Northwest Passage

Some words on my influences the past few months:

The Detective story and its many variations. I've been reading Chandler's The Big Sleep. It's the first book I've read in ages that I feel like I can recommend to my father, but I'm sure he's read it already. This is the prototypical Detective novel; Colombo, Matlock and Dick Gumshoe have Philip Marlowe to thank for their existence. In reading it, I've been trying to cull from it some influence in its movement. The language is very quick, and descriptive passages are deceptively simple.

I also just recently finished Twin Peaks. It's easy to see why it was so popular. It's also to see why people stopped watching in Season 2. Still, it's interesting to see how Twin Peaks took the "straight lawman" character and played around with it. Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) was placed into the quiet town of Twin Peaks to investigate the murder of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). During the course of the investigation he discovers that Laura had a hidden life, and the hidden lives of everyone else in the town are revealed, leading to an escalation in action that shatters Twin Peak's former reputation as a quiet, peaceful town.

One of the questions the show asks is "What was the real reason for this escalation?" Was it the murder itself, or was it the arrival of this outside lawman? If Dale Cooper hadn't have been here, would everything have returned to normal after a week or so? Perhaps it would be better if the mystery hadn't been solved?

After the show I realized just how similar it was thematically to PAM. Sometimes, this discourages me, but in the case with Twin Peaks I feel like I can use it as an example of "what not to do." Do NOT forget the main mystery, or get lost in imagery, or give away the reveal too soon.