Chris Isaak Speaks about His Role as Special Agent Chet Desmond in September 1992 Interview

One of my favorite characters in all of Twin Peaks is Chris Isaak’s Special Agent Chet Desmond in David Lynch’s 1992 prequel film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. For more than three decades, I’ve been mesmerized by his dreamlike performance during the first 35 minutes of the film. I also happen to love his music, having seen him in concerts several times in the past 15 years (it’s a show you don’t want to miss!). In September 1992, Isaak spoke with Tom McNichol for a syndicated story that ran in the September 4-6 edition of USA Weekend. He offered insights about working with David Lynch.

‘CHRIS ISAAK’S TWIN CAREERS’ IN USA WEEKEND FOR SEPTEMBER 4-6, 1992

San Francisco Freelance reporter Tom McNichol has written for Washington, D.C.’s City Paper, The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Wired and more. He is the author of several books, most recently AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards War and Barking at Prozac: My Diary by Buck. He spoke with Chris Isaak about his performance in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, which was released in North America on August 28, 1992. Below is a transcript of that article.

Chris Isaak’s twin careers

The moody musician adds acting to his résumé with the new ‘Twin Peaks’ feature, just out.

Singer-songwriter Chris Isaak has a confession about David Lynch’s latest offbeat production, the movie Twin Peaks — Fire Walk With Me: He doesn’t understand it. And he’s in it.

“Well,” Isaak, 34, says with a smile, “I understand it up until my character leaves the scene. But understanding the movie wasn’t one of the requirements of getting the part.”

He’s more accustomed to the rock ‘n’ roll stage than to the big screen. His 1989 album, Heart Shaped World, has sold more than 1.5 million copies, and the haunting, moody single Wicked Game was an international hit.

Twin Peaks – Fire Walk With Me, which opened last weekend to mixed audience reviews, gives Isaak and fellow rocker David Bowie an opportunity to showcase other talents. It’s Isaak’s first major movie role (he appeared for fewer than 20 seconds in both The Silence of the Lambs and Married to the Mob). In Fire, conceived as a “prequel” to the acclaimed Twin Peaks TV series, the Stockton, Calif, native plays an FBI agent who investigates a grisly murder in the fictitious Northwest town of Twin Peaks, which seems to have a bounty of grisly murders. To hear Isaak tell it, the mastermind behind Twin Peaks’ mayhem is as normal as the clerk at your local hardware store.

“David Lynch’s films are a bit kooky, but he’s just as normal as could be,” Isaak says in a low-key drawl. “He understands that the secret of success in Hollywood is knowing what you want. Everybody else is doing things by consensus. Not David.”

Isaak seems made-to-order for Lynch. The singer’s plaintive tenor, which some have compared to that of Roy Orbison, is a perfect complement to the filmmaker’s themes of isolation and lost innocence. In fact, Isaak favors the same spooky, quivering guitar sound that is a signature of Twin Peaks’ music. Isaak’s carefully cultivated public image – a ’50s-style retro-Romeo with chiseled features and straight-edged ways (he doesn’t drink, smoke or take drugs) – reminds one more of Ricky Nelson than of Willie Nelson. He’s a good match for the clean-cut Kyle MacLaughlin, whom Lynch once again has cast in the role of weird and squeaky-clean FBI agent Dale Cooper.

Isaak admits he was nervous auditioning. “I think I took the audition more seriously than anyone else, because I hadn’t done much acting. I thought if I blew it everyone would think, ‘What a jerk! This singer comes in here and thinks he can act.'”

Isaak got the part, joining a long line of pop music stars turned thespians. And he says he looks forward to landing more movie work – but not if it gets in the way of his first passion, music. “I don’t think I’d cut back on my singing for anything. With music, I’m totally responsible for the finished product.”

Isaak spends most of his time these days finishing his long-awaited follow-up to Heart Shaped World. His daily routine seldom changes: wake up late in the morning in his San Francisco home; ride his bicycle 10 blocks to the audio studio where he records; work on the album until about midnight; ride back home; watch late-night television (old movies or David Letterman), and then lie on his bed in the dark for a couple of hours and play guitar. “Ever since I was a kid,” lie says, “I’ve always played my guitar in the dark. My mom never understood that.”

Sounds like a scene from Twin Peaks. And probably not even Chris Isaak would know what it means.

PHOTO OF CHRIS ISAAK BY DOROTHY LOW

A black and white photo of Chris Isaak accompanies the article with a pullout quote:

Isaak on his music: `Even if no one liked me as a singer, I’d still play my guitar at corner bars. It’s steady work. I never thought I’d say that about music.’

The photo was taken by Dorothy Low, a photographer turned acupuncturist and practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine who spent time in the 1990s capturing images of musicians and bands such as Joni Mitchell, Tupac, TLC and more. In 1989 she married John “Jack” Stanley Walworth, a talented and dedicated producer whose work in documentary and non-fiction television spanned more than four decades and touched audiences around the world. He was a longtime producer on The Amazing Race.

Dorothy and Jack formed Exile Pictures where they worked on documentary and music projects, including groundbreaking collaborations with NHK Japan in the 1980s and early ’90s. Today, Dorothy runs Hath Holisitc in Glendale, California.

I’ve never seen this photo of Chris Isaak outside of the USA Weekend article.