The real-life murder that inspired David Lynch’s cult classic TV show Twin Peaks is going to be the subject of a new documentary, alongside a non-fiction book of the same name: “Blonde, Beautiful And Dead: The Murder Mystery That Inspired Twin Peaks.”
While the 1908 murder of Hazel Drew in Sand Lake, New York took place decades before – and across the country from – the fictional death of Laura Palmer, the events, small-town community, and sexual politics surrounding it will be familiar to fans of the show.
Over the years since Twin Peaks aired, co-creator Mark Frost has even spoken multiple times about how he was told about Drew’s murder growing up, and how it led to inspire his collaboration with David Lynch. For Frost’s grandmother, who lived in Sand Lake, the story of the crime was “along the lines of a cautionary ghost story: Don’t go out in the woods at night,” he recalled in an interview back in 2017.
The new documentary will “investigate the secrets, corruption and gender politics one small-town community tried to keep buried” in the wake of Drew’s death, says production company Metabook Entertainment.
Filmmaker Benjamin Alfonsi, who will direct, adds: “I hope this documentary will give her a voice on screen that she didn’t have in real life.”
Offscreen, the accompanying book release is slated for winter 2021, and will feature a foreword from Mark Frost, who also released the spin-off book The Secret History of Twin Peaks in 2016.