I Know Catherine The Log Lady – Movie Review

A Late Arrival to the Peaks

I met Twin Peaks later in life. Like most late bloomers, I showed up to the party with wide eyes, an open heart, and no clue what I was stepping into. This wasn’t just a show, it felt like an invitation to dream weird and feel deeper. I was hooked once the credits rolled. My third eye opened. Coffee started tasting different. Owls didn’t just stare. I swear they looked back.

A Documentary That Speaks Beyond the Screen

The screener of I Know Catherine, the Log Lady landed in my inbox, I cleared my day, my head, and my expectations. This film isn’t only for Twin Peaks obsessives, though they’ll walk away well fed. It reaches further. It speaks to anyone who’s ever carried pain in one hand and hope in the other. To anyone who’s ever talked to something no one else could see.

It Happens to Us All

The film opens on a quiet gut-punch. Catherine E. Coulson, facing her looming death, listens as a crew member gently says, “I’m sorry about your situation.” She answers, “It’s okay. It happens to us all.” Boom. Mortality, front and center. From that moment on, director Richard Green doesn’t just tell the story of an actress. He reveals the soul of a person who lived full throttle, laughed deep, and stared death in the face without flinching, not even when it had “stage four” stamped on it.

The Log Lady as a Living Spirit

Coulson, best known as the Log Lady, emerges in full dimension: deeply spiritual, fiercely intelligent, warm, and delightfully odd. When she played that role, she wasn’t acting. She was channeling. The Log Lady, otherworldly, cryptic, and rooted in intuition, was Catherine’s spirit in disguise. She walked with one foot in the cosmic dirt.

From Eraserhead to Evergreen Icon

Her story winds back to the beginning. Long before she stepped in front of a camera, she worked behind one. Catherine assisted David Lynch on Eraserhead, lugging gear and giving notes. Some on set called her Too Tall Coulson. She didn’t mind. She was there from the start, helping shape the dream before ever appearing in it, wood in hand, truth on her lips.

Heartbreak, Loss, and the Unfinished

This film doesn’t ride on nostalgia alone. It gets personal. Catherine suffered real heartbreak, by lovers, by life, by a miscarriage that rewired her world. Her ex, filmmaker Bill Haugse, appears on camera and doesn’t hold back. He admits his failures. Missed the hospital. Stole her car. Focused on his own work while she grieved alone. The shame still sits on him, years later. This isn’t gossip, it’s confession. The documentary doesn’t flinch from complexity.

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Her cancer battle never turns into a sanitized arc. Catherine faced it like a fighter but moved like a poet. She kept working. She kept showing up. In 2017, when Twin Peaks: The Return came around, she rallied. David Lynch remotely directed her scenes, and she delivered a final performance that feels less like acting and more like a transmission. Her last words echo.

More Than a Character Actor

There’s a shot of her on the Rolling Stone cover beside the women of Twin Peaks, and it says everything. Catherine wasn’t just a character actor. She was a force. A believer. A dot-connector. When the show’s revival sat on the edge of collapse, she grabbed the hashtag #SaveTwinPeaks and led the charge like a general, with a log for a sword.

A Portrait in Bark and Memory

The documentary includes Lynch, castmates, friends, and deep archives. It’s not just touching, it’s textured. Like bark. Like time. Like memory and grief wrapped around each other. Rarely does a portrait not only remember someone but seem to continue a conversation with them. This one does.

Dreaming Forward

Catherine Coulson is gone. David Lynch, too, at the time of this film’s release. However. If you believe in energy, in echoes, in art that lingers longer than breath, you’ll feel it. You’ll know they’re out there. Log under arm. Camera in hand. Dreaming forward.

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