Three weeks after director David Lynch caused a storm with his public departure from the continuation on Showtime, it looks like the dark clouds over Twin Peaks are finally dissipating and blue skies could be emerging.
While several anonymous sources are optimistic, Dana Ashbrook was actually outspoken about the matter in front of a large crowd at last Sunday’s Antwerp Convention in Belgium. During a Q&A on stage, the actor told fans that negotiations for a David Lynch-directed series are back on, confirming Showtime’s repeated statements in e-mails and interviews. Things are looking way better than they did on Easter Sunday, he added, and there’s a fifty-fifty chance that David Lynch will return to direct the 9 new episodes. UPDATE: Dana said Mark Frost’s The Secret Lives of Twin Peaks book is completed, but its release is uncertain and depends on the ongoing negotiations with Showtime.
“We are not going to do it without [David Lynch]. What is the point, honestly?”
—Dana Ashbrook
On a fun side note: Dana, who first learned from Sheryl Lee that he was going to be cast again, also mentioned that David Lynch asked him if he’d been practicing “walking backwards” lately, as we see Bobby Briggs do in the pilot and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.
[bctt tweet=”“You’ve been practicing walking backwards?” —David Lynch to Dana Ashbrook #TwinPeaks2016″]
Dana Ashbrook Q&A in Antwerp, Belgium on April 26, 2015
UPDATE: Here’s the entire discussion recorded at Antwerp Convention. Dana discusses the indispensability of David Lynch, the emotional diner scene with Don S. Davis, Diane Keaton’s directing style, his favorite scene from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and much more.
Add Dana’s report on the ongoing negotiations to recent yet vague and often metaphoric statements, like this “It’s still blurry but coming into focus” tweet by Sherilyn Fenn (Audrey Horne) along with a recent photo of her and Sheryl Lee (Laura Palmer), and you’d almost get your hopes up. Almost. But fifty-fifty is still far away from 100% so keep crossing your fingers until we hear from Mark Frost and/or David Lynch.
It's still blurry but coming into focus pic.twitter.com/HQGzXHWOWG
— sherilynfenn (@sherilynfenn1) April 27, 2015
Hat tips to Marco Aarts, Julie Sunfield and Hendrik Van Dale!
Dana Ashbrook at Antwerp Convention 2015 with Welcome to Twin Peaks reader, Marco Aarts.
RANDOM BONUS: Time-lapse of Dana Ashbrook getting a haircut
…from hairdresser Lucky Longo.
Fire walk with 
50% is better than 0%. Having said that, this torture has gone on long enough. MAKE THE DEAL!!
I always sort of felt, that Bobby like Harry S. Truman would be much more involved into the mystery side of the new season than ever.
What does the book have to do with this? So if lynch backs out again, we get nothing?
It’s likely that the book is very heavily tied into the new series, rights and all. Frost might have to completely revise it anyway if the series doesn’t come to fruition. It might not stand on it’s own, for all we know.
Luckily, though, things are sounding more positive now.
Awesome, the book will only get published if we get the series. So it’s all or nothing.
Let us win a coinflip! One time!
No, no, no! Do not let this happen!!! The capitalist way is the capitalist way. Respect it. The model is: ‘dominate, dictate and take’. The capitalists’ motto is: ‘Take what you get whether you like it or not and even if it hurts you’. Let David be forced to work with insufficient funds or not at all. The brand will prove to be a bonanza for advertizers while the rest of us can eat gruel. If you want to escape the reasonable, holy bounds of neoliberal capitalism, Twin Peaks fans, then get the Pirate Bay to produce the series. They’re the ones that embrace weak principles like giving and sharing. Sure, they may have some fuzzy idea that ‘all’ of society should win, and that’s nice. But they just aren’t… RIGHTeous. Maybe that’s why they are hounded to death. Think about it!!!
Ok, then…
Capitalism/Communism be damned! I want me some TP!!!
Here’s to hoping that David Lynch directs at least 9 episodes of TP.
It has been far, far too long since Lynch gave us some weirdness.
May the owls be with us!!
Bobby as the new Sheriff. Crazy?
Stranger things have happened, especially in Twin Peaks. I’m personally amused by the thought of Bobby ending up like his dad, lecturing verbosely to a scornful delinquent kid. That would work if he’s the sheriff, or a used car salesman (more likely) or whatever.
Can’t he just direct a few of them? Pilot, finale, and one in the middle; that’s basically what the first season was, and that turned out pretty great. Why all the all-or-nothing talk? Plus, he and Mark Frost already wrote the story.
Second thing: Mark Frost. He doesn’t get enough credit. Yes, Twin Peaks without Lynch would lack the needed surrealism and bursts of inspiration, but Twin Peaks without Frost would be all magic horses and talking logs with no coherent story to carry us through.
Don’t get me wrong; I’d prefer Lynch come fully on board, but if he won’t, wouldn’t partial involvement be an option? Frost is capable of carrying the rest if need be, especially since it’s already written.
What you’re saying (and many others have said the same) is reasonable up to a point, but I don’t get why anyone thinks it’s a solution. If Lynch is a co-showrunner who only directs a minority of episodes, the problem remains: he thinks a certain budget is needed to do it right. This doesn’t change if directing is handed off to others for some of the episodes. It’s still his baby (along with Frost’s of course, and I’m largely agreed with what you say about him), and it’s still at least 50% his say how it’s raised even if there are nannies caring for it some of the time.
Furthermore: some of the most memorable and transformative elements of the show were the result of Lynch’s unique inspirations as a director (especially in 2nd season, when he tended to extensively rewrite the scripts he was handed on the fly). Seems to me that if the new episodes are to knock us out in a way comparable to the previous ones at their best, there has to be even more of that. Those points where the old series stumbled were those where they lacked a cohesive and consistent vision from a distracted or absent Lynch and/or Frost.
Either way, he’s at a point in his life and career when he has no interest in compromising his vision(s) and no need to – he’s got plenty of other projects to keep him busy, plenty of money to live on, and plenty of bad memories of the previous times that he compromised and regretted it (Dune, TP Season 2, the Mulholland Drive pilot). The results may be frustrating for us fans, but I, for one, respect him for it.
Watched Twin Peaks with my daughter. She started walking backwards and acting like Bobby Briggs at school. The school counseler has already scheduled an appointment with us.
A-men.
As long as she doesn’t call her best friend ‘Snake’, I wouldn’t worry.
It sounds like she isn’t experiencing an ongoing reluctance to enter into meaningful exchange with you. So there’s that.
its 50 50 no matter what, right? he either will or he wont lol
Read my lips – NO…DEE-EL…. NO TEE-PEE
It would be great if David Bowie could come back for the new series.Maybe Mark Snow’s book could be made as a cgi series aswell ?