By About a year ago, I decided to watch Twin Peaks for the first time. The series is regarded as one of the most critically acclaimed television shows of all time, but that wasn’t why I wanted to watch it. I wanted to see it because of how weird it was. Whenever people talked about the show to me, they always spoke about how unreal it all seemed. That’s not new for David Lynch, but seeing that strangeness in a show on ABC was fascinating. Probably the icon of the show’s unique blend of surreality, and the subject of the documentary I Know Catherine, The Log Lady, was Catherine Coulson.
Whenever she appeared in the show as the enigmatic Log Lady, not only was it worth a chuckle, but it also drew focus to just how odd the town of Twin Peaks was. She captivated audiences and became an icon of the show’s then two-season run. When the show returned 25 years later with a third season, The Return, people were psyched to see the original cast return, including Catherine Coulson. There was just one problem. She died in 2015, two years before it premiered.
It wouldn’t be accurate to say that I Know Catherine, The Log Lady focuses solely on Catherine’s contributions to Twin Peaks and how she was able to film her final scenes days before her death. This documentary is a thoughtful love letter to a woman who poured her heart and soul into everything and was a real actor’s actor, bursting with energy and dedication to her craft, even to her dying breath. Much like Catherine herself, this documentary is bursting with energy and does whatever it can to honor the legacy of Catherine Coulson in the most beautiful, yet painful, way possible.
I Know Catherine, The Log Lady
Director: Richard Green
Release Date: May 9, 2025 (Los Angeles)
The documentary introduces us to Catherine Coulson mere days before she died. She’s calling a mortuary and says bluntly that she’s in hospice care and she wants to arrange what’s going to happen to her. The operator is obviously taken aback by just how upfront Catherine is about her impending death. The operator apologizes to her. Catherine asks why she’s apologizing. The operator politely yet awkwardly says, “Your situation.”
Catherine’s response? “Oh, that I’m dying? It’s okay, it happens to everyone.”
With that, we’re introduced to a woman who, throughout the documentary’s one hour and 49-minute runtime, is painted as a tireless workhorse of an actress who always manages to make people smile. The documentary, at least for the first half, splits its focus into two different segments. The first is your standard documentary fare, showcasing Catherine’s upbringing and her introduction to the world of acting. From being surrounded by Disney, thanks to her father, to collaborating with David Lynch on Eraserhead, and developing her skills as a camera operator on films like Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, one thing that’s abundantly clear is how Catherine is always a beacon of energy to the people around her.
I Know Catherine, The Log Lady goes to great lengths to get people who are familiar with Catherine Coulson to appear and share their thoughts on her, even if it’s just for a ten-second sound byte. Many of her friends from early in her acting career, when she was an aspiring stage actress, make appearances and recount numerous productions they were in. These moments tend to be pretty rapid fire, oftentimes sporting some disorienting editing that slowly zooms in on each subject as they’re talking. At times, this works, like when the focus is on Bill Haugse, who was in a relationship with Catherine, and we zoom in slowly as he struggles to come to terms with how he treated her back when they were a couple. Other times, it comes across as a bit frenetic.
When we’re not recounting her earlier years, the documentary focuses on the year leading up to her death. We see how she became a respected member of the Oregon theater community and how she discovered that she had Stage 4 lung cancer. But, being the ball of sunshine that she is, she tries to underplay it and stays focused on keeping active. In fact, she hides her diagnosis from the director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s production of Guys & Dolls just so she could do the part, leading to her hiding her condition from most people, including David Lynch. But as the year progresses, Catherine’s physical state declines, and while she wouldn’t want to admit it, the documentary paints a pretty bleak picture that she’s not getting better any time soon.
Eventually, both threads converge at Twin Peaks. While I Know Catherine, The Log Lady is a documentary about Catherine Coulson first, it’s also, to a lesser extent, a documentary about the appeal and impact of Twin Peaks. We see the early days of production, and many of the surviving cast members share their thoughts not just on Catherine, but on how the show was able to leave the legacy that it has. Make no mistake, I Know Catherine, The Log Lady is a must-watch for someone who loves Twin Peaks. It’s clear, especially given the long list of backers at the end, that this was a project developed by fans of the Log Lady and Twin Peaks and will most likely serve as a reminder of the legacy both leave behind.
The last forty minutes or so of the documentary delves into Catherine’s desire to appear as the Log Lady one final time before her passing and the process of making that a reality, even though production had barely begun on The Return. Those moments provoke varying responses from all of the people present. Some want nothing more than to fulfill her dying wish. Some are uncomfortable with the notion of making a woman with stage 4 cancer do any kind of work. What’s especially compelling, though, is how, throughout it all, Catherine doesn’t want to be viewed as a woman who is about to die. She wants to still be seen as a vibrant and attentive actress who becomes angry at the thought of being seen as sick and helpless.
I Know Catherine, The Log Lady, whether intentionally or not, functions as a meditation on death and what death means. Obviously, there’s looking at it from the perspective of Catherine Coulson’s passing, but because of David Lynch’s passing just a few months ago, the segments that feature his recollections on Catherine come across as downright tragic. We see the genuine compassion that he has for her and see the pain in his eyes when he says that he wasn’t able to be there with her in person in her final moments. They both knew that when those few scenes were shot with her in her home without Lynch’s presence (he was only there via Skype), they wouldn’t ever see each other again. But Lynch says that everyone will meet again eventually, and knowing that the two of them are reunited now after his passing puts a tear in my eye just thinking about it.
While diehard fans of Twin Peaks already knew that Catherine’s scenes in The Return were shot two years before the season premiered, the ways that her final scenes are spliced together with the documentary footage are especially heartbreaking. To hear how her caretakers and friends were surrounding her in her final moments, only to cut to the Log Lady tearfully saying “I’m dying,” you can’t help but feel that this isn’t just the character making peace with her situation, but Catherine saying to everyone in the room during shooting, Lynch included, that this is the end. It honestly broke my heart seeing that scene once again, now knowing what we know about how Catherine tried so hard to persevere through it all.
If you want to learn about Catherine Coulson and the impact that her character, the Log Lady, had on Twin Peaks, this is the documentary for you. While it may be a bit haphazard at first, it eventually settles on depicting her as an actress who truly believed in her craft. Beyond that, I Know Her, The Log Lady is a poignant look at death and what a person’s life is like in their final moments. Some die surrounded by friends. Some die alone. Some die doing what they loved. Even in the face of death, it’s important to remember that death does not define a person. Their legacy does. The memories they leave behind do. Not just with Catherine’s death, but with Lynch’s death too. A life well-lived is a life without regrets, and if the documentary makes one thing clear, it’s that Catherine Coulson had no regrets about the life she led.
