
Created by Matt Zoller Seitz
Directed by Judith Carter
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
Haruki Murakami
Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash
Bibliothèque IHEID, Genève, Switzerland
"Where we're from, the birds sing a pretty song and there's always music in the air." When author Scott Ryan (Fire Walk With Me: Your Laura Disappeared, The Last Days of Letterman) heard those words on the television series Twin Peaks in 1990, he wanted to live there as well. Problem was, most of the music that played in Twin Peaks was not released. Only one soundtrack came out from the series, and one from a film. It wasn't until 2011 until director David Lynch and composer Angelo Badalamenti opened the archives and released every track on MP3. These tracks were never officially released and do not stream anywhere today.
Ryan interviews band members who performed the songs, music editors and directors from the series, as well as uses archive interviews from the late Badalamenti and singer from the series, Julee Cruise. This book takes a look at all the music that was in the air from Cruise's 1989 release Floating into the Night, through all the Twin Peaks soundtracks, the 2011 online releases called the Twin Peaks Archives, as well as the releases from the Twin Peaks: The Return in 2017.
Ryan conducts brand new Interviews with Dean Hurley (Composer for The Return, curator of the Twin Peaks Archive), Tim Hunter (Director), Lori Eschler (Music Editor), David Slusser (Composer, Music Editor), Kevin Laffey (A&R for Julee Cruise), Duwayne Dunham (Editor, Director), Kinny Landrum (Keyboards), and Al Regni (Saxophone), and excerpts from Ryan's 2018 interview with Julee Cruise. Plus quotes from David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti from previously printed interviews throughout the years about the music of Twin Peaks.
Original interviews conducted by Scott Ryan with:
Alicia Witt
Lenny Von Dolen
Russ Tamblyn
Charlotte Stewart
Sheryl Lee
Harley Peyton
Kevin Laffey
Duwayne Dunham
Mark Frost
Tim Hunter
David Slusser
Lori Eschler
Al Regni
Julee Cruise
Kinny Landrum
Dean Hurley
Ray Wise
Sherilyn Fenn
Al Strobel
John Neff
Scott Ryan is an author (Always Music in the Air: The Sounds of Twin Peaks, The Last Decade of Cinema, Massillon Against The World, Moonlighting: An Oral History, Last Days of Letterman, Scott Luck Stories, thirtysomething at thirty, Fire Walk With Me: Your Laura Disappeared), a director (A Voyage To Twin Peaks, Meet Abby), podcaster (Tiger Talk), and editor (The Blue Rose Magazine, The Women of Lynch, Barbra Streisand: The Music). He resides in Sarasota, Florida, is married, and has four kids.
MZS.Press is the online arts bookstore founded by author, critic, and filmmaker Matt Zoller Seitz and Directed by Judith Carter. It offers new, used, signed, collectible, and rare books on film, TV, music, photography, and the visual arts. The store was launched in 2019 on a different platform and has expanded to incorporate arts books published by MZSPress's private imprint: titles currently include Seitz's The Deadwood Bible: A Lie Agreed Upon and Dreams of Deadwood, about the HBO Western, and Walter Chaw's A Walter Hill Film.
Our deepest wish is to promote, encourage, and distribute work by small presses, academic presses, and individuals. Extraordinary work tends to get swallowed up on giant platforms like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The titles featured here are personally selected by a group of curators and advisors, including Seitz and an array of critics, artists, journalists, educators, publishers, and arts mavens who are known for their ability to suss out what Seitz's jazz musician dad liked to call "the good sh*t."
In Honor of the greatest auteur of our time, Judith is using one of her favorite quotes by him.
"Every day, once a day, give yourself a present"
David Lynch (January 20, 1946-January 15, 2025)
Matt Zoller Seitz
Critic, Author, Filmmaker, MZS Press Creator
Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large and film critic of RogerEbert.com; Features Writer for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, Contributing Writer for D Magazine and Texas Highways as well as finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism. His writing on film and TV has appeared in Sight and Sound, The New York Times, Salon.com, The New Republic and Rolling Stone. Seitz is the founder and original editor of the influential film blog The House Next Door, now a part of Slant Magazine.
Seitz has written, narrated, edited or produced over a hundred hours’ worth of video essays about cinema history and style for The Museum of the Moving Image, Salon.com and Vulture, among other outlets such as Texas Highways and AARP. His five-part 2009 video essay Wes Anderson: The Substance of Style was spun off into the hardcover book The Wes Anderson Collection. This book and its follow-up, The Wes Anderson Collection: Grand Budapest Hotel were New York Times bestsellers.
Other Seitz books include the New York Times bestsellers The Sopranos Sessions and Mad Men Carousel; TV (The Book), The Deadwood Bible: A Lie Agreed Upon, The Wes Anderson Collection: The French Dispatch and the new The Wes Anderson Collection: Asteroid City. He is also an interviewer, moderator, and film programmer who has curated and hosted film and TV presentations for the Museum of the Moving Image, IFC Center, San Francisco's Roxie Cinema, and other venues. In October 2024 he brought the legendary filmmaker Oliver Stone back to Dallas for a historic return to the city and the Texas Theatre, considered the biggest film event of Dallas in 2024 by Dallas Observer!
Judith Carter was in the Upscale and Luxury Hospitality Industry for most of her life. In 2004 she had a beautiful baby boy with Special Needs and put the pause on her career until 2017 to dedicate herself to him and then others, assisting and volunteering as a legal advocate ensuring the best medical care, evaluations and educations for Special Needs children and their families.
Matt and Judith were family friends for over 20 years. She was there with her family in support when his wife Jen passed away suddenly in 2006. Then just 6 weeks later while Matt was in Dallas; he and his Father, Dave, and Step-Mother, Genie, were there as support, when Judith was alone and her son received the first of many diagnoses that changed the trajectory of their lives. So it made sense in the turbulent year of 2020, Matt asked Judith to take over running the online store that has become MZS.press. The rest as they say is, "Their"-story.