At the latest TCA — a very long procession of television executives telling critics why their new sitcom is going to be a really big deal, don’t you know — Showtime’s President and CEO, David Nevins, was joined by Gary Levine, the network’s President of Programming, to share a bit about what’s almost certainly their most-anticipated project. (Fessing-up time: we’ve transformed ourselves into a Ray Donovan blog.) It isn’t that a whole lot of new tidbits were released (thanks to /Film), but that what little got out is wholly revealing — and, I think, reassuring — about David Lynch‘s approach to the mammoth project.
About the whole “mammoth” thing: it was said that Twin Peaks‘ episode count — often reported as 18, being that the final result is supposed to come to about 18 hours in length — “continues to evolve through the filming and editing process,” into which the director has reportedly steeped himself fully. (That Showtime was caught off-guard by Lynch’s budget and time requirements in early 2015 might be explained by the fact that Nevins agreed to development after seeing two scripts, and was only later handed a giant binder containing the full thing.) Which, in turn, means individual installments won’t necessarily run to an hour.
This is where things get intriguing and vague all the same. Said Nevins:
“I’m definitely open. Everything about Twin Peaks is going to be unconventional. Unconventional in the handling of it and how we put it out in the world and how we market it. I want to really embrace the unusualness of it. I think it is quite possible we’re not going to do a traditional release pattern. I don’t know exactly what that means yet. I’ve had a couple conversations with David but I want to embrace the unexpectedness of it. I could definitely see longer episodes or this question of how do we release it linearly and how do we release it for people who want to stream it. There may be some difference between the two. There’s all sorts of possibilities.”
Let’s hope they only cross that bridge when it stands before them, and, for the time being, just be glad they won’t be catering to the binge-watching crowd with an all-at-once release pattern. Other than some B-roll of waterfalls and forests, and aside from expected comments that the material looks great, we’re left in the dark.
Those wanting some more Lynch and a new way of experiencing his TV series will soon have a fix, however. First off is the vinyl release of Angelo Badalementi‘s original Twin Peaks soundtrack (i.e. music corresponding to the first season), which has been handled by Mondo — and which has currently sold-out, though may come back into circulation soon.
And then there’s a more original effort from the director himself: per Pitchfork, Lynch has written and produced an EP for Chrysta Bell, with whom he’s collaborated on the 2011 album This Train and Twin Peaks‘ new season. Now there’s Somewhere in the Nowhere, which releases on November 7 and from which we can hear a first track, “Beat the Beat,” below. Given the strength of his past song-writing collaborations (e.g. Julee Cruise’s fairly phenomenal Floating Into the Night and The Voice of Love), I’m inclined to think this won’t just be a nice little creative write-off.