So got back today from the big drive-in trip.
I had a bit of a mixed experience at the drive-in and I'm wondering if anyone else can back-up what I'm saying or if anyone knows what the deal is.
After being very anxious about getting-a-good-spot, after some delays we got there at 5:30pm and jumped in the car line. We got a very nice spot in the second row of cars somehow (tons and tons of cars went waaaay back, leaving some open spots towards the front...I wonder why?)
So the event was insanely fun. The band was fantastic, really great setlist (though I kept thinking of songs I wanted to hear), and they especially captured the Julee Cruise songs really well. The most incredible moment of the night is when they finished their set and everyone yelled for an encore, and Michael Horse went up on stage, told them to jam, and then riffed some blues-y song on top about a cadillac. It was just so insane and great and unreal to see that. I posted a video on Twitter here:
It was also surreal to talk to the actors. Me and my wife talked to Dana for a long time, he really is chatty and super friendly and he gave us stickers which was nice of him as we felt bad for not buying anything. My wife asked him if there will be more Twin Peaks and he said definitely not, and talked quite a bit about how it's over. I believed him. I told him his performance, especially in the pilot is so unique, with like the finger snapping, etc, and was that your acting style or...? And he said that was all what David Lynch told him to do.
I mentioned the traffic jam scene in season 3 and I was just like "you saw that performance by that lady and the zombie kid?" and he's like "Yeah! I was right there!" and I asked "what's all that about??" and he shrugged as if to say "fuck if I know!"
I didn't talk to Michael Horse except to thank him for his performance. I didn't talk to Harry as I just got too nervous and didn't know what to say.
Everyone had the coolest Lynch t-shirts. I had my Laura Dern for Best Actress t-shirt (with Lynch and the cow in the back) and got complimented a lot. Talking about each other's shirts was a big theme of the day and a fun way to chat with strangers. Everyone was really nice and basically...a lot like me...which is always a weird experience.
They had free cherry pie!
I ran into an old coworker of mine, which was pretty insane. We talked about Lynch films for a while and it was also cathartic of me to talk about being fired from the job we had and find out what's going on since I left (basically decimated thanks to the strike.)
Me and my wife took photos in the little Red Room set, kind of got caught in a trap of taking tons of other people's photos until I literally had to tell people "OK we have to get out of here or we'll be asked to do this all night." We got some popcorn and ran to the car when the stuff started to play on the screen.
So it was incredible to see Lost Highway while inside a car in the dead of night, and I was also really happy my wife was seeing the film a second time. But...the problem was...the screen was so insanely dark you literally couldn't see half the movie. I'm not exaggerating, the only visible stuff was basically scenes that were during the day or where there's a more bright light on someone. It was like looking at a totally blank screen for certain sections. Examples would be: the scene where Eddy calls Pete, one of my favorite shots in all of cinema, was completely dark. No face on screen. The scene of the guy's head going into the table, totally dark, you couldn't see what happened. Just like any scene of them in the house or them at night or outside or closeups or anything, just like totally black. The scene in the scary cabin that blows up, you couldn't see anything inside there. Couldn't see the Mystery Man standing outside and walking into it. The terrifying scene where the Mystery Man's face is superimposed on Patricia Arquette was barely visible (my wife had to ask me "was her face different?")
I didn't know whether to...complain to someone? Or if it was our windshield, which we kept defogging and wiping down. Did other people feel this way? Is there a reason for this? Is it the 35mm they had or the screen or what? I plan to write to the drive-in just to ask about this, because unfortunately, this sort of thing would make me hesitate about making the trip out there again.
After Lost Highway a car in front of us LEFT! So I ran to my car and zoomed right into that PRIMO SPOT right up front! (note: up front is still way back from the screen, so it's not like it was too close or anything.)
So they screened some of Lynch's The Grandmother between the two movies, which was cool, and also a Woody Woodpecker cartoon! Very cute. Fire Walk With Me played and thankfully, that's not as dark a movie as Lost Highway (visually), so it was mostly very clear, except for a few shots (the convenience store scene was a bit hard to see.) But it looked great and every time I see that movie it's always an amazing experience.
Connectivity I noticed: in Lost Highway, Fred has a pounding headache in jail and asks for an Aspirin. In FWWM, Leland tells Laura during work he had a pounding headache and stopped home for an Aspirin. In both movies you have male protagonists who shift identities and it seems a headache may be one of those signs that a shift is happening? (I also know Leland is probably lying about the Aspirin but I think it's still an interesting thematic connection.)
They announced a special 90-minute surprise feature after FWWM! I thought it was going to be The Missing Pieces, but it turned out to be the European version of the pilot!! We stayed and watched the entire thing, not getting out of there until 4:30 AM and to our motel at 5:00 AM.
It was really amazing going from FWWM to the pilot. I had actually never done that before in such quick succession. The pilot hits incredibly differently and it's just a genius move of Lynch to make Twin Peaks (at that time) this closed circle that never ends that you can never get out of. The moment you "finish" Twin Peaks, the only next thing to do is start it again. And each time it's informed by everything you saw before and it keeps changing and changing.
The international pilot is bizarre. My wife was really kind of baffled by it. What amazes me is that while in some ways it's clunky...oh, the killer is just a random guy we've never seen before (bad Mystery Writing 101), and he's in the boiler room, bang bang, he's dead, case closed! It also has all the hints that they aren't human ("your species..."), really strange tangents (BOB saying "heads up! tails up!" and then the one-armed man yelling "HAS ANYBODY GOT A NICKLE??" after he shoots him. Season 3 brought back the coin motif: WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?), and then of course the 25 Years Later segment is absolutely bizarre in this context. Like taken as its own thing, it's easily the most insane "ending" to a movie that's ever been made. It's the future, this is what reality is like now, Laura is somehow alive, all of the riddle talk, etc, the end. Divorced from the mythology and what we know, it's just so audacious. (BTW, the pilot was not too dark and looked just fine.)
Anyway, we drove out, I got no sleep at all, and then we had a day of fun in Jim Thorpe town, which is a really cute (and BUSTLING) community with tons of fun shops and things to do. Spent hours and hours there. We went to the Old Jail Museum and learned about a haunted handprint on the wall. Went to a scary tunnel and saw some bats (we think...one was a bird...some looked like bats...)