At the end of 2014 I found myself working at Meijer during the holiday madness. It was my job to put away all the stuff people had returned or changed their minds about at the checkout or left laying around the store. And since I was low man on the totem pole, I was scheduled to work until 11pm so that I had time to get it all done.

It was chaos until it wasn’t. There was no way I could just go home and sleep.

So for reasons I don’t recall and will never understand, I started watching Twin Peaks for an hour or two. Something about the melodrama and soaring music was soothing, until Bob would come along and freak me out. It’s seriously some of the most frightening imagery ever aired on network TV, and even on re-watches it’s still chilling.

I was hooked.

But once I found out who killed Laura Palmer my interested started to wain. I kept thinking I’d go back and finish it. Then Netflix took it down. Yet it still remained in the back of my mind. Ten years later, I finally started over again from the very first episode. The melodrama didn’t feel quite so sappy, and knowing where things were going offered me the chance for a different perspective. While part of the second season meanders, eventually it finds its footing and gets really funny.

I’m glad I went back.

Laura Palmer promised Dale Cooper that she’d see him again in 25 years, but I didn’t have to wait that long before starting season three. The first two seasons satirized the popular primetime soaps of its time. With season three, I believe David Lynch wanted to do a sendup of contemporary prestige television, so the tone is very different. We also don’t spend as much time in Twin Peaks. 

Honestly, it’s a rough watch.

I can forgive Lynch his major indulgences. Do we need five minutes of a guy mopping a floor? No. But it’s novel. Although, to be perfectly honest, I zoned out for long sections. The eighth episode of The Return is incredible, with minimal dialog and mind bending imagery. And when Cooper finally takes full control of his body, it’s a breath of fresh air. The other returning actors slip back into their roles as if no time had passed, and the new cast adapts well to Lynch’s weird world.

Lucy understands cell phones now.

I’m not going to attempt to put a worldview spin on the show. If anyone, with the exception of the ghost of David Lynch, comes to you and says he understands Twin Peaks, don’t believe him. It’s just weird, with a heavy influence of Eastern mysticism. But one gets the sense that there is a thread of esoteric logic holding it all together. So we return, trying to grasp that thread, knowing full well that it will always slip through our fingers.

I do have my trite, simplistic, theory.

My guess is that Lynch, Buddhist that he was, believed that we are all striving to be one with the Universe, but that there are malevolent things from outside the universe that wish that cause chaos and strife. Laura Palmer and Dale Cooper represent all that is good, pure, and orderly in humanity, but even they cannot escape the cycle of evil. They’re doomed to die and be reborn, tormented by the likes of Bob.

All anyone can hope for is the rare moment of serenity.

I don’t agree with Lynch, of course. And my theory is probably full of holes that those better schooled in the show are welcome to point out. But I don’t have to understand or agree with a piece of art to appreciate the artistry. David Lynch painted with narrative, the camera, and dialog in mesmerizing ways. I have a different worldview than Lynch, and would never try to mimick his style, but I believe that I can still learn a thing or two from his work about making art.

And that’s why Twin Peaks matters to me.

When it was announced that Amazon/MGM had bought the creative rights to the James Bond franchise “RIP James Bond” started trending on Twitter. After being shepherd by the Broccoli family, first by Albert and then his daughter Barbara, the megacorporation has finally taken over and can do with the character whatever it wants. Why would Barbara, now 64, sell the family trust that she’s been a part of since she was 17 years old?

To borrow from Bond spoof Austin Powers, “One billion dollars.”

At least, that’s the story. Apparently Barbara told her friends that those at Amazon were “[F-ing] idiots” for seeing the franchise as content, and when Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos heard about it he said, “I don’t care what it costs, get rid of her.” One has to imagine that after a lifetime of telling stories with James Bond she had something of a personal relationship with the character, and was offended by the idea of making him more grist for the entertainment mill.

A fate worse than being cut in half by a laser.

While the Bond film franchise has endured for 62 years, the movies aren’t the big events they were. The world has changed. Maybe Barbara Broccoli is tired of fighting against an industry that doesn’t value characters and creativity. Perhaps a billion dollars was too much to refuse. But I wonder if she realizes something that many are loath to accept, though previous generations took it for granted.

Everything dies.

“I think you’re a sexist, misogynist dinosaur. A relic of the Cold War…” said M in 1995’s Goldeneye. That was the state of Bond then, and 30 years later it’s undeniable. The James Bond films, and before that the books, were designed to appeal to men who would never see the world (or after WWII, had seen enough), could only dream of fantastic gadgets, and didn’t want to make friends with globalists.

Admittedly, the desire to bed beautiful women will never go away.

Now the target audience can see exotic locations whenever, no Bond event film required. Fantastic gadgets are so mundane I see self-driving cars on back country roads. And most men of my generation want to play nice with everyone, globalists included. Not even James Bond can survive that, can he? Perhaps it is time to throw Bond into the recycling with other pop culture icons like The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, and Bulldog Drummond, and see what comes out.

Again, it used to be a given that some characters fade away.

I think Barbara saw the writing on the wall. Even so-called “legacy characters” will eventually fade away. What makes this so different is that in the past they were giving way to new characters. The Shadow had to make space for Batman, for example. Unfortunately, we in a cultural moment so bereft of ideas, we can’t help but notice when something that’s seemingly been around forever and we assumed would go on forever, bites the dust.

Or maybe I’m wrong.

There’s a possibility that Amazon will breathe new life into the Bond franchise. But I’m not holding my breath. I do think that something will come along that captures the imagination of today’s audience, though in all probability it will come about organically. Someone (an individual, not a megacorporation) will take the things he loves and find inspiration to make something new.

So let’s just enjoy James Bond as he was.

And not look to him to save us anymore.

If it feels like more of the content on our screens is just soulless, factory made, well, Content, you’re not wrong. Back in the early days of Hollywood, when people could only watch in a theater, the studios had time to find the best writers, directors, actors, and stories and meld disparate parts into enduring art. Now everyone (even some guy with a smartphone and a TikTok account) is competing for our attention.

There’s no room for error, and functioning that way is itself an error.

It’s human nature to look for foolproof formulas. Those who have the money and need a return on their investments turn to the engineers to find ways of eliminating risk, while also demanding quick turnarounds. The result for the audience is that we’re getting assembly line TV dinners, rather than wholesome meals made from scratch. If it feels like more and more of what’s hitting our screens isn’t any more satisfying than a microwaved salisbury steak that came wrapped in plastic, we’re not wrong.

Content is getting dumbed down.

A recent article in PC Mag explains it well. Netflix is clearly asking writers to craft their dialog so that characters explain what’s happening for the convenience of people who aren’t looking at the screen. Well, they’re looking at a screen all right. It’s just not the TV screen as often as it’s their phone. Those tweets aren’t gonna read themselves. Fortunately, we’ve got characters saying, “We spent a day together. I admit it was a beautiful day filled with dramatic vistas and romantic rain…”

Which anyone who was paying attention would already know.

One of the things I learned from Burn Notice is that if you really want someone to believe you (especially if you’re lying), you make them work for the information. Until there’s an investment, until some effort has been put in, anything we’re given lacks value. The less attention our movies demand of us, the less value they have. Thus, it’s Content for the background and not worth returning to for a second for third look.

Easy in, easy out.

There’s another way the studios are looking play it safe and secure our attention. I first became aware of this from Blaine at Criticless Cast, with a video on how movies get cast based on actors’ social media footprint. In an interview actress Maya Hawke said that she’d like to delete her Instagram and just focus on acting, and was warned that movies will have more trouble getting made if the cast doesn’t have a total number of followers.

Anyone else see a problem with this?

On paper, it might make sense. More fans for the people involved means more tickets sold. Right? But if the available actors with the right quota of followers don’t fit the parts, the movie will suffer. Audiences will be merciless toward a miscast star, because at the end of the day story is king. And that’s assuming that this metric is even useful. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is hugely popular on Instagram, but did anyone watch Black Adam?

These are the last ditch attempts to save a failing industry.

The era of the moviestar is over, and influencers don’t sway people the way they think they do. Otherwise, the election would have gone very differently and we’d watching Jungle Cruise 3 this summer. There is no formula for success, just one rule: Whoever has the best story wins. Hollywood knows they don’t have the best stories anymore, and the audience is waking up to who does. 

Welcome to Indiewood.