"There are a few different ways to experience the Twin Peaks franchise. One is as pure vibes—as Brenda Walsh puts it, “it’s not hippie witch, it’s Twin Peaks and it’s very in.” That’s easy to dismiss, but honestly it’s often what gets me to watch. Another way, and this seems to have gotten increasingly dominant lately, is as a puzzle-box mystery-mythology, a more arcane Lost. And that’s wonderful, if only because it encourages a communal conversation to untangle it. But Twin Peaks is also about a teenage girl who was repeatedly raped and ultimately murdered by her father. About how the ongoing abuse shaped her whole world, creating desires and addictions that terrified and excited her, and drawing in a circle of men fascinated by the prospects of saving and/or exploiting her. About how the tortured energy she exuded made the other girls, even her best friend, jealous. It’s a scenario so human and awful that those people—or a viewer—might need a whole fantastic mythical framework just to be able to take it in. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me foregrounds this last aspect. And that’s why, to me, it’s the beating heart of the series."

"I tell people that my favorite film is Gandhi, but my actual favorite film is Patton. Well, you know, there’s so many ideas in the two of them. You know, Patton says, “God help me; I love it so,” with regard to war, and Gandhi is willing to die and to encourage a lot of other people to be willing to die in service of a peaceful civil disobedience. So both things have to do with creating change. So, with Gandhi, I think Ben Kingsley’s portrait — just physically, how he looks, and the way he sounds when he’s delivering that sentient dialogue — and then Attenborough’s canvas — the visual canvas of India, the trains and all that stuff — and then, just my knowledge of the history of people pushing back against colonialism; all of those things just lift you up. They lift you up. The idea of Martin Sheen reporting back to America about what he’s seeing and the obvious lessons that are learned from these people who are willing to walk into abuse in order to make the point that they should be free — I love it because it’s like, “What can we learn from places and people around the world?” I love that. I love the international richness of it, the cultural richness."