By 1990, film auteur David Lynch had more than made a name for himself as a creative genius of the silver screen. “Doubtful whether ABC would have gone for one partner without the other,” Lynch teamed up with a network TV writer from Hill Street Blues, Mark Frost, to create a series that blended soap opera and police procedural with Lynch’s signature blend of otherworldly mysticism. Twin Peaks, the serialized mystery of who killed Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) changed television forever, and the filmmaker surprisingly even took part in the medium’s more corporate requirements, such as short promotional ads.
David Lynch directed some unique and memorable TV promos around the time of Twin Peaks, often utilizing the show’s sets and characters in their narratives. Perhaps most famously, Lynch directed a series of Twin Peaks-themed ads for a 1993 Japanese coffee campaign in light of “Twin Peaks mania” after the cancelation of the series itself. There was one TV promo, however, that not only parodied one of David Lynch’s favorite Hollywood classics but was a direct response to some very real on-set drama involving then-Head of ABC Entertainment and eventual Disney CEO Robert Iger.
Twin Peaks ran from 1990 to 1991, but originally, it was intended to run longer, with Lynch referring to the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer as a golden goose, which allowed the suspects’ own individual stories to eventually carry the series themselves. “Pretty soon you’ve got a lot of golden eggs and someone comes along and says it’s time now to kill that goose. Not a good thing.” The show faced problems when ABC pressured Lynch and Frost to reveal the identity of Laura Palmer’s killer mid-way through its second season. However, this choice caused a sudden imbalance in the show’s narrative, and ratings subsequently declined.
Things only worsened when Iger, who had originally greenlit the series, moved Twin Peaks from Thursdays to Saturdays. The official reason was “to create a new programming block for young audiences,” but since then, Iger revealed in his book, The Ride of a Lifetime, that he’d “given it a death sentence […] First by pushing for a resolution to the mystery, then by putting it on a night when nobody would watch it.” Lynch left ABC, and the series suffered further before he eventually returned to helm the show’s final few episodes before its ultimate cancelation, and Twin Peaks returned to its original Thursday night slot. To promote this return (and to celebrate the end of the nightmare), Lynch directed a promo depicting just that – that it was all a bad dream!
The themes in Twin Peaks (and Lynch’s filmography as a whole) often relate to dreams and nightmares, so to make a joke at ABC’s expense didn’t feel too out-of-character for the cast when contextualized as a blur between dreams and reality. Lynch’s dreamlike themes often explore the double-edged sword of Hollywood glamor and iconography, as well. Many of Twin Peaks‘ characters are named after golden-age Hollywood characters, and he also related his exploration of dreams to one of his favorite Hollywood classics: 1939’s The Wizard of Oz.
The ad is less than a minute long, parodying one scene from The Wizard of Oz as it features Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) waking up in his bed at the Great Northern Hotel, surrounded by a random assortment of Twin Peaks characters. “Auntie Em!” he calls out to Catherine Martell (Piper Laurie, who played Auntie Em in Disney’s 1985 film Return to Oz). “I must have been dreaming. It was horrible. We were on Saturdays!” Cooper goes on to detail that Andy (Harry Goaz), the Log Lady (Catherine E. Coulson), and the Man from Another Place (Michael J. Anderson) were all there, too, much like Dorothy does at the end of The Wizard of Oz. “Saturdays! That is a bad dream!” adds Catherine, before the ad ends with Cooper quoting Judy Garland, in reference to the show’s return to its Thursday night slot. “There’s no place like home!”
‘Twin Peaks’, ‘Wild at Heart’, and ‘Blue Velvet’ All Reference ‘The Wizard of Oz’
Of course, these references are not the first time that Twin Peaks has paid homage to the Judy Garland movie. The name “Judy” is a key mystery in Twin Peaks, and “Garland” is the first name of Don S. Davis‘ character, Major Briggs. “The Wizard of Oz is like a dream, and it has immense emotional power,” says David Lynch. “There’s a certain amount of fear in that picture, as well as things to dream about. So it seems truthful in some way.” The filmmaker’s obsession with the 1939 movie extends far beyond his work on Twin Peaks, even becoming the subject of the 2022 documentary Lynch/Oz.
In many ways, David Lynch’s 1986 film Blue Velvet, serves as a proto-Twin Peaks, featuring Kyle MacLachlan in an investigative role, and themes of seemingly-perfect suburbia’s seedy underbelly, to give just two examples. But despite its dark content, Blue Velvet also relates to the wonder of The Wizard of Oz. Blue Velvet follows Isabella Rossellini’s character, whose name is (fittingly) Dorothy, in a similarly depressing situation to the real-life story of actress Judy Garland as she is medicated and tormented, yet publicly a symbol to be admired. In a deleted scene, Blue Velvet sees Dorothy throw her red shoes off the top of a building as she contemplates taking her own life.
Perhaps most obviously, Lynch’s eagerness to allude to the imagery and symbolism of The Wizard of Oz is exemplified in his 1990 Palm d’Or winning film Wild at Heart. This road movie treads similar territory to Natural Born Killers or Bonnie and Clyde, but Lynch’s film achieves a more transcendental feeling through its connections to The Wizard of Oz. Lula (Laura Dern) and Sailor (Nicolas Cage) refer to the highway as “the Yellow Brick Road,” and at the film’s climax, Glinda the Good Witch even appears, portrayed by Twin Peaks star and Laura Palmer herself, Sheryl Lee. Much like the way Cooper describes his adventures in Twin Peaks, The Wizard of Oz and Lynch’s work alike take us to “a place both wonderful and strange.”
Twin Peaks is available to stream on Paramount+
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