In less than a week, Ray Wise will be joining Twin Peaks fans from around the world during The Real Twin Peaks 2025 event in Snoqualmie Valley, Feb. 21-24. The North Bend Theatre is screening Robocop on Friday night followed by a conversation with Wise and autograph session, and holding a second meet and greet opportunity on Saturday. In preparing for the trip to Washington state, I found an interview with Wise conducted by Russell Smith for The Dallas Morning News in Aug. 1992. He discusses his roles in both David Lynch and Mark Frost’s show along with his performance as Chet McGregor in Bob Roberts.
INTERVIEW WITH RAY WISE BY RUSSELL SMITH FOR THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, AUG. 1992
Long before our world was bombarded with instantaneous updates from social media, newspapers were a primary source for updates from the entertainment world. A reporter could write an article for a major publication which would be syndicated in other papers for weeks after initially being published. Many times, those syndicated articles would be cut down as editors put together papers like jigsaw puzzles. Headlines would also often change based on editor preference.
For a researcher, this editing requires additional digging to find original source articles to ensure a complete picture is presented. This is the case with Russell Smith’s interview with Ray Wise for The Dallas Morning News. Smith spoke with Wise in Santa Monica, California about his roles in Twin Peaks, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and Bob Roberts.
Here are a handful of headlines from United States newspapers that accompanied Smith’s article. They were found in the following publications:
- Idaho Statesman, Sept. 4, 1992
- The Greenville News, Sept. 11, 1992
- South Florida Sun Sentinel, Aug. 31, 1992
- Edmonton Journal, Aug. 30, 1992
- Anderson Independent Mail, Sept. 13, 1992
- Anchorage Daily News, Aug. 31, 1992
Each article is mostly the same story presented in the Hartford Courant above, yet some articles were edited for length. Clearly the Anchorage Daily News editor had a good laugh that day.
RUSSELL SMITH SPEAKS WITH RAY WISE
Ray Wise’s career at the moment is a tale of two Bobs. The actor is known to the TV audience as Leland Palmer in “Twin Peaks,” father of Laura and the man who housed the demonic spirit of Bob, his daughter’s killer. Wise reprises the role in David Lynch’s movie prequel to the series, “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.” He also portrays Chet MacGregor, the media handler of a right-wing, folk-singing political candidate in Tim Robbins’ satirical “Bob Roberts.”
“What a group of eccentric characters,” Wise says of the latter movie. “I mean, my goodness. The Bob Roberts campaign bus would be right at home, it seems to me, in ‘Twin Peaks.’ ”
During a recent interview in Santa Monica, Calif., Wise at first said that the neo-Fascist politician portrayed by Robbins (who also wrote and directed the film) is the scarier Bob. Then he changed his mind: “No, of course Bob in ‘Twin Peaks’ has to scare you more. That’s truly a matter of instantaneous life and death; with Bob Roberts, it’s a slower process.”
Several articles based on Russell’s interview used the publicity photo of Wise holding a photo frame from Twin Peaks’ first season. The Omaha World Herald article from Aug. 31, 1992 above shows how the original story was edited for space.
TWIN PEAKS AFTER LELAND PALMER
Some “Twin Peaks” fans believe that the TV series went downhill after the death of his wacky-evil Leland Palmer character.
“Thank you very much,” says Wise. “I’m glad that somebody has finally pointed this out in print, because I have hesitated to say that for the last year and a half or two years. And now someone else has said it, and I can agree with you. Just about every word that comes out of your mouth right now, I can agree with.”
Leland Palmer’s death scene proved to be one of the show’s most riveting and memorable sequences.
“I am most proud of that death scene and that last show,” Wise says. “That particular sequence took 18 or 19 hours — that whole transformation of Leland into Bob in the (jail) cell, and Bob-Leland killing himself and dying in Cooper’s arms. It was an exhausting process. . . .
“That day was an incredible day, and I think it’s probably one of the most bizarre pieces of film that has ever been on television. I don’t think we’ll see the like of it again — no matter how hard ‘Northern Exposure’ tries. And I say that facetiously and with tongue in cheek; I like ‘Northern Exposure.'”
WISE’S TAKE ON TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME
As for the film prequel version of “Twin Peaks,” Wise says: “My take on it is that it’s a kind of a nightmare. Whose nightmare it is, I’m not quite sure: It could be Laura’s, it could be Leland’s, or it could be someone else’s in town that we don’t even know about. But it’s very nightmarish.
“In many instances, there’s no through-line of logic in a lot of the scenes,” the actor says. “Things just happen for the sake of happening. A white horse can appear in your living room and, in the next second, disappear. Or you can be lying in your bed and see two people standing down at the foot of it and know that they’re real — and then, a second later, they’re gone.
“It has that kind of dream-world quality to it, and that’s the world that David Lynch has created in ‘Twin Peaks.’ And we explore it fully in the movie.”
RAY WISE IN BOB ROBERTS
In the case of “Bob Roberts,” Wise says he had plenty of role models for the unscrupulous public-relations man he plays in the film — “just about every smarmy politician I’ve ever had the pleasure of observing.” “And I mean that not in a totally derogatory way,” he adds. “Smarmy is like a combination of — what is it? — smelly and charming, I suppose.”
Wise describes the character as “a synthesis of several that are On the scene right now. . . . !But] I don’t want to start naming names.”
The actor’s real-world political experience came into play when he participated in a short film for John Glenn’s U.S. Senate campaign in Ohio many years ago. In the upcoming film version of Michael Crichton’s best-selling novel “Rising Sun,” Wise portrays, oddly enough, a U.S. senator.
He says he appreciates the timeli-ness of “Bob Roberts” in this heated election year.
“We in Hollywood, we’re the new enemy now, aren’t we?” says Wise. “The Cold War is over, and now the ‘cultural elite’ has taken over. I guess you have a pretty good idea of how I feel about that and about ev-erything that Mr. (Vice President Dan) Quayle has said in the past. I don’t think I need make any com-ment on that. I think it would dignify it too much to keep talking about it.
“I just hope that we get one or two good Supreme Court justices in the near future,” he says. “That’s about as much as I’m hoping for right now.”
Great article! I’ve never read it before. Thank you for sharing!
I find it interesting how Wise actually states that FWWM is a nightmare and equates Twin Peaks as being a dream decades before The Return posed the question about a dreamer. I think Engels stated something similar, but Ray Wise doing it, and musing in particular about whose dream it is, just kind of startled me.
Particularly the last part where he says, “or it could be someone else’s in town that we don’t even know about. But it’s very nightmarish.”
His pointing to someone else that we don’t even know about is curious to me.
My own interpretation, these days, is that Billy (William Hastings) is the dreamer, which coincides perfectly with Wise’s words. There were too many Williams/Bills running around the Return to be a coincidence, plus the mysterious missing Billy and Mr. C’s arrest report featuring some of Hastings’s information. Plus, William Hastings residing on Elm Street is just too delightful to ignore.
A mysterious figure called Billy featured in many of David Lynch’s artwork, the earliest I can find being “Billy Finds a Book” from the same year as FWWM’s release. From your own investigations, you discovered that Laura is reading is “The Rose and the Ring” written by William Makepeace Thackeray and she is holding a copy of William Saroyan’s The Human Comedy. What struck me about both of those was that they were written by “Billys”. The title Rose and The Ring has obvious connections to the FWWM mythos, but a book about a 14 year old boy is a little more difficult to discern.
Lynch’s own statement concerning the Billy in his art is also very intriguing, that he has “mental problems” and “a lot of different friends within him.”
I wonder if Ray Wise knew or suspected anything from his interactions with Lynch but can’t say anything. He’s always been pretty insistent about Leland’s innocence, despite the more modern “Let’s Blame Leland” take on Twin Peaks, plus Lynch wrote 2 specific instances where Leland, in some way, stated his innocence too: the OG finale and the Between Two Worlds interview with the Palmers.
There’s also the character of Ray in The Return. Lynch might have thought he was overall finished with the character of Leland, believing he had vindicated him in FWWM though it was ultimately misinterpreted, but named Ray Munroe out of a respect for the actor whom played him and whom was always dedicated to the role, no matter what uncomfortable things it and its co-creator asked of him to portray.
It’s Ray whom seems closer to the Betty (another character whom I believe offers answers if we only look to her) story and directly tells Mr. C before the man murders him “I know who you are.” Who not what. If he’s referring to “Billy” Hastings, in some way, this takes on an interesting relation to the fact that David Lynch hired George Griffith to play Ray when Griffith is good friends with Matt Lillard, the man playing Bill Hastings. I think David Lynch had even seen, and enjoyed, the film Griffith made starring both Lillard and himself, “From the Head.”
Anyway, that line from Ray Wise sure got my wheels turning. Thanks again!