Mark Frost • Films To Be Buried With with Brett Goldstein #187

I tell them they've died. Then I get them to discuss their life through the films that meant the most of them. Previous guests include Barry Jenkins, Kevin Smith, Sharon Stone, and even yed Nanbuls. But this week it's the brilliant writer, actor, producer, director and creator mister Mark Frost. Head over to the Patreon at patreon dot com forward slash Brett Goldstein, where you get an extra twenty twenty five minutes with Mark. We go deep. He tells a secret about Twin Peaks.

We talk about the best beginnings and endings. We talk about all sorts of Stuff. You also get the whole episode uncut and as a video. Check it out over at patreon dot com. Forward Slash, Brett Goldsteam, Ted Lasso Season two and one is available on Apple TV Plus. You can watch the whole thing in one go. Super Bob and Soulmates are available on Amazon Prime in most countries, so get on with that. So, Mark Frost, this episode is genuinely, deeply meaningful to me. Mark Frost co created

Twin Peaks with David Lynch. It's the show I saw when I was far too young, and I would credit with making me the man I am today. I have loved and obsessed over Mark's work for many, many years, and so the chance to talk to him was a real honor. We recorded this over zoom a few days ago. I think you're going to hear in the first five minutes, however excited I am. I'm like a dog running around, you know when a dog is just like needs to set.

I'm so excited I'm talking to But it was so special to have this time with someone who has so profoundly influenced my brain, and I'm extremely grateful to him. And by the way, he was proper wonderful. I think you're gonna love this one. So that is it for now. I very much hope you enjoy episode one hundred and eighty seven of Films to be Buried With. Hello, and

welcome to Films to be Buried With. It is I Brett Goldstein, and I am joined today by a novelist, an actor, a writer, a playwriter, a screenwriter, a director, a producer, a creator, a legend, a huge hero, a father, a son, and a living god amongst us. I can't believe he's here. Please, welcome to the show. Is the brilliant, it's the amazing. It's Mark Frost. Hello, Hello, Hello, Mark Frost. You forgot to mention Championship Pole Vaulter. I know, and

I'm kicking I'm literally kicking myself right now. What idiot? It's usually the first thing on my CB. I don't know, Mark Frost. I'm gonna I'm gonna be straight with you. You You are in one of three people that I've had in this podcast that I've been most excited to talk to. One was Barry Jenkis, the other was Brene Brown, and the other is you. And in all three of those cases, I'm slightly like overwhelmed by I have so many things

I want to talk to you about. I'm so excited to talk to you, but I also I guess I firstly need to know what your tolerance is for being told you're brilliant. It's one of them, like it is in if you're like, please don't tell me I'm a genius for an hour because it made me sick, or if you love it, just tell me, well, I have no aversion to it. I mean, it's it's it's your opinion. So I who am I to tell you what to think? You know what I mean? All right, listen, you're a genius,

so look are you? Very kindly said that you'd listened to some episodes of this podcast, so you might already know this. There are two things that take up most of my brain. One is the Mappis and the other is twin Peaks. And I've often last I'll drift off and so I want to say, what are you thinking about it? And I'll go, oh, twin Peaks, like it takes up It lives in my brain. If I'm ever sad, I'll just look up a new theory on twin Peaks.

I just love reading any new take fantastic. You built this world that and I think you know this, that it lives forever in people's minds and they take it into all these different realms, and I know you never say what it all means to you, as much as I might ask you, right, You're never gonna. Well, I've always been a big believer that people get to interpret your work however they choose. You can't impose your sense of what the meaning is or what you were trying

to say. If they didn't get a bit and get it, if they got it in whatever form they think it's it works for them, then they got it. So why the lily? Have you ever read like a take on it or someone's told you, oh, well, twom pixis about this and it's made you angry where even no, it is definitely not that it can be anything, but it's not that once in a great while. I mean, I did get a twelve page letter from an inmate in a prison in Missouri once about thirty years ago, who

who explained what he thought it was all about. And my part involved aliens and murder, and I think a lot of things that might have been personally dangerous for me, so I felt that was not the theories I wanted to ascribe to. Oh my god. I mean, when you create something like this and you send it out into the world, you can't control how people are going to respond, but you can certainly try to weed up the people who feel that you've been speaking directly to them through

a tinfoil hat. And maybe it's best that we not correspond. You know, I'm worried I might be by today's people. I mean, I Frett did not exaggerate when I do say I've talked about this in like injuries. I think it's a defining, defining moment in my life. And my sister is I was nine years old. Me and my sister had been out somewhere and we came home and my dad was on the sofa and the TV was on, and we said, Dad, dad, whatever, and he went just

shut up, sit down. And it was like one minute into the Twin Peaks pilot, as we were nine and eleven, and we watched it and it was the greatest thing we've ever seen, and it scared the absolute shit out of us. And I was supposed to me and my sister had shared a room, and I was supposed to finally move and have my own room. But we were so scared. I think it was meant to be my

first night. Oh man. We were so scared that I brought my mattress from my room and just slept next to my sister's bed and stayed there until I was eighteen. I mean, well, we really helped, helped in your formative years, you know, your revolutionary path. I'm happy to hear that it slightly did. I think it's in filmed. Much of my thinking on a lot of stuff. Can I as about the Return to Inpeace? The Return which is an absolute, staying cold masterpiece. I've read a lot of what you've

said about it, but I'm curious. There are a lot of shows that came back. There are a lot of things that came back. I won't name them. And there lots of things where people are like, oh, bring back that thing we love, and it came back, and they brought back the thing you loved in the way you wanted it, and for some reason it was disappointing, and

it was It's like, it's like pet cemetery. You know, you brought back something from the dead, and if you're trying to if you're trying to recreate it in its original form, it's still dead. It becomes quite horrifying, I think. So my feeling was we had an opportunity to tell a story that was about the most fundamental issue we all face, which is the passage of time. You can't

fight this process. And if time is a river, then your boat's going to be in a different place twenty five years later, and we all were, as we discovered when we all got back together, everybody was in a different and I wanted the show to reflect that. Yeah, so I didn't want to do the cozy tropes that people freaked out about thirty years ago. I wanted to jolt them again, you know, and show them the world's changed and we've all changed, and let's see that on screen.

It was a unique opportunity, and I felt that was really the theme of the piece was too this is what life does to you, and it does different things to different people, but it leaves no one unchanged. So that was fundamentally what I thought we were trying to get at. That's amazing, but I was saying, I was like, weirdly, in its own way, you did do exactly what you did with Twin Peaks originally, which was give people something they'd never seen before, Like that was the thing. It

was like, why we love Twin Peaks. In the fast it was like, wow, this is blame in my mind, and you did it again by not doing the same. Yes, the very first conversation we had about it when I went back to David and I said, I think we have an opportunity to do this and to get europe conversations after that initial meeting to pinpoint what we were going to talk about and what we were on about. And it had nothing to do in many ways with

the old Twin Peaks. It was Yeah, it was set in the same place that had many of the same people, but their concerns had changed, the world had changed, and the show needed to reflect that, so we just went for it. There's a couple of things I would like to ask you, which are more I hope not just specifics Twin Peaks, because I'm sure you won't answer them if they're about that. But in Twin Peaks, there's certainly the suggestion of evil as a outside force, as a

sort of spiritual thing that can take over someone. Is

that how you feel about evil? I always read these theories that is not a spirit and is just I mean, I'm going to put a heavy, heavy spoil there warning on this episode, but so I read these things like, to me, it was always was possessed by But then I've read lots of things going now, that's just how people would rationalize it when they're in these Do you believe that evil is an outside force that can I've attate someone or do you think it is just within man?

I think it's both. I've always described evil as a lack of something. It's a lack of human empathy. It's a lack of understanding that other people are autonomous beings with their own course in life. But if you are sociopathic or schizophrenic or psychotic, which can be caused by many of the things we just talked about, child abuse, neglect, severe mistreatment by your parents, I mean, that's usually what leads to this. That's evil. That is a fundamental human truth.

To mistreat your own child is a great and almost unforgivable evil, and it's often what results in these people who are evil themselves. I mean, I think we've had ample evidence of that in this country in the last five years. When you see a leader rise to the top who is himself profoundly ill, which I believe that

man was. It infects people who are vulnerable, and it has done almost incalculable damage to our social fabric here because putting someone like that in a position of power is so profoundly effective to vulnerable people who don't know any better or who are susceptible to that kind of thinking. So it's a chicken and an egg, and it's hard to know which is which. But evil almost never sprouts without that kind of provocation or origin story. I taught in a prison for a year when I was a playwright.

I taught writing to inmates, and I spent time talking to these guys. And you don't talk about what did you do? Why are you in here? Unless they volunteer. It's a kind of an etiquette it's probably best that you adhere to. And so there was a guy in the class who very quiet turned into assignments, never spoke in class. It wasn't a bad writer, actually had some insightful stories. And I was very curious about him because

he was obviously intelligent and the middle aged guy. And as I was about to leave, when the six months was up. I was very curious. I finally did break etiquette. No ask someone else, what did that guy do? And he was a former repairman, radio and television repairman, and he murdered his entire family. Oh my god, Wow, you'd never have known it to look at him. He was as mild mannered as could be. It could have been a momentary madness. It could have been there was something

truly dark and evil inside him. I don't know, but there he was serving on five life sentences. And you walked away from that going there's something at work here that seems to be a central theme of the human experience. If you don't adhere to social norms and you feel you were above the law, you're going to run a foul of the system. And the system has to self protect it itself against that kind of darkness. So it's

very naughty. It's a very thorny human problem, and we haven't solved it yet for a long way from doing it. Are you telling me that? And about talking about the recent president that the woodsman with the radio, that's Trump with TV And in a way, I mean, yeah, you know, it's all grist for the mill. We never talked about what. We were writing it before he'd come to power, and we were shooting it, you know, the year that he was elected. So in a way we kind of anticipated

some of these things. But if you've got your ears tuned to the right frequencies, you know, you can you can pick these things up. When you're storytelling and you are a Canarian in the coal mine, you want to just you know, put out bulletins. Everyone's spoiled. Let's say beware. You know, danger had there be dragons, you know those areas the maps they used to fill in. That's that's where we are right now. I've obviously a lot of reading on your staff, and there's a book Conversations with

Mark Frust, which is very good. And then you talk in quite an optimistic way about in the grand course of history, we are always in a better place than we were. But then you say, these last four to five years have been traveling, How do you feel given that, I think you are tuned to these vibrations, where do you how do you feel right now at this current point in history? It's up to us, you know. That's

That's what I always feel about the human evolution. I don't believe that we're being guided by benign supernatural forces. It is truly a world of people with free will, and it's up to us to write that ship and set it in the right direction. And we've always been

able to do that up until now. We're now facing much greater consequences to our behavior than we have in the past because of the number of people, the size of the civilization that we've created, and there's plenty of people who were saying, Okay, we got to do something. Now there seemed to be a disturbing number of people who say, why change. You know what works for us. We're making plenty of money, and they're not thinking beyond

their own generation, you know. And that's that's the thinking that we have to instill in people if we're going to survive. I think that's the and storytellers should have some small part and not preaching to people, but showing them what those consequences might be. I don't think there's any it's any accident that we've had a lot of dystopian stories being told, including apocalyptic ones. That's in the air, and it's a possibility. So here we are very interesting.

The one other thing, well, actually, maybe we'll come to that. But do you know what, I've just lived to the nights I made for this, and I've just seen something and I'm like, I forgot to tell you something. Oh no, something I should have said. That's an idiot for us. I mean, I mean, I'm literally I was excited about me and you and I forgot. I have to tell you this quite important, quite important thing. I'm gonna I feel like I had died. I'll just say you've died.

You've died, Mont prest Well, I knew that. Oh okay, yeah, yeah that was oh yeah, no, I've been living with that thought in my mind really for most of my life. So it's it's all a dream. It is a dream. It is all a dream. But but I died in a way that was very and who was the dreamer? So you know, I've been working on this what I felt really strong original screenplay for quite some time, just privably,

my own passion project. And I finally finished it and I showed it to my agents and they were they said, well, this is very ambitious. You know, I don't know what's going to happen, but you know, good on you for doing it. And they send out on a Friday Saturday morning, I got a call. You know, we've had four studios. I want to do this. Uh. Spielberg and Scorsese are both in. They say Leo wants to do it, Brand wants to do Jennifer wants to do it. And the

shock killed me. Boy. So here we are. Wow. I mean, you are the first presentive died of shock and uh and I love it. I mean, I'm so sorry, just instant. Was there anyone around at the time when you were just in your office? No, I was just I was just on the phone. I mean that's how they found me. They found me with the phone still in my hand, a big smile on my face. I mean I was, you know, I was at the best mood when it actually hit. But yeah, you gotta go, You gotta go.

Do you worry about death? Not as much as I used to. I guess you know, if you live long enough, and you know a lot of people who have died. And I've also this is odd. This might not surprise you about me, but I've written a number of things about who were alive at one point or another, and during that process, on three separate occasions, that person appeared to be in a dream and encouraged me to keep doing what I was doing. Yeah, that one was the

book the greatest game ever played. Yeah, I had about you know, a wonderful young man in Francis we met who became the first American born player to ever win the US Open and the first amateur to do it. Changed the course of the sports history. It was really the big bang of the startup golf. He came to me in a dream and said, yeah, keep going and affirming that what I was on about was true. I had the same experience with two other projects, So that's incredible.

I mean, maybe that means I need medication, but these things do happen to me, and I've been aware. I've had experience with a ghost which was intensely creepy and we terrifying us to tell me that. Yeah, I was working at a wonderful regional theater called the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, where I was a high school intern and appeared on all sorts of mainstage productions and really got my training and got my start in the business from that point on. And as you probably know, most theaters

are considered some of the most haunted places. That's why we leave the ghost line on stage every night, they actually leave a solitary bulb lit. This is a tradition really around the world in theaters. I think it's something to do with the intensity of feeling that people have when we're part of that theater, and when they die, often tragically or suddenly. They say these spirits are drawn

to places where they were most connected. So there was a rumor there was a ghost in the guthrie, and the stage hands one night said, look, you know a few of you guys in the program, We're going to go out on stage tonight after everybody's gone the doors are locked after midnight and set up a Wuiji board in the middle of this thrust stage. The rumor was that an usher who had worked at the Gut three

during its early years and had been the happiest. I guess that he had been well there, had committed suicide and his ghost supposedly was still in the theater. His name was Dick Miller, and some of the people that we knew had known him, So oren't we go. We tried out the widge board. I'd never even played with one before, and I was one of three people who put our hands in a little because they call it

a planchet, the thing that moves around and spells. And as we started to ask questions, something was moving this thing around. It wasn't me, and it was spelling out somebody was writing down letters, and it was spelling out things as it got going faster than we could spell, with no stop between words. So it became quickly apparent. And two of the other people were kids my age. They weren't the stage hands who were there to try

to direct this or minis or scare us. And he identified himself as Dick Miller, and we said, goose bumps, you know you're you're pretty freaked out. So where are you now? And he spelled out top now the Guthrie at a second stage called the Other Place theater, which was a few blocks away in an old and everybody called it the gop. It was the acronym for it.

So we thought, do you mean the Other Place? And he said no, And at that moment we heard footsteps in the catwalk above our heads, and the next thing I remember is standing outside the theater literally fled. It was one of the freakiest things you could possibly imagine. So, yeah, that was pretty wild. That was pretty wild. I never touched a Wuiji board again. I just those things are

not to be trifled with. So you know, some of my the the stuff in in your work and Inpatidianto Impaques, the black lodge in the Red Room, and these facts of another place and spirits in the thin line between space and time. And is that something you feel, well, it's it's something that I feel as possible. And you know, there's a wonderful phrase, if it's an Irish phrase of places that are that have qualities like what you're describing, are known as thin places, saying that the veil is

quite thin between here and there. And I've been in places like that and felt it. There's an abbey in the north of England in Whitby, which was actually the abbey that was the inspiration for bram Stoker's Arrival of Dracula in the North of England, and I visited it when I was researching my first book, The List of Seven, and I felt it there. I felt something was going

on there. So you know, you, I guess I'm what you would call a sensitive in that sentence, is that when I've been up against these things and I was shooting years ago in an old nineteenth century insane asylum outside of Montreal. We were using this as a location for the show I was doing, and there were parts of that hospital where they had kept you know, the violently criminally insane that you just felt a darkness you

couldn't even approach. It was overwhelming, and anybody, everybody in the crew just said, I can't go in that room. There were there. So I've had experiences enough like that to know, yeah, there's something going on there. So do you with all there's things that you feel in think, do you think there's enough to life? Do you what do you think happens to you when you cross? I feel that something survives, and I don't know what it is, and I don't think we're our brains have been a

bandwidth to understand what it might be. This is why I feel that most religions, which trying to conquertize the ineffable, you know, the things that can't be described, are inadequate to the town. The experience I had watching in two thousand and one the first time was much closer to a genuine religious experience for me, because I felt it hinted at something like that, and it was smart enough not to say and that's because it's ABC and D. It simply gave you the feeling of what that might

feel like. When cur DeLay's character is in that room at the end and you see him age through his entire life in a span of seconds, you realize he's in the presence of something much larger than we are. So I assume that whatever it is, it is of that magnitude, it's beyond our comprehension. And if we can get like a little tiny, just a weak signal of it and believe that that might be a clue that could lead you to some sort of understanding about it.

So that's been a lifelong pursuit for me, is to try to understand this, because, yeah, death is terrifying when you're young. I mean, you think, what do you there's an end to this wonderful experience I'm having. You've got

to be kidding me. And but that's what makes it precious, you know, so it becomes part of your existance, and as you get older, you know, the Tibetans say, if you want to have a good death, you'd best make a friend of your ending and and prepare for a good death, because that's, apparently, in their worldview, a very important part of the process. Oh wow, well you prepared well, my friend. Because there's a heaven. You're absolutely welcomed in

you get here. I was welcome, no questions asked. They don't even ask for id eat. They're like, you come with me right in the thank you like getting that TSA pass at the airport. Yeah, you're pre pre checked, preche It's filled with your favorite thing. What's your favorite thing? My favorite thing would be dogs. It's well, this heaven is made of ducks. I mean you you. The couches are made of dogs, living dogs. They're they're strong and they can take it. They lay them, but you sit

on them. The wolves are dogs. Everything is dog. You not the food. The food is served on dogs and the dogs. But we're not having dogs, having no one's The dogs are very, very happy and they jump with over you. They're delighted to see you and they're they're very they're great. But the dogs in heaven, as dogs are, want to do they want, and they're obsessed with you, and they want to know about your life. I want

to know everything. They want to go for a walk if you talk about everything, but they want to know about your life through films. These are film being dogs, sure, And the first question they ask is what is the first film you remember seeing? Mark Frost. Well, it's quite appropriate. I'm five years of old and my favorite aunt takes me to Grammond's Chinese Theater, which is a wonderful place

to see your first films. Yeah, for those listeners who haven't been there, I mean it's a world famous yeah, but it's it's a palace inside and it's it also has the feeling of a temple, a holy place, you know, there's a kind of consecrated feel. And we walked in. The movie had just started, so it was already pitch Black, which was very daunting, but it was like entering a mystery school. I felt, this is frightening, but I really

like it. And we walked in and the and the movie playing was I'm sure you know it a Disney film, Sean Connery's first starring role, Darby Ogill and the Little People nineteen fifty nine. Yeah, it's it's Disney working in that minor key of Irish whimsy, as the post titus to say, with a wee bit of magical Shenanigans, you

know that. And it's about an old souse in a village who stumbles upon the Lepricun king, King Brian, and he steals his gold, as you know your want to do when you run into the lepricon king, and it creates all sorts of havoc in the village and it puts his daughter jeopardy. And there are truly terrifying scenes of ban cheese and a kind of spirit carriage driven by these wild horses, and it scared the pants off me.

But I came out of that experience going into the dark, being terrified, having a happy ending coming out and understanding this was a rite of passage and I have I now am a member of the church. At the cinema, that was that. That was my induction and uh and I felt, yes, That's what I'm going to do with my life. That's incredible. Did you say then, did you say that that's what I'm going to do? I said,

I want to see it. I want to see this again, and I want to go to another movie tomorrow and I want to go to have a movie every day this week. And you know, I didn't have the vocabulary to fully express it. It was, It was it exactly, that was. That was when I was seven, that connection, Um, so that was that was. You couldn't ask for a better introduction to film and the high temple of the magic of the movies. That's really wonderful. So what is the film that made you cry the most? And are

you a crier? And I'm interested in this because your work is very emotional. There's a thing about all the versions of Twin Peaks and all the things you've done, there's no I think maybe another reason it is timeless is there's no irony and no one's like being cool, like, yeah, people cry in Twin Peaks. They're really crying. Everyone feeling everything they are feeling at one hundred percent and there's no caveat for that. It's like, this is emotion, this

is truth, This is straight down in the middle. And so for you, what is that for you? Well, that's how life is. You know, you have got to experience. If you're not experiencing the full range of emotions in life, you're you're listening to Instead of the full stereophonic sound you could be having, You're you're listening to a little transistor radio. You know, irony is that I think often a protection against feeling emotion, and it's it's it's it

tends to be. I think of an adolescent stance that we take because emotion frightens us, and I think if you don't grow past it, you're limited in some way. You need that the full range of human experience and emotion is one of the vehicles for that. So I've always felt I want to make people laugh, I want to make a cry, and if I make them think, that's that's a tertiary thing. But if you don't move them,

they're not going to give a shit. They're not going to remember it, they're not going to say that thing, whatever it was, made a difference in my life. And I understood that kind of early on because of the things that moved me. So the movie that really made me cry the most, and I am a crier, particularly at movies that that were. I don't like to be manipulated. I don't like tear jerkers per se. It's like I don't want to kill an animal to make people pride,

you know. It's like Old Yellow really pissed me off, you know. But if it's legit, if it's part of the story Cinema Paradiso. I mean, the first time I saw it, didn't know a whole lot about it. I

didn't know the director's work. It's so fundamentally about the experience of the movies and this marvelous relationship between that young boy and Philip Dore's projectionist, and how he kind of outgrows the relationship, the sadness of leaving a youthful mentor and going on to the big city and having a career and losing touch with his emotions and having a painful divorce and having success in the world but feeling unfulfilled. And he comes back when the projectionist dies,

and you know the scene I'm talking about. At the very end, they had a rule in the town that people were allowed to see scenes of people kissing, so he was required to cut all those scenes out of the movies that they were showing, and he finally finds the reel of the compilation of all those scenes. I mean, I could cry just thinking about it. And it's that incredible Morricone score. It's maybe he's there. I think he's the greatest film composer, and that maybe his brain score.

I cried for half an hour that scene played up. Couldn't leave the theater. The lights came up and I said, I'm sorry, I need to stay here for another twenty minutes. It devastated me because it addressed all these concerns. It's like, okay, people have to feel something. If you don't feel what you're feeling, it's going to make you ill at some level. And yeah, that that scene had everything for me. And it's your two it's your two touchstones is the Church

of cinema and the passage of time. Yeah, exactly, beautiful. What's the film that scared you the most? And you you that means, I mean you make You've scared me more than yeah, and I don't, I don't. Yeah. There are things that as a kid, you know, remember I'm growing up in the sixties. It's it's black and white television till like nineteen sixty four. And the way you learned about things, there was no Internet, it was like this sort of it was. It was weiji parts. That's

how you've got all your information. People would say, you gotta see this, you gotta see that. My brother saw this. My brother saw that, and there was this thing going around about this picture called Psycho that you know that we heard. Oh my god, you have to see this, you can't. They won't let you in the theater. So finally it shows up on television, probably sixty five, sixty six. I don't know how that on network TV they're showing There was nobody who knew how to manipulate your emotions

more than Hitchcock. He's one of the foundational geniuses of the artful, and he created something that was so thoroughly terrifying to me that I remember watching it with two friends and we started on the sofa. By the time we got to the motel, we were on our feet, kind of pacing. By the time we realized Anthony Perkins is looking at her through a peep hole, I moved behind the sofa, and by the time the curtain was torn open and the knife came in, I was below

the sofa. I had I literally I couldn't watch the scene the first time, and all three of us are crouching behind the sofa. It was that frightening, and that's where we watched the rest of the movie, kind of peeking up to see, Okay, what's coming. Oh no, he's going in the house. I'm going back down. So that was the most scared I've ever been as a kid.

The movie that most frightened me more as a grown up, and I'm sure you know it is The Tenant, the Polanski movie from nineteen seventy six, Absolutely terrifying, and he plays the lead role. My god, that this man's psyche. I don't know. I mean, he's been through things in life that should kill twenty other people. So in his work, I guess he's exercising some of those demons. But if you ever really want to not sleep for two nights, just pop on the Tenant and you know, go to town.

Do you think I'd tell well, you must know this, I would say this more for the listings. I'm sure you know this. One of the things I really love about Psycho is that because I always think about doing this myself with when you get notes that he the shower scene, he wasn't allowed the shower scene, and they said you need to make cuts, and he made zero cuts and resubmits it and said I've done what you asked. Yes, And they's like there's like eighty six cuts and yeah,

I know, and like less than thirty seconds. So you know this the scene in one of the all time scariest scenes of all time for me is you know, the reveal of who killed Laura Parma and this scene of where we learn that I've been told that yeah, and did you? I'm just again? That was like network TV and it's horrorf it was. Was that a fight to get that past or no? I mean, because we had we had set the ground worlds very early. We

just said, look, you're in last place, ABC. Your network kind of sucks and you have terrible ideas, you know, and there's a reason people don't watch your shows. So if you want us to do this, don't fuck around, you know, just let us make the show that we want to. And we would get notes and I would go okay, thanks, you know, and hang up. And so they truly did leave us alone. I don't ever remember fundamentally having to change anything. I love. I love to

hear that. No, what is the film that most people don't like? It's not critically acclaimed, but you love it unconditionently you don't care what anyone says. Mark for us, I thought a long time about this because there's a lot of films, and some of them were horror movies. Like, you know, the Ninth Gate I find endlessly appealing. I gat it's Polanski. But The Ghostwriter another sort of underrated film he did that most people don't like. I thought

it was terrific. But the one that is truly an execrable movie and which I just if it's on I have to watch it is Flash Gordon, you know. I mean, it's so perfectly awful. Um. It's like I think somebody described it as a fairy tale set in a disco in the clouds with really bad acting. Us. It's so it's such it's a giant easter Ham, you know, and everything about it is doesn't work, but it's so over the top, and it's got a great score by Queen that.

You know. We still listen to the immortal Sam Jones as Flash Gordon, you know, who never worked again until I think Ted too, Yes, you know, um, and and a bunch of very committed great actors like Max Vansdo you know, if you if the actors will commit to the idea, it doesn't matter how awful it is, as

long as it's a full throated performance. They're not standing back and commenting on, oh my god, I'm slumming they're embracing it and Max Vndo, who is one of the ten greatest actors in the history of the cinema as make the merciless. Come on, I mean, let's go. I'd watch every right now, everyone's on the same page. I think it's consistent, like everyone is tonally. Whatever time they've agreed on, they've agreed on it and they just went

for it. You know. Yeah, it's movies like that are pretty rare, honestly, that are when they're that bad, but they're that committed. Xanadude would be another one that's like that. You know. Well, again, it's to do with the lack of This is not a bad film by any means, but there's something about it. Have you seen the film and net then oh yeah, oh yeah, No, Leo's characters rock,

I mean wild. But ye, but everyone one is fully That film does not work if anyone is not committed, If there's a moment of self consciousness, the whole thing falls apart. No, it's quite amazing. It's amazing. Yeah, what is the film that you used to love? You loved it a lot, but you have voiced it recently and now, yeah, this makes me very sad because when I saw it, I really adored it, and they're friends of mine, and I love their work generally, and I believe that they've

made a good half dozen masterpieces in their life. But I went back during the pandemic and revisited a lot of films and I hadn't seen Fargo in a long time, and I didn't think it held up. And I and I for a couple of reasons, It's still I lived in Minnesota for ten years, so I know, and they're from Minnesota, and we had friends in common back there,

the Cohen brothers. And I think it's in many ways still brilliant, but it's not as fully formed and as as accomplished as I believe some of their other pictures were. Very soon afterwards, I think they were on the cusp of becoming master filmmakers. But the thing you forget is that Fran McDormand is only in the film for about twenty five minutes. Really, he's got very few scenes. It's most you're mostly with Steve Usemi and Peter Stormar, and you're with Bill Macy, who, God love him, I know him.

He's a wonderful actor. He had the worst Minnesota accent I've ever heard. It's that's not how people their talk. You know. I lived there for a long time, and oh my god, you know, it was just not right went on there. Okay, you know, I mean he missed it, and he's a meticulous actor, and it's a it's a tough accent to master. So it wasn't as powerful and as and as strong affilment after twenty years as I remembered, and that was that was kind of a that made

me sad. Shame, yeah, shame, sham in it, Frost. I've been looking forward to this one. What is the film that means the nice to you? Not necessarily the film itself is any good, but because the experience you had around seeing it, that will always make it special. Okay, well, this is a very specific instance. It's nineteen seventy eight. I'm still living in Minnesota, and Minnesota is in what

you would commonly call Tornado Alley. In the summer, from like southwest to northeast, tornadoes come through there with some frequency. I had never been in the years i've been in and I'm with a buddy and we're going to see Cheech and Chong's big first movie up in smoke, and we may or may not have been hot when we went. I don't remember. It's likely that we were. And we're in a little it's a little, you know, kind of bandbox multiplex in a suburb just kind of northeast of Minneapolis,

and we're digging the movie. They're hilarious, we're laughing our heads off. There's almost nobody else there. It's like two o'clock in the afternoon, late in the run of its first run, and suddenly we hear the sirens go off outside. The sirens are there for tornado warnings. And I look at my buddy Hall and he looks at me, and there's like ten minutes left in the movie, and he says, should we leave? And I said, it's almost over, let's wait.

So we stay and we watched the end of the movie and it's hilarious, and we get in the car and we drive back home and we realize that in the interim in that ten minutes, the tornado swept right across the area where we were going to be driving. Had we left when the sirens went off, Oh my god, Cheech and Chong saved my life. Oh my god, you are here. Because how about that. That's an absolutely true story.

That's fucking great. I always new I like teaching Chong, something about him, something about him, something about someday they're going to save my life. Well, what's an unusual addser we've never had that. We've never added till day day passed by because it's teaching too on the same and I I dare say you won't have another. I'm just saying that's going to be a one off. But we didn't know how many people they've saved. What is what

is the film that you must relate to us? It's a complicated answer because I think it changes as you go through life. You know, when I agree, when you're young, it was it was Hud. I was Brandon, Dewildo and Hud watching the adult world through his eyes. And prior to that, shamee, you know, I had a real connection to him. Was a young actor. I felt, Oh, he's a good stand in for me. I get that guy. Although he died, you know, maybe he went to see Chechen Chong and left when the sirens went off. I

don't know he found out authority. It is exactly. He didn't go as own way, So I thought about this a lot, and I think the film that I most relate to in a way that was meaningful to how it affected me was It's a great movie. Sullivan's Travels, Preston Searges, nineteen forty one. I was a very serious young playwright at the time, and I was going to work in the theater. I was going to write plays. I had gone to school to do that. I'd taken a year off to go to Hollywood and I worked.

I wrote The Six Million Dollar Man and two other shows for a year, and I thought, I'm not ready to do this yet. You know. I saw a lot of things that made me think, and I tell the story in the book that you looked at. But I was at an a list Hollywood party. It was at Burch Schneider's house. If you know who Burch Schneider was. He was the son of the head of Columbia Pictures. He started BBS Films with Bob Rifles and they made five Yeasy Pieces and the Monkeys and The King of

Marvin Garden's Easy Rider. You know, they were on top of the world. And this is nineteen seventy four. Everybody was there. I walked in the door and somebody handed me a joint. It was Jeff Bridges, and I take ahead and I hand it to Jack Nicholson and he hands it to Lily Tomlin. You know, it's like I'm I mean, it's like I've gone I've landed an oz. Right.

So I end up out by the swimming pool and I'm sitting on the diving board and I strike up a conversation with a very nice British director and Terrence Young, who had actually directed, among other great movies, Doctor No and Goldfinger. And he takes an interest in me, you know, and he's that thing when someone's the one they call you by your full name. Well, Mark Frost, you know, what's what's your story? And so he tell I tell him,

you know, I was a playwright. I came out and I'm doing this and he sense just he says, Mark, you know, look around everybody you see here, we're all horrors. We're all doing this for money, and they know what our price is. Wow. And it was really, you couldn't have written the scene in another I mean, it's and

I said, oh, really really okay. So I about three months later I went back to the theater and thought, okay, well, maybe he's right, you know, it's you don't want wanted to be one of those guys about whom they say, well, we know what you are, We're just negotiating your price. You know. I wanted to I wanted to go see if, okay, am I going to be a serious playwriter? Am I going to be a horn? That seemed to be only the only two options. And then I was teaching film.

One of the things I did during that period away from la and one of the films I was teaching was Sullivan's Travels because I loved Preston Sturges. And you may know. The story of the movie is he's it's Joel McCrae as this very successful Hollywood director, but he's making a junk in his mind. He's making Ants in Your Parents nineteen thirty nine, you know. And so the whole thing is he wants to make a serious film called Oddly Enough, speaking of the kone brothers, Oh brother,

where aren't they? And he goes out on the road. There's a hobo he wants to tell during the depression, and he wants to tell the story of the common man. He wants to create art and long story, short series of mishaps and misfortunes. He ends up on a chain gang with amnesia in Georgia and one night they're taken into be shown a movie and they're showing a Mickey Mouse cartoon before the movie starts, and he looks around and he sees all the inmates crying their eyes out

with laughter, and how funny this cartoon is. And he has this epiphany, we don't have to make great art. We just need to make people laugh. We need to lighten their load, we need to give them some hope in the world. And he remembers who he is, and he goes back to Hollywood and he gets the girl, and he goes back to making wonderful, popular movies. And so that movie changed my life. About the court. I had a good friend who had been my mentor who went to Carnegie mell In ten years ahead. If I

didn't named Steven Bochco, who had created a show. He had been the guy who got me started Hollywood. And you worked on Hill Story Breeze. Yeah. Yeah. I had come on the air and he said, you know, come on out. I want to I want you to work on the show. So I said, you know, hang out I'll be right there. And that was that was the that was a turning point in my life. So I do cry of that movie with kind of so. So in simple terms, you were like, I'm a player, I'm

an artist. You went to Hollywood a man that a horrible man said, if you're here, you're a whole. You went, I don't want to be a whole. She went back. He was a nice man. He was a nice yeah. Yeah, but he said if you're here, you're a whole. And you're like, oh, that doesn't sound great. So you went back to being an artist. Then Stephen Voska, who was an artist working in this world, said come and work

with me and we'll make an amazing thing about history. Please, And he went all right, yeah, and I got me into And at that point I had lived for four years, you know, with that vowel poverty, and I was tired of having a charget when you start in the winter and you know, taking the bus when it's ten below zero. It just wasn't that much fun. So can I ask you you were a playwright, and I've certainly read and

that you want to get bet you doing that map. Yes, I've written the first play I've written in forty years, and we're gonna thanks. We're going to mount it. I think next summer it should you want to? Okay? So I had a great great uncle, my father's great uncle was a writer in the family. He'd been a newspaper man. More importantly, he was FDRs secretary from nineteen thirty five to nineteen forty five. It was a man named Willhassett. I knew him when I was a kid and during

the war years when there was a press blackout. He had known Roosevelt since the teens. He covered him during the First World War when he was the under Secretary of the Navy and my uncle was working for the Washington Post, so they became friendly. Twenty years later, he said, I need somebody over here who knows a little bit about everything and can write, you know, good prose by the qubic yard. Come now, and he went to work for him. He worked for him till the day he died.

He was with him when he died. He went on by the way to have the same job with Truman for seven years. Because Roosevelt had told Truman there's only one person you can't do this job without, and it's it's him. So during the war he kept a diary. FDR couldn't be covered by the press when he was traveling for security reason, so old newspaperman he keeps a journal of those four years, published in nineteen fifty eight, considered one of the great sources on the intimate life

of FDR. So the play is FDR at War and it's those four years through the lens of this relationship with my great uncle. And so I'm very excited about how long is this play currently? It's you know, standard

lengthy one intermission. Yeah. Is it as much about their relationship it is the history or is Yes, it's very much about their relationship, but it's also about all the battles he was fighting, not just with the access powers, but with his doctors and his health and his marriage and Republicans and Congress and all the things that even his allies. I mean Churchill as a character, it's it's a fantas has to glimpse into who he is as

a person. Fascinate. Wow, congratulations, that's exciting. So what are you going to put it on? We're going to do it off Broadway, probably in western Massachusetts. So I think in the fall and then hopefully and will you I don't really know how it works it Will you be heavily involved in casting, rehearsals, everything, or do you hand over plane? No? You know, I mean the thing that I do remember about the playwrights in charge? You know, he's yeah, okay, great, you are the master of your

own ship there. So I sort of will welcome that opportunity to go back and have some input because I feel very strongly about this piece. So that's very cool. Can I ask you want to have a best along these lines? I get the impression that you like to basically do corect me if I'm wrong, you followed the idea whatever the thing is the right format for the thing. This is a book, this is the players the TV show. It's not that you go, I want to make a

TV show. You go, what's this idea? Is that correct? Yeah? Form follows function. You know. You have to figure out the idea and then figure out how best to tell the story. If you've got the storyteller gene, which I believe I'm sort of born with. And then natural selection, it so happened I was shown a path that allowed me to develop it. I've learned and I've done it. I can't think of before I haven't done I mean documentary, sports writing, non fiction fiction. They're all the same. To me,

it's all the same. It's just that the form churches so anywhere. We are not Okay, we're everybody's favorite. But

what's the sexiest film you've ever seen? Us? Okay, this is this is an unusual answer because I don't think that sex per se on screen is terribly sexy, because I've filmed those scenes before, I've directed people in them, and you know, it's it's very technical, it's the it's the furthest thing from romance, and sexy to me is inexorably tied with romance, and the sexiest era I think in making was the era that included people like Barbara

Stanwick and particularly Ginger Rogers, so I think was the most alluring human female person to ever appear on screen. So the sexiest movies for me are like Top Half and even more so a lesser number one called care Free that's Rogers in a stare. But there was never a more sensual, beautiful, funny, witty, graceful, incredible athlete dancer than Ginger Rogers. I defy anybody to top her as a So that to me is that's romance, yea. And

I can watch those movies. They are evergreen. They and Ginger Rogers is every bit as contemporary as anybody that we know. And she'll live forever, I think because of it. Yet in classians, this makes me feel sick that I'm going to ask these category some category. Mark Frost traveling bind is worrying, why done film? You went? Surely shit, I'm so sorry. That's all right, because I haven't I

have I have an appropriate answer. I had a huge crush on Haley Mills as a as a young person who didn't but I hadn't quite awoken to the idea of why I would find her so attractive. And she made a movie. I think she made like six movies for Disney, and I probably saw all of them, but she made one called Double Trouble where she played twins. And so there was something about seeing two Haley Mills

that just made my system kind of short circuit. And I it made me, was like, to quote myself, feel funny, um, because I you know, I was I was waking up as an adolescent, were not pre I was pre anolyscent. That was the first time where I went, something's going on here in my body and there are two Haley Mills and I just can't handle and I've got double trouble. I've got double trouble. Is it didn't? She's the original Parent Trap as well, wasn't she? Yes? Yeah, she was

always playing twins, she was. Did she put twins in her trap too? She must have done, because they're twins in Parent Trap? But they yeah, I think I think they are. I think Disney would like people really like it was well, they doubled down. They realized we can get two Hairy Mills for the person one so two that sounds like the kind of kill would make, you know, a whole load of the audience feeling very funny right there, very funny, very funny. Mark Frost. Objectively, what is the

greatest film of all time? China Town? Great answer? Not, Benn said, in this category, no killing, which is surprising. It usually is on a list in it Why for you is it? China Town? It's number one. It's a perfect script. It's a perfect script, there's nothing wrong, quick script. And it's the most complex, mediest actable fluid ride that I've ever taken in a movie. I remember walking out of the theater so It in Westwood the day it

opened in nineteen seventy four. My girlfriend and another couple we walked out and we talked about it for four hours because it's It's like a giant trap that closes on you at the end and you realize that everything leading up to that has been preparing you for something that you can't quite handle the first time. And I've watched it probably more than any other film. I watched it at least once a year. It's a it's a perfect script, it's perfect performances by two of the greatest

stars we've ever had. I mean, I think Nicholson is arguably top three the greatest movie stars we've ever known. I've met him and he's a wonderful guy. And that movie spoke to me because it was about things that mattered to me. I had moved to la when there were still orange fields in the valley, and I didn't know that the hidden history of La as Robert Town

was able to lay it out. So the film had it had mystery, it had political relevance, it had obvious sexiness, had had huge star power, and had had a director at the top of this game. Again, one of the handful of great directors we've had in this art form. I can't get enough of it. If I if I had to die and come back in the context of a movie to live in a universe, that would be the universe I would choose. Really, Yeah, can I ask

you this? So you're an actor, an actor and a writer, and there's a story about technics in I Ca'm sure I've taught it on this before, but but it's really stayed with me. I think it was in an interview with someone where someone said to him, you're one of the great movies stars. Your your CV is incredible. You know, there's really not really a bad film on your resume. Why is that? Is it lack? Is it good fortune?

What is it? And he said, now, it's because I'm a good writer, and it's that he knows he knows the job. I think that's absolutely right. How interesting? Yeah, Yeah, he had great taste, he had he had It took a long time for him to get there. You know, he bumped around Hollywood for close to fifteen years before Easy Rider, you know, busted him out, and he was in the Corman World, which was a great training ground. You know, it's given us so many incredible people. It

was it was like summer Stock for film. You know. I never worked for him, but I had plenty of people friends who did. It was a training ground, and so he came out of it knowing where an actor belongs to the ecosystem of a film. So he's a great teammate. You have to have teamwork, and you if you're number one in the call sheet, you better be a good teammate. If you're not, then you're not going to be number one for long. We've both known the people who are number one and are jackasses, and it

makes everybody's life miserable. And his job is to make sure that everybody else is having the kind of experience that he thinks contributes to a good film. I really admire that. Yeah, that's wonderful in terms of you and collaborating and stuff like, it's you work alone. I'm just fascinated in there. I guess I've got two questions of you. One is like energy, as in, you write a novel, you write a play that is a kind of completely solo pursuit where you are alone in a room just you.

You've worked on History Blues where it's a group writer's room, and then you've written with David Lynch where it's just the two of you, particularly the Return Road, it's just the two of you. Is it a big process for you to go? Okay? I now need to sort of summon the energy that involves collaborating with huge people, the kind of social dynamics of that. The you know, when you direct, it's an incredibly social job versus the I guess it's a big question, but like, do you think

you're an introvert? Do you think you're an expert? Do you need to balance these things out? If you've done a big kind of social job, do you want them want to Yeah? I think, I think I'm both. I think and I enjoyed both for different reasons. I realized that I after having directed a fair amount and having done a feature, I realized that wasn't how I wanted

to spend my life exclusively. Every once in a while, sure, but if your if your bread and butter is writing, you've got to have that solitary processing time, you know, I mean, it's it's it's tons of fun to collaborate and it's actually much easier when you've got sports is always the metaphor for me. I played a lot of sports as a kid. So Hill Street Blues it was like being on a basketball team. You know. It was like past the ball over there, he takes it, runs

with it, he takes a shot. You know, you come up with a scene, you come up with a line. It was a group effort, and because we did a lot of team building on that show, it was it was a fun process and it was bruising because it was also you know, you got to fight for rebounds and you got to you got to get your own turf. You know, you're trying to mark. You mark your turf at the same time that you're trying to do served the overall good. So I like them all for different reasons.

But as a writer, you've got to come back to that discipline of sitting down and facing the blank page or the blank screen. So they're all the same to me, They're just different ways of experiencing. And do you you seem to me very then like you see my dad know you you seem like very mentally well and kind of how do you deal with or do you ever have problems with the ego side of it, particularly, let's

say twin Peaks. If you hear people talk about twim Peaks and they go, oh, David Lynchay's twin Peaks or something like that, is there a part of view that it's like, hey, what the fuck? Like do you? Oh? Do you? Never? Do? You tell me? How do you deal with when you're used to doing things on your own and then when it's a collaboration and people might talk about other names? Do you know what I mean? Sure? And that's an ego concern. You know, your your ego

pops up and says, hey, what about me? But if you're confident in what you do and you know what you did and are from the process and the people who were making the thing, no, I mean they know I was the showrunner on the show, So no, it doesn't bother me. It's like, I'll put it this way. The checks we get are the same size, and they both have our names on them. So that's enough for me. You know, I know what I did. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, I know, You've never I'm just fascinated by anyone. I'm

always fascinated by, you know, double acts, by anyone. Any collaboration. Sure, like, well, you know, I'm sure you enjoyed Get Back as much as I did. It's my favorite film of the year. I always wanted to be a fly on the wall with those guys and see how they worked it out.

And we saw that. We saw that, and the answer was it was because they could check their ego at the door when they were in the room together, and it was a beautiful thing to watch and to know that they still loved each other even though they were having troubles. They worked it out. So that's what you do when you're committed and you're in the room, You're work it out and what happens afterwards is out of your control. And I learned a long time ago, don't

worry about things you have no control over. Yes, you're a zen master. And what is the film that you could well have? What's I and I have again any time of time? Well, yeah, that's one of them. But since since it has its own category, I think I have a particular funness and it's similar themed for lurid crime dramas said in Los Angeles, it's a it's a

subcategory that I adore. But so that includes La Confidential and Heat, which were both brilliant movies and two that I will watch anytime they come on wherever they are. I'm stuck. I'm watching the whole movie. But the one that I watched from that era over and over again, and I don't exactly know why yet is Ronan to Nro and Jean Renault's and John Frank and Ivory was his last great movie, and He's He was a great director.

My dad worked with them in the early days of television, so I heard about and you know, great movies early on. I think that's a one or full film to get lost in the world of that movie is spectacular, So I will watch that obsessively. If it shows up, well, well, I'm surprising and brilliant. I don't like to be too negative. Yes, let's let's do it this best we can. You've ever seen every version of the Alamo. I mean, let's let's examine this. You know, they never give you the context.

Those guys were there to spread slavery into a state that belonged to Mexico. You know, their cause sucked. They were bad people for pursuing it. And the fact that they're presented time after time is these heroic figures who die tragically in a noble cause. Is enough horseshit to fill you know, Sofi Stadium. It's it's a garbage story about awful people, and people keep trying to retell it. That's so. You know, John Wayne's version is beyond terrible

for all sorts of reasons. But every version of it sucks, and it's for that reason. It's a bad it's a bad cause you're betting on the wrong team. Yes, it's like a film about Hitler inviting plan Yeah exactly. Yeah, you know, it's like, I don't want any part of that. I'm sorry. I mean the other one that's a contender is I'm sure you've had this mentioned before. There's a movie made mid fifties called The Conqueror. Do you know this movie. It's the story of Genghis Khan. It stars

John Wayne, Yeah, oh boy, and Susan Hayward. And not only that, it was the last film ever produced by Howard Hughes. They shot it in an area in Utah that was directly downstream air quality wise from the nuclear testing ground in Nevada, and of the two hundred and twenty cast members, over ninety of them got cancer and over fifty of them died. Oh my god. And that was also true, including John Wayne and Susan Haywarton and

many other people in the movie. So not only is it John Wayne's Genghis Khan is, on the face of it, the worst idea you've ever heard. It killed everybody who made the movie, you know, and Howard Hughes pulled it from distribution. You can't find it now. And he used to sit and watch it obsessively in his penthouse along with Ice Station Zebra. Those were the two movies he would watch. We know about Ice Station Zebra. Why would

he watch obsessively because he was cuckoo for Cocopus. So I think that objectively makes it the worst movie, and that it killed nearly everybody who contributed to it. That's what often is is that they're up the raid making Genghis Khan. Yeah, exactly, Oh my good. Right in the middle of it. Twelve I think they. I think they set off twelve h bombs at the Nuclear Testagram during production. Yeah, have another cigarette, duke, you know you have nothing and

performed very funny stuff, very funny. What is the film that's made you laughed at? I have to go back to the classics for this, because I started going to these movies when I was in high school. The University of Minnesota Film Society started to bring back those old classic movies. And when I saw Buster Keaton's The General for the first time, I fell on the floor. I mean I was equally I was laughing as hard as

I was stupefied by what he had pulled off. If people don't know the movie, I mean, it's a silent film. It's a Civil War story about a guy who kidnaps a train and tries to take it away from It's a true It's based on a true story. He's sadly a Confederate guy who was being chased by a Union army and it ends with him with an actual train from the era driving over a gorge and blowing up the bridge and the train plunges. It's one of the greatest shots and sent them a history. And Buster Keaton

made all this stuff up on the spot. He was a genius beyond compare. He was again one of those people who helped invent the vocabulary of film. And The General I think is I mean he's made He made one masterpiece after another, but that, to me was the pinnacle. And the only thing that made me laugh as hard as that was WC. Fields trying to sleep on his porch in It's a Gift, which I think is my favorite of his movies. You know that. That? Yeah, and

he has never been mentioned on his podcast. You're kidding. I don't think he's ever come up on his podcast. Says he was a genius. He was an absolute tragic genius and people should go back and look at his movies, the Benk Dick, It's a Gift. These are perfect movies, the classics, and he will make you roar with laughter. And then you know, the Marx Brothers and Horse Feathers is the one that makes me laugh the most. But they that's anarchy, you know, personified. It's fantastic. Yeah, yeah,

what's that? I'm afraid I've never seen it because I don't think we got to it in the UK. But you made a show on the air. Yeah, and that sounds like Mark's Brothers, Is that right? Kind of what? Yeah? It was inspired, Yes, it was inspired by the wonderful chaotic, an archic energy. It was about a live television show

in the fifties. They came out of an idea. My dad had been the stage manager on one of the great shows of that era, of Philco Playhouse, so I had all these stories about things that went wrong when people were live on the air, including some favorite famous actors. So we put all those ideas into it on the air. Next time you're in LA called me up and I'll show it you just maybe an I hope everyone had that. When I show up at your house, you can't go

to place. Brett's here again, he said, listen to this podcast. Yeah, yeah, just give him the DVD. It's like, I'm busy but slided under the door in frost. Now I need you give him me all this time and told me in the secret picture in section, how Annie was you? This has been beyond brilliant and I'm so grateful. I've loved it. However, when you wrote this screenplay, he sent it off and Friday and Saturday morning you get a call from your agents. They say four studios want it. Leo wants it, Merril

wants it, Jennifer Lawrence wants it. J Loo is interested, which I was paying excited about. It's a big war amongst the biggest Hanks. Once they're looking, and you died of shock instantly with a smiling thing. You've probably never been happier, which never would be again. Wow, I've popped around to see on the air, as promised, but I brought the coffle with me just in case you never know. And I walk in, I go, where's my anyone seem money and Jesus upstairs they're talking to his agents. I go,

all right, I know creep upstairs. No it's Mark. Sorry, he's still on the phone, but it's silent, like maybe maybe he's not the fade. Mark. Sorry, I'm going you're dead, But you look so happy. I don't want to disturb you. I'm like, yeah, maybe he's fine. So but you're so happy in your shock. You've you've, you've, You've stuck to the chair with sweat from happiness. And so I can't get you off the chick. You're stuck in this chair. So I have to chop up the chair, you have

to chop you up anyway. I pack you in to this coffin and it's full. It's misjudged the size and impotized for that, but this coffin is absolutely stuffed for the Mark Frost and they're really only enough for him for you to have one DVD that I can slide into the side for you to take across to the other side. And on the other side, it's movie night

every night, and one night it's your movie night. What film are you going to show the people of having the dogs of Heaven when it is your movie night, Mark Frost, You would think it would be trying to tell you were but with that planet to done, But I'm I'm gonna try to do a planet at the apes ending here. There's an Italian film from a few years ago called The Great Beauty, Yes, which I can't get out of my head, and I feel if I watched it a hundred thousand times, I would find something

new in it every single time. And we're going to be in heaven for a while, so I'm going to take Sortantino's The Great Beauty with it because I want to get to the bottom of it. That is a magnificent answer and a wonderful film, Mark Frost, God bless you. Is there anything you would like to tell people to listen,

look out for read watch for you guys. There's a terrific new show what's not New on Apple called Ted lasso that people should inhale because we've been through some hard times these last few years, and this show will be like a bomb to your soul. It will make you feel that anything's possible, that there is good in the world along with sorrow, and we will find our way if we trust our own internatures to relate to other people, to care for them, to befriend them, and

realize that we are all in the same boat. And we'd better start rowing in that direction. So thank you for that. Right well, you can make me cry, and I'm going to get you saying that I'm going to send it to the whole team. It said less because it will mean a lot of sticks, So thank you very much. I was, of course, I think it's this ending that you have coming out that you would like. I know, well, I mean, I've got the play. I've got the play. I've got two other projects that I'm

working on. Nothing that's about to happen, so it's it's premature to be promoting it. But I'm doing a novel of the play as well. You you that's interesting, you really, you really We did the novel the novels, which I fucking love of twin Pete. Yeah, like oh the oh, the world. Yeah, I mean it's it's a way to that's how you that's how you build worlds. And as a writer, I always wanted to build a world. Tolkien I think inspired me in that regard. Um, So that's

what I'm that's my objective. Whenever I'm tackling a story, I want to give you a full rounded experience, because that's that's how we understand our own world. I seeing others. You are a brilliant man. Thank you Mark for us Brett. I've really enjoyed it. Yeah, I loved it. How if you have a wonderful death. Thank you? Good days, he sir.

So that was episode one hundred and eighty seven. Head over to patreon dot com forwards left Brett Goldstein for the extra twenty twenty five minutes of chat Secrets of video with Mark. Go to Apple podcast. Give us a five stars rating. But don't tell me about the podcast. Don't want to hear about it. What I want to hear is about the film that means the most to you and why that's a lovely thing to read. And my name Amen's obsessed with reading, and so thank you,

thank you all for listening. Thank you so much to Mark for giving me all that time. Thank you to Scrubs Pitt and the Distraction Pieces Network. Thanks to Buddy Peace for producing it. Thanks to ACAS for hosting it. Thanks to Adam Richardson for the graphics, Lisa Alladen for the photography. Come join me next week for another incredible guest. I think I've got an absolute banger again next week. So that is it for now. In the meantime, have a lovely week and please be excellent to each other.

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