It was 1992, and I was doing audio/video stuff for Dragon Con. I was running a camera on the main stage, and the footage I shot was not only recorded for resale (on VHS!) but also streamed to hotel rooms throughout the three main convention hotels (This was the convention where I saved Timothy Leary’s life, BTW… That story is here). I wish I could say it was 100% my idea, but it wasn’t – the guys running the con found out that there was a coaxial cable port on the convention floor that could be used to send a signal to the hotel’s in-house cable. I was just the guy who ran the cables and ran the “command center” my pal George Little and I set up.
The aforementioned “command center” was set up in a corner of one of the main convention rooms, used for the more important panels. We had two standard tables set up in an L-shape, with multiple prosumer grade VCRs (Panasonic SVHS was the format I was using) and an A/B editing setup. Here’s the hardware:
George ran a comic store in Birmingham at the time (the late, lamented Curious Georges) and as someone who had graduated University of Alabama with a major in Film, he LOVED movies – the more obscure, the better. He also (like me) LOVED Twin Peaks, which had recently ended. He had taped every episode, and edited out all the commercials – it was the best way to see the show, because at the time the only official release was the first season on VHS and the pilot film on laser-disc and video cassette).
Before the con, George and I hatched a plan. After the major panels of Saturday were done, we would start streaming the entire series to DragonCon viewers… Starting with the pilot movie (without the foreign cut that revealed BOB as the killer). We’d then show that cut at the end of the marathon.
We also decided to do “vignettes” in between episodes – setting up little tableaus like a set of candles, or a picture of trees, or a framed photo of Laura I had acquired (which was much coveted by people at the con, so I had to make sure not to leave it unsupervised else it be snatched away). We would linger on an image for second, or a few minutes, ending with either George or I announcing “Twin Peaks… will continue.”
All this BTW was unannounced, but soon enough people flipped on their TV and saw Peaks… and since we were in the open (the dance started in the same room as we were doing this), lots of people came over to thanks us. Many were confused, and intoxicated. Some thought it was ABC doing the marathon, others stood by and watched us live-stream some of the vignettes. It was a blast.
Alas, no video exists of this – and George and I have long lost the original VHS tapes he had made of the show. It was also (probably) very illegal what we were doing, but hey… We were young and stupid and enjoyed it. We also started hallucinating due to lack of sleep. I went four days with no sleep, and after the marathon was over I went to the bathroom to wash up. I looked at the mirror, and didn’t recognize the face that was looking at me.
Very Lynchian.
Here’s some video that someone posted of the guests and events that year… We are not in it, but I think some of the footage was shot by yours truly…