Production
Twin Peaks had been canceled only a month when David Lynch announced he would be making a movie with French company CIBY-2000 financing what would be the first film of a three-picture deal. However, on July 11, 1991, Ken Scherer, CEO of Lynch/Frost productions, announced that the film was not going to be made because series star Kyle MacLachlan did not want to reprise his role of Special Agent Dale Cooper. A month later, MacLachlan had changed his mind and the film was back on.
The film was made without Twin Peaks series regulars Lara Flynn Boyle, Sherilyn Fenn and Richard Beymer. At the time, these absences were attributed to scheduling conflicts, but in a 1995 interview, Fenn revealed that the real reason was that she "was extremely disappointed in the way the second season got off track. As far as Fire Walk with Me, it was something that I chose not to be a part of." Fenn's character was cut from the script, Boyle was recast with Moira Kelly and Beymer's scenes were not filmed. In a September 2007 interview, Beymer claimed that he did not appear in any scenes shot for the movie, although his character, Benjamin Horne, appeared in the script.
Kyle MacLachlan's reluctance was also caused by a decline of quality in the second season of the show. He said "David and Mark were only around for the first season... I think we all felt a little abandoned. So I was fairly resentful when the film, Fire Walk with Me, came around." Although he agreed to be in the film, MacLachlan wanted a smaller role, forcing Lynch and co-writer Robert Engels to re-write the screenplay so that the Teresa Banks murder was investigated by Agent Chester Desmond and not by Cooper as originally planned. MacLachlan ended up working only five days on the movie.
Another missing figure from Twin Peaks was co-creator Mark Frost. The relationship between Lynch and Frost had become strained during the second season and after the series ended. Frost went on to direct his own movie, Storyville (1992), and was unable to collaborate with Lynch on Fire Walk with Me.
David Bowie had this to say about his part of the movie: "They crammed me. I did all my scenes in four or five days, because I was in rehearsals for the 1991 Tin Machine tour. I was there for only a few days."
Principal photography began on September 5, 1991 in Snoqualmie, Washington and lasted until October of the same year, with four weeks dedicated to locations in Washington and another four weeks of interiors and additional locations in Los Angeles, California. When shooting went over schedule in Seattle, Washington, Laura's death in the train car had to be shot in Los Angeles on soundstage during the last day of shooting, October 31.
Read more about this topic: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
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—Debbie Taylor (20th century)
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“The problem of culture is seldom grasped correctly. The goal of a culture is not the greatest possible happiness of a people, nor is it the unhindered development of all their talents; instead, culture shows itself in the correct proportion of these developments. Its aim points beyond earthly happiness: the production of great works is the aim of culture.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)