss wrote: "Long before the series' April premiere, ecstatic critics were priming TV viewers to expect the unexpected. Lynch's two-hour pilot didn't disappoint. It was frantic and lugubrious in turn, a soap opera with strychnine. In one night, the show had hip America hooked."
  
  Lynch directed two of the first season's seven episodes and carefully chose the other episodes' directors.: 174–175 He also appeared in several episodes as FBI agent Gordon Cole. The series was a success, with high ratings in the U.S. and many other countries, and soon had a cult following. A second season of 22 episodes went into production, but ABC executives believed that public interest in the show was declining. The network insisted that Lynch and Frost reveal Laura's killer's identity prematurely, which Lynch grudgingly agreed to do,: 180–181 in what Lynch called one of his biggest professional regrets. After identifying the murderer and moving from Thursday to Saturday night, Twin Peaks continued for several more episodes, but was canceled after a ratings drop. Lynch, who disliked the direction that writers and directors took in the later episodes, directed the final episode. He ended it with a cliffhanger (like season one had), later saying, "that's not the ending. That's the ending that people were stuck with.": 182
  
  Meanwhile, he was also involved in creating various commercials for companies including Yves Saint Laurent, Calvin Klein, Giorgio Armani, and the Japanese coffee company Namoi, which featured a Japanese man searching Twin Peaks for his missing wife.: 211–212
  
  1990 was Lynch's annus mirabilis: Wild at Heart won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and the television series Twin Peaks was proving a smash hit with audiences across the world. The musical/performance piece Industrial Symphony No. 1, which Lynch had staged with Angelo Badalamenti at the Brooklyn Academy of music, had spawned the album Floating into the Night and launched singer Julee Cruise. Five one-man exhibitions between 1989 and 1991 emphasized Lynch's roots in fine art and painting, and a rash of ads (including a teaser trailer for Michael Jackson 's 'Dangerous' tour) confirmed the demand for the Lynch touch... In an unlikely scenario for the maker of Eraserhead, Lynch had become an influential and fashionable brand name.
  
  While Lynch was working on the first few episodes of Twin Peaks, his friend Monty Montgomery "gave me a book that he wanted to direct as a movie. He asked if I would maybe be executive producer or something, and I said 'That's great, Monty, but what if I read it and fall in love with it and want to do it myself?' And he said, 'In that case, you can do it yourself'." The book was Barry Gifford 's novel Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula, about two lovers on a road trip. Lynch felt that it was "just exactly the right thing at the right time. The book and the violence in America merged in my mind and many different things happened.": 193 With Gifford's support, Lynch adapted the novel into Wild at Heart, a crime and road movie starring Nicolas Cage as Sailor and Laura Dern as Lula. Calling its plot a "strange blend" of "a road picture, a love story, a psychological drama and a violent comedy", Lynch departed substantially from the novel, changing the ending and incorporating numerous references to The Wizard of Oz.: 193–194, 198 Corliss wrote: " Wild at Heart, which sends a pair of loser lovers (Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern) on a trip into the dark night of the Southern Gothic soul, is a tonic for the senses and an assault on the sensibilities. Heads splatter, skulls explode, biker punks torture folks for the sheer heck of it, and a pair of loopy innocents find excitement in a side trip to hell. Pretty much like Blue Velvet. Yes, it's different, but the same kind of different; Lynch could no longer shock by being shocking. Many critics figured they had solved the mystery of his visual style and thematic preoccupations. Next mystery, please. By August, when the film opened in the U.S., the Lynch mob was more like a lynch mob." Despite a muted response from American critics and viewers, Wild at Heart won the Palme d'Or at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. When it won the prize, audience members booed Lynch and the film.
  
  After Wild at Heart ' s success, Lynch returned to the world of the canceled Twin Peaks, this time without Frost, to make a film that was primarily a prequel but also in part a sequel. Lynch said, "I liked the idea of the story going back and forth in time.": 187 The result, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), primarily revolved around the last few days of Laura Palmer's life, was much "darker" in tone than the TV series, with much of the humor removed, and dealt with such topics as incest and murder. Lynch has said the film is about "the loneliness, shame, guilt, confusion and devastation of the victim of incest". The company CIBY-2000 financed Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and most of the TV series's cast reprised their roles, though some refused and many were unenthusiastic about the project.: 184–187 The film was a commercial failure in the U.S. at the time of its release, but has since experienced a critical reappraisal. Many critics, such as Mark Kermode, have called it Lynch's "masterpiece".
  
  Meanwhile, Lynch worked on some new television shows. He and Frost created the comedy series On the Air (1992), which was canceled after three episodes aired, and he and Montgomery created the three-episode HBO miniseries Hotel Room (1993) about events that happen in one hotel room on different dates.: 82–84
  
  In 1993, Lynch collaborated with Japanese musician Yoshiki on the video for X Japan 's song " Longing ~Setsubou no Yoru~ ". The video was never officially released, but Lynch wrote in his 2018 memoir Room to Dream that "some of the frames are so fuckin' beautiful, you can't believe it."
  
  After his unsuccessful TV ventures, Lynch returned to film. In 1997, he released the non-linear noiresque Lost Highway, which was co-written by Barry Gifford and stars Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette. The film failed commercially and received a mixed response from critics.
  
  Lynch then began work on a film from a script by Mary Sweeney and John E. Roach, The Straight Story, based on the true story of Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth), an elderly man from Laurens, Iowa, who goes on a 300-mile journey to visit his sick brother (Harry Dean Stanton) in Mount Zion, Wisconsin, by riding lawnmower. Asked why he chose this script, Lynch said, "that's what I fell in love with next", and expressed his admiration of Straight, describing him as "like James Dean, except he's old".: 247, 252 Badalamenti scored the film, calling it "very different from the kind of score he's done for in the past".: 260
  
  Among the many differences from Lynch's other films, The Straight Story contains no profanity, sex, or violence, and is rated G (general viewing) by the Motion Picture Association of America, which came as "shocking news" to many in the film industry, who were surprised that it "did not disturb, offend or mystify".: 245 Le Blanc and Odell write that the plot made it "seem as far removed from Lynch's earlier works as could be imagined, but in fact right from the very opening, this is entirely his film—a surreal road movie".: 69 It was also Lynch's only title released by Walt Disney Pictures in the U.S., after studio president Peter Schneider screened the film before its Cannes Film Festival premiere and quickly had Disney acquire the distribution rights. Schneider said it is "a beautiful movie about values, forgiveness and healing and celebrates America. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was a Walt Disney film." It was named one of the best films of the year by The New York Times; Janet Maslin wrote: "Somehow it took David Lynch to lead audiences past the ultimate frontier: into a G-rated parable of spirituality and decency, seen from the unfashionable vantage point of old age. Mr. Lynch accomplished the unthinkable by putting Richard Farnsworth, in a devastatingly real and rock-solid performance, on a lawnmower at five miles per hour and still building enough drama and emotion for a great chase. Burned out on the surreal and the grotesque, Mr. Lynch faced down inevitable realities about aging and conscience."
  
  Lynch met the television producer Mark Frost and they started working together on a biopic of Marilyn Monroe based on Anthony Summers 's book The Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe, but it never got off the ground.: 156–157 : 85 While talking in a coffee shop, Lynch and Frost had the idea of a corpse washing up on a lakeshore, and went to work on their third project, first called Northwest Passage and then Twin Peaks (1990–91).: 157 A drama set in an eponymous small Washington town where popular high school student Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) has been murdered, Twin Peaks featured FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (MacLachlan) as the investigator trying to identify the killer, and discovering many of the townsfolk's secrets; Lynch said, "The project was to mix a police investigation with the ordinary lives of the characters." He later said, " worked together, especially in the initial stages. Later on we started working more apart." They pitched the series to ABC, which agreed to finance the pilot and eventually commissioned a season comprising seven episodes.: 157–159 Richard Corliss wrote: "Long before the series' April premiere, ecstatic critics were priming TV viewers to expect the unexpected. Lynch's two-hour pilot didn't disappoint. It was frantic and lugubrious in turn, a soap opera with strychnine. In one night, the show had hip America hooked."
  
  Lynch directed two of the first season's seven episodes and carefully chose the other episodes' directors.: 174–175 He also appeared in several episodes as FBI agent Gordon Cole. The series was a success, with high ratings in the U.S. and many other countries, and soon had a cult following. A second season of 22 episodes went into production, but ABC executives believed that public interest in the show was declining. The network insisted that Lynch and Frost reveal Laura's killer's identity prematurely, which Lynch grudgingly agreed to do,: 180–181 in what Lynch called one of his biggest professional regrets. After identifying the murderer and moving from Thursday to Saturday night, Twin Peaks continued for several more episodes, but was canceled after a ratings drop. Lynch, who disliked the direction that writers and directors took in the later episodes, directed the final episode. He ended it with a cliffhanger (like season one had), later saying, "that's not the ending. That's the ending that people were stuck with.": 182
  
  Meanwhile, he was also involved in creating various commercials for companies including Yves Saint Laurent, Calvin Klein, Giorgio Armani, and the Japanese coffee company Namoi, which featured a Japanese man searching Twin Peaks for his missing wife.: 211–212
  
  1990 was Lynch's annus mirabilis: Wild at Heart won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and the television series Twin Peaks was proving a smash hit with audiences across the world. The musical/performance piece Industrial Symphony No. 1, which Lynch had staged with Angelo Badalamenti at the Brooklyn Academy of music, had spawned the album Floating into the Night and launched singer Julee Cruise. Five one-man exhibitions between 1989 and 1991 emphasized Lynch's roots in fine art and painting, and a rash of ads (including a teaser trailer for Michael Jackson 's 'Dangerous' tour) confirmed the demand for the Lynch touch... In an unlikely scenario for the maker of Eraserhead, Lynch had become an influential and fashionable brand name.
  
  While Lynch was working on the first few episodes of Twin Peaks, his friend Monty Montgomery "gave me a book that he wanted to direct as a movie. He asked if I would maybe be executive producer or something, and I said 'That's great, Monty, but what if I read it and fall in love with it and want to do it myself?' And he said, 'In that case, you can do it yourself'." The book was Barry Gifford 's novel Wild at Heart: The Story of Sailor and Lula, about two lovers on a road trip. Lynch felt that it was "just exactly the right thing at the right time. The book and the violence in America merged in my mind and many different things happened.": 193 With Gifford's support, Lynch adapted the novel into Wild at Heart, a crime and road movie starring Nicolas Cage as Sailor and Laura Dern as Lula. Calling its plot a "strange blend" of "a road picture, a love story, a psychological drama and a violent comedy", Lynch departed substantially from the novel, changing the ending and incorporating numerous references to The Wizard of Oz.: 193–194, 198 Corliss wrote: " Wild at Heart, which sends a pair of loser lovers (Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern) on a trip into the dark night of the Southern Gothic soul, is a tonic for the senses and an assault on the sensibilities. Heads splatter, skulls explode, biker punks torture folks for the sheer heck of it, and a pair of loopy innocents find excitement in a side trip to hell. Pretty much like Blue Velvet. Yes, it's different, but the same kind of different; Lynch could no longer shock by being shocking. Many critics figured they had solved the mystery of his visual style and thematic preoccupations. Next mystery, please. By August, when the film opened in the U.S., the Lynch mob was more like a lynch mob." Despite a muted response from American critics and viewers, Wild at Heart won the Palme d'Or at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. When it won the prize, audience members booed Lynch and the film.
  
  After Wild at Heart ' s success, Lynch returned to the world of the canceled Twin Peaks, this time without Frost, to make a film that was primarily a prequel but also in part a sequel. Lynch said, "I liked the idea of the story going back and forth in time.": 187 The result, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), primarily revolved around the last few days of Laura Palmer's life, was much "darker" in tone than the TV series, with much of the humor removed, and dealt with such topics as incest and murder. Lynch has said the film is about "the loneliness, shame, guilt, confusion and devastation of the victim of incest". The company CIBY-2000 financed Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and most of the TV series's cast reprised their roles, though some refused and many were unenthusiastic about the project.: 184–187 The film was a commercial failure in the U.S. at the time of its release, but has since experienced a critical reappraisal. Many critics, such as Mark Kermode, have called it Lynch's "masterpiece".
  
  Meanwhile, Lynch worked on some new television shows. He and Frost created the comedy series On the Air (1992), which was canceled after three episodes aired, and he and Montgomery created the three-episode HBO miniseries Hotel Room (1993) about events that happen in one hotel room on different dates.: 82–84
  
  In 1993, Lynch collaborated with Japanese musician Yoshiki on the video for X Japan 's song " Longing ~Setsubou no Yoru~ ". The video was never officially released, but Lynch wrote in his 2018 memoir Room to Dream that "some of the frames are so fuckin' beautiful, you can't believe it."
  
  After his unsuccessful TV ventures, Lynch returned to film. In 1997, he released the non-linear noiresque Lost Highway, which was co-written by Barry Gifford and stars Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette. The film failed commercially and received a mixed response from critics.
  
  Lynch then began work on a film from a script by Mary Sweeney and John E. Roach, The Straight Story, based on the true story of Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth), an elderly man from Laurens, Iowa, who goes on a 300-mile journey to visit his sick brother (Harry Dean Stanton) in Mount Zion, Wisconsin, by riding lawnmower. Asked why he chose this script, Lynch said, "that's what I fell in love with next", and expressed his admiration of Straight, describing him as "like James Dean, except he's old".: 247, 252 Badalamenti scored the film, calling it "very different from the kind of score he's done for in the past".: 260
  
  Among the many differences from Lynch's other films, The Straight Story contains no profanity, sex, or violence, and is rated G (general viewing) by the Motion Picture Association of America, which came as "shocking news" to many in the film industry, who were surprised that it "did not disturb, offend or mystify".: 245 Le Blanc and Odell write that the plot made it "seem as far removed from Lynch's earlier works as could be imagined, but in fact right from the very opening, this is entirely his film—a surreal road movie".: 69 It was also Lynch's only title released by Walt Disney Pictures in the U.S., after studio president Peter Schneider screened the film before its Cannes Film Festival premiere and quickly had Disney acquire the distribution rights. Schneider said it is "a beautiful movie about values, forgiveness and healing and celebrates America. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was a Walt Disney film." It was named one of the best films of the year by The New York Times; Janet Maslin wrote: "Somehow it took David Lynch to lead audiences past the ultimate frontier: into a G-rated parable of spirituality and decency, seen from the unfashionable vantage point of old age. Mr. Lynch accomplished the unthinkable by putting Richard Farnsworth, in a devastatingly real and rock-solid performance, on a lawnmower at five miles per hour and still building enough drama and emotion for a great chase. Burned out on the surreal and the grotesque, Mr. Lynch faced down inevitable realities about aging and conscience."