- For its doppelganger, see The arm (doppelganger).
"I am the arm... and I sound like this..."―The arm[src]
The arm was the self-professed name of a being from the Black Lodge who appeared in dreams to both Laura Palmer and Special Agent Dale Cooper, primarily in the form of a dancing, red-suited little man, and later evolving into a tree with a fleshy head on top. The arm had an unclear relationship with the spirit known as Mike, whose human host claimed in one of Cooper's dreams that he had cut off his own arm to rid himself of evil.
It also appeared to have a complicated relationship with the malevolent spirit known as BOB, demanding garmonbozia (concentrated pain and sorrow) from BOB's hosts, but also trying to protect Laura from BOB with the ring in 1989, and aiding Cooper in tracking him down the same year.
However, Cooper became trapped in the Black Lodge for many years, while BOB roamed free on Earth sharing the body of Cooper's doppelganger. In 2016, the arm released Cooper from the Lodge, and guided him on his mission to bring BOB and his doppelganger back into it.
Biography[]
Early existence[]
The arm was a supernatural entity connected to the Black Lodge and an apartment above a convenience store. In the late 1980s, it took the form of a little man in a red suit, and had a distorted manner of speech. It had a connection to the inhabiting spirit Mike,[2] who claimed he had cut off his own arm to rid himself of evil after a religious epiphany.[3]
The arm with BOB and the other spirits above the convenience store[2]
The arm also had an unclear relationship with the homicidal inhabiting spirit BOB, chastising his vicious activities of murder and rape on Earth, but also demanding concentrated pain and sorrow, known as garmonbozia, from his victims for him to eat. It also had connections to the Electrician, Mrs. Tremond, Pierre, the Jumping Man and the Woodsmen, leading at least one meeting with them and BOB around a formica table.[2][4] The arm often interacted with inhabitants of Earth through dreams and visions, but never traversed there physically.[3][5]
First attempt to stop BOB[]
By 1988, BOB had, for decades,[6] inhabited a human host in the form of Leland Palmer of Twin Peaks, Washington, accompanying him in the murder of prostitute Teresa Banks. The arm and Mike realized that for years, BOB had been grooming Leland's daughter, Laura, through Leland's body, and was going to make her his new host. The two began planning to protect Laura from his possession, and the arm started sending vague dream messages to FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, who was investigating Banks' murder, and later, Laura herself.[2]
Offering the ring to Laura[2]
In one of the dreams, which was projected from the future, the arm urged Laura to take a special ring to protect herself from BOB's possession, but Cooper, who was also in the dream, urged her not to. Meanwhile, Mike tried giving her the ring in the waking world, but instead scared her off. On February 24, 1989, Laura and her friend Ronette Pulaski were attacked by BOB, still using Leland as his vessel, who tried to possess Laura in a train car. However, Mike managed to toss Laura the ring and she put it on, preventing BOB from entering her body.[2]
Enraged by this, BOB bludgeoned Laura to death, wrapped her body in plastic, and tossed it in the river. He returned to the Black Lodge, where Mike and the arm reluctantly accepted garmonbozia from Leland. BOB and Leland returned to Earth to continue wreaking havoc, and Laura's soul took up residence in the Black Lodge, safe at last from BOB.[2]
The Laura Palmer investigation[]
The arm in Cooper's first dream[3]
After Laura's body was found, Special Agent Cooper was called in to investigate her murder, having already received a few prophetic dreams of the arm and the Black Lodge, giving him cryptic clues to solving the murder along with Laura's spirit, whom it described as its "cousin".[3]
Over the course of the next month, Cooper used these clues, as well as those from Mike and a tall man he called the "Giant", to learn about BOB and apprehend Leland. However, BOB forced Leland to kill himself soon after being caught, and the arm ceased to appear to Cooper for a few weeks, until the death of Josie Packard, when both BOB and the arm appeared to him.[6][5]
Dale Cooper's entrapment[]
With Cooper and the Giant in the red room[7]
When deranged criminal Windom Earle kidnapped Cooper's girlfriend, Annie Blackburn, he brought her to the Black Lodge as part of an elaborate revenge scheme against Cooper, and a plot to achieve great power. When Cooper followed Earle into the Lodge, he was approached by the arm, now meeting him face to face, who guided him through the Lodge for an unknown purpose, and showed him a number of doppelgangers, including its own.
Eventually, BOB took Earle's soul and escaped the Lodge in the body of Cooper's doppelganger, where they took his place on Earth. Cooper then remained trapped in the Lodge for over twenty-five years, occasionally talking to the arm, who teased and taunted him for getting stuck.[7][4][8]
Defeating Cooper's doppelganger[]
Mike introduces Cooper to the evolved arm[8]
Over the course of the next twenty-five years, the arm evolved into what appeared to be a thin tree crackling with electricity, and a fleshy, pulsing head on top. In 2016, the arm reunited with Cooper for the first time since its evolution, and instructed him to finally exit the Lodge and replace his doppelganger on Earth. However, the doppelganger had thought ahead and created a tulpa of Cooper named Dougie Jones, who was replaced by Cooper instead of him in Las Vegas. Cooper's return to Earth also left him in a near catatonic state, and could barely function in the world as he was mistaken for Dougie.[9][10]
Guiding Cooper to protect himself[11]
Despite this, Mike and the arm attempted to bring Cooper back to his senses and guide him to his destination, including helping him win money at a casino and urging Cooper to protect himself when he was attacked by Ike the Spike. Despite Cooper's response to others' requests being incredibly slow, he was always quick to respond to the arm and Mike.[10][11]
After Cooper recovered, he traveled to Twin Peaks to finally confront BOB and his doppelganger. With the aid of the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department, he managed to defeat them both, before embarking on his greater mission to journey through time to save Laura Palmer's life and potentially locate the powerful negative force known as Judy. His attempt resulted in Laura disappearing instead of dying, and the timeline being heavily altered as a result.[12]
Another 1989[]
When Cooper returned to the Black Lodge, he witnessed his doppelganger's body being burned, with the arm nearby. Before Cooper ventured out to try and find Laura in the new timeline, he was confronted again by the arm, who cryptically echoed Cooper's old friend Audrey Horne, by asking him, "Is it the story of the little girl who lived down the lane? Is it?" Cooper had no answer, and was sent back to Earth in 2016, while the arm remained in the Lodge, seemingly unaffected by the timeline alterations.[13]
Non-canon appearances[]
International Pilot[]
Twenty-five years after Laura Palmer's death, Dale Cooper finds himself in a strange red-curtained room with the little man and a woman who looks exactly like Laura.
The scene is essentially identical to the final scene of "Episode 2," which repurposes it as part of Cooper's dream.
Saturday Night Live sketch[]
The man (played by Mike Myers) goes to Agent Cooper's room after Leo confesses to Laura's murder. When Cooper says he plans to get a pie from the Double R Diner, the man asks if they have little pies and starts to follow him out, but then the agent decides to go to bed. The man starts dancing.
Behind the scenes[]
The Man from Another Place was played by American actor Michael J. Anderson, who was first approached by David Lynch as the eponymous character of the unproduced movie Ronnie Rocket[14] and they later worked together on Industrial Symphony No. 1 and Mulholland Drive.
The little man's identity and relationship with Mike is only vaguely alluded to in the series and film. However, the shooting script for Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me explicitly identifies the man as "Mike" in the convenience store sequence.
Due to payment disputes with Showtime,[15] Anderson did not reprise the role in the 2017 series of Twin Peaks.
An uncredited voice actor provided the arm's voice in Anderson's stead. When asked about the identity of the actor, executive producer Sabrina S. Sutherland responded, "Unfortunately, I think this question should remain a mystery and not be answered."[16] The evolution of the arm's lip movements were based upon footage of Lynch's mouth.[17]
Reverse speak[]
The strange cadence of the Man's dialogue was achieved by having Anderson speak into a recorder. This was then played in reverse, and Anderson was directed to repeat the reversed original. This “reverse-speak” was then reversed again in editing to bring it back to the normal direction. This created the strange rhythm and accentuation that set Cooper's dream world apart from the real world.
Anderson recalls that his reverse-speak was not difficult to master as, coincidentally, he had used it as a secret language with his junior high school friends. Series creator David Lynch was unaware of this when he cast Anderson in the part and had hired a trainer to help Anderson with enunciation. When he found out Anderson could already talk backward, he canceled the trainer and wrote more difficult lines of dialogue for Anderson to read.
The evolution of the arm[]
The tree was made entirely using CGI, the practical set only having an X mark on the curtains.[18] The arm and its doppelganger, referred to as the Good and Bad Tree, were created by the visual company based on Lynch's sculptures of trees and the lip sync being done using footage of Lynch's mouth.[17] It is very similar to the cover made by Lynch for "The Voice of Love" album by Julee Cruise. The cover is a picture of an experiment made by Lynch, who stuffed turkey and cheese into a head-shaped hollowed clay figure and photographed ants eating it.[19][20]
Lynch unambiguously states that the head on top is just a head, not a talking brain, a gland or a neuron.[21]
It is also reminiscent of The Grandmother, a short film he directed where a boy made a tree from which he pulled an old woman. A tree also seemed to be an important part of Eraserhead.
Appearances[]
- The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes (Mentioned only)
- Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
- Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces
- Twin Peaks – season 1
- Twin Peaks – season 2
- "Episode 9"
- "Episode 10" (Mentioned only)
- "Episode 15" (Mentioned only)
- "Episode 16"
- "Episode 23"
- "Episode 29"
- Twin Peaks – 2017
References[]
- ↑ Twin Peaks – "Episode 3"
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Twin Peaks – "Episode 2"
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Twin Peaks – "Episode 23"
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Twin Peaks – "Episode 16"
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Twin Peaks – "Episode 29"
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Twin Peaks – "Part 1"
- ↑ Twin Peaks – "Part 2"
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Twin Peaks – "Part 3"
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Twin Peaks – "Part 7"
- ↑ Twin Peaks – "Part 17"
- ↑ Twin Peaks – "Part 18"
- ↑ Late Night with Dave on February 27, 1991
- ↑ Facebook - Michael J. Anderson
- ↑ Sabrina S. Sutherland Reddit AMA
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 BUF Production notes
- ↑ MacLachlan interview for Entertainment Weekly
- ↑ On the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, 1992
- ↑ Pretty as a Picture - The Art of David Lynch (1997)
- ↑ Lynch interview about Parts 1 to 4
Notes[]
- ↑ Episode end credits identify the character as Man from Another Place, though he is never identified on-screen by this name.