Friday, July 25, 2008 - Stockholm, Sweden
Eternal Longing to Twin Peaks
Every year, devoted fans of the famous, cult television series gather together.
Photo: Erik Augustin Palm
Twede’s Cafe in downtown North Bend, known as the Double R Diner in Twin Peaks. The main destination for Twin Peaks fans.
Photo: Twin Peaks Fest
Jared Lyon, one of the two organizers behind the Twin Peaks Festival, with a hefty set of memorabilia
Facts
The Twin Peaks Festival started in 1993 in Issaquah, Washington (a North Bend neighboring city) by Don and Pat Shook. Today, Jared Lyon and Amanda Hicks are the organizers. The fest has had as many as 250 attendees in a single year. The average is 150.
Actors from the TV series coming to this year’s festival are Piper Laurie (Catherine Martell), Kimmy Robertson (Lucy Moran), James Marshall (James Hurley) and Charlotte Stewart (Betty Briggs).
Twin Peaks first aired on American TV between 1990-1991 and was created by David Lynch and Mark frost. The action takes place in the fictional, idyllic American small town Twin Peaks, which is located in Washington state in the northwestern corner of the U.S., near the Canadian border.
(Translated from the original Swedish story.)
With a mix of surrealism, romance and mysticism, the TV series Twin Peaks changed the landscape of television and paved the way for the success of The X-Files and Six Feet Under. To celebrate the series, devoted fans gather each year at the filming locations in Washington state where ingesting cherry pie, donuts and black coffee has become a ritual. This weekend, it is happening again.
Half an hour outside of Seattle, among majestic mountains and spruce forests, are the small communities of North Bend and Snoqualmie. Together, they constitute a Mecca for those who want to experience the television series’s suggestive environments closely.
It is also here that the Twin Peaks Fest has taken place in various forms since 1993, the year after the David Lynch movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me—something of a combined prologue and epilogue to the series—premiered at the theater in North Bend.
The festival is completely non-profit, with the result that the organizers not infrequently pick from their own pockets. The depressed economy and meticulous preparations split among only a few individuals, has meant more registrants parcels. Jared Lyon and Amanda Hicks, who were two of four organizers in 2004, have been the only organizers since 2007.
From January to July each year, the two have frequent correspondence between their homes in New York and California, respectively. The month before the festival, they sacrifice almost all of their free time.
“We’ve put even more time into organizing this year because the recent festival documentary on the DVD collection Twin Peaks: The Definitive Gold Box Edition,” says Jared Lyon.
Although both he and Amanda are big fans of David Lynch in general, it is no doubt Twin Peaks that is closest their hearts, to call the interest an obsession is an understatement. Amanda has seen the series about 50 times since it premiered, sometimes in one long stretch. In order to not tire of it, today she chooses instead to watch an episode at a time, over a period of several months.
“I keep hoping that I’ll recapture some of whatever I felt when I saw the show for the first time.”
Both Jared and Amanda say a certain degree of nerdiness is inevitable in the type of event that Twin Peaks Festival is. They stress, however, that the atmosphere differs significantly from, for example, a Star Trek convention.
“There you feel like you’re just surrounded by entertainment as a commodity. At the Twin Peaks Festival, you almost forget that it was ‘just a TV show’.” First time attendees are initially most interested to meet the actors and to see the filming locations, but the essence of the festival lies in the meeting of average people.
“Although a majority of the participants are Americans and Canadians,” says Jared Lyon, “visitors have come from every continent except Africa and Antarctica.” A family atmosphere prevails and several love relationships have even begun at the festival, including actress Kimmy Robertson (the squeaky-voiced sheriff secretary Lucy) and a male Twin Peaks fan.
The agenda has four main events: a movie night at the Seattle Art Museum, a sightseeing bus tour, and dinner night with the actors and attendees, and a picnic.
Many of the series’ stars have come to Twin Peaks Fest over the years, including the late Jack Nance—perhaps the most faithful Lynch actor, best known from the cult classic Eraserhead from 1977.
David Lynch himself has so far not made an appearance at the festival, although every year he does create a new video greeting. He has also contributed by providing personal film copies and has expressed great appreciation for the event. His daughter, Boxing Helena director Jennifer Lynch (and author of the Twin Peaks book The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, has participated in the festival a couple of times and promised to try to persuade her father to one day to turn up.
© 2008 Svenska Dagbladet