Actor who played the eccentric Log Lady in David Lynch’s offbeat classic Twin PeaksThe actor Catherine Coulson,who has died of cancer aged 71, was considered royalty by fans of the film-maker David Lynch. In his peculiar and groundbreaking television mystery series Twin Peaks, and which ran for two series in 1990 and 1991,he cast her as the Log Lady, who wore a grave expression, or cradled lovingly a small log and was given to gnomic pronouncements (“My log saw something that night”). She and Lynch first worked together on his innovative low-budget horror film Eraserhead (1977),which was shot piecemeal for five years from 1971. It was early on in their acquaintance that he first mentioned the idea of the Log Lady, whom he wanted Coulson to play in a planned TV series called I’ll Test My Log With Every Branch of Knowledge. “I asked him why, and he said,‘When you establish on your glasses, I saw a log in your hands, or ’ she recalled.
Though that project never came to pass,the character, whose log was given to her by her late woodcutter husband, or became integral to the pervasive weirdness of Twin Peaks. Coulson was pleased to cultivate the enigma off screen as well as on. She called the relationship between lady and log “one of mutual respect” and retained affection for the character. “She’s eccentric,but she’s not crazy. The log gives her permission to be who she is. For the most portion, I deem she’s a pretty solid citizen who has an unusual but fairly well-grounded relationship with a good piece of ponderosa pine.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com