According to “The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer,” July 22 is Laura’s birthday. In honor of the occasion, here is a look at a classic publicity photo from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.
LAURA PALMER AND DALE COOPER IN THE RED ROOM
This black and white publicity photo features Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee, left) and Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan, right) in a classic scene from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, from New Line Cinema. There is no production code on this photo but the image was taken by the late Lorey Sebastian.
The image appears to be cropped from the landscape publicity photo containing more details from The Red Room. Both images would have provided editors options to fit the image in available print space.
WHO IS LOREY SEBASTIAN?
Credited as “Still Photographer” for Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Lorey Sebastian started her career in 1977 as the still photographer on the set of Joan Micklin Silver’s film Between The Lines.
Born in New York City in 1944, Sebastian eventually moved to Los Angeles, California. She had more than 100 film credits to her name including The Player, Crash, St. Elmo’s Fire, True Grit, Twilight, Hell or High Water and Hostiles.
Lorey was briefly married to John Sebastian from the band, The Loving Spoonful. She retired around 2018 and moved to Truchas, New Mexico where she lived with her two dogs. Sadly, she passed on May 9, 2022 at the age of 78 following a brief illness.
During my research, I discovered Ms. Sebastian wrote several “Letters to the Editor” of The Santa Fe New Mexican newspaper from 2018 to 2022. Below is the final letter I found from her dated March 10, 2022.
TWIN PEAKS PUBLICITY PHOTO IN THE NEWS
Like many publicity shots created for Lynch’s 1992 masterpiece, this photo often accompanied articles or film reviews. Ted Mahar from The Oregonian used a cropped image in his movie review on Aug. 31, 1992. He wasn’t a fan of the film but noted Sheryl Lee and Ray Wise’s performances.
Twin Peaks film is an incoherent jumble
Details don’t add up, characters disappear, story just sputters out
If awards are dispensed for confusion and downright incomprehensibility, David Lynch should drive a dump truck to the ceremony.
There is almost no moment in his “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” that is not replete with details that make little or no narrative sense.
Viewers who can track the details could spend the film pondering how they relate to the continuing story. Often, they don’t.
The first and greatest imponderable is why this film was made at all. It is a prologue to the TV series, which began with high school charmer Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) found dead and wrapped in heavy plastic on a Washington riverbank. That’s how this prequel ends.
A great mystery in the TV series was who killed her and why, which was eventually revealed. Well, the same culprit is still guilty.
Of course, the central mystery was but the doorway to numerous plotlets, many difficult to relate to the supposedly central issue.
The 1990-1991 series gave Lynch an outlet for his weird humor and his enthusiasm for suffering, the misshapen and the outcast that he had indulged in “Eraserhead,” “The Elephant Man,” “Dune,” “Blue Velvet” and “Wild at Heart.”
Lynch’s films have the illogic of a dream, with bizarre characters and events depicted in commonplace settings. If people or incidents seem disconnected or even supernatural, well, it all may be just a dream.
A year before Laura’s demise, another girl is found in plastic by the river. and FBI agents (Kiefer Sutherland, Chris Isaak) investigate, sent by boss Gordon Cole (Lynch) from Portland. Isaak’s character disappears, no explanation is ever suggested, and Sutherland eventually slips out of the story unnoticed.
FBI Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) was a key player in the series, but naturally hit Twin Peaks only after Laura’s death. He punches the clock in this film but of course has no real chores yet.
A sinister elderly woman and a strange boy (who suggests Lynch) appear together to Laura like messengers from a world of doom.
The best scene is a seamy, hard music tavern bacchanal, a parental nightmare of where kids might go when they disappear in the evening.
Several performances are intense, particularly Lee’s and, as her tortured and torturing father Leland, Ray Wise’s. As the promiscuous. coke addict high schooler endures her last, miserable week, Lee offers a nicely done sampler of thespic skills: complacent happiness, quivering fear, shrieking terror, sexual ecstasy, flirtatious domination, paralyzing dread.
The entire film may be tongue in cheek. It opens on an absurd note. Cole’s cousin Lit instructs two FBI agents by mime and charade.
This absurdity and dozens more could be amusing as incidents in a coherent story. But “Peaks” plays like a 135 minute anthology of unconnected excerpts from a whole season’s TV shows. What is a fire walk? This film never says.
The funky humor juxtaposes agonized and unamusing suffering, some gory violence and a frantic, bloody finale. The film sputters out like the work of a man who is doodling. It feels like a rough draft for the series Lynch had already made.
Other articles, like Betsy Pickle’s for The Knoxville News Sentinel on Sept. 4, 1992, used the publicity photo in a story about new films.
Laura Palmer: Prequel details her last seven days
Laura Palmer lives! Well, for a while at least. Director David Lynch’s prequel to his offbeat TV series comes to Knoxville today. “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” is playing at Carmike Six and East Towne Crossing.
The movie chronicles the seven days leading up to the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer, played by Sheryl Lee. The film reportedly answers some questions left open in the ABC series but also raises more. It opened last Friday in major cities to mixed reviews.
Many of the television show’s stars show up, including Kyle MacLachlan as FBI agent Dale Cooper and Ray Wise as Laura’s father, Leland. Joining the cast are Moira Kelly as Donna Hayward, Chris Isaak, David Bowie, Harry Dean Stanton and Kiefer Sutherland.
I adore both publicity photos as Laura’s expression of pure joy recalls a deleted scene found in The Missing Pieces that I wish would have never been cut. Dr. Will Hayward (Warren Frost) reads a secret message to Laura during a visit to his home with Donna.
The Angels will return.
And when you see the one
that’s meant to help you,
You will weep with joy.
Author
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