A Man Who Was By Fire Engulfed: An Alternate Murder Scene
This post focuses on there once having been a different version of the train car murder scene in the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. It is meant to accompany my piece in issue #15 of The Blue Rose Magazine. You can find the Kindle copy of the magazine here and the physical copy here.
Please bear with me and forgive the sometimes unavoidable disturbing images included in this post.
The August 8th, 1991 draft of the Fire Walk With Me script, paired with the appearance of Leland's blood-stained shirt in the film suggests there was once more than we see in the final cut.
From the Fire Walk With Me script,
222. EXT. WOODS - NIGHT
Gerard tearing thru the woods. The wind comes up carrying with it
cries and screams and the sounds of BOB.
223. INT. TRAIN CAR - NIGHT
Leland hoists Laura up so that she hovers facing the floor a foot
off the ground. He places a mirror on the floor directly under her
face.
IN THE MIRROR
Laura sees herself turn into Bob. Leland screams into space.
LELAND
DON'T MAKE ME DO IT.
LAURA
NO, YOU HAVE TO KILL ME.
LELAND
I always thought you knew it was me.
LAURA
(into Bob in the mirror)
NO! YOU CAN'T HAVE ME.
(to Leland)
KILL ME.
224. EXT. TRAIN CAR - NIGHT
Gerard arrives outside. He bangs on the train door.
GERARD
LET ME IN. LET ME IN.
The door opens a little bit because Ronette is pushing it with her
feet. Gerard reaches up to help her when suddenly she flies over
his head having been hit.
Ronette hits the ground, her unconscious head bent back at an odd
angle.
ECU: GERARD
He listens to the sounds of murder inside the train car.
225. INSIDE THE TRAIN CAR
Laura screaming
Knife entering flesh.
Bob screaming.
Bloody knife thru the air.
Leland screaming.
226. EXT. TRAIN CAR
ECU: GERARD
Gerard leans in to take a look and steps back laughing. he yells out
for Bob to hear.
GERARD (continued)
THAT'S HIS OWN DAUGHTER YOU'RE
KILLING.
He continues to laugh and runs away from the train car.
A few moments later Leland stumbles out of the car carrying the body
of Laura Palmer wrapped in a plastic shroud. Leland's shirt is puffed
out - a bloody towel inside.
227. EXT. WOODS/RIVER - NIGHT
Leland/Bob lowers the plastic shrouded Laura into the river.
228. EXT. GLASTONBURY GROVE - NIGHT
Leland stumbles to the centre of Glastonbury Grove and stops. A
frightening wind carries haunting music. He digs into his pockets
for the pages torn from Laura's secret diary. he tosses them and
the bloody towel to the wind.
He goes to the centre of the circle of the twelve sycamore trees.
The red curtains appear and he passes between them entering the red
Room.
229. INT. THE RED ROOM
It is not empty. Gerard is just leaving the other side of the room.
LELAND walks thru the Red Room after him. He walks down a corridor
and _into_the_Red_Room_again_.
There on the other side of the room Leland sees Gerard and the Man
From Another Place sitting side by side in a chair facing him.
Leland stops when he sees them. He divides. One half becomes Bob -
opaque. The other half floats up and becomes Leland - transparent.
ON BOB
He reaches up and grabs Leland's wound.
ECU - LELAND'S WOUND
Bob heals Leland's wound.
ON THE SCENE.
Gerard and the Man From Another Place speak in unison.
GERARD/THE MAN FROM
ANOTHER PLACE
(subtitled)
(in unison)
Bob, you're not going home without me. I
want all my garmonbozia. (corn)
- BOB is said to heal Leland's wound in the script. In the film, we only see him seemingly remove the blood from Leland's shirt. The source of blood is never stated. The script has BOB heal Leland before Mike/Gerard asks for garmonbozia. Whereas in the film, the blood is removed only after it is demanded.
- Note that in the opening description, the name BOB is written in all capitals as it is in The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer. It is written this way more than once in the script.
- It's unclear how Gerard's line regarding BOB not returning home without him pertains to BOB healing Leland.
- Twice Leland is described as stumbling, aiding my conclusion.
- In my opinion, the dialogue in the script between Laura and Leland almost seems broken, as though words have been removed or added. Leland's line of, "I always thought you knew it was me," doesn't seem to connect with what is said by Laura, "NO, YOU HAVE TO KILL ME. NO! YOU CAN'T HAVE ME." Leland's line is included in the final cut though the scene is different. We hear Leland's "Don't make me do this!" without seeing him, which may indicate the audio is from an alternative scene with the visuals changed. While reading scripts for the original series, there are moments when the text stands out as having been added or altered. This feels the same.
- "Leland's shirt is puffed out - a bloody towel inside." Leland is later said to have thrown the towel to the wind before entering the circle of sycamore trees. Yet, his appearance in the lodge almost denotes the presence of a towel. The bulk of his shirt seems unnatural.
Evidence Within the Film 
Leland holding a knife aloft.
The knife appears to have a serrated blade.
Leland's cropped face. We see him making stabbing motions four times throughout this sequence, but BOB is only seen once and from a different angle. It seems odd that Leland's face is cropped while BOB is seen clearly -- unless it is symbolic. Note that the knife in Leland's hands no longer appears to have a serrated blade.
Blood on Leland's shirt after the murder. As you can see from the previous images, Leland's shirt was clean.
Blood is on his shirt as Leland exits the train car and when he is in the Black Lodge. Note that when BOB/Leland leaves the train car, he is not wearing the surgical gloves he wore earlier.
An Extension on my Piece in The Blue Rose Magazine,
In the book The Passion of David Lynch, author Martha P. Nochimon writes the following in her notes for Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me:
Considering this, perhaps Cooper's wound in the Black Lodge is the wound he received from Windom Earle. It the same as reopened as he relives the day he and Caroline were stabbed. The wound he received from Windom was the result of love. The blood on Annie's dress is perhaps from Caroline's wound and now possibly a symbolic wound of her own. The blood is on both accounts tied to love through Caroline and Annie. Perhaps the blood from Leland's wound is also a result of love if it resulted as theorized.
Information From Books, Press Kits, etc.
Last year, after speaking to Mr. Wise, attempts were made to find writings concerning the final scenes of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. The searches were limited, having little time online. Included are quotes that seem to support the theory that the train car scene was once significantly different than its final version.
Underlined are points of focus from the Fire Walk With Me Official Shooting Diary as written by Charlotte Fraisse. Of the murder scene:
"The scene is physically very difficult. Laura lies at a slant on her belly, over a mirror handed by Leland, in which his and Bob's faces reflect themselves one after the other. Seeing her image in the mirror, then the two men's faces (lit with white intermitting light very harsh on the eyes), Laura is tormented through several takes. Sheryl unleashes a tremendous energy in this scene. What a transformation from the nice girl player of the beginning to the great actress she has become!"
Aside from one brief glimpse of Laura on the floor, we do not see Sheryl Lee's performance in full. The images of both Leland and Laura are cropped, for the most part, obscuring their entire faces.
Strangely, the script to Twin Peaks episode eight (2.001, May the Giant Be With You) has Laura kneeling in Ronette's memories.
We do not see Leland and BOB's faces interchange in the mirror, as described in the shooting diary. Leland and BOB are shown as one as they stand in the place of one another. One turns into the other and back. Interestingly, Frank Silva, in an interview with Wrapped in Plastic Magazine, issue #8, said the following,
"Those were the most horrific scenes for me to do, to play those scenes looking at myself. It was really bizarre. That scene in Fire Walk With Me in the train car, when I turn into Laura when she's looking in the mirror - when I did that scene I went off into another plane."
Note that Mr. Silva said, "When I turn into Laura." He plainly states BOB turns into Laura, not the other way around. The finished film has Laura seeing herself turn into BOB. Was there once more to this? Does it correspond with a previous post discussing the possibility of BOB having blue eyes in the season two premiere? One can also assume his words are a mistake though we can't know.
In the same interview, Mr. Silva says the following when asked about deleted scenes,
"The killing scene basically had a lot more. We did the entire killing scene like the Maddy scene, where Ray had to do it and then I did it. I think [David] wanted to make it more explicit that Bob was possessing Leland; he wanted to see more of Leland doing it rather than Bob doing it. So in that stuff I'm just there every now and then."
Returning to Frasses' shooting diary, we see a blinding light accompany Leland in one frame. 
There isn't another scene with as intense lighting save for one frame of Laura. (Below.) The white light of Leland seems to be of a different intensity than the white-gold light of Laura. Is the shot of Leland from an earlier take?
The light is darker when we see BOB with his arms raised, but it still fills the room. (Below)
Laura lying "at a slant on her belly" remains unseen. We can see Laura's arms are bound in the film, but we can't necessarily tell if she is on her stomach. One almost assumes she is on her knees.
The image below is the only time we truly see Laura on her belly in the train car sequence, as mentioned in the Shooting Diary. Laura is on her stomach, but she is not resting at a slant, so even at that, it is not a perfect match with the description.
Due to the cost of a used copy of John Thorne's The Essential Wrapped in Plastic, the contents of the book eluded my knowledge until late 2020. After having reached the conclusion that the ending of Fire Walk With Me was changed, I am grateful John Thorne documented a similar view in his essay, The Realization of Laura Palmer.
From the essay,
"Lynch probably shot the scene the way it was scripted, assuming that Laura's explicit decision to end her life was a sufficient conclusion to her story (and, of course, one that perfectly fit with the facts as described in the series.) Once it was shot, however, Lynch saw that such an ending was still weak and unsatisfactory."
Further on, discussing the script that has Laura asking Leland to kill her, Mr. Thorne writes,
"The decision is hers, but the crucial act is Leland's; she is dependent on what he does. Leland takes center stage in this important final sequence as he, now freed from Bob, performs the ugly but necessary act of murder. As a result, Leland frees Laura from possession. Further, he "re-sacrifices" himself to Bob as a consequence of Laura's escape. Scripted, the scene is essentially about Leland, not Laura."
I feel as though the scene may have granted Leland and Laura equal focus. As the film stands now, the scene features Laura, but she is in agony. Leland/BOB is primarily our focus as they enter the Black Lodge. We can't know what resulted from Laura taking the ring. We can theorize, but we don't know for certain.
This post by Steven Miller of Twin Peaks Blog covers a few of the insert scenes, including the Owl Cave Ring rolling into the train car, scheduled to be filmed at a later date. Another post by Mr. Miller on this topic.
A change to the murder scene is also mentioned in Andreas Halskov's TV Peaks: Twin Peaks and Modern Television Drama.
From the book, p. 169,
"Like Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart, Fire Walk with Me was too long, according to the producers and the chief at Cannes, and David Lynch was told to cut his movie down and to change the morbid ending where Laura is killed in a train car. According to sound designer Douglas Murray,
Giles Jacob was the chief of the film festival at Cannes for many years, and we were working on the film, we were mixing it, and we were getting it ready for the festival. They had accepted the film on principle for competition, but hadn't seen it. So he came to visit us, and he objected to the film. He thought it was too long, but the main thing is the scene where Leland kills Laura. We had done an amazing sound treatment on that. We had thunderblasts, when you see the lights, and we had voices, and we had lots of sounds of the boxcar and the stabbing going into her heart repeatedly. It was very intense. Giles Jacob thought that it was too much, and he convinced David Lynch that it should be more poetic, so David went away from that scene somewhat rattled, and so he took it to heart and made adjustments accordingly. The scene in the boxcar ended up being all music.
I was so disappointed that all of our work was not used, but the scene is very strong. It was a very powerful and experimental thing we had done, but in the wrong way. It was powerfully horrific, but in the end it becomes kind of a release for Laura. Riccardo Muti's music, which they were lucky to be allowed to use, changed the whole scene. The music was so celestial, and the ending ended up being so beautiful. The other thing Giles Jacob complained about was all of the subplots, and many of them got taken out."
You can read more of Mr. Halskov's interview with Douglas Murray here.
Mr. Murray also tells this story a little differently in this interview.
The Angelo Badalamenti track Circumference of a Circle, released through the Twin Peaks Archive collection, is played in fragments from 2:00:13 to 2:06:40 in the film. It begins as we see Leland/BOB look in the window of Jacques' cabin and plays intermittently until Leland/BOB enters the Red Room. The track is eleven minutes and eleven seconds - yet the sequence in the film is under seven minutes.
The track plays from 2:00:13 to 2:00:44 before it becomes mixed with another song, possibly Teresa's Autopsy. At 2:01:06 it has dissolved into the background in favor of another track I am not capable of identifying without comparison - it is possibly the previous track as mentioned. At 2:01:30, Circumference of a Circle is no longer heard. Though we briefly hear the ceiling fan as Leland/BOB approaches Laura. It returns inside the train car at 2:02:23 and mixed with the sound of the ceiling fan at 2:02:38 and Jeffries at 2:02:41. The train car is filled with a light peaceful sound, a softness like the reaches of space, with Ronette's angel at 2:03:45 until 2:03:57. We return to the heavy sound of the fan, Jeffries and Circumference of a Circle. We hear only the fan and Jeffries as Gerard/Mike begs to be let in, the ring appears and Ronette is thrown from the train car from 2:04:08 to 2:04:40. 2:04:41 until 2:05:56. Circumference of a Circle resumes from 2:05:56 to 2:06:40. I state the time to note how little of Circumference of a Circle is used - leading me to wonder if what we hear may have been the backing to scenes that were removed. The track Jacques' Cabin - The Train Car is not a perfect match for what is heard in the film.
In the end, the general public will more than likely never see the remaining deleted or alternate scenes from Fire Walk With Me. In Scott Ryan's Fire Walk With Me: Your Laura Disappeared, Mary Sweeney, the film's editor, revealed that the original running time of the film was five and a half-hours.
Links to related blog posts:
Indications of Laura's Partial Possession.
Proof that Sheryl Lee wore the Owl Cave Ring
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