Nominations for the 2018 Emmys are less than a month away at this point, and many eyes are on Twin Peaks>. The Showtime revival was a critical darling and brought David Lynch back to the spotlight — including a standing ovation at Cannes. The show might not get as many Emmy nominations as some might hope, but we’re a bit lucky we got the show from Lynch at all. There probably would’ve been some version of the show, but Lynch himself almost walked away due to the budget.
As Lynch lays out in his new memoir Room to Dream, written with Kristine McKenna, his dream of a budget for the new Twin Peaks didn’t exactly meet up with what Showtime was offering (via Vulture):
“Mark [Frost] and I met with Showtime about ‘Twin Peaks,’ then [executive producer] Sabrina [Sutherland] came up with the numbers and everybody freaked out. They were realistic numbers, but Showtime thought the budget was stupid high…
“When I saw the budget they were offering, I said, ‘F*ck this,’ and ready made!” Lynch writes. “I said, ‘I’m f*ckin’ out! If they want to do it without me I’ll probably let them, but I’m out,’ and I felt a tremendous sense of freedom mixed with sadness when I made the decision.”
Using Lynch from the latest Twin Peaks season, this is possibly what his reaction might’ve been:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1zBz8mYVGg
He likely cursed a bit more than that, but things did get better as he goes on to say. Plus, cookies were involved:
“Gary brought cookies and they were here for about forty-five minutes,” Lynch writes. “By the end it wasn’t happening at all, then when they stood up to leave and David said, ‘I’m going to work up an offer for you.’ I said, ‘Well, maybe I’ll work up an offer for you.’”
“With not a f*ckin’ thing to lose, Sabrina and I drew up a list of everything we’d need,” Lynch continues. “I said, ‘Okay, Sabrina, you’re gonna go in there in say, ‘This is not a negotiation. If you want to do it, this is what it takes.’ If they start quibbling about stuff, say thank you very much and stand up and leave. But David Nevins said, ‘We can make this work,’ and that was it — I’m back in the thing.”
It is pretty strange to think about Twin Peaks returning without David Lynch, especially in hindsight. It could happen in the future, sure, but this revival needed him, and the proof is in the finished product. It delivered on a lot of levels and stories like this show that he and the rest of the folks behind the show put their best on the screen.
