Paris Trout with Dennis Hopper and Barbara Hershey, Directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal 1991, Plus Trash Talk from Some Under-Educated White Girls


From 2019: Search the term “bottle+rape+scene+dennis+hopper” and you’ll likely be sent to this entire film, my ex-friend Steve Gyllenhaal’s second feature directorial effort (at 42) and Hopper’s purportedly favorite role. Bottle rape at 42:00. There’s a creepy, dreamy, nasty edge in almost all the sex scenes of Steve’s movies, something I think he picked up from David Lynch in imitation of the form—but not the substance—of Lynch’s genius sex-weirdness… Steve, you might remember, directed the 20th episode of the 2nd season of Twin Peaks. But no, nothing of Lynch’s great vision rubbed off on Stephen; ever a journeyman, he was (and I say was, he’s no longer doing feature films, he’s making his bread shooting TED talks nowadays) more in the same bag with those mediocre, cold “auteurs” of his era John Carpenter and David Cronenberg.

If we were still talking I’d probably bring it up, but as he seems to have gone permanently off the rails with his bizarre blog (now defunct) and his equally bizarre 2012 Kickstarter(!) campaign I figure it would be pointless now.

UPDATE 11 Nov 19: Looks like Steve’s getting me in hot water again. Check out these now-archived bizarre reactions to this posting in the Hollywood Babylon group on Facebook. These females and their insulting, sexist, racist remarks impressed me so much I used their names in my latest porn novel.

UPDATE 11 Dec 2023: Lookee what I found still hanging around the internet! A full-scale takedown of me (a rehash of that takedown on the old Gawker) on a fan website dedicated to Jake Gyllenhaal—remember him?—from 2009 called OhNoTheyDidn’t, now archived here. Smelly unclean stuff. And you wonder why I dislike under-educated white girls. The book (really an academic paper, more or less) under discussion is A Poet from Hollywood: Love, Insanity, Stephen Gyllenhaal, and the Creative Process which I wrote in 2012.


FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER

Gordon Cole: The Link Between Twin Peaks and Billy Wilder; Plus “The Emperor Waltz” by Johann Strauss II, Conducted by Daniel Barenboim with the Berliner Philharmoniker, 2013

What is the connection between David Lynch and Billy Wilder?

Goddammit, I’ve posed this question to all my Twin Peaks groups on Facebook, and nobody got it. Now I’m going to give it to you.

“The Emperor Waltz”: the music and the film.

Assistant Deputy Director Gordon Cole of the FBI is a character on Twin Peaks.

Assistant Producer Gordon Cole of Paramount Pictures is an unseen character in Sunset Boulevard. Gordon Cole wanted to borrow Norma’s classic car for a “Crosby picture”—Billy Wilder’s 1949 film The Emperor Waltz, starring Bing Crosby and Joan Fontaine.


The entire film THE EMPEROR WALTZ directed by Billy Wilder is available to watch here


But that’s not all. There’s an artistic, almost metaphysical link, to the David Lynch work and the Billy Wilder work. For all its color and seeming frothiness, The Emperor Waltz the film barely conceals the same awful truth Lynch made clear in episode 8 of the third season of Twin Peaks: that at a particular point during the middle of the 20th century, Evil partnered with the willing Spirit of Man to try to annihilate the human race. Joe McBride you big fat blowhard, I got that drowning mongrel puppies thing too. I was just a little girl when I first saw this movie and the drowning puppies bit shocked me at once—because, you know, puppies. But also because of what Mrs Weisberg taught us in 4th grade class. And, you know, Anne Frank.

David Lynch and Billy WilderAbove David Lynch and Billy Wilder: Daniel Barenboim conducts the Berliner Philharmoniker in Strauss’s grandest waltz.


In the Revolution of 1848, Johann Strauss II (or Jr) had sided with the dissidents—the anti-Habsburg faction—while Strauss Sr his father had been an avowed royalist, composing the Radetsky March in honor of the great general who played a large part in suppressing the Revolution. For some time the court looked with misgivings and suspicion at Strauss Jr, however important he proved to the Austrian image.

There’s a file of a police interrogation where the younger Strauss was asked why he had dared to play the Marseillaise. In an Austria of strict censorship, that was a loaded question. Strauss answered, “Because it is good music and good music is what concerns me.”

But the wounds of the revolution gradually healed. Soon Austria had a new emperor. When the emperor celebrated the 40th anniversary of his accession in 1888, Strauss composed a waltz in honor of Franz Josef.

My signal, my flame, my beloved John Wilson conducted this piece in Stockholm 29 March 2019.


FULL DRESS // A gifted mesmerist—a sinister composer—a naive young conductor from the north…inspired by an episode from the life of Rachmaninoff // DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK POSTER