<Li> Tony Jay as Dougie Milford </Li> <Li> Walter Olkewicz as Jacques Renault </Li> <Li> David Warner as Thomas Eckhardt </Li> <P> 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 in 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 . 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 . </P>

Where was the opening scene of twin peaks filmed