18 Things You Didn't Know About "Twin Peaks"

The owls are not what they seem.

1. The series was originally supposed to take place in North Dakota.

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"Long before we moved into the Pacific Northwest, we were playing around with this idea of the plains and a place far away from the world. But what we really lacked was that sense of mystery in the forest and the darkness that moving a little further west had." —Mark Frost

2. The show's creators didn't want to reveal the identity of Laura Palmer's killer.

ABC

"The murder of Laura Palmer was the center of the story, the thing around which all the show's other elements revolved — like a sun in a little solar system. It was not supposed to get solved. The idea was for it to recede a bit into the background, and the foreground would be that week's show. But the mystery of the death of Laura Palmer would stay alive." —David Lynch

3. Before Twin Peaks, co-creators Mark Frost and David Lynch teamed up to write a Marilyn Monroe biopic, titled Goddess, which was never produced.

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They even worked their failed venture into Agent Cooper's monologue in the series premiere: "There are two things that continue to trouble me, and I'm speaking now not only as an agent of the bureau but also as a human being. What really went on between Marilyn Monroe and the Kennedys, and who really pulled the trigger on JFK."

4. Actor Kyle MacLachlan axed the romantic storyline between Agent Dale Cooper and Audrey Horne.

ABC

"I’m not supposed to say it. But David knows I tell what happens, and what happened was that Lara [Flynn Boyle] was dating Kyle [MacLachlan], and she was mad that my character was getting more attention, so then Kyle started saying that his character shouldn’t be with my character because it doesn’t look good, ’cause I’m too young. Literally, because of that, they brought in Heather Graham — who’s younger than I am — for him and Billy Zane for me. I was not happy about it. It was stupid." —Sherilyn Fenn

5. You can stay at the Great Northern Hotel for $230 a night.

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6. The original Twin Peaks population count was 5,120, not 51,201.

Warner Bros.

According to the fan site Welcome to Twin Peaks: "It was supposed to be only a fraction of that, but afraid its viewers wouldn’t be able to relate to such a small town, ABC demanded Twin Peaks to be more populated. So David Lynch and Mark Frost appended a '1' at the end."

7. Despite the show's success, the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me was booed at the 1992 Cannes Film Festival, and bombed at the U.S. box office.

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"The movie is a true folly—almost nothing in it adds up—yet it isn’t jokey and smug like Lynch’s last film, Wild at Heart, or his recent TV series, the gruesomely wacked-out On the Air, which seemed to pick up where the disastrous second half of Twin Peaks left off. In Fire Walk With Me, he’s at least trying to recover his poetic sincerity. There have always been two sides to Lynch: the inscrutable, demonic prankster and the rhapsodic dreamer. If only his dreams weren’t starting to look like reruns." —Owen Gleiberman, EW

8. At one point, Mikhail Gorbachev persuaded George H.W. Bush to help him unearth who killed Laura Palmer:

Ryan Hamilton Walsh @JahHills

Gorbachev made HW Bush try and get Lynch to admit who killed Laura Palmer

05:02 PM - 16 Nov 2014

9. Steven Spielberg was attached to direct the second season premiere, but Lynch insisted on directing the episode himself.

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"Because we were friendly we talked about it a lot and he said to me in passing how fun it would be to direct an episode so I went to Mark over the summer and said, 'This probably is not a bad way to kick off the second season, right?' So we sat down with him and had this very long meeting about the second season and Steven just said 'I want it to be as weird as possible, it’ll be so much fun' so whether or not he would have even done it – we’ll never really know, but when Mark told David he didn’t even hesitate saying, 'No, no, I think I’ll direct the first one. Maybe he can direct later in the season' – which he obviously didn’t." —Twin Peaks producer Harley Peyton

10. It only took 20 minutes for David Lynch and composer Angelo Badalamenti to come up with the theme song.

Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images

ABC

"The Love Theme, which is heard repeatedly throughout the series, is a short, twisted piece of music, lasting about three minutes. But the sheer speed and ease of its composition indicate what a happy collaboration Badalamenti and Lynch share." —Ron Givens, EW

11. The bizarre vocal patterns in the Red Room were achieved by having the actors read their lines in reverse.

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12. Josie Packard's character was originally supposed to be Italian.

ABC

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"For starters, she wasn't even supposed to exist – the role was rewritten to suit actor Joan Chen's Chinese heritage after Isabella Rossellini left the project." —Sean T. Collins, Rolling Stone

13. Frank Silva (aka "Bob") was also the show's set decorator.

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14. The zig-zagging black-and-white floor pattern in the Black Lodge was also featured in David Lynch's film Eraserhead (1977).

ABC

Columbia Pictures

15. Zooey Deschanel's dad directed three episodes, and her mom played Donna Hayward's mother, Eileen.

ABC

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16. Maddie Ferguson's character is from Missoula, Montana, which is also David Lynch's hometown.

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17. A novel titled The Secret Lives of Twin Peaks (written by Mark Frost) will be published later this year to update readers on the lives of the main characters over the past 25 years.

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"'The Secret Lives of Twin Peaks,' which has also been picked up all over the world, will go on sale in late 2015, ahead of Showtime’s revival of the series." —Tim Kenneally, The Wrap

18. Peggy Lipton (aka Norma Jennings) is mom to Parks and Recreations actress Rashida Jones.

ABC

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The new Twin Peaks season will air on Showtime in 2016.

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