Man from another place
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The Man From Another Place also called the Midget or "The Dancing Dwarf" is a character in the Mark Frost and David Lynch television series, Twin Peaks. He made his first appearance in the third episode of the first season, "Zen, or the Skill to Catch a Killer". He is portrayed by Michael J. Anderson.
The character may exist as a figurative element of Special Agent Dale Cooper's dreaming consciousness. He is dressed in a sharp red suit and seems to reside in a red room. If nothing else, the color scheme represents fear, terror, arousal, and imminent danger. The Man also dances hypnotically, and somewhat perversely. There exists in the Man From Another Place the queer promise of a strange, occult knowledge that is paramount for Agent Cooper in his pursuit of Laura Palmer's killer.
The strange cadence of The Man's dialogue was achieved by having Michael J. Anderson speak into a recorder. This was then played in reverse, and Anderson was directed to repeat the reversed original. This "reverse-speak" was then reversed again in editing to bring it back to the normal direction. This created the strange rhythm and accentuation that set Cooper's dream world apart from the real world.
Michael J. Anderson recalls that his reverse-speak was not difficult to master as, coincidentally, he had used it as a secret language with his junior high school friends. David Lynch was unaware of this when he cast Anderson in the part, and even hired a trainer to help Anderson with the enunciations, but when he found out he could already talk backwards so well he cancelled the trainer and wrote more and more difficult lines of dialogue for Anderson to read.
The character appears in five episodes over the course of the series, as well as material from the second episode which was aired as part of the pilot episode when released as an individual release in Europe and Japan.
In the prequel to the Twin Peaks TV series, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, he appears again where he enigmatically states "I am the arm". This is believed to refer to Phillip Michael Gerard's missing arm.
| Twin Peaks |
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| Episodes | Actors |
| Characters |
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Main Characters |
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Andy Brennan | Bobby Briggs | Donna Hayward | William Hayward | Ben Horne | Audrey Horne | Ed Hurley | James Hurley | Norma Jennings | Shelly Johnson | Catherine Martell | Pete Martell | Lucy Moran | Josie Packard | Leland Palmer | Harry Truman |
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Recurring Characters |
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Annie Blackburn | Garland Briggs | Denise/Dennis Bryson | Gordon Cole | Windom Earle | Thomas Eckhardt | Maddy Ferguson | Tommy "Hawk" Hill | Jerry Horne | Nadine Hurley | Doctor Lawrence Jacoby | Hank Jennings | Leo Johnson | The Log Lady | Man from another place | Evelyn Marsh | Andrew Packard | Sarah Palmer | Albert Rosenfield | The Renault brothers | Harold Smith | Dick Tremayne | BOB |
