"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

i really like bob's dialogue in the books, it kind of illustrates how laura got so warped. imagine that presence in your life, probably your whole life, and what that would do to you.

not to mention the bonus creepy points for "in this seed is death indeed," jesus h

 Laura and BOB are like comparing apples and oranges.  Laura is a human being with secrets.  BOB is a supernatural entity from another place that our race knows next to nothing about.  BOB is the subject here, not Laura.

Nefud, are you referring to that dream where Laura has to eat BOB's "seed"?  Yuck and major creepy.

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

Que? You mean because Laura's feminine power is so much more realized in the Diary (instead of being a mute damsel in distress?)

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

He's a lot more frightening when he's grinning maniacally and making those animal noises, I find that film/series BOB is scariest because he has no human elements, it'd be like trying to reason with a hungry lion. Diary BOB is still terrifying ("In this seed is death indeed", "hundreds of little cuts", etc.) but he is essentially human-like, albeit a sick child-abusing one.

The little bitch
Is awfully sorry
The little bitch
Drinks you up

BOB just aint scary to me without that kind of menace. He's in her head- that's flipping terrifying.

i didn't care all that much for fire walk with me until i read the diary. now i can't imagine what that movie would be like without it. for instance, the scene with the log lady is either

without diary: "oh, jeez, they decided to shoehorn the log lady in. that was weird. whatever."

with diary: "wow, that's the log lady, one of the few positive influences from laura's young teenage years. she saw her when she was just beginning to go down this path, and here she is now that it's almost over."

the diary matters quite a bit, it's vastly underrated even among fans imo.  

I always felt that BOB's character was diminished more in the film than in the diary. In the series (and to a lesser extent in the diary), it's pretty straightforward; BOB, the demon in the woods,  possesses Leland at an early age, then for years, through Leland's body, terrorizes and ultimately brutally kills Laura. So tragic and deeply fascinating and mysterious. In the Diary, we don't know that BOB has been doing his dirty deeds through Leland and he remains, despite his maniacal ramblings, a pretty dark and frightening enigma –just a little more fleshed out than we see in the series. The film, however, (in my view) takes a lot of BOB's characters power away by implying that he is merely the dark side of Leland and/or a fantasy-being fabricated by Laura in order to block out that fact that her father has been having his way with her. The mystery surrounding the Theresa Banks case in the series is made compelling by its very vagueness, as it  seems that the direct responsibility for her murder lies in the supernatural hands of BOB rather than Leland's. I prefer the idea of Leland as the mere week vessel of BOB's fiendish evil-doings. The film portrays Theresa's murder as the result of her threat to Leland that she'll expose their affair to Sarah. To me, that's pretty lame. Where does BOB come into that equation at all? It just paints Leland as this stock dad/husband who's willing to kill his mistress to save his marriage and reputation. Though I truly love aspects of the movie, in my more cynical moments my synopsis of the film is this: A disturbed husband/father has an affair with a waitress and is driven to murder her when she threatens to expose him. His daughter, whom he's been molesting for years, breaks through to the reality that her father has been screwing her, not the demon she's created to deal with such a an ugly truth. Father realizes that she's caught on and kills her before she too can expose him. Ho hum.

While I do respect this as an alternate interpretaion of Laura's life and death, and enjoy it on its own as a film, I'm consistently bummed at how much it takes away from the supernatural side of the story (namely BOB and the "evil in the woods"), which is what I enjoyed so much about the series and the diary.

InTwinPeaks.com

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

 As Comic Book Guy from The Simpson's might put it, best post ever. I would have written that myself if I didn't have a short attention span. Over the years the sexual abuse theory has become more and more prominent and gone from being one of many different interpretations to the interpretation. 

I've always seen Leland as a victim and the tragedy of the series is that he was forced to sexually abuse and kill the daughter he clearly loved. To reduce him to an deranged child molester reduces the series, the film and the book to self-indulgent bollocks. The woods aren't mysterious or dark, it's just mass hysteria, and Cooper enters the lodge only to come out posessed by... what exactly?... his own animal impulses? Zzzzz. I don't think DL endorses the idea that Bob's just a metaphor... I think his words have been taken out of context by the newer fans and over-enthusiastic academics. To quote the Log Lady's poem;   

     Pain for the victim, pain for the inflicter of pain.
     A circle of pain, a circle of suffering.

That concept drives the whole narrative of Twin Peaks. It's the reason the One Armed Man says to Bob (in the script) "That's his own daughter you're killing". I find the idea that Leland is forced to murder Laura as horrifying as anything Laura goes through. A lot off people don't get that because they're so paranoid about misogyny.   

i really think you're not giving it enough credit. it's never that straightforward. one of the few things i still really like to chew on his how much was leland and how much was bob, and where the distinction between the two lies. if anything it's the series that's way too cut and dry, saying that bob posessed leland and leland was really a good daddy if only that nasty ghost in the woods hadn't got him. "ho hum" indeed.
 

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

"Harry, I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Every day, once a day, give yourself a present. Don't plan it, don't wait for it, just let it happen. Could be a new shirt at the men's store, a catnap in your office chair, or two cups of good, hot, black coffee. Like this."  -Dale Cooper

 that's unironically how i work when it comes to zombie movies

 i really dislike the millitary-industrial complex, so day of the dead is my all-time favorite