Kyle Milner
In an Australian first, select cast and crew from “Twin Peaks” tour Australia and New Zealand this month for the highly-anticipated ‘Conversation With The Stars’ event. The Australian tour will be a celebration for fans of this iconic television series to hear first-hand of some amazing in front of camera and behind the scenes moments of filming. In addition to cast members Sheryl Lee, Kimmy Robertson, Michael Horse, Al Strobel and Dana Ashbrook, Sabrina Sutherland, production co-ordinator of season 2 of “Twin Peaks” and executive producer of “Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series” is headed down under. We caught up with Sutherland, also an associate producer on David Lynch’s ”Inland Empire”, Production Supervisor on ”Lost Highway” and Producer of ”David Lynch: The Art Life”, ahead of the event.
So it’s been a year now since Twin Peaks: The Return first aired on television, and you guys are still busy out there promoting it, talking about it online and on tour. As a fan, looking back at the show it seems like even when it’s all over and there’s seemingly no more show to come, Twin Peaks seems to just keep going on and living. People are so desperate for more, even if it’s just a little bit of conversation with anyone who worked on the show, like yourself. Would you agree that the show seems to have a life of its own?
Sabrina: Well, I think it’s not your traditional show. I do think it’s very unique, and I do think that the way David has left it, it’s open for interpretation, and there’s a lot of conversation behind that. There’s a lot of history with the show, being on for years and replayed throughout these twenty-five, thirty years almost. It seems like there’s a growth to it, and there’s a fanbase that, you know, our show, this new season wouldn’t have happened without the fans that existed from the previous series. So I think that generation or generational love for the show has really kept it going, and it just sparked all new things when the new season came out. I’m going on this new tour mainly to meet with fans and talk with people who I’ve only chatted with on Facebook or just not face-to-face, and it’ll be really wonderful to meet people who haven’t had the opportunity to talk with any of the actors or know about the show first-hand because they live so far away.
Of course, down here in Australia and New Zealand – where I personally live – because we’re so small and far away, we typically don’t get the chance to meet stars from shows that we love, people like yourself who have been such an integral part of them. It’s great to hear that, for you, that this is an opportunity to finally get to meet face-to-face and take these questions in an intimate setting. That’s awesome.
Sabrina: Oh yeah, absolutely. And can I just say, I lived for a few months in New Zealand, and I loved it there. [laughs] I just wanted to say that.
We really appreciate people coming down here, it’s so rare for such cool people to come down.
Sabrina: Well I’m excited about it, and I’m hoping that fans will enjoy it, and certainly we’re open to questions and just, time to talk.
You’ve been involved with the show going right back, and being an Executive Producer on Twin Peaks: The Return you’ve been an integral part of it – not only the production, but your communication with fans online, your Reddit AmA semi-recently. You’re keeping a bridge for fans who want to know more. But I feel like a lot of the general public might not necessarily have an understanding of what Executive Producer means in terms of the show. What would you say, on a day-to-day basis, what was your involvement in The Return and making that happen?
Sabrina: Well, I would definitely say my title of Executive Producer is – my job description is different than other people who might have that same title. I was the right-hand person for David Lynch, I was the producer as well as executive producer. So I hired all the key personnel, I did the initial budget and schedule to propose for finding a distributor like Showtime. I worked with David very closely in the early months before the script was even finished, to figure out what he wanted on-screen. And my job, I guess the best description of it, is to help facilitate the vision in David’s head onto the screen. So that’s my job. But I deal with all the technical things, I deal with everybody, I deal with the budget, I deal with locations, I deal with post-production and production, pre-production. I am 100% throughout the entire show, and then deal with all of the things after the show as well. Any publicity, anything regarding festivals or anything like that. It all kind of falls under me.
It’s so impressive that you’ve been able to handle all of that, because the show seems to be such an immense, complex production.
Sabrina: Yeah. [laughs]
Even outside the realms of regular television production.
Sabrina: Yeah, it definitely was not the usual. We shot it as a film, and going in we didn’t know how many hours it was going to be, but we had a very set budget and we had a set time schedule. So we had a due date, regardless of if we had nine hours or what turned out to be eighteen hours, we still had that same due date. So it was very hard to meet that due date with all the hours we ended up doing.
It’s incredible that it’s managed to come back from the 90s, and not only come together in the way that it did, but to be such an impressive new thing while still being it’s own thing like back in the day.
Sabrina: I think that’s 100% David. I mean, it definitely tied into the original show but it was new and it’s just a unique visual representation of something, you know. So I think that’s all David.
I imagine you must constantly get questions in relation to David – “can you interpret this for me”, “what the hell was that”, “what the hell happened there?” I know he can be a cryptic guy, he’s a dreamer, and doesn’t seem to necessarily enjoy going all that in-depth about his work. He doesn’t like to tell us everything. Do you often find it challenging when you’re asked to talk about the show, in regards to things he’d perhaps prefer to leave as a mystery? As a fan of a show, I love that a lot of the things in it don’t necessarily have a solid answer, or are just up to interpretation. Do you find it challenging to have to say “I’d love to tell you that, but…”?
Sabrina: No, I don’t. David has a unique vision. I’ve worked with him a long time, I know that it’s not confusing for him, what’s up on the screen. He understands all of it. My working on it and my understanding of it – which can be completely different from my understanding of it – for me, it totally works and I understand the whole show too. Again, it’s my interpretation, David hasn’t told me “this means this”, or anything like this. I find that this show is like a work of art. And David, being an artist, it’s a moving art piece. And you never really explain art. I think once an artist finishes something, it’s there, you look at it. It’s an emotion, and it’s your understanding of how that piece of art hits you. And I think that’s how the show is. I don’t really have a problem with explaining things. And I would never want to say something that isn’t necessarily the case, it’s my point of view. I don’t know the answers, only David, in his head, understands what certain things are. And that’s up to him to say.
I think it’s so exciting that in 2017, 2018, there’s a show in the modern era that still has that exciting air of mystery and interpretation, not just in its form and aesthetic but is genuinely this sort of phenomenon. I was poring over forums while the show was airing and it’s rare for a television series to give you that kind of feeling.
Sabrina: That’s so great! That’s such a compliment, thank you. I mean, it’s not that it’s my doing, but I feel a part of the show and that’s such a wonderful thing to say about the show.
It’s incredible that so little of the show was spoiled or leaked. The promos were such teasers, and so often with television series you seem to get someone at the studio leaking an episode online or a synopsis might be mistakenly released. But I found that it was pretty much a complete mystery going in each week.
Sabrina: Yay! That was my job! [laughs]
And you did a fantastic job – each week, sitting down, it was like “what the hell is going to happen this week?” Was it difficult on your behalf to keep it all under wraps?
Sabrina: Yes. I’ll say with the teasers, David created the teasers. He was very adamant that nothing from the show was to come out in terms of picture. And on set, it was my job to make sure photographs weren’t taken, actors and crew members didn’t talk to the press, didn’t talk to people. There were a few slips here and there, but I think that overall, considering how long people had to kind of keep a secret, and how many days we were shooting, I think it went pretty well. I’m still knocking on wood that it didn’t leak out as much as I feared it would.
As someone who spent countless hours searching for anything I could, yeah, you guys did an immense job of keeping it all under wraps each week.
Sabrina: Yay! [laughs] That’s the thing, you experience it, and if you have some pre-conceived image or an idea of something when you go in, it takes you out of the show. And this way, you don’t know what to expect and you can just immerse yourself and just watch it and experience it.
I imagine you’re constantly asked, “is there going to be more Twin Peaks?”. And don’t worry, I’m not going to ask. [laughs] But everybody, whether it’s fans, critics or – I imagine, even cast and crew – would love there to be more. Even if there isn’t another season, just to know a little bit more. A bit more of the lore, that we even got from the books as well, Mark Frost’s books.
Sabrina: Let me just interject here and just say that, with Mark’s books, they were written entirely by Mark. They’re Mark’s ideas and his vision of what he thinks Twin Peaks is, or what happens in the future and that. That’s not David’s ideas. I just want you to know those weren’t part of the series, those were Mark going off and doing that himself.
Oh, absolutely. There just seems to be this desire for anything new, regardless of whether it’s straight from David himself, or Mark, or anything else. There just seems to be this insatiable thirst for more. Personally, would you feel satisfied if The Return was the last glimpse we get into the world of Twin Peaks?
Sabrina: I definitely feel that it ended well. It has room for interpretation, and there’s more story, for me. So I like how it ended up, but I would absolutely love to have another season. Absolutely. But if it ends here, I’m totally satiated and feel like it was an experience, and a one-of-a-kind experience that’s so unique you can’t put your finger on it. And I think years from now, if there isn’t anything more, you can still go back to this and say, “wow, that’s a pretty incredible series”.
TOUR DATES
WEDNESDAY 22ND AUGUST – AUCKLAND, ASB THEATRE
THURSDAY 23RD AUGUST – CHRISTCHURCH, ISAAC THEATRE
SATURDAY 25TH AUGUST – MELBOURNE, PALAIS THEATRE
SUNDAY 26TH AUGUST – BRISBANE, EATONS HILL HOTEL
WEDNESDAY 29TH AUGUST – ADELAIDE, THEBARTON THEATRE
SATURDAY 1ST SEPTEMBER – SYDNEY, DARLING HARBOUR THEATRE, ICC SYDNEY
SUNDAY 2ND SEPTEMBER – PERTH, ASTOR THEATRE
