In Episode 2022, Audrey Horne performs an act of civil disobedience by chaining herself to a vault in the Twin Peaks Savings & Loan. Shortly after, Andrew Packard and Pete Martell open a safety deposit box filled with a parting gift from Thomas Eckhardt. In reality, the Twin Peaks Savings & Loan was filmed at two different spots in Los Angeles.
The scene opens with an image of a “New Accounts” employee sleeping. I love they included the number “1985” on the drawer behind her (folks haven’t opened an account in a long time). We get a better look at the area when Loan Manager Dell Mibbler receives a phone call.
Audrey Horne arrives to chain herself to the vault’s gate. She is protesting of the bank’s connections to the Ghostwood development project now being run by Catherine Martell.
As Dell brings Audrey a glass of water, we get a look at the vault door side of the bank.
The interior scenes were shot inside this building at 650 South Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles. Hat tip to Scott Prendergast for identifying the spot on Twitter.
While the location originally was a bank in the 1920s, it is now a club called The Reserve that opened in 2014.
This map of The Reserve shows the interior scenes were shot on the left side.
Here are some better looks inside the club courtesy of their official website.
Scott also shared with me two photos of famous boxer Muhammad Ali sitting in front of the vault.
Dell Mibbler slowly escorts Andrew and Pete to the safety deposit boxes inside the vault.
Andrew opens the door to box 14761.
A hat tip to @smearattack who noticed Andrew was wearing a Black Dots POP Swatch watch from 1988.
Thomas Eckhardt left a bomb inside the box with a note: “Got you, Andrew. Love, Thomas.”
The Reserve turned the safety deposit box room into a bar. I wonder if box 14761 is still on the wall (according to Brad Dukes, author of “Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks,” it was still there in 2010).
Once the bomb begins exploding, the action cuts to an exterior scene.
For the longest time, I thought this building may be in downtown Los Angeles.
Yet I wondered what building company would allow the front door and windows to be purposely destroy. Unless the building was being demolished, this didn’t make sense. I concluded it had to be a set or possible shot on a backlot area in Los Angeles.
The first place I looked was Universal Studios Lot where I found a matching image of the building facade. The website stated the Backlot photos were only a guide as some locations may have changed. The image looked very similar to the exterior facade in Episode 2022.
This aerial view from Google Maps shows the location of the bank facade. Interestingly, it’s close to the courthouse square location seen in Back to the Future.
The scene ends with Dell Mibbler’s glasses flying through the air and landing on a tree. Dollar bills from the bank rain down as the scene fades to black.
I wonder if the glasses scene was shot by the fir trees by the aforementioned Back to the Future courthouse. According to the map above, there appears to be a tree that could possibly match. What a wild connection to a classic 1980s film that could explain Richard/Cooper’s final line from Season 3: “What year is this?” (Ha!).
