Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces is a 2014 compilation of deleted and extended scenes from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, a 1992 psychological horror film directed by David Lynch and written by Lynch and Robert Engels. The scenes were not included in the early home video releases of Fire Walk with Me and remained under lock and key for over twenty years, although their content was generally known to the public via the Fire Walk with Me script.
When filming Fire Walk with Me, Lynch shot up to five hours of material but cut the film to two hours and fourteen minutes for its theatrical release, explaining that he wanted to focus the film on the story of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). The deleted scenes principally concerned the FBI's investigation into the murder of Teresa Banks (Pamela Gidley), who shared a killer with Laura, and everyday interactions with characters from seasons one and two of the Twin Peaks television series (1990–91). The Missing Pieces restores characters who were entirely cut from Fire Walk with Me, such as Josie Packard (Joan Chen), Ed Hurley (Everett McGill), and Nadine Hurley (Wendy Robie), and adds material to characters whose participation was reduced in the final edit.
Although The Missing Pieces is loosely structured as a feature-length film and has a feature-length runtime, it is not a standalone story and omits expository and storyline material from Fire Walk with Me, meaning that familiarity with the original film is essential to understanding The Missing Pieces. It has generally been released as a special feature to home video releases of Fire Walk with Me, such as CBS Home Entertainment's Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery and Twin Peaks: From Z to A and The Criterion Collection's Fire Walk with Me re-release.
After examining the body of Teresa Banks, FBI Agents Sam Stanley and Chet Desmond discuss how much time had passed since they entered the morgue. They question the owner of Hap's Diner about Teresa, his former employee. Sheriff Cable fights Desmond to stop him from moving Teresa's body to Portland for further investigations, but Desmond beats him. At the FBI's Philadelphia office, Special Agent Dale Cooper makes light conversation with his unseen secretary Diane. After Desmond disappears, Cooper visits Stanley to discuss the Banks investigation.
Long-disappeared Agent Phillip Jeffries checks into a hotel in Argentina. He vanishes when entering an elevator. Several years later, he emerges from a different elevator in the FBI's Philadelphia office and tells Cooper, Gordon Cole, and Albert Rosenfield about his vision of a space between different worlds. The Black Lodge spirits, the Man from Another Place and Killer Bob, are shown residing with several other spirits above a convenience store.
One year later in Twin Peaks, Bobby Briggs and Mike Nelson discuss the fact that they owe Leo Johnson $5,000 and that their cocaine supply is running low. Leo is later seen verbally and physically abusing his wife, Shelly Johnson, and forcing her to clean the kitchen floor.
After going to school, Laura Palmer is horrified when she discovers pages ripped out of her diary. As she runs downstairs, she bumps into her mother, Sarah Palmer, who is returning from grocery shopping. Laura asks to use the car, claiming she forgot her books. After finding the books, Sarah confronts Laura and asks her to not lie to her.
At dinner, Leland Palmer attempts to teach his family how to introduce themselves and say their names in Norwegian. He explains that his boss Benjamin Horne has invited a delegation of Norwegians to close a property deal, and he wants his family to be able to introduce themselves properly. Sarah and Laura roar with laughter at Leland's antics.
One night, Laura sneaks out of her house and meets a trucker in his truck and exchanges sex for drugs.
Laura, who delivers food for the Meals on Wheels program, visits the Double R Diner to pick up her shipments for the day. Ed Hurley and Nadine Hurley enter the diner for coffee. When Nadine sees Norma Jennings working at the counter, she angrily makes Ed leave with her. Laura skips the day's deliveries after meeting two mysterious spirits outside the diner, and Norma tells Shelly to cover for Laura. Norma begins to cry, after which Ed reenters the diner and apologizes to her.
When Laura visits Donna Hayward's house, she expresses gloomy thoughts to Donna, which Donna's father Doc Hayward overhears. The next time she visits Donna, Doc passes her a comforting message. Laura cheers up, but when Donna's parents suggest calling Leland, her expression becomes icy. Donna's parents realize that something is wrong between Laura and Leland, but do not feel that they can do anything.
At the Packard Sawmill, Dell Mibbler complains to Josie Packard and Pete Martell that their two-by-fours are smaller than advertised. Pete explains that two-by-fours are not supposed to be exactly two inches by four inches, but Dell is unconvinced. Pete defuses the conflict by explaining that at Dell's bank a dollar is not worth what it used to be.
Back at home, Laura goes up the stairs and begins to hear the voice of BOB, coming from the ceiling fan. She slowly begins to become possessed by BOB, only to have her mother, Sarah, interrupt the possession.
To go to Jacques Renault's Canadian prostitution nightclub, Jacques, Laura, Donna, and their clients (drunk and high on cocaine) recklessly drive across the Canadian border at night.
Local prostitute Teresa Banks wonders why her client Leland Palmer backed out of a foursome he had asked her to arrange. After connecting the dots between Laura (one of the other prostitutes in the foursome) and Leland, she realizes Leland is Laura's father. She calls Leland to blackmail him, which leads to her death.
Sheriff Harry S. Truman and his deputies, Andy and Hawk, meet to discuss catching a local drug dealer.
The day after Bobby kills a man with a package of cocaine, he meets Laura at her locker at school and asks her to hide $10,000 in her safety deposit box. Laura antagonizes Bobby about the situation, which makes him angry. Bobby goes into the woods and discovers that the drugs he stole are baby laxatives and not cocaine.
Dr. Lawrence Jacoby calls Laura and questions why she has not called or visited him recently. Laura shows disgust in her facial expression and says that she made audiotapes for him.
On the night of her death, Laura is having dinner with her mother, fully aware that her father is BOB. Feeling disgusted with her father and herself, she asks if she can go to Bobby's house. Major Briggs reads aloud from the Book of Revelation to his wife Betty. Lucy, Andy, and Truman are shown at the Sheriff's station.
Laura climbs out her bedroom window to meet James Hurley one last time. She hides in the bushes outside her house as her father approaches the front door. Leland sees her and follows her. The Log Lady is shown clenching her log as she hears the screams of Laura's murder.[1]
Two scenes take place after the end of the original television series. The first scene depicts Annie Blackburn being wheeled into the hospital after her encounter with Dale Cooper in the Black Lodge. She is wearing the ring Laura Palmer and Teresa Banks wore before their deaths until a nurse steals the ring off her finger. In the next scene, Dr. Hayward and Sheriff Truman hear Cooper/Bob smash his head against the mirror. The doppelgänger, still cackling "How's Annie?", hears them and lies on the floor. Dr. Hayward says that Cooper should go right back to bed. The doppelganger replies, "But I haven't brushed my teeth yet."
David Lynch originally shot more than five hours of footage for Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, which he cut down to two hours and fourteen minutes.[2] He denied making the cuts for runtime reasons,[3] instead explaining that he wanted to focus the film on Laura Palmer, and that the deleted scenes "were too tangential to keep the main story progressing properly".[4] He remarked that "it might be good sometime to do a longer version with these other things in, because a lot of the characters that are missing in the finished movie had been filmed. They're part of the picture, they're just not necessary for the main story."[4]
Although the film's editor Mary Sweeney said that Lynch would "love" if the deleted scenes were released,[5] the unused footage was not released for over twenty years.[6] Lynch suggested that the distribution companies that owned the home video rights to Fire Walk with Me could not agree with him on a price to edit, mix, and color grade the remaining footage.[7][8]
The deleted scenes remained under lock and key, but the film's shooting script was publicly accessible.[9] The script gave fans a general sense of what Lynch cut from the final edit, including interactions between Agents Desmond, Stanley, and Cooper; a fight between Desmond and Deer Meadow Sheriff Cable; a lost and disoriented Agent Jeffries; a dinner where Leland Palmer entertains his family; conversations between Laura and BOB's disembodied voice; the revelation that the package of cocaine that Bobby Briggs steals from the deputy was actually baby laxative; and an extended version of the scene where Cooper's doppelgänger interacts with Sheriff Truman and Doc Hayward.[10]
During the twenty-two-year interval between Fire Walk with Me and The Missing Pieces, the deleted scenes became a frequent topic of discussion within the Twin Peaks fandom. Various commentators described them as the fandom's "Holy Grail".[11][12] At various points, fans campaigned for distributors to release the deleted scenes as a director's cut or as special features to a home video release.[6]
Development and release
In 2012, Lynch and Mark Frost secretly began developing a third season of Twin Peaks,[13][14] which premiered in 2017.[15] In January 2015, they delivered a version of the season three script to Showtime (the cable TV arm of Paramount, which owned the rights to Twin Peaks through Aaron Spelling Productions).[16] While Lynch and Frost worked on the season three script, Lynch and Paramount's home video subsidiary CBS Home Entertainment agreed to release a box set combining the first two seasons of Twin Peaks with Fire Walk with Me. As part of the deal, Lynch produced The Missing Pieces as a special feature for the box set. Given the longstanding speculation about the deleted scenes, the never-before-seen material in The Missing Pieces was deemed the highlight of the re-release.[6][17][18]
While promoting the box set, Lynch commented that "it was great going back into the world [of Twin Peaks] ... and living with the people again".[19] The third season was still a secret at the time, but when asked about future Twin Peaks stories, Lynch teased that "you never say never".[19]
To commemorate the box set, Paramount organized a special screening of The Missing Pieces at the Vista Theatre in Los Angeles on July 16, 2014. Lynch delivered a cryptic introduction about the beauty of wood.[20][1] Three months later, Showtime announced the third season of Twin Peaks.[21]
Reception
Critical reception
Reviewers generally agreed that The Missing Pieces was not a standalone feature film, instead characterizing it as "a series of vignettes that capture stolen moments";[22] a "fragmented ... cluster of vignettes";[19] and a series of "dead ends, intriguing digressions, smart discards, and intriguing unused options".[6] One writer said that the film "seemingly presumes we'll be watching with full knowledge of already-seen events".[17]
Several reviewers noted that The Missing Pieces still adds to the Fire Walk with Me story, despite its fragmented nature. Jace Lacob (BuzzFeed) explained that the film eventually "coalesces into something" that "give[s] us a deeper portrait of Laura and those around her ... something alternately funny and heartbreaking, terrifying and uplifting".[22] He added that the deleted scenes further showcased Sheryl Lee's "incredibly nuanced and powerful performance ... giv[ing] television's most famous dead girl a profound sense of vulnerability".[22] Chuck Bowen (Slant Magazine) noted that The Missing Pieces specifically "underline[s] the town's willed obliviousness to Laura's misery".[23]
However, critics cautioned that The Missing Pieces did not resolve any of the mysteries left by the second season's cliffhanger ending. Jonathan Eburne (Los Angeles Review of Books) noted that while the 2014 box set was "terrific ... it remains steadfast in its refusal to [resolve lingering questions about its characters' fates or the series' "otherworldly cosmology"]".[24] Lacob agreed that the film did not "pull back the curtain on the larger mysteries of Twin Peaks".[22]
Fan edits
In the years since The Missing Pieces was released, several bootlegfan edits have attempted to splice the deleted scenes into Fire Walk with Me to create a coherent whole.[25][26][27]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
