Al Strobel talks about 'Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me'

[Minion066]

Personally loved FWWM, Twin Peaks' most interesting parts to me always involved Laura Palmer and the Lodge Spirits, and this movie was all that.

[SudaXanym]

Al tells it like it is. He is so right.

[DistantJ]

Through the distance of future past, the magician longs to see...

[genesis098123]

do you know other roles of strobel, becuse i only know the one he played in twin peaks

[peeterpolomaa]

Fire Walk With Me was a bad movie. Pity that this guy, who is a very strong actor and contributes a lot to the Twin Peaks series, has to talk like this about a crappy movie. Twin Peaks was like a 5 course dinner, while FWWM is a blended shake of all those ingredients in smaller quantities. It is an embarrassment to its creators and most of its advocates are simply praising the clothes of the naked king.

[myboomstick]

movie's fine. harden up princess.

[buckleygeneration]

Is this great man still alive?

[MountAthos]

I don't think FWWM is random abstract art. I think it is a theological evaluation of how demons (and angels) interact with mankind. And how man tries to deal with spiritual trials.

[deepspacer]

The man is dead right when he says FWWM is difficult to look at..i've had friends round to watch the film,and guess what they simply did not get it...Its a film that is full of art and takes you in to look at things in a certain way,A deep way, makes you think and study.Each scene is is perfectly directed,you can see the time and dediication involved .The film will be hard to match.

[Nigelcf]

I totally agree with every word this guy says about FWWM. Respect.

[SolidSnail]

Incredibly, Lynch has said that Strobel was, essentially, cast solely based on his having one arm, and the fact that he turned out to be such an interesting actor with such a distinctive voice was one of the very many happy coincidences that happened during production.

Throw in all those other creative improvisations that paid off - set designer turned main antagonist Frank Silva for example - and it almost gets hard not to buy into Lynch's whole "all things are unified" philosophy...

[doors123]

So, the actor himself has only one arm?

Great guy and a great actor.

[SolidSnail]

Yeah, don't you remember that scene where they burst into his hotel room and Harry says "Put your hands up"? He's only wearing a towel - you couldn't fake that sort of thing.

[doors123]

I remember that, yes, but in films you can fake most things, such as missing an arm. However, I believe you if you say that the actor is really a one-armed man.

[SolidSnail]

Well, you see him turn around so his arm couldn't have been concealed, and digitally editing it out would have been far too advanced for Twin Peaks' CGI, based on the other - thankfully rare - special effects in the series. According to the IMDb, he lost his arm in a car accident as a teenager.

[doors123]

Ok, you convinced me :)

[Hoopermazing]

Sure you could. Haven't you ever seen "Forrest Gump"?

[SolidSnail]

Well, Twin Peaks didn't have Forrest Gump's budget. Remember that CG owl?

[Hoopermazing]

I'm not sure what you're talking about. However, if you were referencing my comment about Mike being scary before he removed his arm, it had nothing to do with special effects. I was talking about Mike the Black Lodge Demon, to whom BOB was merely a familiar. When he "saw the face of god" he cut off his arm and turned away from evil.

[SolidSnail]

What's that got to do with Forrest Gump?

[Hoopermazing]

You implied that an amputated limb couldn't be faked. Lt. Dan's amputated CGI legs were shown in Forrest Gump.

[SolidSnail]

Bizarrely I appear to have imagined a reply of mine and then another response from you, which went: me - "Twin Peaks didn't have Forrest Gump's budget. Remember that owl?" and you - "I don't know what you're talking about, but..." and then you went off into a philsophical thing about Mike. Which is why I said, "What's that got to do with Forrest Gump?" But that stuff's not in the comments now. That's real strange.

[Hoopermazing]

Allow me to elucidate:

My Forrest Gump comment related to Lt. Dan's CGI amputated legs.

My comment on the nature of Mike related to another comment I made, in which I said that he wasn't scary after he removed his arm.

I thought that you had inferred that I meant he wasn't scary because of TP's cheap television SFX, when what I really meant was that he was likely worse than BOB originally.

Somehow, the various conversational threads got muddled.

[regularperson46]

Every word of what he says is true.

[Skull10]

Critics are intelligent? That's funniest thing I've ever heard.

[telekinesisforcats]

in a show filled with scary and creepy characters, the One Armed Man was the KING!

[hooperxxx]

What was scary about Mike? What would have been scary is if you had seen him before he cut of his arm, but not for long.

[DoctorMetropolis]

I know this fine actor personaly. He is a joy to sit and converse with. great vid. 5 stars

[anton1990]

Ahh man, thats so cool!

[hiyadroogs]

He seems a very deep & insightful man. If it's true that you do know him personally, would you please convey to him our collective thanks for his ethereal & thought provoking role in this life changing series. Thank you, Mr Strobel.