As promised, Twin Peaks turned Comic-Con’s Hall H into the Black Lodge this afternoon with a panel moderated by The Leftovers’ Damon Lindelof, who opened by saying, “I owe my entire career to this show.” As described by Deadline, the panel itself was largely the sort of “it’s an honor to work with such fine actors” back-patting you hear at all these sorts of things, albeit with a lot more David Lynch impressions. Naomi Watts may have let slip a minor spoiler by saying, “Whenever David calls, we take the call. Even if he asks you to wear a bunny suit,” and Matthew Lillard called his onscreen breakdown in “The Return: Part 9” “the scariest scariest thing I ever read as an actor.”
But there was one thing about the panel that was wonderful and strange, and that was a video director David Lynch made in lieu of an in-person appearance. (Come on, you didn’t really expect David Lynch to show up at Comic-Con, did you?) The video is unfortunately not online at the moment, but from what we’ve heard about it, it sounds delightfully weird, with Lynch’s greeting to the crowd being continually interrupted by Looney Tunes-worthy sound effects as Angelo Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks theme played in the background. Here’s how Mashable describes it:
The screen starts as static.
The static fades and David Lynch is looking into the camera, and appears to be crouching in a dark room. He holds up a golf ball.
“This is the golf ball that O.J. hit before going to prison …” as the screen turns back to static fuzz. But then the signal comes back in! And Lynch once again addresses the camera:
“I wanted to thank you all for joining us here and spending some time with us,” he said, in his most flat and deliberate way. “Today you’re going to meet some great actresses and great actors, and I hope you have a very enjoyable … “
(The screen begins to fuzz again. Lynch looks alarmed at something behind the camera)
“Hey! You can’t bring a horse in here! What are you doing?” he yells.
(Horse sounds, the sound of hooves crashing into things)
“Manuel! Take that gun away from her!”
(Lynch leaps to his feat to go intervene as more crashing noises)
“Hey, that was a damn good lamp! You’re moving all my stuff! Get that horse outta here!”
(The crashing stops but Lynch continues yelling)
“Oh, thanks a lot, your horse stepped on my cat! … Come here honey … “
(Cat hissing and scratching noises)
And the screen goes to static.
Deadline’s account is a little different, describing Lynch walking into frame holding a severed arm, taking a golf ball out of its hand, and then making the O.J. joke. We’d never think of suggesting that someone who was at the panel upload a shaky cell-phone video of the greeting, because if Lynch hates it when people watch his movies on cell phones, imagine how mad he’d get if you watched footage of him taped on a cell phone. Sure would be nice if Lynch were to upload that video for his Twitter friends, though.