Deleted Scenes from Fire Walk With Me That Should Not Have Been Deleted

I got Twin Peaks: The Entire Mystery with Fire Walk With Me and all the deleted scenes, remastered and on Blu-ray!
Now this is what I loved about them:

SPOILERS!

1. Buenos Aires / Above the Convenience Store

The David Bowie scene in the original cut of Fire Walk With Me was brief. Brief enough to be bizarre and in line with David Lynch's penchant for randomness and leaving us with more questions than answers. The scene starts with a man getting off an elevator in the Philadelphia FBI headquarters where Agent Cooper works. That man is David Bowie, and you think, "Cool, what the heck is he doing here? Boy David Lynch is sure taking me on a wild ride." Bowie is dressed in a tropical shirt and baggy khaki suit; a stark contrast to the standard FBI black suit and tie attire. Everyone else in the room - David Lynch as Chief Gordon Cole, Kyle MacLachlan as Agent Dale Cooper, and Miguel Ferrer as Agent Albert Rosenfeld - knows who this is. It's Phillip Jeffries, the long lost FBI agent.

Jeffries stands there and starts talking like a person with dementia, talking about a "Judy" that we don't know is psycho babble or actually relevant to these men. Just before you think David Bowie is going to say something of worth the scene fuzzes out like a crossed transmission and all of a sudden we're in a world that is reminiscent of the types of dreams Cooper would have on Twin Peaks.

I couldn't sleep so now no one can sleep.

This dream does have the Man From Another Place (the dwarf) and Bob in it, but it also includes two lumber jack guys, an old black man, the old woman and her creepy magician/ mini David Lynch grandson (aka the Tremonds), and a terrifying man with a white mask, red suit, and high top hair cut.

As expected the "dream" does not directly answer anything with it's coded language, but maybe with a few more watches... You hear bits of what Jeffries is telling the detectives, if you can tell that's what's going on at all; it's very much inter-cut with the things the dwarf and others say. Then we get a shot of Jeffries in the office talking but without synced sound, and finally a TV fuzz shot of him screaming in apparent agony. When the time is right the dream fuzzes out and we're back in the office. Gordon Cole is yelling that Jeffries has disappeared into thin air. We missed him disappearing, and we never get to see Jeffries again or know really what he said to Cooper, Cole, and Rosenfeld.

In the deleted scene you get Jeffries talking and the dream separately. It's an extra 5 minutes that should have been kept in. It would not have given too much away, or been too wordy. Jeffries actually sits down and starts talking as though he just made a harrowing journey and is trying to recount it so everyone can understand. Jeffries explains that he lived above a convenience store with a group of people. This is HUGE, because we all know from Twin Peaks that Bob and Mike lived above a convenience store (and now we know that this was important because it turned out to be the Black Lodge). Jeffries explains the situation and the dream becomes more of a twisted perspective on the infamous apartment above the convenience store / Black Lodge, and less of a random idea Lynch had to freak us out. After Jeffries sufficiently disturbs everyone with his story Cole tries to get the receptionist to answer on the intercom while the lights flicker. Jeffries notices the date and seems confused. Cole turns his head to look back at Jeffries and he's gone.

Then Jeffries appears with light and flame in the hallway of a Buenos Aires hotel, leaving a scorch mark on the wall. He scares the shit out of those who witness this and, to put it mildly, he looks pretty ragged from the journey. The screaming moment from the original cut of FWWM is from this deleted scene. I felt like this last bit was not really necessary. It opens up a whole plot device about time travel that no one else in the Twin Peaks series or FWWM experience. If there is evidence that this does occur with other characters then it is much more subtle and open to interpretation. There's another scene preceding this of Jeffries checking into the hotel, which gives the time and space jump context. I was just happy to hear Jeffries' story, I don't care where he went when he disappeared. It could have been somewhere interesting and relevant like the Black Lodge but since it was just Argentina, who cares? I guess that's why these were cut, but it doesn't explain why the speech was cut at all.

Here is some of the speech.

Jeffries stumbles to a chair. JEFFRIES: Listen to me carefully. I saw one of their meetings. It was above a convenience store. ALBERT: Whose meeting? Where have you been? COLE: FOR GOD SAKES, JEFFRIES, YOU’VE BEEN GONE DAMN NEAR TWO YEARS. JEFFRIES: It was a dream. (takes Albert by the arm) We live inside a dream. ALBERT: And it’s raining Post Toasties. JEFFRIES (shouting): NO. NO. I found something … in Seattle at Judy’s … And then, there they were … Albert is about to say something, but is stopped by Cole’s gentle pressure on his arm. JEFFRIES: They sat quietly for hours.

"They sat quietly for hours." [shudders]

Another addition to the Black Lodge dream in this extended scene is a super imposition of Laura staring off with an unblinking almost dead expression while double images of the group in the apartment hover over. If that was kept in this would be our first image of Laura in FWWM, implying that she was dreaming the same thing Jeffries saw. It gives more insight to her reaction to the Tremonds in the parking lot of the RR Diner where they give her the framed photograph.

 

2. Party Girl

In this deleted scene we see a flashback Leland Palmer calling Theresa Banks to make a date for a four-way. It is about one year before Laura's murder. He's called on Theresa's services before and creepily compared her to his daughter Laura. Little does he know Laura as well as Ronette Pulaski are Theresa's other friends, ready for anything. In FWWM Leland has this flashback after he and Laura are accosted by Mike the one-armed man. He sees Laura through a window in the motel room as she and Ronette pass the time waiting for their John. Leland says "I chickened out." gives Theresa the cash and runs away. Theresa knows something is fishy here.

In the deleted scene Theresa explains to Laura and Ronette that the John chickened out. They spend a moment lounging on the bed together with some palpable sexual tension. Theresa slowly brushes her hair off her face as she looks seductively at Laura. Laura notices the ring on Theresa's hand. It's the same blue green ring with the owl symbol she would later see in a dream, and then also thrust in her face when Mike the one-armed man starts screaming at her and Leland in the street. 

After a freeze frame on Laura looking back at Theresa and the ring, we cut to Theresa calling Jacque Renault to pry information about Laura and Ronette's fathers. She concludes that the John must have been Laura's father, and immediately calls him up. After she says hello we cut to Leland in his office silently listening to her blackmail him. Then we know that this was his motivation to murder Theresa Banks.

The blackmailing is only implied in the original cut of FWWM. During the scene where Laura and Ronette talk to Jacque in the very loud, red Canadian bar, we can read in Jacque's subtitles that Theresa was interested in Laura's father's appearance. Laura gets very agitated upon hearing this.

We also see in FWWM that Laura reflects in her bedroom about the ring she saw in Mike's hand. She has a flashback to quick cuts of the deleted scene, specifically the gif image above, reminding her where she saw it.

I can understand that the flashback sequence would have seemed redundant if they kept the whole scene with the three of them in the motel room. I suppose Laura could have had her own complete flashback of this moment from her perspective, as Leland did of his perspective, but I also can't resolve where that could have been placed in the film. Although it might have completed the connection of why Laura even had a memory of Theresa looking at her from that angle etc. Overall it's a beautifully shot scene that I'm glad was recovered.

 3. Bob Speaks Through Laura / Blue Sweater

This cut scene depicts a moment when Laura is encountered by the spirit of Bob in the stairwell to her bedroom. It appears that he speaks to her through the ceiling fan. As he says sexually predatory things to her she harshly whispers to herself trying to fight him out of her mind. The fan seems to mesmerize Laura and we see a helpless staring face slowly shape into a menacing grin.

This is not at the menacing grin stage yet btw.

We are seeing Laura pulled to the dark side. For most of the movie Laura is either bad or good. We see her doing normal high school things with Donna, even if they get a bit emotional. Or we see her hooking and snorting coke like a champ. I think we're expected to think that as soon as she walks out the door of her house it's either going to be one or the other. Inside the Palmer home is complete uncertainty of safety and sanity. Laura and her parents have incredibly tense moments that border on abusive.

Who wants breakfast!

If you thought breakfast was a hoot, try dinner!

Seeing her give in to Bob in the moment is important to illustrate how Laura moved between both worlds.

Side note: it reminds me of the scene in FWWM where Bob comes through Laura's window and for the first time in this film - and in Twin Peaks history - the sight of Bob doesn't render the viewer a screaming flailing mess.

She allows him to get on top of her, and she is maybe even turned on for a minute. She asks "Who are you?" and in that moment we see Leland's face, and that's when Laura starts screaming in horror. (Which is horrifying because it's incest, so I guess if you had to choose which is more horrifying...)

Anyway...

Laura's trance in the stairwell is interrupted by her mother, Sarah Palmer, asking where her blue sweater is. Laura says to her, "You're wearing it." Sarah realizes her error and begins to panic. She cries and says, "It's happening again." Sound familiar? It's the same line the Giant says over and over again to Cooper in Twin Peaks when Laura's cousin Maddie is being murdered by Leland.

The blue sweater must be symbolism for something being right under your nose (like the sexual abuse of Laura at the hands of her father). It's happening again and again and you didn't even know. Sarah appears to be upset because she didn't notice she was wearing the sweater, maybe on the surface referencing an unmentioned mental issue that's flaring up. Laura tries to calm Sarah insisting that it's not happening again and it's OK.

I really appreciate the reference back to Twin Peaks in this scene and I think the whole bit with Laura being entranced into Bob's world and the sweater would have benefited FWWM. 

Honorable Mentions

Distant Screams

 This was a very short deleted scene that just shows the Log Lady crying in the dark with her log while you can faintly hear the screams of Laura and Ronette in the distance, or maybe in her mind as the log telepathically gives her the message. In Twin Peaks the Log Lady says "My log heard something that night." This is presumably depicting that moment. In FWWM the Log Lady confronts Laura and tells her about how easily innocence can be burned up by evil. If the deleted scene were kept in it would have still made perfect sense and would take the Log Lady's influence full circle.

Asparagus 

This one is pretty much a throw away scene, but it references Laura not liking asparagus, which is important - sort of. While reading her diary in Twin Peaks, Agent Cooper reads an entry from the night of Laura's murder where she writes, "Asparagus for dinner again. I hate asparagus. Does this mean I'll never grow up?"

I just admire the attention to detail; that they filmed this as a nod to the TV series, putting effort into staying consistent and attempting to put the whole puzzle together.

I highly recommend this box set. If you don't have a Blu-ray player find a friend that does and make them watch it with you. Enjoy all the extra content and the other fun that comes inside the package...