Filmmaker Adam Baran (Jackpot) says that when he met Travis Blue back in 2005, at an LGBT film festival, "We quickly bonded over our favorite films and TV shows: Twin Peaks, My Own Private Idaho and Tarnation." But then Baran learned that Blue's obsession with Twin Peaks, David Lynch and Mark Frost's classic cult series from the early 90s, went way beyond mere fandom. Blue grew up near North Bend, Washington where some of the series was shot in 1989 and 1990, and visited the set as a pre-teen, even skipping school the day that they shot the iconic scene from the pilot where Laura Palmer's body is found, wrapped in plastic, on the shore of a lake. And in the subsequent years he would come to idolize the character of Laura and use her as a model for his spiral into drug use and sexual exploration as a teenager. "In eighth grade was cocaine, and some of it was meth... some of it was crack." He went on to attend the Twin Peaks Fan Festivals that occurred in the years following the show's cancellation — and he was even banned from attending for a period of time for bad behavior.

Having interviewed Blue a number of times in the last four years, Baran has now decided to make a full-length documentary about Travis Blue and how Twin Peaks influenced his life. A Kickstarter hoping to put together some seed money for the project launched today, and there are a ton of rewards involved for Twin Peaks fans including autographed photos, and Log Lady art.

Baran tells SFist that his own Twin Peaks fandom goes back to high school, when as a kid growing up near New York his local video store only stocked the first few episodes, and in the pre-Netflix era, this meant some serious commitment to track down the rest.

"As a filmmaker, I've always been fascinated with the work of David Lynch," Baran says. "Seeing Lost Highway in high school opened me up to a new way of looking at the world and telling stories, in the same way filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick reacted when Eraserhead premiered in the late 70's. After Lost Highway, I became really obsessed with Twin Peaks. My best friend Claire and I used to go to the video store to try and rent the episodes, but they only had the first few, so we would go into New York to visit the Museum of Television and Radio — which is now the Paley Center. They had all the episodes and we made I don't know how many trips to that space to watch them all and finish out the series. We were definitely Peaks Freaks. I think a lot of what I'm trying to figure out in making this film is what connects me — a gay man who watched Twin Peaks as a fan and lived a relatively sheltered life in East Coast suburbia — and Travis Blue, whose obsession with the series took him on a wild and dangerous ride into adulthood. I hope by the end of making this I'll know more about what Travis' story says about myself."

Baran is working with executive producers P. David Ebersole and Todd Hughes (Room 237, Hit So Hard) and executive producer Jonathan Caouette (dir. Tarnation, All Tomorrow's Parties) to bring the project to life, and right now is trying to raise $60K. Baran believes that bringing Blue's story to life will have "the power to help people heal and come to grips with life's horrors," while also appealing to fans of the darker aspects of Twin Peaks and its depiction of drug-using teens.

And as fans are anticipating a new, third season of the show coming to Showtime next year (though possibly without the creative help of David Lynch), Baran hopes there will be interest for a documentary project like his too. "Four years ago when I was trying to get producers for this project, people were saying they didn't see the relevance of it, a story about a kid obsessed with a long-off-the-air show," Baran says. "But now, since Twin Peaks has a third season on the way, and it's clear that there is a huge interest in the show still, it's making it a lot easier for us to justify Northwest Passage's existence."

Check out more about the film, and see that Log Lady art, over at Kickstarter.