title: Green Day

text: On April 13, 2019, for Record Store Day, the band released their Woodstock 1994 performance on vinyl for the first time. It contains all 9 songs they played live, as well as audio of the ensuing mud fight. On September 10, 2019, the band announced the Hella Mega Tour with Fall Out Boy and Weezer as headliners alongside themselves, with The Interrupters as the opening act. They also released the single, "Father of All..." off their thirteenth album, "Father of All Motherfuckers". The same day, in an interview with KROQ, Armstrong announced the band would be parting ways with Reprise after the album's release, as they were off their contract with Warner. On September 30, 2019, Green Day signed a two-year agreement with the National Hockey League (NHL). The album's second single, "Fire, Ready, Aim", was released on October 9, 2019. The album's third single, "Oh Yeah!", was released on January 16, 2020. The album was released on February 7, 2020. The album's fourth single, "Meet Me on the Roof", was released on the same day as the album.


title: Green Day

text: On April 6, 2020, Armstrong revealed that he had written six songs intending to record new music with the band once the COVID-19 pandemic had passed. On May 21, 2020, the band released a cover of Blondie's "Dreaming".


title: Green Day

text: On October 30, 2020, the band's secret side project, The Network, teased upcoming activity with a video entitled "The Prophecy" and mentioned their upcoming sequel album. Then on November 2, 2020, the Network released a music video for their first song in 17 years, named "Ivankkka Is a Nazi". After a couple of weeks of small hints on social media, as well as Green Day claiming they were not The Network, the band released an EP on November 20, 2020, titled "Trans Am". On December 4, 2020, The Network released their second album "".


title: Green Day

text: In February 2021, Green Day announced a single, titled "Here Comes the Shock", which was later released on February 21, 2021. The band would release a remastered version of "Insomniac" in March for the belated 25th anniversary of the album's release, with bonus live tracks. On May 17, 2021, Green Day released the single "Pollyanna". Following this, on November 5, 2021, the band released the single "Holy Toledo!".


title: Green Day

text: "BBC Sessions", the fourth live album by Green Day, was released on December 10, 2021. Eight days later, they put out a teaser video with the captions "RAK Studios. London, England. Green Day. 1972". On October 26, 2022, Green Day was announced as a headliner for the fifth annual Innings Festival in Arizona.


title: Green Day

text: Green Day's sound is often compared to first wave American and British punk rock bands such as the Ramones, Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Dickies, and Buzzcocks. Stylistically, several publications have characterized as punk rock, skate punk, alternative rock, and power pop. Critics have disputed the qualification of the band as power pop. The band has casually explored other musical styles including post-punk and pop rock with "21st Century Breakdown", and garage rock on "¡Dos!" and "Father of All..". Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic described Green Day as "punk revivalists who recharged the energy of speedy, catchy three-chord punk-pop songs." Among the labels of the band by critics, members Billie Joe Armstrong and Tre Cool have stated in interviews with "Livewire" and "Kerrang!" that Green Day is just a punk rock band.


title: Green Day

text: While Armstrong is the band's primary songwriter, he looks to the other band members for organizational help. Billie Joe Armstrong has mentioned that some of his biggest influences are seminal hardcore punk Hüsker Dü and the Replacements, and that their influence is particularly noted in the band's chord changes in songs. Green Day has covered Hüsker Dü's "Don't Want to Know If You Are Lonely" as a B-side to the "Warning" single, and the character "Mr. Whirly" in the group's song "Misery" is a reference to the Replacements song of the same name.


title: Green Day

text: Among other influences, Green Day have also cited power pop/hard rock bands the Kinks, the Who, and Cheap Trick. English rock musician Noel Gallagher of Oasis complained about the band semi-jokingly, claiming that the band had ripped off his song "Wonderwall" with its song "Boulevard of Broken Dreams". Green Day has cited Operation Ivy as a big influence. In August 1996, Billie Joe Armstrong told "Guitar World" he "can remember a few different instances" of when he first discovered punk rock: "There were these two guys who introduced me to things like D.O.A. and the Dead Kennedys. Then, in the seventh grade, there was a girl at school who would bring in records like T.S.O.L. and say, 'Here, listen to this.'" Armstrong said he thinks he "really started getting into" punk rock "in 1987 with "Turn It Around!", a double seven-inch compilation record put out by [punk fanzine] "Maximumrocknroll"." Armstrong cited "Turn It Around!" as an influence, calling it "a pretty big record" for him. Armstrong would cite fellow East Bay punk bands Operation Ivy and Crimpshrine as influences. Tré Cool as stated that the band is influenced by music that they didn't like, he stated artists like Hall & Oates, Cyndi Lauper and other 1980s music.


title: Green Day

text: Although Green Day has been compared to the Buzzcocks, the Ramones and the Clash, Mike Dirnt said he had never heard the Buzzcocks when Green Day began. Dirnt said: "First off, you can't sound like any of those bands. And secondly, those are probably the last ones in my record collection." Armstrong responded to Dirnt, saying: "Mine too. Those are all bands I got into later." The Dickies is another band Green Day has been compared to. Dirnt said he "never owned a Dickies album, although" he "did see" the Dickies live "around the time of" "Kerplunk!". Dirnt said "by that time, we'd played so many shows it had no bearing." Armstrong referred to the Dickies as "just another Ramones rip-off". Although in August 1996, Armstrong said bands like the Ramones are bands he listened to later, in June 2010, Armstrong cited the Ramones as an influence. He also said his "range of favorite songwriters goes anywhere from the Sex Pistols to Lennon–McCartney. During the "American Idiot" and "21st Century Breakdown" era of Green Day, the band was influenced by The Who, U2, Motown albums, and musicals such as "Grease".


title: Green Day

text: The band's 1991 album "Kerplunk" is one of the best-selling independent albums of all time, selling over 4.5 million copies worldwide. It was also listed in 100 greatest indie albums by Blender in 2007.


title: Green Day

text: Green Day is credited (alongside Bad Religion, The Offspring, Social Distortion, and Rancid) with popularizing mainstream interest in punk rock in the United States, particularly with the album "Dookie", which was cited by Fuse as the most important pop-punk album of all time, the best alternative album of 1994 by "Rolling Stone", and as one of the best punk rock albums of all time by "Rolling Stone", "Kerrang!", "Revolver", and "LA Weekly". It was also placed on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "Definitive 200" list of 200 classic albums. Both "Dookie" and "American Idiot" appeared on "Rolling Stone"s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In 2011, they were voted best punk rock band of all time by "Rolling Stone". Diffuser.fm listed "Dookie" as the greatest album of the 90s.


title: Green Day

text: Green Day has sold more than 90 million records worldwide making them one of the highest-selling artists of all time. The group has been nominated for 20 Grammy awards and has won five of them with Best Alternative Album for "Dookie", Best Rock Album for "American Idiot" and "21st Century Breakdown", Record of the Year for "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", and Best Musical Show Album for "".


title: Green Day

text: In 2010, a stage adaptation of "American Idiot" debuted on Broadway. The musical was nominated for three Tony Awards: The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in April 2015, their first year of eligibility.


title: Green Day

text: The band has been cited as an influence by a variety of artists, including Avril Lavigne, Fall Out Boy, Blink-182, Lady Gaga, Wavves, Fidlar, Tegan and Sara, Bowling for Soup and Sum 41.


title: Green Day

text: Since 1991, members of the band have branched out past Green Day, starting other projects with various musicians. Notable projects related to Green Day include Billie Joe Armstrong's Pinhead Gunpowder with Jason White and The Longshot with Jeff Matika, The Frustrators with Mike Dirnt, and The Network, a collaboration between Green Day and friends in which all members play under fake stage names. Green Day has also released an album titled "Stop Drop and Roll!!!" on May 20, 2008, under the name Foxboro Hot Tubs, which the band uses to book secret shows. In late December 2011, Armstrong formed a family band called The Boo which recorded a one-off Christmas record for their friends and family making a few copies available in a local store. Since January 2018, Armstrong, Dirnt and White have played in the band The Coverups along with Green Day audio engineer Chris Dugan and tour manager Bill Schneider. The band sporadically performs one-off shows, usually in small clubs, and cover the songs of classic rock and alternative rock bands such as Cheap Trick, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Clash, and Nirvana.


title: Green Day

text: In September 2006, Green Day collaborated with U2 and producer Rick Rubin to record a cover of the song "The Saints Are Coming", originally recorded by the Skids, with an accompanying video. The song was recorded to benefit Music Rising, an organization to help raise money for musicians' instruments lost during Hurricane Katrina, and to bring awareness on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the disaster. In December 2006, Green Day and NRDC opened a web site in partnership to raise awareness on America's dependency on oil.


title: Green Day

text: Green Day released a cover of the John Lennon song "Working Class Hero", which was featured on the album "". The band performed the song on the season finale of "American Idol". The song was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2008 but lost to The White Stripes' "Icky Thump". That summer, the band appeared in a cameo role in "The Simpsons Movie", where the band performs the show's theme song; Green Day's version was released as a single on July 23, 2007.


title: Green Day

text: In 2009, the band collaborated with theater director Michael Mayer to adapt the group's rock opera "American Idiot" into a one-act stage musical that premiered at the Berkeley Rep on September 15, 2009. The show then moved to Broadway on April 20, 2010. The reviews of "American Idiot: The Musical" have been positive to mixed. Charles Isherwood of "The New York Times" wrote an enthusiastic review for the Broadway production. He called the show "a pulsating portrait of wasted youth that invokes all the standard genre conventions ... only to transcend them through the power of its music and the artistry of its execution, the show is as invigorating and ultimately as moving as anything I've seen on Broadway this season. Or maybe for a few seasons past." Jed Gottlieb of the "Boston Herald" enjoyed the premise of the show but found that "the music and message suffer in a setting where the audience is politely, soberly seated".


title: Green Day

text: Michael Kuchiwara of the Associated Press found the show to be "visually striking [and] musically adventurous", but noted that "the show has the barest wisp of a story and minimal character development". Paul Kolnik in "USA Today" enjoyed the contradiction that Green Day's "massively popular, starkly disenchanted album ... would be the feel-good musical of the season". "Time" magazine's Richard Zoglin opined that the score "is as pure a specimen of contemporary punk rock as Broadway has yet encountered, [yet] there's enough variety. ... Where the show falls short is as a fully developed narrative." He concluded that ""American Idiot", despite its earnest huffing and puffing, remains little more than an annotated rock concert. ... Still, [it] deserves at least two cheers—for its irresistible musical energy and for opening fresh vistas for that odd couple, rock and Broadway." Peter Travers from "Rolling Stone", in his review of "American Idiot", wrote "Though "American Idiot" carries echoes of such rock musicals as "Tommy", "Hair", "Rent" and "Spring Awakening", it cuts its own path to the heart. You won't know what hit you. "American Idiot" knows no limits—it's a global knockout." The musical has been nominated for three Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Scenic Design. It was also nominated for several Drama Desk Awards and Outer Critics Circle Awards.


title: Green Day

text: In October 2009, a Green Day art project was exhibited at StolenSpace Gallery in London. The exhibition showed artworks created for each of the songs on "21st Century Breakdown", was supported by the band, and led by the group's manager Pat Magnarella. He explained in an interview that "[Artists are] basically like rock bands. Most are creating their art, but don't know how to promote it." For Billie Joe Armstrong, "Many of the artists... show their work on the street, and we feel a strong connection to that type of creative expression."


title: Green Day

text: On April 13, 2011, a film version of "American Idiot" was confirmed. Michael Mayer, director of the Broadway musical, will be directing the film. It will be produced by Green Day, Pat Magnarella (Green Day's manager who also produced "Bullet in a Bible", "Awesome as Fuck", and "Heart Like a Hand Grenade"), Playtone (Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman) and Tom Hulce. However, in February 2020, Billie Joe Armstrong revealed to "NME" that plans for a film adaptation of the stage musical had been "pretty much scrapped", without providing any more details as to the reason.


title: Green Day

text: On January 23, 2013, it was announced that a documentary showing Armstrong's journey from punk rock to Broadway was to be released. Called "Broadway Idiot" and showing a lot of behind-the-scenes of the "American Idiot" musical production, the movie was directed by Doug Hamilton, veteran television journalist for CBS News' "60 Minutes" and PBS documentaries such as "Nova", "Frontline" and "American Masters". A trailer was released on January 30, 2013. The documentary premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival on March 15, 2013.


title: Green Day

text: Green Day served as executive producers of "" (2017), an extensive documentary film about the San Francisco Bay area punk scene from the late 1970s to the 1990s.


title: Green Day

text: Green Day has generated controversy over whether their musical style and major-label status constitutes "true punk". In reaction to both the style of music and the background of the band, John Lydon, former frontman of the 1970s punk band the Sex Pistols commented, "So there we are fending off all that and it pisses me off that years later a wank outfit like Green Day hop in and nick all that and attach it to themselves. They didn't earn their wings to do that and if they were true punk they wouldn't look anything like they do." However, others in the punk rock scene would come to the defense of the band on their punk status. Bad Religion lead guitarist Brett Gurewitz and founder of the independent punk label Epitaph Records would state, "They [Green Day] are a punk band, but you know, punk is the legacy of rock and roll, and Green Day are the biggest band in the genre."


title: Green Day

text: Armstrong has discussed the group's status of being a punk band on a major record label, saying, "Sometimes I think we've become redundant because we're this big band now; we've made a lot of money—we're not punk rock anymore. But then I think about it and just say, 'You can take us out of a punk rock environment, but you can't take the punk rock out of us.'" In 2021, Armstrong condemned the band's labeling as "pop-punk" by critics in a Vulture magazine interview, stating, "I never really liked that term (pop punk), it turned into sort of a genre. I never thought of myself as a pop artist. I’ve always been left of center. To say you're a pop-punker … it never sat well with me." Armstrong acknowledged the band's more melodic punk style compared to other bands from the Bay Area scene it emerged from, but also brought up the band's performance alongside East Bay hardcore bands like Neurosis, Engage, Spitboy, Blatz, and Filth.


title: Green Day

text: On September 21, 2012, while Green Day was performing at the iHeartRadio music festival, Armstrong stopped while performing "Basket Case", because he believed the group's time was being shortened, possibly to extend R&B artist Usher's performance. Angered, Armstrong began ranting while a screen in the rear of the audience was labeled "1 Minutes Left", saying "You're gonna give me one fucking minute? You've gotta be fucking kidding me!" He also told the crowd he "was not Justin Bieber" and labeled the festival as a "joke". When the screen went blank, Armstrong smashed his guitar, while bassist Mike Dirnt smashed his bass. Armstrong then gave the finger, and declared that Green Day would be back before throwing his microphone down and walking off the stage. Two days later, the band's representative apologized for the incident on the group's behalf stating that "Green Day would like everyone to know that their set was not cut short by Clear Channel and to apologize to those they offended at the iHeartRadio Festival in Las Vegas" also adding that Armstrong would be headed to rehab, for abuse of alcohol and prescription pills. However, Dirnt would later say in an interview with "Rolling Stone" that he agreed with what Armstrong meant by his rant. The band later made amends with the company and played an album release party for their 2016 release, "Revolution Radio". They also returned to the festival in 2019 supporting the album "Father of All Motherfuckers".


title: Green Day

text: On July 7, 2017, about 20 minutes before Green Day headlined Mad Cool, a festival in Madrid, an acrobat fell about from a cage above the stage and died. Some fans were upset at the band and festival organizers for continuing the show, which was attended by about 35,000 people. On their website, Armstrong said the band did not know about the accident before their set, and likely would not have played if they had.


title: Tommy Lee Jones

text: Tommy Lee Jones (born September 15, 1946) is an American actor and film director. He has received four Academy Award nominations, winning Best Supporting Actor for his performance as U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard in the 1993 thriller film "The Fugitive".


title: Tommy Lee Jones

text: His other notable starring roles include Texas Ranger Woodrow F. Call in the television miniseries "Lonesome Dove", Agent K in the "Men in Black" film series, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in "No Country for Old Men", Hank Deerfield in "In the Valley of Elah", the villain Two-Face in "Batman Forever", Mike Roark in the disaster film "Volcano", terrorist William "Bill" Strannix in "Under Siege", Texas Ranger Roland Sharp in "Man of the House", rancher Pete Perkins in "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada" (which he also directed), Colonel Chester Phillips in "", CIA Director Robert Dewey in "Jason Bourne", and Warden Dwight McClusky in "Natural Born Killers". He most recently appeared in the science fiction film "Ad Astra" in 2019 and in the comedy "The Comeback Trail" in 2020.


title: Tommy Lee Jones

text: Jones has also portrayed historical figures such as businessman Howard Hughes in "The Amazing Howard Hughes", Radical Republican Congressman Thaddeus Stevens in "Lincoln", executed murderer Gary Gilmore in "The Executioner's Song", U.S. Army General Douglas MacArthur in "Emperor", businessman Clay Shaw, the only person prosecuted in connection with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in "JFK", Oliver Vanetta "Doolittle" Lynn, in "Coal Miner's Daughter", and baseball player Ty Cobb in "Cobb".


title: Tommy Lee Jones

text: Jones was born on September 15, 1946, in San Saba, Texas. His mother, Lucille Marie (; 1928–2013), was a police officer, school teacher, and beauty shop owner, and his father, Clyde C. Jones (1926–1986), was a cowboy and oil field worker. The two were married and divorced twice. He has said that he is of part Cherokee descent. He was raised in Midland, Texas, and attended the then-named Robert E. Lee High School.


title: Tommy Lee Jones

text: Jones soon moved to Dallas and graduated from the St. Mark's School of Texas in 1965, which he attended on scholarship.


title: Tommy Lee Jones

text: He attended Harvard College on need-based aid; his roommate was future Vice President Al Gore. As an upperclassman, he lived in Dunster House with roommates Gore and Bob Somerby, who later became editor of the media criticism site The Daily Howler. Jones graduated "cum laude" with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English in 1969; his senior thesis was on "the mechanics of Catholicism" in the works of Flannery O'Connor. At Harvard, he was a pupil of dramatist Robert Chapman.


title: Tommy Lee Jones

text: Jones played guard at Harvard from 1965 to 1968. He was a member of Harvard's undefeated 1968 football team. He was named as a first-team All-Ivy League selection, and played in the 1968 Game. The game featured a memorable and last-minute Harvard 16-point comeback to tie Yale. He recounted his memory of "the most famous football game in Ivy League history" in the documentary "Harvard Beats Yale 29–29".


title: Tommy Lee Jones

text: Jones moved to New York to become an actor, making his Broadway debut in 1969's "A Patriot for Me" in a number of supporting roles. In 1970, he landed his first film role, coincidentally playing a Harvard student in "Love Story" (Erich Segal, the author of "Love Story", said that he based the lead character of Oliver on aspects of two undergraduate roommates he knew while on a sabbatical at Harvard, Jones and Al Gore).


title: Tommy Lee Jones

text: In early 1971, he returned to Broadway in Abe Burrows' "Four on a Garden" where he shared the stage with Carol Channing and Sid Caesar. Between 1971 and 1975 he portrayed Dr. Mark Toland on the ABC soap opera "One Life to Live". He returned to the stage for a short-lived 1974 production of "Ulysses in Nighttown", an adaptation of one episode from James Joyce's novel "Ulysses", playing Stephen Dedalus opposite Zero Mostel's Leopold Bloom and directed by Burgess Meredith. It was followed by the acclaimed TV movie "The Amazing Howard Hughes", where he played the lead role.


title: Tommy Lee Jones

text: In films, he played a hunted escaped convict in "Jackson County Jail" (1976); a Vietnam veteran in "Rolling Thunder" (1977); an automobile mogul, co-starring with Laurence Olivier, in the Harold Robbins drama "The Betsy"; and a police detective opposite Faye Dunaway in the 1978 thriller "Eyes of Laura Mars".


title: Tommy Lee Jones

text: In 1980, Jones earned his first Golden Globe nomination for his portrayal of country singer Loretta Lynn's husband, Doolittle "Mooney" Lynn, in "Coal Miner's Daughter". In 1981, he played a drifter opposite Sally Field in "Back Roads", a comedy that received middling reviews.


title: Tommy Lee Jones

text: In 1983, he received an Emmy for Best Actor for his performance as murderer Gary Gilmore in a TV adaptation of Norman Mailer's "The Executioner's Song". The same year, he starred in a pirate adventure, "Nate and Hayes", playing pirate captain Bully Hayes.


title: Tommy Lee Jones

text: In 1989, he earned another Emmy nomination for his portrayal of Texas Ranger Woodrow F. Call in the acclaimed television mini-series "Lonesome Dove", based on the best-seller by Larry McMurtry.


title: Tommy Lee Jones

text: In the 1990s, Jones was featured in blockbuster films such as "JFK" co-starring Kevin Costner, "The Fugitive" co-starring Harrison Ford, "Batman Forever" co-starring Val Kilmer, "Volcano" co-starring Anne Heche, and "Men in Black" with Will Smith. His performance as Deputy U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard in "The Fugitive" received broad acclaim and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and a sequel. When he accepted his Oscar, his head was shaved for his role in the film "Cobb," which he made light of in his speech: "The only thing a man can say at a time like this is 'I am not really bald'. Actually I'm lucky to be working".


title: Tommy Lee Jones

text: Among his other well-known performances during the 1990s were those of the accused conspirator Clay Shaw/Clay Bertrand in the 1991 film "JFK" (which earned him another Oscar nomination), as a terrorist who hijacks a U.S. Navy battleship in "Under Siege" and as a maximum-security prison warden who's in way over his head in "Natural Born Killers". He also played the role of "Reverend" Roy Foltrigg in the 1994 film "The Client".


title: Tommy Lee Jones

text: Jones co-starred with director Clint Eastwood as astronauts in the 2000 film "Space Cowboys", in which both played retired pilots and friends/rivals leading a space rescue mission together.


title: Tommy Lee Jones

text: In 2005, the first theatrical feature film Jones directed, "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada", was presented at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. Jones's character speaks both English and Spanish in the film. His performance won him the Best Actor Award at Cannes. His first film as a director had been "The Good Old Boys" in 1995, a made-for-television movie.


title: Tommy Lee Jones

text: Two strong performances in 2007 marked a resurgence in Jones's career, one as a beleaguered father investigating the disappearance of his soldier son in "In the Valley of Elah", the other as a Texas sheriff hunting an assassin in the Oscar-winning "No Country for Old Men". For the former, he was nominated for an Academy Award.


title: Tommy Lee Jones

text: Jones has been a spokesman for Japanese brewing company Suntory since 2006. He can be seen in various Japanese TV commercials of Suntory's Coffee brand Boss as a character called "Alien Jones," an extraterrestrial who takes the form of a human being to check on the world of humans. Many of these commercials can be seen on YouTube. In 2011, Jones appeared in public service announcements on Japanese television, joining a number of other popular figures who sang two sentimental songs in remembrance of those lost in the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.


title: Tommy Lee Jones

text: In 2010, Jones appeared alongside Ben Affleck in the recession drama "The Company Men". The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where early reviews praised Jones's performance as "pitch-perfect." Jones had a role in the Marvel Studios film, "". He also directed, produced and co-starred with Samuel L. Jackson in an adaptation of "The Sunset Limited".


title: Tommy Lee Jones

text: In 2012, there was another turning point in Jones's career, starting with playing Agent K again in "Men in Black 3", portraying Arnold Soames in the romantic dramedy "Hope Springs", and co-starring as Thaddeus Stevens in Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln". Jones's performance in "Lincoln" received wide critical acclaim, and he was nominated for an Oscar for the fourth time, for Best Supporting Actor.


title: Tommy Lee Jones

text: Jones was married to Kate Lardner, the niece of screenwriter and journalist Ring Lardner Jr., from 1971 to 1978. He has two children from his second marriage to Kimberlea Cloughley, the daughter of Phil Hardberger, former mayor of San Antonio. On March 19, 2001, he married his third wife, Dawn Laurel.


title: Tommy Lee Jones

text: Jones resides in Terrell Hills, Texas, a city just outside of downtown San Antonio, and speaks Spanish. He owns a cattle ranch in San Saba County, Texas, and a ranch near Van Horn, Texas, which served as the set for his film "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada". He owned an equestrian estate in Wellington, Florida, until he sold it in 2019. Jones is a polo player, and he has a house in a polo country club in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is a supporter of the Polo Training Foundation. He is an avid San Antonio Spurs fan; he is often seen courtside at Spurs games. At the 2000 Democratic National Convention, he gave the nominating speech for his former college roommate, Al Gore, as the Democratic Party's nominee for President of the United States.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British writer and Anglican lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Oxford University (Magdalen College, 1925–1954) and Cambridge University (Magdalene College, 1954–1963). He is best known as the author of "The Chronicles of Narnia", but he is also noted for his other works of fiction, such as "The Screwtape Letters" and "The Space Trilogy", and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, including "Mere Christianity", "Miracles", and "The Problem of Pain".


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis was a close friend of J. R. R. Tolkien, author of "The Lord of the Rings". Both men served on the English faculty at Oxford University and were active in the informal Oxford literary group known as the Inklings. According to Lewis's 1955 memoir "Surprised by Joy", he was baptized in the Church of Ireland but fell away from his faith during adolescence. Lewis returned to Anglicanism at the age of 32, owing to the influence of Tolkien and other friends, and he became an "ordinary layman of the Church of England". Lewis's faith profoundly affected his work, and his wartime radio broadcasts on the subject of Christianity brought him wide acclaim.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis wrote more than 30 books which have been translated into more than 30 languages and have sold millions of copies. The books that make up "The Chronicles of Narnia" have sold the most and have been popularized on stage, TV, radio, and cinema. His philosophical writings are widely cited by Christian scholars from many denominations.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: In 1956, Lewis married American writer Joy Davidman; she died of cancer four years later at the age of 45. Lewis died on 22 November 1963 from kidney failure, one week before his 65th birthday. In 2013, on the 50th anniversary of his death, Lewis was honoured with a memorial in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast in Ulster, Ireland (before partition), on 29 November 1898. His father was Albert James Lewis (1863–1929), a solicitor whose father Richard Lewis had come to Ireland from Wales during the mid-19th century. Lewis's mother was Florence Augusta Lewis Hamilton (1862–1908), known as Flora, the daughter of Thomas Hamilton, a Church of Ireland priest, and the great-granddaughter of both Bishop Hugh Hamilton and John Staples. Lewis had an elder brother, Warren Hamilton Lewis (known as "Warnie"). He was baptized on 29 January 1899 by his maternal grandfather in St Mark's Church, Dundela.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: When his dog Jacksie was killed by a car, the four-year old Lewis adopted the name Jacksie. At first, he would answer to no other name, but later accepted Jack, the name by which he was known to friends and family for the rest of his life. When he was seven, his family moved into "Little Lea", the family home of his childhood, in the Strandtown area of East Belfast.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: As a boy, Lewis was fascinated with anthropomorphic animals; he fell in love with Beatrix Potter's stories and often wrote and illustrated his own animal tales. Along with his brother Warnie, he created the world of Boxen, a fantasy land inhabited and run by animals. Lewis loved to read from an early age. His father's house was filled with books; he later wrote that finding something to read was as easy as walking into a field and "finding a new blade of grass".


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis was schooled by private tutors until age nine, when his mother died in 1908 from cancer. His father then sent him to England to live and study at Wynyard School in Watford, Hertfordshire. Lewis's brother had enrolled there three years previously. Not long after, the school was closed due to a lack of pupils. Lewis then attended Campbell College in the east of Belfast about a mile from his home, but left after a few months due to respiratory problems.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: He was then sent back to England to the health-resort town of Malvern, Worcestershire, where he attended the preparatory school Cherbourg House, which Lewis referred to as "Chartres" in his autobiography. It was during this time that he abandoned the Christianity he was taught as a child and became an atheist. During this time he also developed a fascination with European mythology and the occult.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: In September 1913, Lewis enrolled at Malvern College, where he remained until the following June. He found the school socially competitive. After leaving Malvern, he studied privately with William T. Kirkpatrick, his father's old tutor and former headmaster of Lurgan College.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: As a teenager, Lewis was wonderstruck by the songs and legends of what he called "Northernness", the ancient literature of Scandinavia preserved in the Icelandic sagas. These legends intensified an inner longing that he would later call "joy". He also grew to love nature; its beauty reminded him of the stories of the North, and the stories of the North reminded him of the beauties of nature. His teenage writings moved away from the tales of Boxen, and he began experimenting with different art forms such as epic poetry and opera to try to capture his new-found interest in Norse mythology and the natural world.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Studying with Kirkpatrick ("The Great Knock", as Lewis afterward called him) instilled in him a love of Greek literature and mythology and sharpened his debate and reasoning skills. In 1916, Lewis was awarded a scholarship at University College, Oxford.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis experienced a certain cultural shock on first arriving in England: "No Englishman will be able to understand my first impressions of England," Lewis wrote in "Surprised by Joy". "The strange English accents with which I was surrounded seemed like the voices of demons. But what was worst was the English landscape ... I have made up the quarrel since; but at that moment I conceived a hatred for England which took many years to heal."


title: C. S. Lewis

text: From boyhood, Lewis had immersed himself in Norse and Greek mythology, and later in Irish mythology and literature. He also expressed an interest in the Irish language, though there is not much evidence that he laboured to learn it. He developed a particular fondness for W. B. Yeats, in part because of Yeats's use of Ireland's Celtic heritage in poetry. In a letter to a friend, Lewis wrote, "I have here discovered an author exactly after my own heart, whom I am sure you would delight in, W. B. Yeats. He writes plays and poems of rare spirit and beauty about our old Irish mythology."


title: C. S. Lewis

text: In 1921, Lewis met Yeats twice, since Yeats had moved to Oxford. Lewis was surprised to find his English peers indifferent to Yeats and the Celtic Revival movement, and wrote: "I am often surprised to find how utterly ignored Yeats is among the men I have met: perhaps his appeal is purely Irish – if so, then thank the gods that I am Irish." Early in his career, Lewis considered sending his work to the major Dublin publishers, writing: "If I do ever send my stuff to a publisher, I think I shall try Maunsel, those Dublin people, and so tack myself definitely onto the Irish school."


title: C. S. Lewis

text: After his conversion to Christianity, his interests gravitated towards Christian theology and away from pagan Celtic mysticism (as opposed to Celtic Christian mysticism).


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis occasionally expressed a somewhat tongue-in-cheek chauvinism towards the English. Describing an encounter with a fellow Irishman, he wrote: "Like all Irish people who meet in England, we ended by criticisms on the invincible flippancy and dullness of the Anglo-Saxon race. After all, there is no doubt, "ami", that the Irish are the only people: with all their faults, I would not gladly live or die among another folk." Throughout his life, he sought out the company of other Irish people living in England and visited Northern Ireland regularly. In 1958 he spent his honeymoon there at the Old Inn, Crawfordsburn, which he called "my Irish life".


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Various critics have suggested that it was Lewis's dismay over the sectarian conflict in his native Belfast which led him to eventually adopt such an ecumenical brand of Christianity. As one critic has said, Lewis "repeatedly extolled the virtues of all branches of the Christian faith, emphasising a need for unity among Christians around what the Catholic writer called 'Mere Christianity', the core doctrinal beliefs that all denominations share". On the other hand, Paul Stevens of the University of Toronto has written that "Lewis' mere Christianity masked many of the political prejudices of an old-fashioned Ulster Protestant, a native of middle-class Belfast for whom British withdrawal from Northern Ireland even in the 1950s and 1960s was unthinkable."


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis entered Oxford in the 1917 summer term, studying at University College, and shortly after, he joined the Officers' Training Corps at the university as his "most promising route into the army". From there, he was drafted into a Cadet Battalion for training. After his training, he was commissioned into the 3rd Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry of the British Army as a Second Lieutenant, and was later transferred to the 1st Battalion of the regiment, then serving in France (he would not remain with the 3rd Battalion as it moved to Northern Ireland). Within months of entering Oxford, he was shipped by the British Army to France to fight in the First World War.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: On his 19th birthday (29 November 1917), Lewis arrived at the front line in the Somme Valley in France, where he experienced trench warfare for the first time. On 15 April 1918, as 1st Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry assaulted the village of Riez du Vinage in the midst of the German spring offensive, Lewis was wounded and two of his colleagues were killed by a British shell falling short of its target. He was depressed and homesick during his convalescence and, upon his recovery in October, he was assigned to duty in Andover, England. He was demobilized in December 1918 and soon restarted his studies. In a later letter, Lewis stated that his experience of the horrors of war, along with the loss of his mother and unhappiness in school, were the basis of his pessimism and atheism.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: After Lewis returned to Oxford University, he received a First in Honour Moderations (Greek and Latin literature) in 1920, a First in Greats (Philosophy and Ancient History) in 1922, and a First in English in 1923. In 1924 he became a Philosophy tutor at University College and, in 1925, was elected a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Magdalen College, where he served for 29 years until 1954.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: During his army training, Lewis shared a room with another cadet, Edward Courtnay Francis "Paddy" Moore (1898–1918). Maureen Moore, Paddy's sister, said that the two made a mutual pact that if either died during the war, the survivor would take care of both of their families. Paddy was killed in action in 1918 and Lewis kept his promise. Paddy had earlier introduced Lewis to his mother, Janie King Moore, and a friendship quickly sprang up between Lewis, who was 18 when they met, and Janie, who was 45. The friendship with Moore was particularly important to Lewis while he was recovering from his wounds in hospital, as his father did not visit him.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis lived with and cared for Moore until she was hospitalized in the late 1940s. He routinely introduced her as his mother, referred to her as such in letters, and developed a deeply affectionate friendship with her. Lewis's own mother had died when he was a child, while his father was distant, demanding, and eccentric.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Speculation regarding their relationship resurfaced with the 1990 publication of A. N. Wilson's biography of Lewis. Wilson (who never met Lewis) attempted to make a case for their having been lovers for a time. Wilson's biography was not the first to address the question of Lewis's relationship with Moore. George Sayer knew Lewis for 29 years, and he had sought to shed light on the relationship during the period of 14 years before Lewis's conversion to Christianity. In his biography "Jack: A Life of C. S. Lewis", he wrote:


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Later Sayer changed his mind. In the introduction to the 1997 edition of his biography of Lewis he wrote:


title: C. S. Lewis

text: However, the romantic nature of the relationship is doubted by other writers; for example, Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski write in "The Fellowship" that


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis spoke well of Mrs. Moore throughout his life, saying to his friend George Sayer, "She was generous and taught me to be generous, too." In December 1917, Lewis wrote in a letter to his childhood friend Arthur Greeves that Janie and Greeves were "the two people who matter most to me in the world".


title: C. S. Lewis

text: In 1930, Lewis moved into The Kilns with his brother Warnie, Mrs. Moore, and her daughter Maureen. The Kilns was a house in the district of Headington Quarry on the outskirts of Oxford, now part of the suburb of Risinghurst. They all contributed financially to the purchase of the house, which eventually passed to Maureen, who by then was Dame Maureen Dunbar, when Warren died in 1973.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Moore had dementia in her later years and was eventually moved into a nursing home, where she died in 1951. Lewis visited her every day in this home until her death.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis was raised in a religious family that attended the Church of Ireland. He became an atheist at age 15, though he later described his young self as being paradoxically "very angry with God for not existing" and "equally angry with him for creating a world". His early separation from Christianity began when he started to view his religion as a chore and a duty; around this time, he also gained an interest in the occult, as his studies expanded to include such topics. Lewis quoted Lucretius ("De rerum natura", 5.198–9) as having one of the strongest arguments for atheism:


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis's interest in the works of the Scottish writer George MacDonald was part of what turned him from atheism. This can be seen particularly well through this passage in Lewis's "The Great Divorce", chapter nine, when the semi-autobiographical main character meets MacDonald in Heaven:


title: C. S. Lewis

text: He eventually returned to Christianity, having been influenced by arguments with his Oxford colleague and friend J. R. R. Tolkien, whom he seems to have met for the first time on 11 May 1926, as well as the book "The Everlasting Man" by G. K. Chesterton. Lewis vigorously resisted conversion, noting that he was brought into Christianity like a prodigal, "kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape". He described his last struggle in "Surprised by Joy":


title: C. S. Lewis

text: After his conversion to theism in 1929, Lewis converted to Christianity in 1931, following a long discussion during a late-night walk along Addison's Walk with close friends Tolkien and Hugo Dyson. He records making a specific commitment to Christian belief while on his way to the zoo with his brother. He became a member of the Church of England – somewhat to the disappointment of Tolkien, who had hoped that he would join the Catholic Church.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis was a committed Anglican who upheld a largely orthodox Anglican theology, though in his apologetic writings, he made an effort to avoid espousing any one denomination. In his later writings, some believe that he proposed ideas such as purification of venial sins after death in purgatory ("The Great Divorce" and "Letters to Malcolm") and mortal sin ("The Screwtape Letters"), which are generally considered to be Roman Catholic teachings, although they are also widely held in Anglicanism (particularly in high church Anglo-Catholic circles). Regardless, Lewis considered himself an entirely orthodox Anglican to the end of his life, reflecting that he had initially attended church only to receive communion and had been repelled by the hymns and the poor quality of the sermons. He later came to consider himself honoured by worshipping with men of faith who came in shabby clothes and work boots and who sang all the verses to all the hymns.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: After the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the Lewises took child evacuees from London and other cities into The Kilns. Lewis was only 40 when the war began, and he tried to re-enter military service, offering to instruct cadets; however, his offer was not accepted. He rejected the recruiting office's suggestion of writing columns for the Ministry of Information in the press, as he did not want to "write lies" to deceive the enemy. He later served in the local Home Guard in Oxford.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: From 1941 to 1943, Lewis spoke on religious programmes broadcast by the BBC from London while the city was under periodic air raids. These broadcasts were appreciated by civilians and servicemen at that stage. For example, Air Chief Marshal Sir Donald Hardman wrote:


title: C. S. Lewis

text: The youthful Alistair Cooke was less impressed, and in 1944 described "the alarming vogue of Mr. C.S. Lewis" as an example of how wartime tends to "spawn so many quack religions and Messiahs". The broadcasts were anthologized in "Mere Christianity". From 1941, Lewis was occupied at his summer holiday weekends visiting R.A.F. stations to speak on his faith, invited by Chaplain-in-Chief Maurice Edwards.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: It was also during the same wartime period that Lewis was invited to become first President of the Oxford Socratic Club in January 1942, a position that he enthusiastically held until he resigned on appointment to Cambridge University in 1954.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis was named on the last list of honours by George VI in December 1951 as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) but declined so as to avoid association with any political issues.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: In 1954, Lewis accepted the newly founded chair in Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he finished his career. He maintained a strong attachment to the city of Oxford, keeping a home there and returning on weekends until his death in 1963.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: In later life, Lewis corresponded with Joy Davidman Gresham, an American writer of Jewish background, a former Communist, and a convert from atheism to Christianity. She was separated from her alcoholic and abusive husband, novelist William L. Gresham, and came to England with her two sons, David and Douglas. Lewis at first regarded her as an agreeable intellectual companion and personal friend, and it was on this level that he agreed to enter into a civil marriage contract with her so that she could continue to live in the UK. They were married at the register office, 42 St Giles', Oxford, on 23 April 1956. Lewis's brother Warren wrote: "For Jack the attraction was at first undoubtedly intellectual. Joy was the only woman whom he had met ... who had a brain which matched his own in suppleness, in width of interest, and in analytical grasp, and above all in humour and a sense of fun." After complaining of a painful hip, she was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer, and the relationship developed to the point that they sought a Christian marriage. Since she was divorced, this was not straightforward in the Church of England at the time, but a friend, the Rev. Peter Bide, performed the ceremony at her bed in the Churchill Hospital on 21 March 1957.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Gresham's cancer soon went into remission, and the couple lived together as a family with Warren Lewis until 1960, when her cancer recurred. She died on 13 July 1960. Earlier that year, the couple took a brief holiday in Greece and the Aegean; Lewis was fond of walking but not of travel, and this marked his only crossing of the English Channel after 1918. Lewis's book "A Grief Observed" describes his experience of bereavement in such a raw and personal fashion that he originally released it under the pseudonym N. W. Clerk to keep readers from associating the book with him. Ironically, many friends recommended the book to Lewis as a method for dealing with his own grief. After Lewis's death, his authorship was made public by Faber's, with the permission of the executors.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis continued to raise Gresham's two sons after her death. Douglas Gresham is a Christian like Lewis and his mother, while David Gresham turned to his mother's ancestral faith, becoming Orthodox Jewish in his beliefs. His mother's writings had featured the Jews in an unsympathetic manner, particularly on "shohet" (ritual slaughterer). David informed Lewis that he was going to become a ritual slaughterer to present this type of Jewish religious functionary to the world in a more favourable light. In a 2005 interview, Douglas Gresham acknowledged that he and his brother were not close, although they had corresponded via email.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: David died on 25 December 2014. In 2020, Douglas revealed that his brother had died at a Swiss mental hospital, and that when David was a young man he had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: In early June 1961, Lewis began experiencing nephritis, which resulted in blood poisoning. His illness caused him to miss the autumn term at Cambridge, though his health gradually began improving in 1962 and he returned that April. His health continued to improve and, according to his friend George Sayer, Lewis was fully himself by early 1963.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: On 15 July that year, Lewis fell ill and was admitted to the hospital; he had a heart attack at 5:00 pm the next day and lapsed into a coma, but unexpectedly woke the following day at 2:00 pm. After he was discharged from the hospital, Lewis returned to the Kilns, though he was too ill to return to work. As a result, he resigned from his post at Cambridge in August 1963.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis's condition continued to decline, and he was diagnosed with end-stage kidney failure in mid-November. He collapsed in his bedroom at 5:30 pm on 22 November, exactly one week before his 65th birthday, and died a few minutes later. He is buried in the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church, Headington, Oxford. His brother Warren died on 9 April 1973 and was buried in the same grave.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Media coverage of Lewis's death was almost completely overshadowed by news of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which occurred on the same day (approximately 55 minutes following Lewis's collapse), as did the death of English writer Aldous Huxley, author of "Brave New World". This coincidence was the inspiration for Peter Kreeft's book "Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis, & Aldous Huxley". Lewis is commemorated on 22 November in the church calendar of the Episcopal Church.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis began his academic career as an undergraduate student at Oxford University, where he won a triple first, the highest honours in three areas of study. He was then elected a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, where he worked for nearly thirty years, from 1925 to 1954. In 1954, he was awarded the newly founded chair of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, and was elected a fellow of Magdalene College. Concerning his appointed academic field, he argued that there was no such thing as an English Renaissance. Much of his scholarly work concentrated on the later Middle Ages, especially its use of allegory. His "The Allegory of Love" (1936) helped reinvigorate the serious study of late medieval narratives such as the "Roman de la Rose".


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis was commissioned to write the volume "English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Excluding Drama)" for the Oxford History of English Literature. His book "A Preface to Paradise Lost" is still cited as a criticism of that work. His last academic work, "The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature" (1964), is a summary of the medieval world view, a reference to the "discarded image" of the cosmos.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis was a prolific writer, and his circle of literary friends became an informal discussion society known as the "Inklings", including J. R. R. Tolkien, Nevill Coghill, Lord David Cecil, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and his brother Warren Lewis. Glyer points to December 1929 as the Inklings' beginning date. Lewis's friendship with Coghill and Tolkien grew during their time as members of the Kolbítar, an Old Norse reading group that Tolkien founded and which ended around the time of the inception of the Inklings. At Oxford, he was the tutor of poet John Betjeman, critic Kenneth Tynan, mystic Bede Griffiths, novelist Roger Lancelyn Green and Sufi scholar Martin Lings, among many other undergraduates. Curiously, the religious and conservative Betjeman detested Lewis, whereas the anti-establishment Tynan retained a lifelong admiration for him.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: In addition to his scholarly work, Lewis wrote several popular novels, including the science fiction "Space Trilogy" for adults and the Narnia fantasies for children. Most deal implicitly with Christian themes such as sin, humanity's fall from grace, and redemption.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: His first novel after becoming a Christian was "The Pilgrim's Regress" (1933), which depicted his experience with Christianity in the style of John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress". The book was poorly received by critics at the time, although David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, one of Lewis's contemporaries at Oxford, gave him much-valued encouragement. Asked by Lloyd-Jones when he would write another book, Lewis replied, "When I understand the meaning of prayer."


title: C. S. Lewis

text: The "Space Trilogy" (also called the "Cosmic Trilogy" or "Ransom Trilogy") dealt with what Lewis saw as the dehumanizing trends in contemporary science fiction. The first book, "Out of the Silent Planet", was apparently written following a conversation with his friend J. R. R. Tolkien about these trends. Lewis agreed to write a "space travel" story and Tolkien a "time travel" one, but Tolkien never completed "The Lost Road", linking his Middle-earth to the modern world. Lewis's main character Elwin Ransom is based in part on Tolkien, a fact to which Tolkien alludes in his letters.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: The second novel, "Perelandra", depicts a new Garden of Eden on the planet Venus, a new Adam and Eve, and a new "serpent figure" to tempt Eve. The story can be seen as an account of what might have happened if the terrestrial Adam had defeated the serpent and avoided the Fall of Man, with Ransom intervening in the novel to "ransom" the new Adam and Eve from the deceptions of the enemy. The third novel, "That Hideous Strength", develops the theme of nihilistic science threatening traditional human values, embodied in Arthurian legend.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Many ideas in the trilogy, particularly opposition to dehumanization as portrayed in the third book, are presented more formally in "The Abolition of Man", based on a series of lectures by Lewis at Durham University in 1943. Lewis stayed in Durham, where he says he was overwhelmed by the magnificence of the cathedral. "That Hideous Strength" is in fact set in the environs of "Edgestow" university, a small English university like Durham, though Lewis disclaims any other resemblance between the two.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Walter Hooper, Lewis's literary executor, discovered a fragment of another science-fiction novel apparently written by Lewis called "The Dark Tower". Ransom appears in the story but it is not clear whether the book was intended as part of the same series of novels. The manuscript was eventually published in 1977, though Lewis scholar Kathryn Lindskoog doubts its authenticity.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: "The Chronicles of Narnia", considered a classic of children's literature, is a series of seven fantasy novels. Written between 1949 and 1954 and illustrated by Pauline Baynes, the series is Lewis's most popular work, having sold over 100 million copies in 41 languages . It has been adapted several times, complete or in part, for radio, television, stage and cinema.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: The books contain Christian ideas intended to be easily accessible to young readers. In addition to Christian themes, Lewis also borrows characters from Greek and Roman mythology, as well as traditional British and Irish fairy tales.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis's last novel, "Till We Have Faces", a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, was published in 1956. Although Lewis called it "far and away my best book," it was not as well-reviewed as his previous work.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis wrote several works on Heaven and Hell. One of these, "The Great Divorce", is a short novella in which a few residents of Hell take a bus ride to Heaven, where they are met by people who dwell there. The proposition is that they can stay if they choose, in which case they can call the place where they had come from "Purgatory", instead of "Hell", but many find it not to their taste. The title is a reference to William Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell", a concept that Lewis found a "disastrous error". This work deliberately echoes two other more famous works with a similar theme: the "Divine Comedy" of Dante Alighieri, and Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress".


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Another short work, "The Screwtape Letters", which he dedicated to J. R. R. Tolkien, consists of letters of advice from senior demon Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood on the best ways to tempt a particular human and secure his damnation. Lewis's last novel was "Till We Have Faces", which he thought of as his most mature and masterly work of fiction but which was never a popular success. It is a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche from the unusual perspective of Psyche's sister. It is deeply concerned with religious ideas, but the setting is entirely pagan, and the connections with specific Christian beliefs are left implicit.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Before Lewis's conversion to Christianity, he published two books: "Spirits in Bondage", a collection of poems, and "Dymer", a single narrative poem. Both were published under the pen name Clive Hamilton. Other narrative poems have since been published posthumously, including "Launcelot", "The Nameless Isle", and "The Queen of Drum".


title: C. S. Lewis

text: He also wrote "The Four Loves", which rhetorically explains four categories of love: friendship, eros, affection, and charity.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: In 2009, a partial draft was discovered of "Language and Human Nature", which Lewis had begun co-writing with J. R. R. Tolkien, but which was never completed.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis is also regarded by many as one of the most influential Christian apologists of his time, in addition to his career as an English professor and an author of fiction. "Mere Christianity" was voted best book of the 20th century by "Christianity Today" in 2000. He has been called "The Apostle to the Skeptics" due to his approach to religious belief as a sceptic, and his following conversion.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis was very interested in presenting an argument from reason against metaphysical naturalism and for the existence of God. "Mere Christianity", "The Problem of Pain", and "Miracles" were all concerned, to one degree or another, with refuting popular objections to Christianity, such as the question, "How could a good God allow pain to exist in the world?" He also became a popular lecturer and broadcaster, and some of his writing originated as scripts for radio talks or lectures (including much of "Mere Christianity").


title: C. S. Lewis

text: According to George Sayer, losing a 1948 debate with Elizabeth Anscombe, also a Christian, led Lewis to re-evaluate his role as an apologist, and his future works concentrated on devotional literature and children's books. Anscombe had a completely different recollection of the debate's outcome and its emotional effect on Lewis. Victor Reppert also disputes Sayer, listing some of Lewis's post-1948 apologetic publications, including the second and revised edition of his "Miracles" in 1960, in which Lewis addressed Anscombe's criticism.<ref name="Reppert 2005 https://books.google.com/books?id=hn1gaNlri1cC&pg=PA266 266"></ref> Noteworthy too is Roger Teichman's suggestion in "The Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe" that the intellectual impact of Anscombe's paper on Lewis's philosophical self-confidence should not be over-rated: "... it seems unlikely that he felt as irretrievably crushed as some of his acquaintances have made out; the episode is probably an inflated legend, in the same category as the affair of Wittgenstein's Poker. Certainly, Anscombe herself believed that Lewis's argument, though flawed, was getting at something very important; she thought that this came out more in the improved version of it that Lewis presented in a subsequent edition of "Miracles" – though that version also had 'much to criticize in it'."


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis wrote an autobiography titled "Surprised by Joy", which places special emphasis on his own conversion. He also wrote many essays and public speeches on Christian belief, many of which were collected in "God in the Dock" and "The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses".


title: C. S. Lewis

text: His most famous works, the "Chronicles of Narnia", contain many strong Christian messages and are often considered allegory. Lewis, an expert on the subject of allegory, maintained that the books were not allegory, and preferred to call the Christian aspects of them "suppositional". As Lewis wrote in a letter to a Mrs. Hook in December 1958:


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Prior to his conversion, Lewis used the word "Moslem" to refer to Muslims, adherents of Islam; following his conversion, however, he started using "Mohammedans" and described Islam as a Christian heresy rather than an independent religion.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: In a much-cited passage from "Mere Christianity", Lewis challenged the view that Jesus was a great moral teacher but not God. He argued that Jesus made several implicit claims to divinity, which would logically exclude that claim:


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Although this argument is sometimes called "Lewis's trilemma", Lewis did not invent it but rather developed and popularized it. It has also been used by Christian apologist Josh McDowell in his book "More Than a Carpenter". It has been widely repeated in Christian apologetic literature, but largely ignored by professional theologians and biblical scholars.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis's Christian apologetics, and this argument in particular, have been criticized. Philosopher John Beversluis described Lewis's arguments as "textually careless and theologically unreliable", and this particular argument as logically unsound and an example of a false dilemma. The Pluralist theologian John Hick claimed that New Testament scholars do not now support the view that Jesus claimed to be God. The Anglican New Testament scholar N. T. Wright criticizes Lewis for failing to recognize the significance of Jesus' Jewish identity and setting – an oversight which "at best, drastically short-circuits the argument" and which lays Lewis open to criticism that his argument "doesn't work as history, and it backfires dangerously when historical critics question his reading of the gospels", although he argues that this "doesn't undermine the eventual claim".


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis used a similar argument in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", when the old Professor advises his young guests that their sister's claims of a magical world must logically be taken as either lies, madness, or truth.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: One of the main theses in Lewis's apologia is that there is a common morality known throughout humanity, which he calls "natural law". In the first five chapters of "Mere Christianity", Lewis discusses the idea that people have a standard of behaviour to which they expect people to adhere. Lewis claims that people all over the earth know what this law is and when they break it. He goes on to claim that there must be someone or something behind such a universal set of principles.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis also portrays Universal Morality in his works of fiction. In "The Chronicles of Narnia" he describes Universal Morality as the "deep magic" which everyone knew.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: In the second chapter of "Mere Christianity", Lewis recognizes that "many people find it difficult to understand what this Law of Human Nature ... is." And he responds first to the idea "that the Moral Law is simply our herd instinct" and second to the idea "that the Moral Law is simply a social convention". In responding to the second idea Lewis notes that people often complain that one set of moral ideas is better than another, but that this actually argues for there existing some "Real Morality" to which they are comparing other moralities. Finally, he notes that sometimes differences in moral codes are exaggerated by people who confuse differences in beliefs about morality with differences in beliefs about facts:


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis also had fairly progressive views on the topic of "animal morality", in particular the suffering of animals, as is evidenced by several of his essays: most notably, "On Vivisection" and "On the Pains of Animals".


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis continues to attract a wide readership. In 2008, "The Times" ranked him eleventh on their list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945". Readers of his fiction are often unaware of what Lewis considered the Christian themes of his works. His Christian apologetics are read and quoted by members of many Christian denominations. In 2013, on the 50th anniversary of his death, Lewis joined some of Britain's greatest writers recognized at Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. The dedication service, at noon on 22 November 2013, included a reading from "The Last Battle" by Douglas Gresham, younger stepson of Lewis. Flowers were laid by Walter Hooper, trustee and literary advisor to the Lewis Estate. An address was delivered by former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. The floor stone inscription is a quotation from an address by Lewis:


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis has been the subject of several biographies, a few of which were written by close friends, such as Roger Lancelyn Green and George Sayer. In 1985, the screenplay "Shadowlands" by William Nicholson dramatized Lewis's life and relationship with Joy Davidman Gresham. It was aired on British television starring Joss Ackland and Claire Bloom. This was also staged as a theatre play starring Nigel Hawthorne in 1989 and made into the 1993 feature film "Shadowlands" starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Many books have been inspired by Lewis, including "A Severe Mercy" by his correspondent and friend Sheldon Vanauken. "The Chronicles of Narnia" has been particularly influential. Modern children's literature has been more or less influenced by Lewis's series, such as Daniel Handler's "A Series of Unfortunate Events", Eoin Colfer's "Artemis Fowl", Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials", and J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter". Pullman is an atheist and is known to be sharply critical of C. S. Lewis's work, accusing Lewis of featuring religious propaganda, misogyny, racism, and emotional sadism in his books. However, he has also modestly praised "The Chronicles of Narnia" for being a "more serious" work of literature in comparison with Tolkien's "trivial" "The Lord of the Rings". Authors of adult fantasy literature such as Tim Powers have also testified to being influenced by Lewis's work.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: In "A Sword Between the Sexes? C. S. Lewis and the Gender Debates", Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen finds in Lewis's work "a hierarchical and essentialist view of class and gender" corresponding to an upbringing during the Edwardian era.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Most of Lewis's posthumous work has been edited by his literary executor Walter Hooper. Kathryn Lindskoog, an independent Lewis scholar, argued that Hooper's scholarship is not reliable and that he has made false statements and attributed forged works to Lewis. Lewis's stepson, Douglas Gresham, denies the forgery claims, saying that "The whole controversy thing was engineered for very personal reasons ... Her fanciful theories have been pretty thoroughly discredited."


title: C. S. Lewis

text: A bronze statue of Lewis's character Digory from "The Magician's Nephew" stands in Belfast's Holywood Arches in front of the Holywood Road Library.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Several C. S. Lewis Societies exist around the world, including one which was founded in Oxford in 1982. The C.S. Lewis Society at the University of Oxford meets at Pusey House during term time to discuss papers on the life and works of Lewis and the other Inklings, and generally appreciate all things Lewisian.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Live-action film adaptations have been made of three of "The Chronicles of Narnia: " (2005), "" (2008) and "" (2010).


title: C. S. Lewis

text: Lewis is featured as a main character in "The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica" series by James A. Owen. He is one of two characters in Mark St. Germain's 2009 play "Freud's Last Session", which imagines a meeting between Lewis, aged 40, and Sigmund Freud, aged 83, at Freud's house in Hampstead, London, in 1939, as the Second World War is about to break out.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: In 2021, "The Most Reluctant Convert", a biographical drama about Lewis's life and conversion, was released.


title: C. S. Lewis

text: The CS Lewis Nature Reserve, on ground owned by Lewis, lies behind his house, The Kilns. There is public access.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Twin Peaks is an American mystery serial drama television series created by Mark Frost and David Lynch. It premiered on ABC on April 8, 1990, and originally ran for two seasons until its cancellation in 1991. The show returned in 2017 for a third season on Showtime.


title: Twin Peaks

text: The series follows an investigation, headed by FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) and local Sheriff Harry S. Truman (Michael Ontkean), into the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) in the fictional town of Twin Peaks, Washington. The show's narrative draws on elements of detective fiction, but its uncanny tone, supernatural elements, and campy, melodramatic portrayal of eccentric characters also draws from American soap opera and horror tropes. Like much of Lynch's work, it is distinguished by surrealism, offbeat humor, and distinctive cinematography. The score was composed by Angelo Badalamenti with Lynch.


title: Twin Peaks

text: The original run was followed by the 1992 feature film "", which serves as a prequel to the series. The initial success of the series sparked a media franchise, leading to the release of several tie-in books, including "The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer". The show's 2017 revival saw much of the original cast return, with Lynch directing.


title: Twin Peaks

text: In the years following the first two seasons, the show gained a devoted cult following and became referenced in a wide variety of media. "Twin Peaks" is often listed among the greatest television series of all time and has received universal acclaim from critics and audiences. It is considered a landmark turning point in television drama. The 2017 revival also received widespread critical acclaim.


title: Twin Peaks

text: In 1989, local logger Pete Martell discovers a naked corpse wrapped in plastic on the bank of a river outside the town of Twin Peaks, Washington. When Sheriff Harry S. Truman, his deputies, and doctor Will Hayward arrive, the body is identified as high school senior and homecoming queen Laura Palmer. A badly injured second girl, Ronette Pulaski, is discovered in a fugue state.


title: Twin Peaks

text: FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper is called in to investigate. Cooper's initial examination of Laura's body reveals a tiny typed letter "R" inserted under her fingernail. Cooper informs the community that Laura's death matches the signature of a killer who murdered another girl in southwestern Washington the previous year, and that evidence indicates the killer lives in Twin Peaks.


title: Twin Peaks

text: The authorities discover through Laura's diary that she had been living a double life. She was cheating on her boyfriend, football captain Bobby Briggs, with biker James Hurley, and prostituting herself with the help of truck driver Leo Johnson and drug dealer Jacques Renault. Laura was also addicted to cocaine, which she obtained by coercing Bobby into doing business with Jacques.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Laura's father, attorney Leland Palmer, suffers a nervous breakdown after her death. Her best friend Donna Hayward begins a relationship with James. With the help of Laura's cousin Maddy Ferguson, Donna and James discover that Laura's psychiatrist, Dr. Lawrence Jacoby, was obsessed with her, but he is proven innocent of the murder.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Hotelier Ben Horne, the richest man in Twin Peaks, plans to destroy the town's lumber mill along with its owner Josie Packard, and murder his lover (Josie's sister-in-law), Catherine Martell (Piper Laurie), so he can purchase the land at a reduced price and complete a development project called Ghostwood. Horne's sultry, troubled daughter, Audrey, becomes infatuated with Agent Cooper and spies on her father for clues in an effort to win Agent Cooper's affection.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Cooper has a dream in which he is approached by a one-armed otherworldly being who calls himself MIKE. MIKE says that Laura's murderer is a similar entity, Killer BOB, a feral, denim-clad man with long gray hair. Cooper finds himself decades older with Laura and a dwarf in a red business suit, who engages in coded dialogue with Cooper. The next morning, Cooper tells Truman that, if he can decipher the dream, he will know who killed Laura.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Cooper and the sheriff's department find the one-armed man from Cooper's dream, a traveling shoe salesman named Phillip Gerard. Gerard knows a Bob, the veterinarian who treats Renault's pet bird. Cooper interprets these events to mean that Renault is the murderer, and with Truman's help, tracks Renault to One-Eyed Jack's, a brothel owned by Horne across the border in Canada. He lures Renault back onto U.S. soil to arrest him, but Renault is shot while trying to escape and is hospitalized.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Leland, learning that Renault has been arrested, sneaks into the hospital and murders him. The same night, Horne orders Leo to burn down the lumber mill with Catherine trapped inside and has Leo gunned down by Hank Jennings to ensure Leo's silence. Cooper returns to his room following Jacques's arrest and is shot by a masked gunman.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Lying hurt in his hotel room, Cooper has a vision in which a giant appears and reveals three clues: "There is a man in a smiling bag", "the owls are not what they seem", and "without chemicals, he points". He takes a gold ring off Cooper's finger and explains that when Cooper understands the three premonitions, his ring will be returned.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Leo Johnson survives his shooting but is left brain-damaged. Catherine Martell disappears, presumed killed in the mill fire. Leland Palmer, whose hair has turned white overnight, returns to work but behaves erratically. Cooper deduces that the "man in the smiling bag" is the corpse of Jacques Renault in a body bag.


title: Twin Peaks

text: MIKE is inhabiting the body of Phillip Gerard. His personality surfaces when Gerard forgoes the use of a certain drug. MIKE reveals that he and BOB once collaborated in killing humans and that BOB is similarly inhabiting a man in the town. Cooper and the sheriff's department use MIKE, in control of Gerard's body, to help find BOB ("without chemicals, he points").


title: Twin Peaks

text: Donna befriends an agoraphobic orchid grower named Harold Smith whom Laura entrusted with her second, secret diary. Harold catches Donna and Maddy attempting to steal the diary from him and hangs himself in despair. Cooper and the sheriff's department take possession of Laura's secret diary, and learn that BOB, a friend of her father's, had been sexually abusing her since childhood and she used drugs to cope. They initially suspect that the killer is Ben Horne and arrest him, but Leland Palmer is revealed to viewers to be BOB's host when he kills Maddy.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Cooper begins to doubt Horne's guilt, so he gathers all of his suspects in the belief that he will receive a sign to help him identify the killer. The Giant appears and confirms that Leland is BOB's host and Laura's and Maddy's killer, giving Cooper back his ring. Cooper and Truman take Leland into custody. In control of Leland's body, BOB admits to a string of murders, before forcing Leland to commit suicide. As Leland dies, he is freed of BOB's influence and begs for forgiveness. BOB's spirit disappears into the woods in the form of an owl and the lawmen wonder if he will reappear.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Cooper is set to leave Twin Peaks when he is framed for drug trafficking by Jean Renault and is suspended from the FBI. Renault holds Cooper responsible for the death of his brothers, Jacques and Bernard. Jean Renault is killed in a shootout with police, and Cooper is cleared of all charges.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Windom Earle, Cooper's former mentor and FBI partner, escapes from a mental institution and comes to Twin Peaks. Cooper had previously been having an affair with Earle's wife, Caroline, while she was under his protection as a witness to a federal crime. Earle murdered Caroline and wounded Cooper. He now engages Cooper in a twisted game of chess during which Earle murders someone whenever a piece is captured.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Investigating BOB's origin and whereabouts with the help of Major Garland Briggs, Cooper learns of the existence of the White Lodge and the Black Lodge, two extra-dimensional realms whose entrances are somewhere in the woods surrounding Twin Peaks.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Catherine returns to town disguised as a Japanese businessman, having survived the mill fire, and manipulates Ben Horne into signing the Ghostwood project over to her. Andrew Packard, Josie's husband, is revealed to be still alive while Josie Packard is revealed to be the person who shot Cooper at the end of the first season. Andrew forces Josie to confront his business rival and her tormentor from Hong Kong, the sinister Thomas Eckhardt. Josie kills Eckhardt, but she mysteriously dies when Truman and Cooper try to apprehend her.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Cooper falls in love with a new arrival in town, Annie Blackburn. Earle captures the brain-damaged Leo for use as a henchman and abandons his chess game with Cooper. When Annie wins the Miss Twin Peaks contest, Earle kidnaps her and takes her to the entrance to the Black Lodge, whose power he seeks to use for himself.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Through a series of clues Cooper discovers the entrance to the Black Lodge, which turns out to be the strange, red-curtained room from his dream. He is greeted by the Man From Another Place, the Giant, and Laura Palmer, who each give Cooper cryptic messages. Searching for Annie and Earle, Cooper encounters doppelgängers of various people, including Maddy Ferguson and Leland Palmer. Cooper finds Earle, who demands Cooper's soul in exchange for Annie's life. Cooper agrees but BOB appears and takes Earle's soul for himself. BOB then turns to Cooper, who is chased through the lodge by a doppelgänger of himself.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Outside the lodge, Andrew Packard, Pete Martell and Audrey Horne are caught in an explosion at a bank vault, a trap laid by the dead Eckhardt.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Cooper and Annie reappear in the woods, both injured. Annie is taken to the hospital but Cooper recovers in his room at the Great Northern Hotel. It becomes clear that the "Cooper" who emerged from the Lodge is in fact his doppelgänger, under BOB's control. He smashes his head into a bathroom mirror and laughs maniacally.


title: Twin Peaks

text: 25 years after the cliffhanger ending of the season two, FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) remains trapped in the Black Lodge and prepares his return to the world. Cooper's doppelgänger—possessed by the evil spirit Bob—lives in Cooper's place and works to prevent his own imminent return to the Black Lodge with the help of various associates. Meanwhile, the mysterious murder of a librarian in Buckhorn, South Dakota attracts the attention of FBI Deputy Director Gordon Cole (David Lynch) and his colleagues, while a message from the Log Lady (Catherine Coulson) leads members of the Twin Peaks Sheriff's Department to reopen investigations into the events surrounding the 1989 murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee).


title: Twin Peaks

text: Season 3 of "Twin Peaks" was announced on October 6, 2014 as a limited series that would air on Showtime. David Lynch and Mark Frost wrote all the episodes, and Lynch directed. Frost emphasized that the new episodes were not a remake or reboot, but a continuation of the series and film, and the passage of 25 years is an important element of the plot. The third season is also known as "Twin Peaks: The Return" and "Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series".


title: Twin Peaks

text: Most of the original cast returns, including Kyle MacLachlan, Mädchen Amick, Sherilyn Fenn, Sheryl Lee, Ray Wise, and several others. Additions include Jeremy Davies, Laura Dern, Robert Forster, Tim Roth, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Amanda Seyfried, Matthew Lillard, and Naomi Watts.


title: Twin Peaks

text: In the 1980s, Mark Frost worked for three years as a writer for the television police drama "Hill Street Blues", which featured a large cast and extended story lines. Following his success with "The Elephant Man" (1980) and "Blue Velvet" (1986), David Lynch was hired by a Warner Bros. executive to direct a film about the life of Marilyn Monroe, based on the best-selling book "Goddess". Lynch recalls being "sort of interested. I loved the idea of this woman in trouble, but I didn't know if I liked it being a real story." Lynch and Frost first worked together on the "Goddess" screenplay, and although the project was dropped by Warner Bros., they became good friends. They went on to work as writer and director for "One Saliva Bubble", a film with Steve Martin attached to star, but it was never made either. Lynch's agent, Tony Krantz, encouraged him to do a television show. Lynch said: "Tony I don't want to do a TV show." He took Lynch to Nibblers restaurant in Los Angeles and said: "You should do a show about real life in America—your vision of America the same way you demonstrated it in "Blue Velvet"." Lynch got an "idea of a small-town thing", and though he and Frost were not keen on it, they decided to humor Krantz. Frost wanted to tell "a sort of Dickensian story about multiple lives in a contained area that could sort of go perpetually". Originally, the show was to be titled "North Dakota" and set in the Plains region of North Dakota.


title: Twin Peaks

text: After Frost, Krantz, and Lynch rented a screening room in Beverly Hills and screened "Peyton Place", they decided to develop the town before its inhabitants. Due to the lack of forests and mountains in North Dakota, the title was changed from "North Dakota" to "Northwest Passage" (the title of the pilot episode), and the location to the Pacific Northwest, specifically Washington. They then drew a map and decided that there would be a lumber mill in the town. Then they came up with an image of a body washing up on the shore of a lake. Lynch remembers: "We knew where everything was located and that helped us determine the prevailing atmosphere and what might happen there." Frost remembers that he and Lynch came up with the notion of the girl next door leading a "desperate double life" that would end in murder. The idea was inspired, in part, by the unsolved 1908 murder of Hazel Irene Drew in Sand Lake, New York.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Lynch and Frost pitched the idea to ABC during the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike in a ten-minute meeting with the network's drama head, Chad Hoffman, with nothing more than this image and a concept. According to the director, the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer was initially going to be in the foreground, but would recede gradually as viewers got to know the other townsfolk and the problems they were having. Lynch and Frost wanted to mix a police investigation with a soap opera. ABC liked the idea and asked Lynch and Frost to write a screenplay for the pilot episode. They had been talking about the project for three months and wrote the screenplay in 10 days. Frost wrote more verbal characters, like Benjamin Horne, while Lynch was responsible for Agent Cooper. According to the director, "He says a lot of the things I say." ABC Entertainment President Brandon Stoddard ordered the two-hour pilot for a possible fall 1989 series. He left the position in March 1989 as Lynch went into production. They filmed the pilot for $4 million with an agreement with ABC that they would shoot an additional "ending" to it so that it could be sold directly to video in Europe as a feature film if the TV show was not picked up. ABC's Bob Iger and his creative team took over, saw the dailies, and met with Frost and Lynch to get the arc of the stories and characters. Although Iger liked the pilot, he had difficulty persuading the rest of the network executives. Iger suggested showing it to a more diverse, younger group, who liked it, and the executive subsequently convinced ABC to buy seven episodes at $1.1 million apiece. Some executives figured that the show would never get on the air or that it might run as a seven-hour mini-series, but Iger planned to schedule it for the spring. The final showdown occurred during a bi-coastal conference call between Iger and a room full of New York executives; Iger won, and "Twin Peaks" was on the air.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Each episode took a week to shoot, and after directing the second episode, Lynch went off to complete "Wild at Heart", while Frost wrote the remaining segments. Standards and Practices had a problem with only one scene from the first season: an extreme close-up in the pilot of Cooper's hand as he slid tweezers under Laura's fingernail and removed a tiny "R". They wanted the scene to be shorter because it made them uncomfortable, but Frost and Lynch refused, and the scene remained.


title: Twin Peaks

text: "Twin Peaks" features members of a loose ensemble of Lynch's favorite character actors, including Jack Nance, Kyle MacLachlan, Grace Zabriskie, and Everett McGill. Isabella Rossellini, who had worked with Lynch on "Blue Velvet", was originally cast as Giovanna Packard, but she dropped out of the production before shooting began on the pilot episode. The character was then reconceived as Josie Packard, of Chinese ethnicity, and the role given to actress Joan Chen. The cast includes several actors who had risen to fame in the 1950s and 1960s, including 1950s film stars Richard Beymer, Piper Laurie, and Russ Tamblyn. Other veteran actors included British actor James Booth ("Zulu"), former "The Mod Squad" star Peggy Lipton, and Michael Ontkean, who co-starred in the 1970s crime drama "The Rookies". Kyle MacLachlan was cast as Agent Dale Cooper. Stage actor Warren Frost was cast as Dr. Will Hayward.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Due to budget constraints, Lynch intended to cast a local girl from Seattle as Laura Palmer, reportedly "just to play a dead girl". The local girl ended up being Sheryl Lee. Lynch stated: "But no one—not Mark, me, anyone—had any idea that she could act, or that she was going to be so powerful just being dead." And then, while Lynch shot the home movie that James takes of Donna and Laura, he realized that Lee had something special. "She did do another scene—the video with Donna on the picnic—and it was that scene that did it." As a result, Sheryl Lee became a semi-regular addition to the cast, appearing in flashbacks as Laura, and portraying another, recurring character: Maddy Ferguson, Laura's similar-looking cousin.


title: Twin Peaks

text: The character of Phillip Gerard's appearance in the pilot episode was originally intended to be only a "kind of homage to "The Fugitive". The only thing he was gonna do was be in this elevator and walk out", according to David Lynch. However, when Lynch wrote the "Fire walk with me" speech, he imagined Al Strobel, who played Gerard, reciting it in the basement of the Twin Peaks hospital—a scene that appeared in the European version of the pilot episode, and surfaced later in Agent Cooper's dream sequence. Gerard's full name, Phillip Michael Gerard, is also a reference to Lieutenant Phillip Gerard, a character in "The Fugitive".


title: Twin Peaks

text: Lynch met Michael J. Anderson in 1987. After seeing him in a short film, Lynch wanted to cast the actor in the title role in "Ronnie Rocket", but that project failed to get made.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Richard Beymer was cast as Ben Horne because he had known Johanna Ray, Lynch's casting director. Lynch was familiar with Beymer's work in the 1961 film "West Side Story" and was surprised that Beymer was available for the role.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Set dresser Frank Silva was cast as the mysterious "Bob". Lynch himself recalls that the idea originated when he overheard Silva moving furniture around in the bedroom set, and then heard a woman warning Silva not to block himself in by moving furniture in front of the door. Lynch was struck with an image of Silva in the room. When he learned that Silva was an actor, he filmed two panning shots, one with Silva at the base of the bed, and one without; he did not yet know how he would use this material. Later that day, during the filming of Sarah Palmer having a vision, the camera operator told Lynch that the shot was ruined because "Frank [Silva] was reflected in the mirror". Lynch comments: "Things like this happen and make you start dreaming. And one thing leads to another, and if you let it, a whole other thing opens up." Lynch used the panning shot of Silva in the bedroom, and the shot featuring Silva's reflection, in the closing scenes of the European version of the pilot episode. Silva's reflection in the mirror can also be glimpsed during the scene of Sarah's vision at the end of the original pilot, but it is less clear. A close-up of Silva in the bedroom later became a significant image in episodes of the TV series.


title: Twin Peaks

text: The score for "Twin Peaks" has received acclaim; "The Guardian" wrote that it "still marks the summit of TV soundtracks". In fall 1989, composer Angelo Badalamenti and Lynch created the score for the show. In 20 minutes they produced the signature theme for the series. Badalamenti called it the "Love Theme from Twin Peaks". Lynch told him: "You just wrote 75% of the score. It's the mood of the whole piece. It is "Twin Peaks"." While creating the score, Lynch often described the moods or emotions he wanted the music to evoke, and Badalamenti began to play the piano. In the scenes dominated by young men, they are accompanied by music that Badalamenti called Cool Jazz. The characters' masculinity was enhanced by finger-snapping, "cocktail-lounge electric piano, pulsing bass, and lightly brushed percussion". A handful of the motifs were borrowed from the Julee Cruise album "Floating into the Night", which was written in large part by Badalamenti and Lynch and was released in 1989. This album also serves as the soundtrack to another Lynch project, "Industrial Symphony No. 1", a live Cruise performance also featuring Michael J. Anderson ("The Man from Another Place").


title: Twin Peaks

text: An instrumental version of the song "Falling" became the theme to the show, and the songs "Rockin' Back Inside My Heart", "The Nightingale", "The World Spins", and "Into the Night" (found in their full versions on the album) were all, except the last, used as Cruise's roadhouse performances during the show's run. The lyrics for all five songs were written by Lynch. A second volume of the soundtrack was released on October 30, 2007, to coincide with the Definitive Gold Box DVD set.


title: Twin Peaks

text: In March 2011, Lynch began releasing "The Twin Peaks Archive" – a collection of previously unavailable tracks from the series and the film via his website.


title: Twin Peaks

text: FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper states, in the pilot episode, that Twin Peaks is "five miles south of the Canadian border, and twelve miles west of the state line". This places it in the Salmo-Priest Wilderness. Lynch and Frost started their location search in Snoqualmie, Washington, on the recommendation of a friend of Frost. They found all of the locations that they had written into the pilot episode. The towns of Snoqualmie, North Bend and Fall City – which became the primary filming locations for stock "Twin Peaks" exterior footage – are about an hour's drive from the town of Roslyn, Washington, the town used for the series "Northern Exposure". Many exterior scenes were filmed in wooded areas of Malibu, California. Most of the interior scenes were shot on standing sets in a San Fernando Valley warehouse.


title: Twin Peaks

text: The soap opera show-within-the-show "Invitation to Love" was not shot on a studio set, but in the Ennis House, an architectural landmark designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Mark Frost and David Lynch made use of repeating and sometimes mysterious motifs such as trees (especially fir and pines), coffee and doughnuts, cherry pie, owls, logs, ducks, water, fire — and numerous embedded references to other films and TV shows.


title: Twin Peaks

text: During the filming of the scene in which Cooper first examines Laura's body, a malfunctioning fluorescent lamp above the table flickered constantly, but Lynch decided not to replace it, since he liked the disconcerting effect that it created.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Cooper's dream at the end of the third episode, which became a driving plot point in the series's first season and ultimately held the key to the identity of Laura's murderer, was never scripted. The idea came to Lynch one afternoon after touching the side of a hot car left out in the sun: "I was leaning against a car—the front of me was leaning against this very warm car. My hands were on the roof and the metal was very hot. The Red Room scene leapt into my mind. 'Little Mike' was there, and he was speaking backwards... For the rest of the night I thought only about The Red Room." The footage was originally shot along with the pilot, to be used as the conclusion were it to be released as a feature film. When the series was picked up, Lynch decided to incorporate some of the footage; in the fourth episode, Cooper, narrating the dream, outlines the shot footage which Lynch did not incorporate, such as Mike shooting Bob and the fact that he is 25 years older when he meets Laura Palmer's spirit.


title: Twin Peaks

text: In an attempt to avoid cancellation, the idea of a Cooper possessed by Bob came up and was included in the final episode, but the series was cancelled even before the episode was aired.


title: Twin Peaks

text: Before the one-and-a-half-hour pilot premiered on TV, a screening was held at the Museum of Broadcasting in Hollywood. Media analyst and advertising executive Paul Schulman said: "I don't think it has a chance of succeeding. It is not commercial, it is radically different from what we as viewers are accustomed to seeing, there's no one in the show to root for." The show's Thursday night time slot had not been a good one for soap operas, as both "Dynasty" and its short-lived spin-off "The Colbys" did poorly. "Twin Peaks" was also up against the hugely successful sitcom "Cheers".


title: Twin Peaks

text: Initially, the show received a positive response from TV critics. Tom Shales, in "The Washington Post", wrote: ""Twin Peaks" disorients you in ways that small-screen productions seldom attempt. It's a pleasurable sensation, the floor dropping out and leaving one dangling." In "The New York Times", John J. O'Connor wrote: ""Twin Peaks" is not a send-up of the form. Mr. Lynch clearly savors the standard ingredients ... but then the director adds his own peculiar touches, small passing details that suddenly, and often hilariously, thrust the commonplace out of kilter." "Entertainment Weekly" gave the show an "A+" rating, and Ken Tucker wrote: "Plot is irrelevant; moments are everything. Lynch and Frost have mastered a way to make a weekly series endlessly interesting." Richard Zoglin in "Time" magazine said that it "may be the most hauntingly original work ever done for American TV".


title: Twin Peaks

text: The two-hour pilot was the highest-rated movie for the 1989–90 season with a 22 rating and was viewed by 33% of the audience. In its first broadcast as a regular one-hour drama series, "Twin Peaks" scored ABC's highest ratings in four years in its 9:00 pm Thursday time slot. The show also reduced NBC's "Cheers"s ratings. "Twin Peaks" had a 16.2 rating, with each point equaling 921,000 homes with TVs. The episode also added new viewers because of what ABC's senior vice-president of research, Alan Wurtzel, called "the water cooler syndrome", in which people talk about the series the next day at work.