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So that was a very lucky thing.

THE RED ROOM
     
     
     
    One summer day, I was at a laboratory called Consolidated Film Industries in Los Angeles.We were editing the pilot for Twin Peaks and had finished for the day. It was around six-thirty in the evening and we had gone outside.There were cars in the parking lot. I leaned my hands on the roof of one car, and it was very, very warm—not hot, but nicely warm. I was leaning there and —ssssst!— the Red Room appeared. And the backward thing appeared, and then some of the dialogue.
     
    So I had this idea, these fragments. And I fell in love with them.
    That’s how it starts.The idea tells you to build this Red Room. So you think about it. “Wait a minute,” you say, “the walls are red, but they’re not hard walls.” Then you think some more. “They’re curtains. And they’re not opaque; they’re translucent.” Then you put these curtains there. “But the floor . . . it needs something.” And you go back to the idea and there was something on the floor—it was all there. So you do this thing on the floor. And you start to remember the idea more. You try some things and you make mistakes, but you rearrange, add other stuff, and then it feels the way that idea felt.

ASK THE IDEA
     
     
     
The form which embodies that which appeared in consciousness—that is to be held within consciousness.
    UPANISHADS
     
     
     
    The idea is the whole thing. If you stay true to the idea, it tells you everything you need to know, really. You just keep working to make it look like that idea looked, feel like it felt, sound like it sounded, and be the way it was. And it’s weird, because when you veer off, you sort of know it. You know when you’re doing something that is not correct because it feels incorrect. It says, “No, no; this isn’t like the idea said it was.” And when you’re getting into it the correct way, it feels correct. It’s an intuition: You feel-think your way through. You start one place, and as you go, it gets more and more finely tuned. But all along it’s the idea talking. At some point, it feels correct to you. And you hope that it feels somewhat correct to others.
    Sometimes, I’ll go into a set that was built based on an idea, and for a moment or so, I think I am right in that idea. It’s fantastic. But a lot of times, you don’t build the set; you find a location that feels correct, based on that idea. And the location can be changed in many ways to get closer to the idea.The props and the light can be altered. The light can play a huge role in this. And you just keep working and working until the thing feels correct, based on the idea. If you pay attention to all the elements swimming together, then lo and behold, at the very end, it’s surprising how close it all is to that original spark.
    New ideas can come along during the process, too. And a film isn’t finished until it’s finished, so you’re always on guard. Sometimes those happy accidents occur. They may even be the last pieces of the puzzle that allow it all to come together. And you feel so thankful: How in the world did this happen?
    During Blue Velvet , we were shooting a scene in the apartment of the character Ben, who is played by Dean Stockwell. At a certain point, Dean was going to sing “In Dreams” by Roy Orbison. He was going to lip-sync to that and sing it to Dennis Hopper. In the script, he was supposed to pick up a small lamp from a table and use it as a microphone.
    But right in front of him on the set—and Patricia Norris, the production designer, said she did not put it there—was this work lamp. It had a long cord and its bulb was hidden from the audience, but illuminated Dean’s face. And Dean just snatched this up. He thought it was placed there for him. There’s so many of these things that come along.
     
    Sometimes accidents happen that aren’t happy, but you have to work with those as well. You adapt. You throw out this thing, and throw out