Twin Peaks Publicity – Carel Struycken as The Giant

In the second season opener for Twin Peaks, Carel Struycken made quite an entrance playing the Giant. He appeared twice to Special Agent Dale Cooper toward to beginning and near the end of the episode. As part of the show’s publicity, a close up photo slide of the Giant in room 315 at The Great Northern Hotel was released. It’s one of two similar shots taken by publicist and on-set photographer Paula K. Shimatsu-u.

CAREL STRUYCKEN AS THE GIANT IN “TWIN PEAKS”

The photo slide of Carel Struycken was captured on the set of The Great Northern Hotel’s room 315 constructed at the former City Studios in Van Nuys, California.

The image was captured by Unit Publicist Paula K. Shimatsu-u. The image is reminiscent of The Giant’s second encounter with Special Agent Dale Cooper when he tells Cooper that it’s “better to listen than to talk.”

Interestingly, in the original script from Mark Frost and David Lynch, the Giant sits on Cooper’s bed. The broadcast version has the Giant standing at the end of Cooper’s bed.

Cooper puts a sleep mask and turns off the lamp. He lies still for a moment. He thinks he feels a weight settle on the end of the bed. He turns, senses something. He lifts the corner of the sleep mask and sees …

… the Giant is back. Sitting at the end of the bed. 

It’s important to note the placement of the ceiling lamp (to the left of The Giant) and the fold of his red bow tie (also on the left side of the image).  This helped me determine the correct orientation of the photo slide which I won at auction.

The slide contained handwritten words “Twin Peaks,” “Carel Struycken” and “Howie.” The slide most likely came from Hollywood News Service which was once managed by the late Roger Asquith  in the 1960s.

According to his author page on Prestbury Books, Asquith first “operated a radio in the Royal Air Force and was later trained as a Marine Radio Officer in London. He then set sail around the world on British, Australian, Swedish vessels and finally the hell ship known as the CUBAN TRADER.

After a year as a trainee TV cameraman for the CBC in Canada, Roger went to Hollywood. Unable to get a job in television. Roger first worked in the sound department at Walt Disney on the dubbing of Lady and the Tramp into foreign languages, the managed the HOLLYWOOD NEWS SERVICE writing articles for British, Australian and American magazines where he hobnobbed with stars from Elvis Presley, Bette Davis, George Cukor, Marilyn Monroe to Lucille Ball.”

This publicity slides was shared with news publications for use in newspapers, magazines and other printed sources.

WHO IS PAULA K. SHIMATSU-U?

According to her defunct website, Paula is a a third generation native of Los Angeles, California who worked from an early age in film, television and on the stage with Cary Grant, Anne Bancroft, Ricardo Montalbán, Florence Henderson, Elvis Presley and many other legendary Hollywood stars.

She was informed about an assistant role to Mark Frost by a friend from UC Berkeley, Tony Krantz. He introduced Mark to David Lynch while working at Creative Artists Agency. After they decided to collaborate on a script for a television pilot with the working title, “Northwest Passage” Paula assisted Mark and David with research for the pilot script and the formation of Lynch-Frost Productions. During the first season, she was credited as “Assistant to Mark Frost.”

By the second season, she was credited as “Unit Publicist.” Her duties included building creative assets used to promote Twin Peaks including photography and other press materials. She told Wired’s Brendan Seibel on August 6, 2010 that she got the gig despite a lack of photographic experience.

“I still don’t know what an f-stop is. I relied on my automatic camera, and for shooting in low light levels with no flash allowed, I think I got some pretty superb images.”

Superb images indeed! These publicity photos are priceless treasures from a time before the digital age. I’m grateful for Paula for capturing these behind-the-scenes moments.

STARPICS TRADING CARD | #55 – THE GIANT

A similar publicity image of The Giant showed up on card #55 from the StarPics trading card release of 1991. This image must have been part of a sequence as Carel is seen looking down versus looking directly at the camera.

The back of this card contains details provided by Lynch/Frost Productions.

Accomplishments:
I befriended Special Agent Dale Cooper and gave him the clues to find Laura Palmer’s killer. I also returned Cooper’s ring.

Strengths:
I come from the place where the spirits that rule man and nature reside. I am a messenger of truth.

Weaknesses:
I can only be seen by those who believe.

There is also a cropped negative image of the photo from the card’s front. I reversed it as seen in the image above. More details are included under this photo.

Birthdate: Unknown

Education: White Lodge

Actor: Carel Struycken

The Giant would appear a handful of times in the second season in episodes 2.001 (#8), 2.002 (#9), 2.007 (#14), 2.009 (#16), 2.020 (#27) and 2.022 (#29). Despite these limited on-screen appearances, he made quite an impression in Twin Peaks.

Download a high-resolution copy of the photo slide on my Flickr account: https://www.flickr.com/photos/aloha75/albums/72177720325607231/