An interesting report about the French 'Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me' Blu-ray and those deathless deleted scenes from Dugpa.com

I never report on Blu-ray releases here on Psychobabble because, well, I don't have a Blu-ray player so I personally don't care about them. But I'm making a little exception today about a disc that isn't even being released here in the States because of a provocative article over at Dugpa.com, the Internet's finest David Lynch fan site. The report delivers some possible bad news to those of us who've been frothing at the mouth for a release of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me complete with the two hours-or-so of deleted scenes featuring many beloved cast members cut from the released film. Part of the reason I bought my first DVD player was because of reports that such a disc was soon to be released. Ten years on, I'm still waiting (the Powers That Be have really forced us "Twin Peaks" freaks to be unnaturally patient. There was a six-year gap between the DVD releases of season one and season two of the series).

Now Dugpa is announcing the upcoming Blu-ray release of Lynch's criminally under-appreciated and genuinely harrowing feature prequel in France for this coming November 3rd. The site reports that inclusion of the deleted footage is highly unlikely and also posits that this might be the final possibility that MK2, the company that owns Fire Walk With Me and all its related footage, might allows us a glimpse into the doings of Sheriff Truman, Josie Packard, Pete Martell, Lucy Moran, Ben Horne, and the rest prior to Laura Palmer's death.

I'm personally hoping that this is hyperbole on Dugpa's part. First of all, this is not the U.S. release of this U.S.-made film, and it's more likely that a bare-bones (or, at least, deleted-scenes-devoid) version of the film would be released in another country. Once the Blu-ray Fire Walk With Me hits U.S. shelves without deleted scenes I'll be more convinced that the dream is dead. I'm also hoping that Lynch eventually follows up his excellent Lime Green DVD box set, which includes all of his pre-Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me features (except for Dune, which he hates), with a similar set focusing on the next phase of his career. The Lime Green set was packed with some real treasures, like a near feature-length selection of outtakes from Wild at Heart. I can't imagine Lynch putting out another such set without those deleted scenes from Fire Walk With Me.



Still, Dugpa probably has greater insight into this matter than I because the site's creator (not sure if he's one of those anonymous Web people, so I'll refrain from mentioning his name) filmed 20 hours of interviews with 22 Fire Walk With Me cast and crew members for a possible 2-disc Blu-ray release back in 2005. When that project was put on hold, the release of these interviews also went into limbo. So now Dugpa is asking fans to email MK2 requesting the release of his impressive work (the form is in French, but let's face it... non-English speakers are more likely to understand English than English-speakers are to understand another language. Because we suck). Although this campaign pertains to the French release, abundant interest may convince MK2 to take greater care when it comes time to re-release Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me in other parts of the world. Send your messages using this online form.

You can read the complete article, which includes a full list of the people Dugpa interviewed in '05, here. Dugpa has been kind to me in the past, picking up on my Twin Peaks A-Z piece posted last April to commemorate the show's 20th Anniversary, so let's send some of that support back to him.

Good luck, Dugpa...