I Know Catherine, The Log Lady

It always feels odd, when someone dies, to realise that they were better known as somebody else. Catherine Coulson and the Log Lady, whom she played in Twin Peaks, were very different people, and yet Catherine loved that role more than any other, clinging to life at the very end in part so that she might reprise it. It does not seem inappropriate, then, that this documentary should celebrate the two of them together.

Premièred at the American Cinematheque's This is Not A Fiction Film Festival, and screening as part of Fantaspoa 2025, the film has an additional poignancy because David Lynch, too, has now died. Here he looks lively and energetic, his illness yet to exert its full pressure. He opens the film by paying tribute to Catherine, describing her as one of his closest friends, and indeed, the two went back a long way. As the film jumps back and forth in time, we learn about their early friendship during Catherine’s theatre days, when she was married to Jack Nance, and her work as assistant director on Eraserhead.

There’s a whole other layer of career there – one in which she was mentored by John Cassavetes – and it gets its own space in the film. It has historical as well as personal significance given how few women were working in such roles at the time. We see photos of her behind the camera, and a rather charming one of her posing with Ricardo Montalban on the set of Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan,

There’s a lot of material likes this - a collection of images captured by family and friends, videos of her stage performances and, of course, her film and TV work as an actor. It’s sometimes rather chaotically arranged and one gets the feeling that director Richard Green couldn’t bear to throw anything out. This will thrill fans, but the film would be stronger with a more incisive edit. It’s overlong. Some of this material would work better in the form of Blu-ray extras.

It’s easy to understand how the film got like this because it’s so full of love. Members of Catherine’s family, her close friends, her theatrical troupe and, of course, members of the Twin Peaks family all share their stories. The effusive praise which emerges from these seems entirely genuine, with several – most notably long term partner William Haugse – suggesting that they didn’t really feel good enough for her, and using the opportunity to make posthumous apologies. Through Haugse, we also learn about the miscarriage – on stage, of course – which dashed her hope of giving birth to a child, though she would later adopt. The film doesn’t shy away from the distress that the loss caused her, nor from her experiences with stage four lung cancer. It includes a recording of her phone call to the local mortuary just four days before her death to give the staff a heads-up and make sure that she was doing everything properly. In proper style, she would wait for an astronomical event before taking her final breath.

Though parts of the film are repetitive and others don’t quite knit together, there are some real gems hidden in there. The most striking of these is a story told by David Lynch about how Catherine nearly died years earlier – an incident so startling that at first it seems like fiction. We also get some intriguing insights into her childhood, when her father ran PR at Disneyland so she got to play assorted Disney characters in early meet n’ greets. As for the Log Lady, we learn about her origins during the making of Eraserhead, and Catherine’s devotion to representing her at each year’s Twin peaks convention, right up until the end. There’s a behind-the-scenes look at the single scene she was able to deliver for the third series, filmed from her bed, a final testament to enduring friendship.

Green has wisely avoided saturating the film with Log Lady clips, but her presence is always felt. She’s described as a shaman, connecting two worlds. Of course, that’s what an actor does, and although Catherine is gone, we’ll see her in the trees.

Reviewed on: 19 Apr 2025