David Lynch and the Double R Diner

Twede’s Cafe in North Bend, WA has recently been renovated to return as the Double R Diner in the renewed Twin Peaks set to debut on Showtime sometime in 2017. Word is the owner made returning the diner to the look of the Double R part of the deal in exchange for using the location. A smart move in anticipation of the onslaught of coffee and cherry pie seekers likely to descend on the location in the coming year(s).

This recent photo, by Travis Blue, of filming going on right now caught my eye as it would any Twin Peaks fan. But why?

Hello from the set of Twin Peaks! pic.twitter.com/Nbz6uTSvod

— Travis Blue (@travisblue) September 14, 2015

Looking closer, my eye zoomed out to the towering mountains, the trees…those clouds. Then it hit me. The Double R is the epicenter of what is Lynchian about Twin Peaks.

Man, I hate using that word, “Lynchian.” Poor Lynch probably hates it too. Yet isn’t it a tribute to an artist that his style demanded a new word? Like pornography, you know it when you see it.

Looking it up, one nerdy site defines the term like this, “a particular kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mundane combine in such a way as to reveal the former’s perpetual containment within the latter.”

On one level, the Double R encapsulates all of the kitschy distractions of Twin Peaks; the coffee and cherry pie, but you can also see it as a character. It’s one of David Lynch’s inspirational muses like “Nighthawks at the Diner” or like Claude Monet’s many paintings of haystacks. Remember, David Lynch is first and foremost a painter.

Follow me here as we look back at a seemingly innocuous scene set at the Double R from the original series (second season episode 7) as a tearful Shelly Johnson tells Norma Jennings that she’s going to need to quit her job at the Double R.

Sure enough, this is one of only four episodes David Lynch directed in the second season. Only Lynch would think to direct a scene this touchingly naive. Any other director would have cut this to make room for another ‘more dramatic’ scene–reducing this to passing dialogue.

Too often critics and writers dwell on the obviously quirky or frightening elements in Lynch’s work. Here, he is utterly true to the realism of the moment. Sure, the scene includes Lynchian clichés like characters crying, smooth jazzy music and that awkward feeling when you’re left asking, “Is this suppose to be funny?” Yet isn’t this precisely what happens when a good employee leaves a job? Come to think of it, my first experience as a manager included numerous people crying on me!

When I was re-watching the series last year, this was one of those moments when I said, “This is why I love David Lynch and Twin Peaks.”

Note the superb acting from a very young and inexperienced Mädchen Amick. Watching the clip again, it’s Mädchen’s nervous hands and the click of her ring on the counter as she starts to drop her guard that nails the scene for me. She’s not “acting” per se, she’s swimming in the world of David Lynch’s brilliant direction. And that direction includes profound freedom for an actress to be the character on set.

Weird and achingly emotional scenes really do happen in everyday life and David Lynch is just enough of an Eagle Scout from Missoula, Montana to show them to us. Here’s hoping he still is.

P.S. This is what I saw moments after waking up and seeing that photo of the Double R today. O Dear/deer, life really is stranger than fiction…Make sure you press play.

#MeanwhileinNebraska: Deer breaks into hotel (VIDEO) https://t.co/A6Zc6pNtTp pic.twitter.com/HVll3wKJ10

— RT (@RT_com) September 15, 2015

Initially, I thought to forward this to David Lynch on Twitter. Not that he reads his tweets, but couldn’t they use this idea as a scene at the Great Northern or Double R? Later, I decided to just write this little article.