The feel of the 2010's

[dilbert1]

@IdleRich Really off-topic but you might find this video on Oliver Stone’s attempts to out-weird Lynch entertaining. I guess he did it first in ‘93 with the miniseries Wild Palms which ripped off Twin Peaks much to Lynch’s chagrin. Then again in Natural Born Killers with Wild at Heart. The most interesting part of the video is the speculation about the more or less hidden commentary on and passive aggressive references to all this supposedly embedded within Lost Highway.

 

[IdleRich]

@IdleRich Really off-topic but you might find this video on Oliver Stone’s attempts to out-weird Lynch entertaining. I guess he did it first in ‘93 with the miniseries Wild Palms which ripped off Twin Peaks much to Lynch’s chagrin. Then again in Natural Born Killers with Wild at Heart. The most interesting part of the video is the speculation about the more or less hidden commentary on and passive aggressive references to all this supposedly embedded within Lost Highway.

Nice one. When I was little I was dinly aware of Twin Peaks but missed it and always felt that I'd fucked up so I caught Wild Palms to make up for it... watches it again a few years ago and still found it relatively entertaining nonsense. I will try check that vid tomorrow.

 

[Mr. Tea]

It had to be cos the original Twin Peaks has this reputation as the strangest thing (no pun intended) ever on TV, but while that may have been true at the time, it really doesn't look that way if you watch it now - so the only way it could preserve its reputation and be as headfucking as the first one is by being a lot fucking stranger.

You reckon? Not saying you're wrong, I mean there could be all sorts of weird stuff on TV since 1990 (!) that's passed me by entirely. But what shows would you say have been weirder that TP?

 

[IdleRich]

I dunno to be honest. I'm going by people who didn't watch it at the time going back to it and finding it disappointingly normal.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I dunno to be honest. I'm going by people who didn't watch it at the time going back to it and finding it disappointingly normal.

It sounds like the kind of opinion that professional iconoclasts feel compelled to have, and then when you challenge them to name any examples, they'll say "Oh, you know, loads..."

Probably the closest thing I can think of in terms of combining police drama, nice-small-town-with-big-bad-secrets soap opera and supernatural horror (although that aspect was far more subtle than in TP, and you were left to make your mind up whether it was all in the head of the drug-addled narrator character, IIRC) was the first series of True Detective. But even then, it had little or none of the really hallucinatory/nightmarish feel that TP has. Plenty of brutal meth-dealing biker gangs, murdered prostitutes and abused children, but nobody at any point turned down an alley off the seemingly wholesome Main Street, Anytown and then started screaming because there was a funny little man doing a funny little dance to some downtempo jazz that was just utterly horrifying for no reason you can explain.

 

[pattycakes_]

All being watched over by a clairvoyant lady with a pet log

 

[Mr. Tea]

All being watched over by a clairvoyant lady with a pet log

The actress who played Margaret Lanterman really was dying during the filming of the third series, as well as in the show. I will confess I cried during her final phone call with Hawk.

 

[version]

This is something which plagued the 2010s and continues into the 2020s,

"Among Netflix’s many crimes against artistry (the algorithmic dumping ground they greet their acquisitions with, back in the news: not paying their creatives fairly, etc.), one of the more underrated is their absorption of the trashy, stylish genre programmer. Back in the day, a comically bleak piece of Southern Gothic exploitation like The Devil All the Time or espionage paperback material like The Gray Man would’ve been prime red meat for our sturdiest, practical mid-budget craftsmen to stylistically experiment with and develop their auteurist credentials beyond the music videos and advertisements they were likely discovered through. Under Netflix, films like these now fit into pre-determined algorithmic slots and are given a generic, prestige television autopilot slickness that mutes any potential... bad trash will trump boring trash every time—we used to know this."

 

[Clinamenic]

The actress who played Margaret Lanterman really was dying during the filming of the third series, as well as in the show. I will confess I cried during her final phone call with Hawk.

You didn't find her performance a bit wooden?

 

[Clinamenic]

Thought this absolutely nailed something which developed over the course of the 10s:

"Among Netflix’s many crimes against artistry (the algorithmic dumping ground they greet their acquisitions with, back in the news: not paying their creatives fairly, etc.), one of the more underrated is their absorption of the trashy, stylish genre programmer. Back in the day, a comically bleak piece of Southern Gothic exploitation like The Devil All the Time or espionage paperback material like The Gray Man would’ve been prime red meat for our sturdiest, practical mid-budget craftsmen to stylistically experiment with and develop their auteurist credentials beyond the music videos and advertisements they were likely discovered through. Under Netflix, films like these now fit into pre-determined algorithmic slots and are given a generic, prestige television autopilot slickness that mutes any potential a movie like Reptile might have... bad trash will trump boring trash every time—we used to know this."

This does make me think about the the golden age of tv/miniseries, what probably mid/late 2010's into the 2020's? Also in film, mid-budget indie/arthouse has been experiencing a very fruitful decade, in my opinion, led by the likes of A24.

I get the sense that "indie" film really only started in the last few decades of the 20th century, and up until around the mid/late nineties they seemed mostly low-budget or student-like in terms of production value. In the US at least, it was the likes of Linklater, Tarantino, Smith, probably a handful of others, who helped popularize these low/mid-budget auteur indies.

 

[Clinamenic]

Not sure if anyone's mentioned hysterical realism (I know people have mentioned Pynchon, Wallace, et al, as prescient forbearers of sorts), but the trend does seem to have manifested in film and TV, what with Boots Riley's Sorry To Bother You (and his new series, I'm a Virgo), Carax's Annette, Baumbach's White Noise (haven't read Delillo, not sure if he's categorized under hysterical realism), Kaufman's I'm Thinking of Ending Things (don't know anything about that book though).

 

[IdleRich]

It sounds like the kind of opinion that professional iconoclasts feel compelled to have, and then when you challenge them to name any examples, they'll say "Oh, you know, loads..."

Maybe so, but it rang true to me, and remember it's me saying that I don't know what other things they were talking about, it's not the person who made the claim.

And forget about other shows, doesn't it make sense that for the new Twin Peaks to have the same effect now that the first one did in 1990 it has to go further.

Probably the closest thing I can think of in terms of combining police drama, nice-small-town-with-big-bad-secrets soap opera and supernatural horror (although that aspect was far more subtle than in TP, and you were left to make your mind up whether it was all in the head of the drug-addled narrator character, IIRC) was the first series of True Detective. But even then, it had little or none of the really hallucinatory/nightmarish feel that TP has. Plenty of brutal meth-dealing biker gangs, murdered prostitutes and abused children, but nobody at any point turned down an alley off the seemingly wholesome Main Street, Anytown and then started screaming because there was a funny little man doing a funny little dance to some downtempo jazz that was just utterly horrifying for no reason you can explain.

I'm not talking about police procedurals specifically, but I can well believe that in the last thirty odd years there have been a few shows made such that for a viewer who grew up watching them Twin Peaks doesn't seem that weird.

It's a reasonable enough request on your part to ask for concrete examples... now obviously I dunno what the guy who wrote the article was thinking of, but gimme a day or two and I'll see if I can make some suggestions that fit.

 

[version]

White Noise (haven't read Delillo, not sure if he's categorized under hysterical realism)

He was, Underworld was one of the targets of Wood's piece where he coined the term.

 

[Mr. Tea]

You didn't find her performance a bit wooden?

That was so bad, and so good.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I love it that Rich thought my post was so insightful, he just decided to quote it wholesale without saying anything else, just to make sure nobody missed it.

Thanks Rich, much appreciated.

Edif: awwww.

 

[Mr. Tea]

He was, Underworld was one of the targets of Wood's piece where he coined the term.

Is it a patch on the film with sexy vampire Kate Beckinsale? I bet it's not.

 

[dilbert1]

I dunno to be honest. I'm going by people who didn't watch it at the time going back to it and finding it disappointingly normal.

Did you mean people going back to it now? I assume the reboot had something to do with ‘10s tumblr exhuming the shit out of TP and X-Files, to the point that being “alt” meant you inevitably observed some reverence for these shows. In 2011-12 it was common to see people sporting ‘I Want To Believe’ and black symbol (from TP) patches on their denim jackets at punk shows, in Olympia, WA anyways.

 

[craner]

He was, Underworld was one of the targets of Wood's piece where he coined the term.

One of the reasons you can never think too badly of Zadie Smith is that she received such a high-profile battering in that essay and yet she took it, shrugging off the damage with some grace.

 

[IdleRich]

Did you mean people going back to it now? I assume the reboot had something to do with ‘10s tumblr exhuming the shit out of TP and X-Files, to the point that being “alt” meant you inevitably observed some reverence for these shows. In 2011-12 it was common to see people sporting ‘I Want To Believe’ and black symbol (from TP) patches on their denim jackets at punk shows, in Olympia, WA anyways.

I'm just referring to an article I read by a youngish person talking about their experience of watching Twin Peaks with all the expectations they had for it... and perhaps I'm extrapolating too much from that one thing and assuming it accurate describes the feelings of everybody under about 35 (who has an opinion one way or another) but what they said in the piece did seem very plausible to me.

 

[dilbert1]

I gotcha @IdleRich As someone under 35 I did/do find the show kind of hokey and annoying (not underwhelmingly strange), although that could be colored by a contrarianism re: the exhumation during my coming of age which I mentioned before. Most of his films though, including Fire Walk With Me, I’m a fan of.