The Greatest Youtube Video Ever (No, Really)

I recently completed watching two of what have been called the greatest television series of all time, The Sopranos and The Wire. The Sopranos is definitely strong and high up there on the list (particularly because of the fifth season episode “Long Term Parking” in which Adriana is whacked, maybe the most evil scene ever filmed). The Wire suffered through its final season dampening all that had come before—its depiction of a system rotten from top to bottom was well wrought and dramatically satisfying until it ran out of steam.

But they both (and Breaking Bad as well) pale in comparison to David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks, the show that opened the door for these other series to exist. Deeply scary, hysterically funny, a meld of soap opera, slapstick, mystery, police procedural, etc., Twin Peaks is the apex of serial storytelling. With only three seasons, it certainly did not have as much lasting power as the shows referenced above, but that was the fault of audience demand and the meddlesome executives of ABC. The Sopranos soared because the executives at HBO are more fearless than those on network television. But Twin Peaks was a trailblazer that the executives never understood and they forced a mid-season reveal, snuffing it out before its resurgence in 2017 with a third season that is perhaps the single greatest achievement in narrative television.

You probably have heard of Twin Peaks without seeing it. I can only echo the words of the character played by Lara Flynn Boyle in the first episode after the pilot. Donna is describing to her mother her state of consciousness after losing her best friend and falling in love all in a 24-hour period. She says, “It’s like I’m having the most beautiful dream and the most terrible nightmare all at once.” That’s Twin Peaks. I’ll say no more because you should watch it now (and you can on Paramount+).

But I will say it has a reputation, like all of David Lynch’s work, for being inscrutable, impenetrable. It is full of symbols and imagery that do not necessarily elucidate the plot but instead makes the audience think. Most TV audiences at the time did not want to think. Today even, Twin Peaks would be a strain on certain viewers who demand explanations. Heck, most people give up on trying to explain Lynch’s work at all. But one guy didn’t. And he made the greatest Youtube video I’ve ever seen. And I’m not joking.

Youtube is an amazing website/app/social media. In addition to housing what would otherwise have been lost media (rare films, older television shows, news events from the past), it is also a veritable treasure trove for content creators who are often (though not always) funny, insightful, and entertaining. I spend probably too much time on Youtube, but why wouldn’t I when what I have at my fingertips are nostalgic shows from my childhood, comedy sketches from around the world, rare documentaries that might have aired once on television. It’s a gold mine. But, as far as original content, there are giants and there are people barely trying and those in-between.

While he has not uploaded a new video in three years, one of the giants goes by the handle Twin Perfect. Initially dedicated to pieces about the video game Silent Hill, the channel went a very different direction in March of 2016 when he began defending overlooked movies and explaining abstract ones. Then, in 2019, there came “Twin Peaks ACTUALLY EXPLAINED (No, Really).” When I first saw the title, I giggled and didn’t take it seriously. Then, I looked at the running time of a little over four and a half hours and I thought, “You know, I love Twin Peaks, so let’s give Twin Perfect a try.”

There is no way I would or could give away too much of his argument. Watching the original Twin Peaks, the prequel film Fire Walk with Me, and the sequel series The Return are an absolute must before even attempting the analysis and there is not room here to do any of those projects justice except to give you the highlights.

Twin Peaks was born from a pilot script called "Northwest Passage" that writer Frost and director Lynch concocted, never believing it would be picked up. Nestled in the Pacific Northwest, Twin Peaks is a town much like the one in Lynch’s Blue Velvet. On the surface, it has great beauty and eccentric, lovable residents. Underneath, there are dark forces at work in the woods nearby and a criminal underbelly to rival a big city.

Centering on the case of the murder of the homecoming queen Laura Palmer, which was never meant to be solved, it absolutely enchanted audiences when it premiered in 1990. So much so that the cult grew fast. Being ‘90s TV viewers, they expected the murder of Laura Palmer to be wrapped up. When that didn’t happen at the end of the first season (every episode of which is perfect), audience demand for answers flooded the network and Lynch’s hand was forced to reveal the killer midway through the second season.

After that, all the story arcs that emerged from the characters Laura affected (in both her outward good girl image and her seedy, drug-riddled side) got fouled up. Lynch, disgusted with the network, left the show and went off to direct Wild at Heart, which will one day be seen as another outstanding achievement. But when interest and ratings began to slip, he returned to direct a powerful season finale in vain hope of keeping the show alive. When this did not work, he made the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, much hated then, but now revered as one of his best films. It was full of more mystery and even fewer solid answers for the fans and Twin Peaks flickered out only two years after it emerged.

Twenty-five years after the prequel, Lynch and Frost (and most of the cast) reunited for a third season—I refuse to use the term “reboot” here. Any hopes of answers quickly dissipated, but what he made (especially “Part 8”) is breathtaking. When I say it’s the best thing I’ve ever seen on television, it’s not my usual hyperbole. It makes everything else, including The Sopranos and, I hate to say it, Six Feet Under, look like damp firewood. In short, Twin Peaks is the only television show that is like a great novel or a great movie. Every time you watch it, you find something you’ve never noticed before. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

It is often said that Lynch’s work is strange, elliptical, heady stuff that asks more questions than it answers. But, using copious quotes from Lynch himself, Twin Perfect argues there is one correct interpretation of Twin Peaks. He says it matter-of-factly and, while one can only guess Lynch’s real intentions, his argument is almost flawless, so much so that, when re-watching the show last week, I couldn’t get it out of my mind and I even found more examples that proved his theory (and his video is 4 ½ hours full of examples). Twin Perfect anticipated this—he begins the video with several disclaimers that his take will forever alter the way one watches Twin Peaks (in a good way). Boy, was he right.

I’ll try to condense what I hope is a respectful summary of his case. He argues that Twin Peaks is a television show that is aware it’s a television show and is, in its own way, about television. Particularly the television of the late eighties in which murders wouldn’t affect characters too long and the solution would always be given in one hour’s time. He paints Twin Peaks as a criticism of television’s biggest problem: the violence is glamorous and no one ever cares much about the victims. With Laura Palmer, Lynch was trying to bring humanity to the sadness of the world that TV often glosses over in favor of quick resolutions. There is also an argument that aligns the series with Lynch’s practice of Transcendental Meditation. I won’t begin to summarize those points except to say Season 3 makes sense to me now. I knew it was brilliant the first time I saw it, but I can’t say I understood it. In fact, I’ve always watched Lynch’s films assuming I wouldn’t understand. I just let them be what they are and that is, in itself, satisfying. But Twin Perfect kind of made me rethink the man and his work.

Now there is so much more to his case than that. If I had to truly summarize his video essay, it would take a ream of paper.

You may ask, “Now, how on earth could a four-hour video of a guy talking be the greatest Youtube video ever?” Well, firstly, his use of footage not only from the franchise but from interviews, audio clips of podcasts, and elsewhere, is presented with seamless professionalism. The dozens of quotes from Lynch are read by him out loud the way Lynch speaks—his voice being kind of a fifties-peachy-keen-Boy-Scout brogue. The way the argument is laid out would make writers of doctoral dissertations toss in the towel. While he does make some cognitive leaps that you don’t always follow, he always justifies his point in such a way that arguing becomes useless. He also turns your attention to things in the show that you might have missed altogether.

It is also, as all great Youtube videos are, funny. The fact that the video has had over two million views (maybe forty of them mine) and over eleven thousand comments is proof enough that the argument is so persuasive, the technical perfection is so dazzling, and the wormhole he takes you down so engrossing that you wish it were four hours longer.

He did two follow-ups after fans asked questions. Those videos, subtitled respectively “EVEN MORE Evidence” and “Responding to the Critics,” are on equal par with the original. The second is almost as long as a regular film (an hour and eighteen minutes) and the final video doesn’t quite make half an hour, but they serve as perfect buttresses to what was already a strong take.

While I may have not been as persuasive here as Twin Perfect was, I strongly urge you to watch this video. If you know Twin Peaks, it is infinitely inventive and, even if you disagree with the explanation vehemently, I think you’d still have a good time. And if you haven’t seen Twin Peaks, well…time to get some hot coffee and cherry pie and get to work.

Lost Classics: Disney's THE HAPPIEST MILLIONAIRE

One need only look at the output from Walt Disney Studios in the 1960s and see that, progressively, Walt was less and less interested in animation. During this time, a bevy of so-so live action films were released, along with some that were half-animated and half-live-action, which was a remnant of what made Disney famous—his Alice shorts were among his most successful first ventures.

The Disney animated films of this time were generally lacking. Xerox animation and a decline in a definitive visual style hampered many projects in addition to wilder experimentation in “adapting” the classic stories. For example, The Jungle Book bears no more than characters from Rudyard Kipling’s books.

The peak of this “live action” period, which coincided with Disney’s early death, was Mary Poppins, the wildly popular movie musical that was one of Walt’s greatest achievements: a perfect amalgamation of fantasy, animation, music, and production value. After Disney’s death, another big-budget musical fantasy, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, would appear. The latter has mass appeal among members of my generation who fondly remember it, but it was neither a smash with critics nor audiences.

But I have always seen Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks as part one and three of a loosely related trilogy of live action movie musicals. The second culprit, which was a failure in its time and even went through a period where the Disney Company tried to bury it, was The Happiest Millionaire, an ambitious (and long) adaptation of a Broadway play by Kyle Crichton, who had published the memoirs of Cordelia Drexel-Biddle.

Drexel-Biddle’s father, Anthony J., was an all-American man. As far as historical significance, he was one of the loudest voices urging President Wilson to become involved in World War I. As far as his eccentricities, he owned a large mansion in Philadelphia that included a personal collection of alligators he had personally hunted down in Florida. Behind the mansion, he operated a Bible and boxing college that brought together spiritual vitality with physicality. With a respectable run on Broadway, the rights to Crichton’s play (adapted from the book My Philadelphia Father) were obtained by Disney in hopes of making another lavish musical. Trusted Disney director Norman Tokar and screenwriter A. J. Carothers adapted the tale which included songs by Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman, the greatest songwriters in Disney history. The music alone, including the score by Jack Elliott, had a runtime longer than most Hollywood comedies.

The Happiest Millionaire opened in 1967 and it’s not hard to see why it was a failure. 1967 and 1968 were pivotal years of social change in America. Premiering right on the heels of the Summer of Love, a musical about a Bible-thumping, war-mongering millionaire was about the most out of touch thing the Disney company could produce. Set in the 1910s and featuring no lovable children (as did Mary Poppins), it could be surmised that The Happiest Millionaire was destined to fail or, at the very least, to never capture an audience.

It was originally presented as a “road show” attraction, travelling towns with major premieres and high-priced tickets. Both these sorts of attractions and movie musicals in general were on the decline in Hollywood. These facts contributed to the miserable failure of the film as it was shortened from 164 minutes to 144 and then, in general release, to 118 minutes. For years, this shortest version was the only copy one could get your hands on, only in videocassette form. By removing the “Buena Vista” title card at the beginning of the film, companies like Anchor Bay Entertainment released this version on DVD and I can also distinctly remember watching the film around 3 or 4 in the morning as part of the Disney Channel’s “Vault” in my high school years (my first exposure).

Finally, a 172-minute director’s cut, including scenes that were only achieved through arduous restoration processes, was released by Disney on DVD. I’ve even seen it on Disney+, so it seems Disney no longer shuns the project. But for most Disneyfiles, this movie has almost been completely swept under the rug. While you can hear snips of the music in the Magic Kingdom, The Happiest Millionaire has become a bit of dodo. While not as unsuccessful as the animated films of the early-mid ‘80s, it did its best to break even and is probably only remembered as the film debut of Lesley Ann Warren, who would become best known as Miss Scarlett in the 1985 film Clue.

So, is there anything about Millionaire that is appealing? Plenty—and more where that came from. I could never see it the way Walt saw it—as a film with mass appeal—but what is there is charming, especially the music.

When I’m asked what my favorite Disney song is, I always reply, “Are We Dancing?” People have no idea what I’m talking about, but that is the answer. Beautifully sung by John Davidson (later a game show host) and Warren, it is a waltz tune played when Cordelia meets Angier Duke (yes, those Dukes) and fall in love. Along with this song, there are many that have all the hallmarks of Sherman Bros. classic songs—catchy melodies, zingy lyrics, and bouncing fun.

The film served as the American debut of British pop idol Tommy Steele, who often steals the movie as the confused butler of the Drexel-Biddles. He begins the movie with “Fortuosity,” a delightful song that sums up his happy-go-lucky lifestyle. While at first perplexed by the household, the butler settles into the madness and inherits a bit of his own. While trying to keep Duke from leaving his betrothed, he attempts to get Davidson drunk as a skunk in the number “Let’s Have a Drink On It,” which (again) is perhaps too long, but never loses momentum.

Much has been made of the fact that this is the last Disney film with Walt’s own touch (although he also made early decisions concerning The Aristocats) and, after reading Neal Gabler’s Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, I can see why Millionaire appealed to him as a property. In his later years, he was bleakly sad, physically sick, and homesick for a childhood world he couldn’t recover but could reimagine in the form of Disneyland.

I, for one, find Millionaire lovable. It manages to bring a smile to your face despite yourself. Neglecting all I mentioned above about historical context (the changing nature of young people, protests against the Vietnam War, diminishing belief in organized religion), the principal problem with the film is, whereas Poppins and Bedknobs had children, Millionaire focused on young adults. This makes it a very different type of Disney film—it is the story of a man and his blossoming daughter who is trying to find her own way. While we should celebrate this difference, it probably put the nail in the coffin on the movie. The youngest character could still be said to be middle-school aged. The films that always remain with us from the Disney Company capture something of the magical essence of childhood. On that front, Millionaire fails.

But, taken on its own, it’s a success—a driven, musical, mad little odyssey into a distinct American figure. While much of the film focuses on the comedy, when one gets to the end as Fred MacMurray laments the loss of his daughter to a husband, he and Greer Garson sing “It Won’t Be Long ‘Til Christmas,” a song that should speak to anyone who’s ever moved away from home or have resigned themselves to only seeing their children once in a while.

So, if you want to see something both indicative of and completely different from most classic Disney fare, watch The Happiest Millionaire. Understood as a period piece, it is charming, uplifting and (while butt-numbing), has enough on its own to entertain if not enlighten.

Lost Classics: Norman Mailer's MAIDSTONE

While during his lifetime, his work became more and more critically derided, there has been a resurgence of interest in American novelist, journalist, and polemic Norman Mailer since his death in 2007. In his heyday, he was considered a provocative artist whose work was often overshadowed by a brazen machismo that put him in horn-locking mode with other men-of-letters of the period, like Gore Vidal, and as a subject of vitriol to emerging philosophies in the late twentieth century (particularly feminism).

Perhaps best known for his non-fiction novel on the Gary Gilmore case The Executioner’s Song and his debut novel The Naked and the Dead plus dozens of reports and essays, some of his work, particularly the ancient-Egyptian-themed novel Ancient Evenings, are being reevaluated as some of his best work. He also occasionally dabbled in the dramatic arts. The most successful of these ventures was his 1967 stage adaptation of his 1955 novel The Deer Park, a Hollywood story that had a respectable run Off-Broadway, but (having read it last year) could prove considerably difficult to stage today.

He also adapted The Executioner’s Song for an extremely well-made television film, which garnered Tommy Lee Jones an Emmy Award. But Mailer would not have been happy simply writing scripts. His personality (particularly in his drinking days) was so large, directing films became a sometime occupation with three experimental films in the ‘60s and ‘70s and a big-budget film in the late ‘80s, Tough Guys Don’t Dance, adapted from his novel. The latter, while receiving a few good reviews, is most famous for the “Oh Man, Oh God” meme that surely made the late Ryan O’Neal wince even many years after.

But his three experimental films that disappeared shortly after their initial premieres, Wild 90, Beyond the Law, and Maidstone, were finally restored and released as part of the Eclipse label of the Criterion Collection. Being in that collection has become a great honor for filmmakers all over the world and the Eclipse label in particular offers even wilder arthouse fare for those who only visit Barnes & Noble during a Criterion sale.

This last weekend, I had my first brush with Mailer’s films with his most famous, 1970’s Maidstone. Experimental films of the time, particularly the ones influenced by the European New Wave, are often exercises in cinematic masturbation, and Mailer’s is no different. But I’d be lying if I wasn’t fascinated by the whole project and found in it something quite remarkable: an improvised film that manages to be both of that moment and countercultural at the same time.

Mailer directs, “writes,” and stars in the story of Norman T. Kingsley, a world-famous film director who has thrown his hand into the race for President of the United States. This idea might have seemed ridiculous in 1970, but with increasingly public media figures finding themselves in office (beginning with George Murphy and, of course, most famously, Ronald Reagan), it doesn’t seem so now.

The film is divided into twelve chapters comprising what was 45 hours of film reduced to a little over a hundred minutes of screentime. For the first eight of so chapters, the film is a linear narrative of Kingsley casting and prepping an elaborate sex film (whether this is a soft-core porn film or an elicit art film is never elucidated), eventually shooting on the grounds of a vast mansion. Documentary style, the cameras follow political operatives as they lay their cards on the table concerning their candidate, whose principal drawback is his association with a group of ne’er-do-wells that include Rey (Rip Torn), a menacing figure who always seems like he may break into violence at any moment. A British journalist chronicles the meetings as well as the shooting of the film, including about fifty people on the estate in various states of undress.

It is hard to distinguish Kingsley from Mailer. Both have avid interests in boxing and flexing, talk in mocking tones to women, have large egos and are cult leaders in their own mind. Increasingly, the line between mockumentary and reality are skewed until the famous end of the picture that shows an actual fight between Mailer and Torn, in which Torn smacked him on the head with a hammer, drawing blood (then, Mailer bit a part of Torn’s ear off). This scene was not originally to be included in the film as neither are acting, calling each other by their real names, the fight apparently resulting in Torn’s frustration with Mailer’s direction which, gathering from the film itself, must have been the lunatic running the asylum.

I was expecting what most folks who’ve seen it see—a good first fifteen minutes, a fascinating last fifteen minutes, and a lot of drudgery in between. But Mailer’s Presidential plot gives a lot of goods in the middle of the film as he tries to put a finger on his positions with Black militants and women’s advocates. Beautifully preserved by Criterion, the scenes of Mailer laying shirtless in the grass making political points capture a moment in time that was a lot like ours now—a society on the verge of imploding. It made me wonder if, in fifty year’s time, someone could watch the early scenes of Maidstone and believe it really happened. In a way, Kingsley foretells of a figure like Trump, who has no shortage of braggadocio and malice and is clearly an outsider figure.

When I watched the film, I thought a lot of Peter Weir’s The Truman Show in the sense that had that movie been made as an arthouse film rather than a commercial vehicle for Jim Carrey, it would have been a truly great film instead of the too-well-staged, slick concoction it became. With Maidstone, you are watching documentary and mockumentary. There are actors attempting to improvise who clearly can’t think of things to say, there are fewer good actors who briefly take you out of the moment, and yet there’s a sort of elegance to it all, even with its cinema verité style camera movement.

If Maidstone could have been forethought rather than improvised, one could see it as being a great movie. But I think its off-the-cuff style brings something of what I wish Truman Show had been—something messier, less easy to pin down. Because of the improvisational nature, Maidstone captures lightning in a bottle and, though some scenes are too long (perhaps padding once he had the structure), it seemed to me vibrant, alive, and fearless—all characteristics of its director. Along with Town Bloody Hall, I think we’re seeing Mailer and, as a preservation of a one-of-a-kind iconoclastic figure, it succeeded in my eyes. I’d rather watch interesting failures any day than polished, turgid drama.

Much has been made of the fight scene. Some say it’s the only thing worth watching, and I disagree. Mailer manages to put together all the concerns of the day—Nixon, Vietnam, the Black power movement, the women’s rights movement, and capture real frustration, real near-implosion. The fight scene is only the icing on the cake as you feel at any moment that the whole thing could go out of control, as the country did, and it does. The fight scene may make it essential viewing, but it is not all that is there.

While it may seem what they call “tone deaf” to even bring up Mailer in a world where masculinity is devalued, I applaud (yet again) the fearlessness and down-beat nature of the films of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s—by far the most creative in film history. Now, maybe Maidstone doesn’t belong in the same category as Bonnie and Clyde or Chinatown, but I think it sits right along with I Am Curious (Yellow/Blue) and other films of that ilk as something worth watching and preserving.

It would be a shame indeed if we only knew Mailer because of his personal problems and his persona. What should be paid attention to is the work. Mailer went into writing plays and directing films to bring his personal ideas to the forms. I think he thought he would change the world. I admire the ambition—such a thing gels with his personality. He belongs to a long line of American writers, like BenjaminFranklin, Vidal, and Harold Bloom who spoke as if they knew everything and were chastised for it even when others had to realize they were right about a lot more than they got wrong. More and more, I want to be moved by the films I see and I have to keep going back further and further in history to find something visceral, something that grabs one’s attention. Maidstone did it. That’s all I ask for.