The film festival tour for the Twin Peaks pilot episode continues with a look at the 1990 Miami Film Festival. While West Coast audiences were baffled or confused by David Lynch and Mark Frost’s masterpiece, the East Coast premiere was well received based on reviews following the screening. Let’s journey back to February 1990.
HISTORY OF THE MIAMI FILM FESTIVAL
The Miami Film Society was established in 1984 for “film aficionados in the Miami community to come together and share in the unique experience of cinema.” In February that year, Nat Chediak and Steven Bowles launched the Miami Film Festival.
Mr. Chediak served as the Festival’s Artistic Director for 18 years including the seventh annual one held in 1990. Tom Spencer and Maria Christina Barros were co-chairs.
With the Festival about a few weeks away in January 1990, the nonprofit society was in the news for being in a financial pickle. While the Film Society of Miami had received more than a quarter of its $800,000 festival budget from public funds, the organization was about $70,000 in the red. The debt was attributed to the festival’s financial practices such as holding lavish parties at the Vizcaya estate or having a “jazz club” at the Hotel Inter-Continental.
Spencer, a local attorney returned to the Festival to help get expenses under control as he explained to The Orlando Sentinel on February 5.
“It got out of hand, and it got out of hand particularly last year,” said Spencer. “We’ve put tremendous, tremendous controls on everybody this year (with respect to finances … We have two accountants watching every dollar.”
Despite the fiscally responsible mood at the event, the film line up was similar to the previous six years, and ticket sales were about even to the 1988 festival. Bill Cosford, movie critic for the Miami Herald, would later remark it was “a good festival – a fine one, even” despite the lack of Hollywood stars or the toned-down parties.
MIAMI FILM FESTIVAL LINE UP
On January 12, 1990, the festival announced 26 titles for the 10-day event. Chediak selected films that fit into three major themes: movies by American-maverick directors, movies by foreign directors working in English, and glasnost movies. David Lynch and Mark Frost’s work fell into that first category.
The schedule also included approximately two dozen feature films from around the world, many of which made their United States premieres at the event.
Twin Peaks would be shown on February 10 at 4:30 p.m. The paper described the film as: “Twin Peaks, pilot for the new TV series created by David Lynch, a kind of “Blue Velvet Meets Peyton Place.”
Interestingly, the film would have its West Coast premiere a day later at the first Palm Springs International Film Festival. This means the film was booked for Miami prior to it being shown in California.
The Miami Herald also ran a full-page advertisement showcasing all the films. The screening of Twin Peaks would be presented by General Rent A Car. New owners took over the south Florida rental company in May 1989 and were looking to have a stronger image in the region. By the mid-1990s, the company seems to have disappeared.
I like this synopsis that was most likely drafted by the film organization, particularly this passage: “Because Lynch has approached [Twin Peaks] with the perverse wit, aesthetic sophistication and moral complexity we expect of him, by the pilot’s cliff-hanger finish, you will agree this is the most ambitious project ever conceived for television by a major American filmmaker. And the most subversive.”
The paper also ran a similar synopsis of the film in its Spanish edition.
The color image above from The Mauve Zone is the publicity photo the festival and local news used throughout the event.
The Tampa Bay Times ran an article on February 2, the first day of the festival, that again included a description of Twin Peaks.
“And there will be a screening of Twin Peaks, a pilot for a new ABC series directed by Blue Velvet’s David Lynch. This dark serial, about the corruption of a seemingly placid logging community, shows at 4:30 p.m., Feb. 10.”
Okay, that’s one way to put it. For all of the festivals I’ve discussed, I’ve found many articles typically include a nod to the pilot.
Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel’s movie critic, was looking forward to Twin Peaks. On February 5, he wrote about the film:
“Perhaps the most eagerly anticipated film among those showing here is Twin Peaks, a maverick movie about corruption in a seemingly peaceful logging community. Twin Peaks, which will be presented Saturday, was co-created by director David Lynch and is his first film project since the controversial Blue Velvet of 1986. Adding to the curiosity about Twin Peaks is the fact that it is not a feature film but, rather, the pilot for a television series that is expected to air on ABC next month.”
Artistic Director Chediak provided some insight to Boyar why he selected the film.
“The question about Twin Peaks remains: How will America respond to it?” said Chediak. “It’s every bit as potentially volatile as Blue Velvet was … He [Lynch] is lifting the lid off Pleasant Valley, America. That’s a heavy does of acid to inject into the national Kool-Aid system.”
According to a festival preview in the February 9, 1990 edition of The Miami Herald, it appears that Michael Ontkean may have attended the event. I have yet to locate any photos from his appearance.
FEBRUARY 10 – OLYMPIA THEATRE
The historic Olympia Theatre, located at 174 E Flagler Street in Miami, was home to the festival in 1990.
The million-dollar Olympia Theatre was designed by John Eberson who was hired by Paramount Enterprises, Inc. in 1924. He had recently completed work on the Majestic Theatre in Dallas, Texas. By December that year, he turned over blueprints for construction of the Miami theater to be built on the site of the former “Airdome,” an open-air movie theatre (How exactly did that work in Florida where it rains every day at 3:00 p.m.?).
Construction began in May 1925 for the “Miami Theatre and Office Building.” Eberson’s theater was designed to replicate a Spanish garden. When the venue was completed in January 1926, the complex was renamed the “Olympia Theater and Office Building” by the wife of the land owner, Mrs. A.E. Rickmers. The name was changed to match its Mediterranean design style.
The theater opened on February 18, 1926 as a silent movie theater with a screening of The Grand Duchess and the Waiter.
By the 1970s, Maurice Gusman has purchased the facility and turned it into a rock concert venue named “Gusman Cultural Center.” It was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, the same year the Miami Film Festival began. In 1989, the facility was converted again into a performing arts center.
I was unable to locate any photos from the 1990 festival of the screening. From reports, it sounds like stars were not in attendance yet that didn’t stop several positive reviews.
REACTIONS TO TWIN PEAKS PILOT
First up, Hearld Television Critic Hal Boedeker gushed about Twin Peaks calling it “a strange, stunning success.” He had attended a Los Angeles press screening in January where he raved about the pilot (that’s a different article for another time).
Entertainment writer Roger Hurlburt from the South Florida Sun Sentinel also reviewed the pilot, giving it three out of four stars. He also makes note of something that would be echoed much later by some watching the series – the “drawn-out and deliberate pacing.” As we will learn, viewers (and the network) wanted resolution to the question “Who killed Laura Palmer?” quicker than Lynch and Frost wanted.
More than two years later, Orlando Sentinel critic Jay Boyar would return this this screening when he wrote about Twin Peaks – Fire Walk With Me. He mentions his first encounter with the “Twin Peaks phenomenon” at the 1990 Miami Film Festival – two months before the pilot aired on television.
“Frankly, the experience pretty much blew me away,” wrote Boyar. “In this column, I called the “Twin Peaks” pilot “the best film I saw” at the festival – event though it wasn’t really a movie.”
At the time, he was looking forward to Lynch’s prequel film despite reports of the film being “booed earlier [in 1992] at the Cannes Film Festival.” Of course, we know that this account isn’t 100% accurate as the general audience at Cannes applauded.
Below is Boyar’s article from March 2, 1990, a few weeks after seeing the pilot in Miami.
He knew Twin Peaks was special, and that positive momentum would continue leading up to the television debut on April 8, 1990.
