It looks like the editing process is proving long and arduous for Cameron Cloutier as he ploughs through raw footage to create his long-awaited Twin Peaks fan film, Queen of Hearts. Having spent years examining and re-examining the 300 pages of my novel, I can appreciate the joy and pain of working on a labour of love. Every little detail needs to be perfect in your own head otherwise it nags at you persistently. If nothing else, it must be a wonderful feeling for Cameron to have managed to capture all (or almost all) of the footage he needed for the film.

With all the problems and delays and heartbreaks he had to go through along the way, it must be wonderful to have all that footage and be in complete control of the outcome from now. It may be taking him a little longer than he planned but the continued story of Annie Blackburn looks to be drawing closer and closer.

As we wait for the finished article, Cameron has started to provide more and more little teases of what is to come. I haven’t done a post on this for a while and it seemed the proper time to gather together some of what we have seen in order to make some predictions as to what is coming.

Firstly, I must say how very impressed I was with the piece of original music which was released earlier today. ‘Fade’, written and performed by Madison Bates is a wonderful song from someone with a really wonderful voice. The twangy guitar is deliciously reminiscent of that period of David Lynch’s career that both Cameron and I seem to prefer. Listen for yourself here.

Well done to all involved and congratulations on finding a great location – I love the corridor shot at the end which brought back memories of that terrifying end to Season 2’s opening episode.

Besides this music video, showing us the daily grind of Annie’s fugue state, there have also been a few other bits and pieces dropped for us, the first of which was a full scene. This gave us our first extended look at two principal characters: the young Dale Cooper and his tragic love, Caroline Earle. It was good to see something more meaty, and get a glimpse of things only alluded to in the original series. It takes time to get used to a new Cooper. The young man filling these rather large shoes, as I’ve said before, seems to have done his homework and is doing a pretty good job of channeling Kyle, both in his mannerisms and his body language. I really thought this would be a tough gig but I can already see him working out nicely. As for Caroline, I’d never really given much thought to what kind of person she was. Outside of Frost’s description of her in his book, which I haven’t read for a long time, all we have is Cooper’s recollections from Season 2. As far as the series goes, I don’t think she had been fleshed out at all. She was just there as a conduit for Cooper’s guilt, hair flowing in the breeze and all.

The way I see it, Cameron’s film seems to be a split narrative. Some of it takes place in the world of Scott Frost’s Dale Cooper Autobiography. We have the relationship between Cooper and Windom Earle, his early career as an agent of the FBI and his affair with Earle’s wife. The other narrative is Annie’s. This is the part that is most mysterious. I’m left wondering how Cameron is going to bring these two stories together into one. What is the bridge between these two worlds? I’m going to take a couple of guesses and see how close I get.

Option 1 – Annie is dreaming of Cooper’s earlier life during her fugue. She gets to witness the tragedy of Caroline’s murder first hand. Maybe she switches places with her during this section, as Caroline and Annie have already been shown to be interchangeable in Season 2? Maybe this gives her a deeper connection with Cooper, OR, maybe she’s there to die in place of Caroline. If she were to switch places in some way, as I said, she would be able to somehow free Caroline to come back later on. It would fit with the title: Queen of Hearts. Annie is cut off to everyone and as good as dead as it is. She makes no appearance in The Return and Cameron has said at times that this means his canon and continuity wasn’t wrecked by Season 3. She’s not just going to wake up and everything’s fine. If she’s fading, as she says in the song, she could slip away into death. her last act of kindness being to spare Cooper the heartache of seeing Caroline die. Annie can appear to Laura; why not Caroline?

Option 2 – The Cooper/Earle story has some sort of unresolved mystery which echoes through to the later Annie narrative. I have no idea what that could be. We’ve seen her running through the forest around Jackrabbit’s palace. Maybe she needs to pass through the White Lodge to regain her soul? Within the White Lodge (remember she’s already been through the Black Lodge) she could achieve peace through seeing that mystery solved, whatever it could be.

There have also been a couple of outtakes put on YouTube, presumably swept up off the cutting room floor. One features Caroline and Cooper at the dinner table, shifting perspective reminding me of the hallway camera scene in Fire Walk With Me. I kept expecting Coop to switch to someone else when we cut back.

The other is a quick shot of Annie, out of it, singing Sycamore Trees in her hospital bed.

Whatever happens, it’s going to be great to get some additional Twin Peaks content some time soon. Keep up the good work, Cameron!

In other news, my book has gone off to the publishers and they are working on the typesetting as we speak. I’ll be talking to them about cover and print options next week and will get some idea of what I can retail the book for. I’ll have a meatier update on that in a couple of weeks.

Have a good week everyone.

Richard