Louis C.K. And Marc Maron Might Know Something About The New ‘Twin Peaks’ Unconventional Approach

Twin Peaks has always been a weird television show from the beginning, and proudly so as all David Lynch’s projects are. Beautifully weird is the best way to put them and disarming as well, as if it’s the way to “place card” the emotions out of the viewer.

When it comes to the new season of Twin Peaks, we’re all in this together where we’re not quite sure what to expect from the new show. And it appears no one, not even the studio executives, knows what to expect and much less how it’s going to air — unless you’re “in the know” like Louis C.K. and Marc Maron.

According to SlashFilm, Showtime Networks Inc. President and CEO David Nevins confirmed that the director of Twin Peaks David Lynch has finished shooting the series and will be editing until the end of the year, promising to show a peek of the show at the beginning of 2017.

“It is a fluid process. David Lynch who is doing it all, he co-wrote with Mark Frost, he directed every episode, he’s editing every episode, scoring every episode. It’s a process of seeing how it evolved. That organism continues to evolve. Until he’s figured that out and show it to us, we actually don’t know.”

Nevins is referring to the unconventional approach the director is taking for the new season of TwinPeaks which Inquisitr also reported on.

The unconventional approach to marketing Twin Peaks and even in how Showtime is going to air it appears to be part of the new direction many networks are taking to distribute their programming, more specifically with episodic dramas where even when the shows are aired on television weekly, more of them are moving quickly to break up the sets for one season which Marc Maron and Louis C.K. attribute to British programming.

This and other details of the making of non-traditional programming in general is thoroughly examined in an interview with comedian, writer, and director Louis C.K. on WTF with Marc Maron Podcast, where he talks about the making of his very unconventional web series Horace and Pete.

When Showtime announced that they were going to bring Twin Peaks back, there was reportedly a stalemate in the process between the studios and David Lynch as he wasn’t given the freedom or the budget to do the show as he wanted, and when he quit, it sent a shock wave through the show’s fan base. It would appear that that was enough for the studios to concede and so they lured him back, giving him the freedom he needed.

The connection between Louis C.K. and Lynch goes back to 2012 when David Lynch was cast in his Louie series for an episode called “The Late Show,” which both Maron and Louie refer to in their interview. The New York Times provides details for how C.K. got the director to be on his FX series, but specifically for that episode there is even more of a connection with Louis C.K’s Horace and Pete in that he rented out a studio to shoot the web series at the Penta Hotel in New York, which is the same place they shot the late night segment for his FX series.

The difference between Twin Peaks and Louie is that Lynch got the studio to give him the money to do the series, but Louis C.K. paid for his Horace and Pete out of his own pocket behind FX’s back not only because of how unconventional it was going to be shot and released, but also because he was using major star power for the series including big names that were loosely bound to the FX network. The interview reveals he was walking a fine line and at risk of infuriating the studio, especially because it was in secret. But the studio also came around and eventually embraced his artistic direction.

The other difference is that Louis C.K.’s series was only “aired” through his website where members of his newsletter would get updates of when the new episodes were released. To him it didn’t matter what the return was, as he would eventually get that back through his method of syndication by selling downloads through his site.

Of course, there’s more riding on Twin Peaks for Showtime than Horace and Pete. The Slashfilm article offers more input from Nevins where he says that he’s embracing the unexpectedness of the show, so he’s not sure how they’re going to market it yet. But he is already saying that he’s seen footage of the new Twin Peaks season and he’s already saying that it’s “masterful”.

[Image via Louie/FX]