Header photo by Sabrina S. Sutherland. Promotional photo of Sabrina S. Sutherland by Patrick Ecclesine
Fans of David Lynch are already familiar with Sabrina S. Sutherland, whether they’re aware of it or not. Starting her working relationship with Lynch as a production coordinator on the second season of Twin Peaks and then working as a production assistant on his 1997 film Lost Highway, Sabrina eventually became the executive producer of Lynch’s last feature-length film Inland Empire in 2006, as well as the final season of Twin Peaks, which aired on Showtime in 2017. From there she helped maintain Lynch’s Daily Weather Reports and other videos on his YouTube channel and worked closely with him for the last decade of his life. This fall she will be hitting the road with other Twin Peaks alumni as part of the Twin Peaks: Conversation With The Stars tour
Tyler King: Well first of all I wanted to thank you for taking the time to talk with me!
Sabrina Sutherland: Yeah, of course!
TK: You have this Twin Peaks: In Conversation With The Stars tour coming up. I’m wondering if this the first time that you’ve done something of this magnitude of touring around the country doing something like this, and if so is this something that you’re looking forward to?
SS: Well we did a tour I think in 2018 through Australia and New Zealand with some of the same cast members of the show, and it was really fun and it was really exciting because at that time the show had recently come out and not a lot of people have traveled there from the show so it was really nice to see a lot of fans that we have a lot of interaction with but never get to see in person. So we did that, which was great. I never have done the US but I had wanted to, and like I’ve said in the past, David Lynch was excited about it as well. When we were in Australia and New Zealand, David would call in, even though it was something like two in the morning here, he would call in and take some questions from some of the fans, which was so wonderful. He’d just set his alarm and get up and do it! And he talked about doing that for this upcoming one as well, but unfortunately that’s not going to happen, but I am still looking forward to it. It’s really wonderful to be able to get out and meet a lot of fans that otherwise might not have the opportunity to talk to some of the cast.
TK: The lineup for the tour is yourself, Kimmy Robertson, Harry Goaz, Ray Wise, and Sheryl Lee at the West Coast shows. What is your relationship like with them since working with them? Are are you all hanging out together on Sundays?
SS: Well we’re all pretty good friends I think! Kimmy lives close by so I see her on occasion. Harry lives in another state, although I get to talk to him via text or email a lot more than seeing him, but every once in a while he’ll come to LA. Sheryl is also local and she’s so sweet. I always love talking with her. Ray, he and I don’t talk as much. I think he’s got a lot more going on. A lot of the actors have become really good friends!
TK: Was your first time meeting these four actors through Twin Peaks, or had you worked with any of them before?
SS: I met all of them through working on the second season of Twin Peaks. Although every once in a while throughout the years we talked, but we all became more friendly in the early 2010s, and then when the third season of Twin Peaks happened, of course we became even closer and have remained close since.
TK: One of the things that I love about following you on social media is that you seem kind of in touch with these Twin Peaks memes that will go around online. I’m wondering is that something that David was also in tune with? Were you ever showing him some of the weird garmonbozia-themed memes that show up?
SS: Certainly I showed him a few that I thought were really outstanding but I think this is really my own strange sense of humor! So I really enjoy seeing them, but you know David would would see some and he enjoyed seeing some of them but he wasn’t somebody who was really online. He wasn’t on social media so it was only if somebody showed him what was happening that he really saw them. I would show him a few but I don’t think he’d seen them all, which is too bad because some of them are really good!
TK: You say that he wasn’t online that much, and I know that you were the one who was uploading his daily weather reports, the number of the day videos, all of those things on the David Lynch Theater YouTube channel. Was he at least aware of, maybe not necessarily the importance that these videos had in in some of our lives, but the impact and how much people looked forward to those videos?
SS: I think so. When I say “online” I really mean social media. He wasn’t a social media guy, but he would go onto our website every once in a while and read what was there, especially if it was something that he thought was a particular day and just wanted to see what the response was. So he was in touch with that, and I don’t know that he really thought of it in that way. I think it was something that gave him pleasure and he hoped other people would get pleasure out of it as well.
TK: There was such an outpouring of love when he passed a few months ago and it really seemed like even people who you might not necessarily have thought were very big David Lynch fans had nothing but positive things to say about him. He just seemed like such this totally anachronistic individual in the 21st century. I’m wondering, as far as unfinished projects of his that might end up being released, is there anything there? I know that towards the end he was working on more music like the Cellophane Memories album that he did with Chrystabell. Was there any other music that he was working on at the time?
SS: I think he and Chrystabell were working on some things, and I think he was busy up through his passing so I had anticipated continuing working with him and we had had a project that had gotten shut down during COVID that we had hoped to, I wouldn’t say resurrect, but we had been working on throughout that time period and were ready to bring it back. So there were a lot of things that were cooking and it’s unfortunate that those won’t come to fruition.
TK: Your career working in production seems so tied to him, especially in the last 25 years or so. I’m wondering how long did it take for you and him to kind of get on the same the same wavelength?
SS: I suppose when he brought me in kind of as a full-time person Around then we started to have a more close relationship and collaboration, so I think probably around at the end of 2008 so maybe 2009, 2010, we really got into a rhythm and working on all the different things. Probably by 2012 it became the solid thing it ended up being.
TK: Do you remember any particular difficulties, especially with either Inland Empire or the third season of Twin Peaks where you had to tell him, “Hey the people at Showtime/the other producers really need to know why you’re doing a certain thing a certain way.”
SS: No. I didn’t experience all those early years with David where he was having to answer to others, and I think after working on Dune he really maintained his creative control, so there really wasn’t any of that. I suppose the most constrained he ever had been was during maybe working on commercials where it was very much more fixed as to what he should or should not be doing, but he still had creative control, and he worked around those limitations. There are always things that I’d have to let David know. Maybe monetarily we couldn’t do something the way he wanted to do it or he didn’t have access to something, but then we’d figure out a different way of being able to do the same thing in a less expensive way.
TK: I know that you came to working with him as a fan of his previous films. I’m wondering, do you have the ability to separate working on something like Inland Empire or the third season of Twin Peaks with your enjoyment of watching them?
SS: Sure! When I’m working on a show I’m thinking of the show. I’m not really thinking about trying to have fun. What I mean is that I’m really focused so it’s work, so I don’t really have the time to sit there and say, “Wow I’m working on this.” Although sometimes I do in my head, but I really have to focus on the job so I don’t give myself that time to do that.
TK: I know you’re a very big fan of music, and David seemed like such a lover of music. Every episode of the last season of Twin Peaks, except for the finale, seemed to have a revolving musical guest playing at The Roadhouse. Was your joint love of music something that the two of you bonded over? And is there a specific music-related memory that you associate David with?
SS: For a few years David and I shared an office, which is an experience all on its own! And David would like to sit and play music, so whether or not I liked it I’d have to sit there. But I always enjoyed it. It was always fun to hear thr music he would put on, but I think the greatest experience was we were doing a new project like I had said that got shut down and, this is before shooting or anything like that, we went through a whole collection of music that he had. He had this whole kind of library of music that had been created but never released so we’d sit for hours just listening to these different tracks and there were a few that he picked for this new show which he got inspired by. He’d get inspired by the music to create a visual, and then he think of what music would go with that. So that that really cool. And during the last Twin Peaks we went through music as well and he was able to find pieces that just fit perfectly to some of these scenes that were just kind of phenomenal.
TK: So this library of music, was that music that he had made on his own or with Dean Hurley or Angelo Badalamenti?
SS: He had done a lot of music with Angelo. I don’t remember too much music that he had done with Dean. But he had done some more stuff with Angelo as Thought Gang and he had done some with, um, oh gosh what’s the other group? I can’t think of it right now but I’ll text it to you! He had just had all of these experiments that he had done in the 90s through the early 2000s, he had a whole bunch of music that he just had and then he worked again with Angelo on the latest project he was going to do, and he worked and came up with a whole bunch of different music prior to the actual shooting. He did some stuff early on and that was recorded and then those things were there for him to use if he wanted.
TK: Talking about Angelo Badalamenti for a second, on the last album that David did with Chrystabell, Cellophane Memories, Angelo is credited with some synthesizer work on it. Do do you know if this was pre-existing work of Angelos’s or did Angelo and David start on this album before Angelo passed away.
SS: That’s probably more of a question for Chrystabell! From what I understand though he might have just used some pieces from his music library that he liked as background to expand on what he and Chrystabell were doing.
TK: That vast library of music, do you know what the fate of it might be?
SS: Unfortunately no.
TK: That’s a shame. I really love the Thought Gang record, I was so pleased when Sacred Bones Records put it out a few years ago. Finally being able to listen to it, it’s such an outlier in Lynch’s and Angelo’s work.
SS: Do you know what the other album was? Fox Bat Strategy! That’s it!
TK: I’ve never heard of this!
SS: You have to go find it!
TK: I want to talk about the third season of Twin Peaks a little bit. In preparation for this interview I read other interviews that you’ve done and I know that you weren’t necessarily part of the script writing process or anything like that with David and Mark Frost, but I’m wondering… When people talk about the first couple of seasons of Twin Peaks, the episodes that are frequently mentioned are the pilot, the last episode of the second season, and the one where Leland is revealed to be the killer. But when a lot of people talk about the third season of Twin Peaks, the episode that really frequently gets mentioned a lot is the eighth episode. I’m wondering what was the production like of that episode compared to any of the others? Was there anything done differently regarding the preparation of that episode?
SS: We shot the series like a film and each scene was shot, as David would say, modularly, so it was self-contained. We just went by location so the different pieces that are there were shot at different times and it really was in editing that everything got put together. Butt say the scene with the woodsman coming out, that’s in post-production. And the music and all of that, that’s all David in post-production. That’s not like what was written in the script. Everything is very straightforward in the script and then anything like that that comes out visually or audio wise, that’s all David in the post-production.
TK: Had you seen the episodes before they aired on Showtime or were you like the rest of us fans seeing it all unfold for the first time?
SS: No, I was there with David while he was editing throughout the whole process, so I saw everything. I saw many different versions of the episodes.
TK: Being inside of the the “David Lynch camp,” were you aware of what the reactions were to each episode or was there more of an attitude of, “it’s out there and if people love it they love it, and if they don’t like it they don’t like it?”
SS: I think that’s pretty much the way David has always been. I follow along more only because I tried to be a conduit between David and the fans in some respect. David loved the fans but he never had any true way of talking with them, so I tried to be that person. So I would watch the reactions and I would see things and I would tell David, “Hey this is happening or whatever.” But it didn’t really matter to him that much if people were positive or negative.
TK: Are are there any parts of the filming of that season that stick out to you?
SS: Everything! Everything was so powerful to me. We shot everything in Washington first, so that was done early on in 2015 and then in January 2016 we moved to Los Angeles and did everything else. It was all interesting to me and it was all something that I enjoyed doing so I can’t really pick any one thing.
TK: You talk about how David was so supportive of this upcoming tour that’s going to be happening in a few months, one of the things that is being advertised about the tour is that there’s going to be a video memorial for David at the shows. Is that something that you have any input on?
SS: Yeah, I’m trying to put something together that celebrates David in a positive way.
TK: As someone who worked on the show so much, did you have the kind of love for the show before you came on board on the second season or when you came in was it just something that you were kind of blind to?
SS: No, I loved the first season. I loved it so much that I called and asked if I could work on it. I was a huge, huge, huge fan and lucky enough to catch the producer Gregg Fienberg at the right time when I called and he answered. Why would he answer, I don’t know! And he said that they needed somebody and could I come in the next day and interview and I did and then he says, “Okay great you can start Monday!” So I was very very lucky and I met so many different people like Deepak Nayar, who I worked with for years.
TK: What do you think it is about the show that has given it such staying power over the decades?
SS: I always think about David’s work as being kind of ahead of its time. There are a lot of times people look at works of his and don’t understand it or don’t appreciate it, but then 10 years later or 20 years later they’re saying how wonderful it is right. That’s happened with most of his films actually, so I think it’s the same with Twin Peaks. In a way it’s just ahead of its time and I think he and Mark wrote something pretty amazing and pretty advanced. Just the whole idea of it is such an advancement in television at that time, and over the years it’s just held up. There are a lot of shows that were super popular and you go back and watch them and you go, “I don’t know why I liked it!” But you go back and watch Twin Peaks and there’s still something there that you go, “Wow! This is really good!” I think it is just really well written and well done.
TK: You mention about how some of David’s work wasn’t positively received at the time and I’m reminded about the promotion of Lost Highway with the quote on the poster, “Two thumbs down!”
SS: Lost Highway is so interesting. I love Lost Highway. When it came out it was totally just forgotten unfortunately. But we did a remastering of it recently and it came out and I think it’s been very positively received. You know, a lot of people didn’t see it at the time.
TK: That was one of his last films that I ended up watching and I have no idea why it got so forgotten for so long because to me it’s one of my favorite works of his. I know you did work on Lost Highway, what was that experience like?
SS: That was great! I loved working on that movie. I was a production supervisor and I worked under Deepak, but Deepak a lot of times wasn’t around in the evenings because his work really was during the day. As producer he had a lot of day stuff, so I would be the person on set throughout all of the shooting until the end of the night, right until everybody wrapped. So a lot of times I’d have interactions with David that were not so great because I’d have to tell him he couldn’t have something, so he really didn’t appreciate me coming! If I came on set he’d make a really bad face, but it worked out okay!
TK: So much of David’s work, and one of the things that I love so much about it, is that anybody who watches something like Eraserhead can come away with a completely different understanding of what Eraserhead is about. Anybody who watches Mulholland Drive can come away with the same thing. Did you ever have any talks with him like, how Hawke asks in the third season of Twin Peaks, “Is it really about the bunny?” Or anything like that?
SS: No. You know, he didn’t want to talk about the meaning of things but certainly I could talk about what it meant to me, and so I might say something about what I thought the meaning of a certain scene or film of his was. I think the only time I ever asked him was during Lost Highway. While we were shooting we were in the prison set. I remember it distinctly, and I had to go find all these porno magazines and watch these things. It was really a weird job that I was doing and I saw David and I went up to him and I said, “I think the movie means blah blah blah blah blah.” And he looks at me and says, “Yeah like that.” And, like, he agreed with me! So all these years later working with him I reminded him that, “Hey I went up to you and you agreed that I knew exactly what Lost Highway was about.” And he said, “I never said that.” I said, “Yeah you did, yeah you did, you said I was right!” And he said “I would never have said that!” I said “Yeah you did.”
TK: It sounds like that famous clip of him where he says Eraserhead is his most spiritual film and the person interviewing him asks him to expand upon that and he just says, “Uh, no.” It sounds like coming in working with David as somebody who was already a fan, it seems like a dream come true.
SS: For sure, for sure. David lived up… No, actually, David went beyond the expectations. I knew him as a person. I really do feel he is the best human being I’ve ever met. Just personally he was a really solid person who cared about people and human beings.
TK: I don’t know too many people who interacted with him or met him, but the people that I do know who did… He’s one of those people where when he passed away and it seemed like everyone was talking about him. But nobody had anything negative ever to say about him.
SS: Yeah, it was very difficult. He was human, you’ve seen him getting angry, mainly at me! [laughs] But through all of that he was quick to forgive and he really did care about people. Even if there were people that did egregious things against him, which there were several people who did some really horrible things, he would eventually forgive them. I always said that he was much more evolved than I was because I can’t forget if somebody does something really bad to me, to my dying day I’m going to remember that this person was mean. And David, he was able to let that go and say, “Well they must have been having a problem or they probably didn’t realize that what they were doing was wrong.” I would see him say that and go, “Wow, how can you do that?” He was the bigger person in every situation. It would take him sometimes a while to get there, but he’d get there. He would see unhoused people on the street and he would stop and always give them money or cigarettes. He was generous, he’d make you stop the car so he could give something to somebody.
TK: So what is next for you, Sabrina?
SS: I don’t know! I’m still figuring out what’s going on now and making sure that everything’s kind of set as far as everything with David, and then I don’t know what I’m going to do next. But we’ll see!
Twin Peaks: Conversation With The Stars will be at the Uptown Theatre in Napa on October 17th. Tickets can be purchased here
