“As Usual…Jack Nance”
Jack Nance as Pete Martell
As a multiple-time re-watcher of Twin Peaks, one of my goals with Back to the Double R is to give comprehensive investigations each one of the major characters in the show and the actors who brought them to life. The show is legendary for many reasons, but for me the characters are why I have always found Twin Peaks so compelling and enduring. If you own a copy of the soundtrack to Twin Peaks on CD, the booklet has pictures of 40 members of the main and extended cast—including Diane, who is represented by a picture of Agent Cooper’s tape recorder. And that is just Season One! Over the course of the 48 episodes of the show (Seasons 1, 2 and The Return), plus the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, plus some supplemental materials, I hope to touch on much of the vast cast of characters and give deep dive looks into the most compelling roles.
I’m also trying to tell a bit of a story with which character I choose to focus on with each episode we discuss. For some episodes of Twin Peaks, it will be extremely obvious who I choose. Episode 5, for example, is titled “The One-Armed Man” and happens to have a showcase scene for Al Strobel, who plays Philip Gerard, aka MIKE. Other episodes will be obvious because there is a major plot development or the character is killed off, giving us podcast hosts a nice way to look at the breadth of the character. Some characters will be focused on more than once—Agent Cooper is an obvious choice here, as is Laura Palmer herself (considering that Sheryl Lee plays multiple roles on the show also obvious), and at other points in the podcast I find that it is simply time to focus on a particular character, even if the episode we will be discussing doesn’t necessarily have a massive focus on the character we will be diving into (my focuses on Sherriff Truman, Shelly Johnson, and Norma Jennings were all decided in this fashion). But to kick us off in the pilot, I simply had to focus on Pete Martell, played by the late Jack Nance.
Many directors have an actor (and please consider this term to be gender-neutral, and if there is a proper gender-neutral term for actor, please let me know, I am open to correction) who is their personal muse. I’m thinking of the relationship Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro share here, or Spike Lee and Denzel Washington. If you’re a big film nerd like me, maybe the relationship between the late Garry Marshall and Hector Elizondo comes to mind. Marshall frequently used Elizondo in key supporting roles—he was first cast as the concierge in 1990’s (hey there’s that year again) Pretty Woman which is sort of the fairy godmother part in that Julia Roberts Cinderella story. Marshall was so taken with Elizondo that the director called the actor “his good luck charm” and Elizondo’s credit would appear with the phrase “As Usual…Hector Elizondo”. Nance, who is the lead in Lynch’s film debut, 1977’s avant-garde masterpiece Eraserhead, is both a leading man muse and a good luck charm. Entering the realm of television for the first time, Lynch wanted to bring actors he was comfortable working with and whom he could trust. Nance is joined by his Eraserhead castmates Catherine E. Coulson (they were previously married), who plays the Log Lady, and Charlotte Stewart, who plays Betty Briggs, in the cast of Twin Peaks.
If can be argued that starting the journey of a Twin Peaks rewatch is taking a descent into Hell, and Pete Martell is our Virgil opening the gates. While I misremembered the detail about Pete being the first character we see in Twin Peaks (it is actually Josie Packard, as played by Joan Chen), but Pete is who discovers the body of Laura Palmer washed up on the riverbank along the Blue Pine Lodge. He utters the line “She’s dead…wrapped in plastic” to Sheriff Truman over the phone and off we go. My co-host Damon noted that Pete is the most likeable character in Twin Peaks, and to start the journey, we need to know who our friends are. Pete Martell is our first friend in the town of Twin Peaks, and as the show progresses Pete is steadfast in his friendship. He may be the one character without an agenda, and thus Pete is the one character who can work in a scene with any other on the show. Pete can fit right in with Cooper and Truman over coffee (after he percolates a batch without a fish of course), get henpecked and browbeaten by his imperious wife Catherine (a fantastic in-joke from Lynch here giving Piper Laurie’s character the same name as Nance’s ex-wife), who calls him a poodle. Pete can even crack the veil of mystery Josie always wears, coaxing out genuine humanity from a character who wears many faces. Pete is also hugely enjoyable when he is by himself, muttering “two by fours and four by eights” or drinking milk in an oversized beer stein. Pete also reminds me of my grandfather, who lived in Washington state for the last 40 years of his life and enjoyed many of the same things Pete did—fishing, a warm flannel, a love of the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest. He is a character I think many viewers will find familiar and loveable.
If you’re familiar with role-playing games, I am going to place each character from Twin Peaks along the traditional nine sections of the Dungeons & Dragons character alignment grid. I am going to classify Pete Martell as True Neutral, which defined as being “neutral on both axes and tends not to feel strongly towards any alignment, or actively seeks their balance.” Pete, while not a chameleon, can move easily among the good and evil characters and maintains positive relationships with all the characters. This manner of neutrality is what makes Pete an endearing and enduring character and a natural guide to introduce us to this world.
Tragically, Jack Nance passed away on December 30th, 1996. Perhaps unsurprisingly for someone so strongly associated with David Lynch, Nance died under mysterious circumstances. The day before he passed, Nance showed up to a lunch with friends with a large, crescent shaped bruise under his eye. When pressed, Nance told his friends he was in a fight with transient individuals at a Winchell’s donut shop and said, “I guess I got what I deserved.” Nance left the lunch with a headache, and the next day he was found dead on the floor of his Pasadena apartment. The bruise was revealed to be a subdural hematoma and proved fatal. Nance himself struggled with alcohol addiction (his autopsy revealed his BAC at 0.24%, three times above the legal limit in most of the country) and was known to be a bit of a raconteur with a short temper. Nance’s second marriage was to the adult film actress Kelly Jean Van Dyke (daughter of Jerry Van Dyke and niece to Dick). It lasted seven months from May to November 1991 and ended with Van Dyke’s suicide by hanging. While Pete is a man at peace with himself, Jack Nance struggled with personal demons.
Nevertheless, Jack Nance is a classic actor of cult cinema and his Pete Martell is a mixture of oddness and bemusement that makes the character one Twin Peaks’ most beloved.
