Imaginary Worlds - The Real Twin Peaks

Episode Date: May 17, 2017

Most people think of Twin Peaks as a place in their imaginations or on TV. But the show caused an identity crisis for the folks living in the towns where Twin Peaks was filmed. Kyle Twede, who owns Twede's Cafe which was a major location on the show, has to walk the line between being a real place and an imaginary one that caters to tourists. Dana Hubanks thinks David Lynch did capture something authentically dark about her hometown. And Cristie Coffing says whether the show captured the area is less important than the fact that it brought in a steady influx of tourists. But none of them were as disturbed by the show as Harry "Buzz" Teter. Not only did his hometown of Twin Peaks, CA resemble its TV counterpart -- but his late girlfriend shared many similarities with Laura Palmer, including her tragic fate.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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This episode is brought to you by Secret. Secret deodorant gives you 72 hours of clinically proven odor protection free of aluminum, parabens, dyes, talc, and baking soda. It's made with pH balancing minerals and crafted with skin conditioning oils. You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky.

So, Twin Peaks is coming back to TV this month. I'm so excited. I've known this for two years, and I can't believe it's actually here. On May 21st, a third season of Twin Peaks is going to air on Showtime with most of the original cast. David Lynch is going to direct every episode. And as I mentioned in my episode about the X-Files, I always love the idea of returning to older characters

and pretending that, well, the show's been off the air. These characters have been living their lives and we're just catching up with them. And since Twin Peaks ended on a cliffhanger, I'm very curious to see what happens. So when the show first went on the air in the spring of 1990, I was just graduating high school. And Twin Peaks was the perfect show to get sucked into as a teenager with all the melodrama and the supernatural intrigue. the melodrama and the supernatural intrigue. And I hadn't traveled much outside the Northeast, so I just fell in love with this world of the Pacific Northwest that David Lynch had created. But over time, I became really interested in the actual places where Twin Peaks was filmed.

North Bend, Fall City, and Snoqualmie in the state of Washington. And until Twin Peaks went on the air, they were known as logging towns, with great opportunities to go fishing, camping, skiing, or hiking. And then suddenly they had this new identity imposed on them by a filmmaker with a very strange sensibility. So when the first show came out, you know, everybody was sitting down, everybody in town was sitting down watching the show, and there's pictures of the birds and the mountains and all the fun stuff that people love about North Bend. But then all of a sudden there was this dead gal wrapped in plastic.

Good Lord, Lord. Half the town turned their TVs off. They didn't want to be known as the serial killer town. They didn't want to be known as the serial killer town. That is Kyle Tweedy, the owner of Tweedy's Cafe, which is the same location as the Double R Diner on the show, where everybody was plotting their evil schemes or gossiping about who killed Laura Palmer. By the way, I'm not there in Washington. I wish.

I was relying on a local reporter named Casey Martin to record the interviews. And sometimes I was able to do the interviews over the phone, but in this case, Casey went to the diner himself, and he even met a tourist from Spain there. The environment and the mood is very like in the series. So it really captures this place, like with all these mountains that surround all these areas. So it's dreamy, it's misty. I think it captures everything. Yeah. Now, as the owner of the diner, Kyle Tweedy says it's really hard to walk the line

between being a real restaurant and this imaginary place that tourists come to with these big expectations. Like on the show, another guy named Kyle, the actor Kyle McLaughlin, is always going on about how this diner has the best damn coffee in the world. And the cherry pie? This must be where pies go when they die. Kyle says that is a hard reputation to live up to. Let me tell you, cherry pie is expensive to make, expensive to buy the ingredients for, and a pain in the butt to make by hand, which we do.

But it's worth it for him because he'd rather be known as a place that has great cherry pie than a really dark, surreal place where evil spirits are literally lurking in the woods. At the same time they did Twin Peaks, they also did Northern Exposure, which was a lighthearted comedy. People always keep saying, why didn't they do a lighthearted comedy down here? We didn't want to be the murder capital of the world. Danny Hubank sees all this very differently. She's a musician. She works at the Black Dog Arts Cafe in Snoqualmie.

And she thinks that David Lynch absolutely captured the area. There are so many specific elements, whether it comes down to the track of the chorus frogs that he chooses to put into a scene behind dialogue at night or the way that the road looks with, like, the towering evergreen trees, you know, when James is riding his motorcycle down the road at night.

Dana was born in 1990, the year the show came out. She actually went to the high school in the show, the one with the red stripes on the walls. She says growing up, her friends talked about the town as the real Twin Peaks. Just even from the time of being in middle school and high school, I remember there being this sense of almost like a curse hanging over the town. And that sounds really cliche and corny, but it's true.

I mean, that was often a part of the conversation. There was a string of years, maybe 10 years, where every single year someone from the high school would die in some tragic way, whether, you know, drowning in the river or, you know, murders and suicides and, you know, terrible car accidents. And there was definitely this sense of, you know, tragedy just sort of hanging over the town a lot of the time and still. And it creates this sort of atmosphere where you can almost see a story like Laura's story playing out. Twin Peaks is different. Long way from the world, you've noticed that.

Yes, I have. That's exactly the way we like it. But there's a back end to that that's kind of different, too. Maybe that's the price we pay for all the good things. What would that be? There's a sort of evil out there. Something very, very strange in these old woods. The area does have a high number of grisly murders.

In the 1980s and 90s, Gary Ridgeway, the Green River serial killer, dumped the bodies of his victims in the river east of Seattle. Dana remembers two instances where men killed their entire families, and one of them lived up the street from her when she was a kid. There's also a literal darkness to the show, which is not a camera trick. It's just the way the area looks. I just spent the last year traveling the country and I just returned to Snoqualmie like two months ago. And when I came back to Washington, the people that I was traveling with, I turned to them and was like,

I forgot how dark, like how literally, you know, the sky and the colors and the trees and the hillsides, like how literally dark this place is compared to anywhere else in the country. Christy Koffing owns the cafe where Dana works. We get so much rain and so much darkness. And when it first begins in the winter, you think, oh, this is fine, I can handle it. And then a couple months in, you just think that you're going to go insane. But Christy strives to keep a positive attitude. handle it. And then a couple months in, you just think that you're going to go insane.

But Christy strives to keep a positive attitude. Her diner is a haven for local artists and musicians. And when they were filming the new season of Twin Peaks, the crew was in there all the time. We had David Lynch in for lunch and he was just very gracious. And did he order pie or coffee? No, he had, I think he had a turkey BLT. Christy loved Twin Peaks when it came out. In fact, before the show went on the air, somebody from the props department bought a diary at a store that she ran. She didn't think anything of it, but then that diary turned out to be a huge plot point on the show because it was filled with Laura Palmer's secrets.

And then she's written, nervous about meeting Jay tonight. That's the letter J, Diane. And that is the last entry. You know, you have to remember that at the time, we were a logging community. So most of that community, the loggers, they didn't really care either way. But a lot of the merchants just stood up and took notice

because it was just amazing the tourism that it brought to town. Yeah, she sees no downside to the area being known as a place where creepy stuff happens all the time if it brings in tourists. Exactly. And that was happening to us after the logging industry left. We had no identity. We were just floundering. And Twin Peaks really helped us through that period. It gave us a nice influx of tourism and identity and exposure. It was great. It was right when we needed it. In fact, when Kyle Tweedy bought his diner in the late 90s, the one that was featured on Twin Peaks,

he thought the show was a fad that had passed its prime. So we really pushed trying to get the locals back in here. We downplayed Twin Peaks. But then in maybe three months after owning the business and opening it up, there was this gal standing there looking at the one or two pictures that we had left of Twin Peaks. And she had flown from Germany to New York, from New York to Seattle, got in a taxi and came here. Didn't have a hotel, didn't have anything else.

19 years old, she had to get to here. So at that point, we just really realized that for some of these fans, it was really a mecca for them, you know, a place that they needed to visit before they died. So we began at that point to try to amass as many Twin Peaks memorabilia things so that we could. And then when David Lynch came back to the diner in 2015 to film season three... Sat down with David Lynch and asked him what he wanted to do. And he said he kind of wanted to take it back to the way it was before.

And I said, well, if that's what you want to do, go ahead. But they can't go back. These days, they're facing a much bigger identity crisis. North Bend and Snoqualmie are only 30 miles east of Seattle. And since the tech boom took off, they've become really desirable locations for people working at companies like Amazon or Zillow. The population has quadrupled since 1990. Housing prices have soared beyond what a lot of locals can afford. They're even tearing down the high school to make way for all these new families.

And that bums out Dana Hubanks. We want it to stay the strange, weird place that it's always been. And again, going back to the, you know, the relatability with the series, it's like coming here, you could go into, you know, any bar in North Bend and meet someone just as weird and strange and, you know, whatever you want as a character on Twin Peaks. But the more that, you know, development happens and the more that that gentrification happens, you know, whatever you want as a character on Twin Peaks. But the more that that, you know, development happens and the more that that gentrification happens, you know, the less and less of that you see in the, you know, more and more of, you know,

suburban families and parts of the community that don't bring the character that has always been associated with this place. So when Dana watches Twin Peaks, she sees a time capsule. Yeah, everyone on the show is up in each other's business and they're trying to screw each other over. But at least they know their neighbors. I feel nostalgic for that time, even though I was only, you know, I was an infant in that time. But just to know that there was a time when this place was a little bit more protected from all of that craziness and yeah. was a little bit more protected from all of that craziness.

And yeah. Yeah, to her, craziness is not a supernatural serial killer named Bob. It's seeing a Banana Republic, where there used to be a mom and pop store. Or seeing a lot of BMWs, where there used to be just pickup trucks. Every week, basically, you see a new notice of public land use go up. And you're like, all right, you know, another shopping center, another housing development, you know, what's next? And I think a lot of people in this area feel like, you know, we're destined to become another any town USA, basically. In a moment, we're going to hear from a guy who is convinced that Twin Peaks is not based on those towns in Washington.

He says the show is based on his hometown, which is actually called Twin Peaks. And the parallels get even spookier from there. That's just by the show. But maybe no one more than Harry Teeter, who goes by the nickname Buzz. At the time, Buzz was working for the Forest Service in Arizona. Came home from work one day, and my Debbie had this show on and she was kind of real excited. She's like oh there's a show on called Twin Peaks and blah blah blah and I was like huh really? You see Buzz used to live in a town called Twin Peaks which was in the mountains

northeast of Los Angeles near Lake Arrowhead and the Twin Peaks that he used to live in was a logging town with a big sawmill, just like the show. It was full of all these strange, small-town-type characters, like the show. You kind of get people that are like hermits. They don't really fit in with down in the city and stuff like that, and they live out in those kind of out areas. They're hiding out, basically. But when he discovered that the main storyline of the show was going to be the murder of Laura Palmer, that's when the parallels got really disturbing for Buzz.

See, in 1974, Buzz came back to Twin Peaks after getting out of the Army. He got a cabin with his girlfriend Nancy Easton. And one night they went to a dinner party. girlfriend Nancy Easton. And one night they went to a dinner party. And Nancy went back to the cabin alone because Buzz was staying with a friend who was helping him fix his Jeep. In the middle of the night, Buzz got a call that his cabin was burning down. So he sped over. It was a nasty night out. It was foggy. It was cold. It was windy. It was rain off and on. And by the time we started pulling the grade up to where the house was, I mean, the night was just a glow with a fire from this place. It was totally involved. And

we pulled up and of course I'm like, well, where's Nancy? A deputy took him aside. He said, she's in the house, and I need you to identify her. Of course, Buzz was completely devastated. But he had no idea things were about to get worse. He thought the cabin burned down because of faulty wiring. The next day, he learned it was arson. Nancy had been sexually assaulted and murdered.

So in 1990, when he watched Twin Peaks, he just started noticing all these similarities between Nancy and Laura Palmer. They were just a couple years off in age. I believe in the TV series when Laura Palmer's killed, she's 17, something like that. Nancy had just turned 20. They both worked at the lodge across the lake.

They were both homecoming queens. And they're both killed in the same manner. Watching the show, he felt traumatized all over again. Yeah, I was angry. I just didn't need my nose, you know, shoved into this again and reminded on a weekly basis about what happened. Another parallel. In the first episode, the cops immediately suspect Laura Palmer's boyfriend. You think I killed her?

Bobby, we're going to have you make a phone call. You can call your parents, and they can arrange to get a lawyer. And that happened to Buzz. They worked me over, you know, interrogation and trying to break my story. And finally they go, well, we want you to take a polygraph test. And would you be willing to do that? And I said, well, yeah, of course I would. Well, I went in and I failed.

And I said, well, yeah, of course I would. Well, I went in and I failed. Because every time they mentioned her name, I could feel my heart take off and I could hear the machine behind me go crazy. So I stood up, came out of there and they handcuffed me and said, you're under arrest for first-degree homicide. After a few days, Buzz calmed down, and he passed the polygraph test. Also, his friend was able to vouch for his alibi. But a cloud of suspicion followed him everywhere. One day, his boss at the fire department called him in for a meeting.

Basically told me I was never going to get a promotion. I wasn't going anywhere in that fire department. And I was like, wait a minute, wait a meeting. Basically told me I was never going to get a promotion. I wasn't going anywhere in that fire department. And I was like, wait a minute, wait a minute. I just saw my performance report. I had an outstanding performance report. And he goes, that's not it. He goes, it's this Twin Peaks thing. And I was like, what? And he goes, oh yeah. He goes, there's people upstairs, which would be the chief, the admin people. Some people up there think you got away with murder. Buzz quit that day. And ironically, he went into law enforcement where he found himself working with a cop that arrested him.

Again, like the show, this is a small town where everybody knows each other. And that's when he learned there was a suspect, a guy who was at that dinner party that night. But for various reasons, this guy was never arrested. So Buzz spent the next few decades trying to prove that this guy did it. And he makes a compelling case, but since the man was never formally charged, I'm not going to go into the details. But in 2005, Buzz says he got a letter from a hospice care worker who told him that this man was a former patient of hers. And on several occasions, he had said, I killed a girl in Twin Peaks. And another time he said he was crying in bed going, I'm sorry, Nancy, I'm sorry.

But this person had no idea of what happened. Until a couple of years later, she was talking to the daughter of a friend of mine who told her the story. The light bulb went on over her head and she went, oh, my God. How did you feel when you got that letter? Oh, boy. It was, boy, talk about a mixed blessing. I went out behind the house, sat in the backyard at a table, and I cried my eyes out.

Because it was over, as far as I was concerned. Not quite. When he read that David Lynch was going to restart Twin Peaks, Buzz felt like he needed to tell his story. So he wrote a book about it, because he thinks that Lynch was inspired by Nancy's death. He lived in Southern California when this all happened, because at that time, in 1974, 75, 76, a lot of people were talking about it.

Another thing that makes me think that he knew about this was in late 1985, 86, he pitched a movie script to Dino De Laurentiis about a murder mystery that was called Up at the Lake. Anybody in Hollywood, if I'd been gone for a couple of days and somebody asked me, where have you been? And I said, well, I've been up at the lake. Everybody in Hollywood knows I'm talking. It's Lake Arrowhead because that's where everybody goes. Now, Buzz got a lot of flack for the book. First, the cops back home were not happy that he was accusing them of dropping the ball

on a murder investigation. And fans of the show were upset because they thought he was calling David Lynch a thief. You know, how dare you? David Lynch would never stoop to something like this and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, whoa. He actually loves David Lynch.

I mean, not Twin Peaks for personal reasons, but he's a huge fan of Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive. He even likes Dune. If anything, he was just using the series as a hook to get people to hear his story. Because in the end, I mean, he wrote the book for himself.

When I wrote that book, I think it was cathartic. I think it helped kind of remove the albatross from around my neck. Like, I can talk to you about it right now. Ten years ago, I couldn't have. It would be too emotional. There are over 100 towns named Twin Peaks in the U.S. And I wonder if there's somebody in every one of those towns who watched the show in 1990 and thought, hey, that's my Twin Peaks. That's what artists do.

They tell stories that are tied to a certain time and place, and they make them feel universal. And Twin Peaks proved that TV, which people were still calling the idiot box back then, could produce great works of art. And art can shine a light when the world feels dark. Let the rain knock you down. Let it move your world around. That is it for this week. Thank you for listening.

Special thanks to Christy Koffing, Kyle Tweedy, Buzz Teeter, Casey Martin, and Dana Hubanks. By the way, this is actually a track off of one of Dana's albums. Let it drive you into the ground. Imaginary Worlds is part of one of Dana's albums. Imaginary Worlds is part of the Panoply Network. You can like the show on Facebook,

I tweet at E. Malinsky, and another version of this episode aired on Studio 360 as part of an hour-long special about the impact of Twin Peaks. There's a lot of really good stuff there. I'll put a link to it on my site, imaginaryworldspodcast.org. I'm looking for the sun But the rain's gonna pour

Till it's done I'm not alone