RELATED
SITES:
Ganymede
Ink Syndicate
CannonFilms.com
The Dunsel Report
SYNDICATION:
Atom Feed
BLOG LINKS:
John Gorenfeld
Paul Frankenstein
Jim Steinman
Soul of Trek
True Father
ST XI
ASSORTED
WRITINGS:
"Cannon
Films: The Rise and Fall of Menahem Golan" (2001)
"Fast Company" (2007)
"Last
Man Dancing" (2001)
"Our Alien, HE" (1987)
"Drummer
on Top: The Red Hot Chili Peppers' Chad Smith" (2002)
"Singin'
the Hi-Res Blues" (2003)
BIO:
I
grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and now live in Brooklyn, New York.
I have a bachelor's degree in linguistics from Swarthmore College and
a master's degree in journalism from UC Berkeley. Feel free to email
me at patrick@runkle.info.
From
2000 until 2004, I was the editorial director for ArtistPro,
a music-industry trade publisher in the Bay Area. I also was
editorial director for ArtistPro's short-lived national magazine,
which was distributed to all the members of the GRAMMY organization.
(That includes Phil Spector.)
Current
activities include my band, Ganymede, my trips to Canada, and various other things I do. (See above for links.) I also have a large collection of oversize video boxes from the early 80s.
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I have been heartily enjoying the newly released Twin Peaks second season DVDs; the image quality is so good that it looks better than when originally broadcast. Having bitterly experienced the hard fall of the show in 1991, it's amazing to me how little my appreciation for the show and the feelings that it evokes has changed. I still believe the second season has some incredibly strong moments, even if the growing pains of trying to expand the Peaks universe were too much for even the faithful to bear.
On that note, the Peaks wikipedia page includes some info that strikes me as revisionism, describing lots of internal strife about the show's direction as well as charges that David Lynch "abandoned" Peaks before swooping in to change the show's direction for the last six episodes and direct the finale. (Also there's a questionably unsourced story about how a romance between Agent Cooper and Audrey Horne was nixed by Kyle MacLachlan's girlfriend and co-star Lara Flynn Boyle, leaving the writers in search of material to cover a major subplot.) Of course, the simple problem was that the show was simply not designed for the long haul. Lynch wasn't a television guy; I don't think anyone had a vision of where to take the show over 30 hours and I'm not sure the best TV writer on the planet could have made any difference. Furthermore, Lynch directed the second season's best episodes, which were good even when the material wasn't. I think the only conclusion is that if ABC had been smarter, and ordered another season of a limited amount of episodes, the show may have survived.
Recent developments for show enthusiasts are encouraging: Apparently a new CD of Angelo Badalamenti's magnificent music from the show's second season is imminent, and there is still hope that hours of cut footage from Fire Walk With Me will eventually see the light of day.
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