One time I did so much crystal meth in such a short period of time that I started hallucinating violently and couldn't shake myself out of it. I kept having this rapidly recurring hallucination in which the boy in the movie 'The Black Stallion' is petting the muzzle of the horse in a friendly, affectionate way when the horse suddenly raises up and bites his entire face off. I don't know what caused my mind to reference that movie, but it made for a horrifying strobe light.
p.s. Obviously, any media/art/whatever-related personal traumas that you guys want to throw at each other and me would me most welcome. Today's the last one to send me your self-portraits, so those of you who are so inclined, don't forget. It's going to be a whopper of an entry, as it should be, including pix 'of' commenters and some lurkers as well, and I'll post it tomorrow. So enjoy your last mysterious day. ** Franko b, Leave it to you to cut right to the chase, you demon. ** Michael karo, Yeah, people are always mistaking me for George Clooney. It gets really annoying sometimes. Uh, I don't think there's any dough attached to the Lambda award, but you do get a Oscar-like trophy, or at least they used to give out trophies. I hope so. ** Adjoun, I haven't seen 'Destricted.' Have you? I hear intrigued and/or intriguing things about it. Actually, the word I've most heard on it is that Larry Clark's segment in it is easily the best thing he's done filmically in years. ** Jeffrey, Greetings to you. Excellent first post, btw. I'm sort of the opposite, if the blood and violence is fake, it can get as gruesome as possible and I barely blink. But, as I guess you can tell from my post today, real violence and gore can very easily freak me out. Don't know why, apart from the obvious. ** Dave, I do very much like the graphic novel as a form, but I'm less well read in that genre than in most others for reasons I can't explain. Economics and lack of freebies, I think. I'll try to think up a list nonetheless. I was really into yaoi for a while. When my novels were trendy in Japan eight or so years ago, my fans there used to send me packages of yaoi, and a few yaoi artists adapted parts of my novels into yaoi comix. I was really fascinated by all that. Maybe I should do a yaoi day, although carefully since a lot of what's depicted in them wouldn't sit well with non-Japanese authorities. ** Jax, Well, Yury and I have at least two or three more sittings for our portait to go, but it was interesting, and so far the portrait looks pretty us-like. Our Versailles excursion was scuttled due to inclement weather. Rained most of the day yesterday, in other words. Speaking of which, anybody out there seen a screening of Sophia Coppola's 'Marie Antonionette' movie. I've heard terrible third hand buzz, but that often means nothing. ** Lux, Thanks, man. 'My Little Eye.' That's a great choice. ** Maximum etc., I just caught the Jason goes to space Friday the 13th a few days ago. It was kind of great in a dreadful way, the 'best' of the last three or four Ft13s anyway. ** Cautivos, Hey. Well, since God Jr. just got picked up in Spain, it'll probably be a year or so until it comes out, I'd guess. I don't think The Sluts is being published there, at least not so far. The next book of mine coming out over there is my journalism collection 'All Ears' that Acuarela is doing maybe this fall. Your 'hateful' list was pretty interesting and right on for the most part, or I'm with you on much of those people. But 'last Almodovar movies?' Why? I'm curious, because I've quite liked his last few movies. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on that. ** Killer luka, The photobucket link didn't work, but I did find a pic of you for the portrait day, so if you have a specific one you'd like, send it to me today or send me to it. Yeah, that was me in the hall in the Frisk movie. I really don't like that movie. If I had a time machine, one trip I'd make is back to the day I agreed to let them make it so I could say no instead. But did you like it? It doesn't upset me when people do. John Waters likes it, for instance. ** Stickitminister, Mark Prent? No, I don't know his work. Obviously, you think I should find it, yes? And so I'll do a query. ** C., Welcome back, my pal. You were much missed here. Thanks for your sweet warmth about my award. What's going on with you? What's been happening? Yury says a very friendly hi back to you. I don't have pretty clothing, if that helps. Very not pretty clothing, in fact. ** Xkoesj, I did quite like Metallic Falcons. How did you find them? Do you like Erase Erata? ** Diarmuid, Welcome. Yeah, of course I would. I mean that's so cool of you, thanks. I'll email you. ** Joe mills, Okay, I'm among the Patrick Hamilton ignoramuses (sp?), or I think I am, if memory serves. Head hung in shame and note written in to-read list. ** Lost, child, Thank you. Now it's your turn to win a prize. ** David ehrenstein, Ah, Bill Jones. You tell him hey back for me. Maybe he reads my blog. Hey, Bill, if so. In addition to Mark's show, Bill has a show opening at David Kordansky Gallery in LA's Chinatown soon too. I'm hoping to catch its tail end. ** Tigersare, Truly fine and very pleasurable Scott Walker piece. You should write such things more often, or maybe you do and you just don't tell us. You have the knack, more than the knack. ** Tosh, You saw Sparks. Oh, sadness and misery in my heart. Maybe they'll play Paris. Did they do a show a la the Little Beethoven show -- big theatrics, new and old -- or ...? You know I'm with you big time on Ron Mael's incredible genius. It's too bad Tam Tam didn't get to do that Sparks book. Hey, maybe I'll make you a deal. I'll write that book about my life filtered through Bresson if you'll write a book about your life filtered through Sparks. Now that would be an awesome book. ** Blake, Cool, thanks. I snuck it into the show tomorrow. ** Tender prey, The performances of 'I Apologize' in Barcelona are in early November. The 10th and 11th, I think. I'm pretty sure 'I Apologize' is being performed in Scotland, but I don't know if the dates are set yet. This fall, probably. Otherwise, no UK bites yet, though I think there's a bunch of interest in bringing 'Kindertotenlieder' there, probably to London, once we get it finished. Yeah, I was completely blown away by 'Irreversible.' One of my dreams is that Gaspar Noe would do a film of one of my books, in fact. Long shot, unfortunately. ** Hedi, You saw Sparks too?! Argh. Thanks a lot for the really kind words on 'The Sluts.' And for the fill-in on Steve Strange/Visage. Does he still do stuff? Are you the kind of fan who's followed him this far? ** Thanks, everybody. See you, and you'll see a portion of yourselves, tomorrow.
posted by Dennis Cooper at 12:27 PM
69 Comments:
I think the more S&M scenes in the novels of gerard reve were sort of trauma/shocking, much more like de Sade, cause they read not as fiction or just someone's a bit wicked fantasy, but they seemed soo real to me.
I read in a some of your back entries about the scene in la luna where mattew barry dancing to staying alive in a roman cafeteria. the man who grabs him is one of pasolini's favourite actors (playing acatone and oedipous re but that scene was also mature shocking, and heavily influenced my mind and libido as a teenager (I liked your p.s. comment a few entries back when you said the 60s LOTF movie influenced your mind a libido so much, so here is my take ;-)
wow, those traumatic moments are so traumatic! the fact that some of them were real life events (albeit book, movie, or tv related) like meeting ross martin or getting drafted into the army, makes them all the more harrowing. i think my most traumatic moments have come from dreams, but i must have blanked out almost all of them.
i remember one dream of feeling an itch in my hand and looking down to see a festering hole in my skin that suddenly became a bottomless pit (kind of like what happened to keiji's friend in the last post). i was haunted by that dream for a long time.
thanks very sincerely dennis for your kind words about my scott walker article. i write one or two of those things a week for the same newspaper, but it's very rare that i get to interview anyone i care about. it is often a lot of fun, though, to interview bette midler or nana mouskouri or bo diddley etc, and in a way i'm glad that my own musical tastes don't often coincide with my assignments. can't help but feel the whole journalist-as-frustrated-musician thing fairly often, as i talk to all these famous people who are doing what i (in my heart of hearts) wish i was doing...
ps. can i just say that reading frisk as my introduction to dennis cooper was as traumatic a literary experience as i've ever had. until the end of the novel i was extremely upset and confused (and occasionally excited). now i think of it as a very sweet-natured book.
Belated congratulations - 'clink' - I shall raise a glass of champagne to you on Wednesday (and a few to myself too I fear). GREAT news, and hopefully this will mean you have better luck with UK publishers.
Good news too on theatre pieces possibly coming to UK - do keep us up to date on this - would Edinburgh be for the Festival?
Twin Peaks was definitely disturbing in parts.
If anyone who contributes here can draw gay porn in the style of Yaoi, please send me an email at bkkdoctor@yahoo.com
I know a website currently looking for this type of illustration
Nicely unsettling selection of traumas there, Dennis - that Dragnet theme-music thing is particularly interesting.
I keep meaning to see '1900' - I'm hanging my head in shame here - but now I have an additional reason to rent it.
My particular horror from reading '120 Days' was the bit where they sewed a rat inside a woman's...um, something - uterus, womb, vagina, can't remember - and let it eat its way out. Okay, now I've made myself wince - fair exchange for the Nick Berg beheading clip, I suppose.
In general, written horror seems to affect me more. Maybe I'm just not that visual...
Having said that, I couldn't watch 'American Psycho' past the dog bit, a section of documentary footage in which street sweepers were shown shovelling up very obvious remnants of skin and body parts after an IRA bombing, and the bit where the ape keeps screaming in 1978 film 'The Mafu Cage' disturbed me immensely.
This is such an interesting post. For a long time I've been working my personal trauma into my artwork, as every artist does I suppose... I once had a dream where I got raped by a deer, wich started my fascination for deer in a way.
One of my trauma's is the noise made in the movie 'American History X' when Edward Norton catches a black man stealing his car and forces him to lie on the street, stomach down. And to lay his front teeth on the side of the pavement. Then you hear the noise of his breaking skull as Edward kicks against the back of the black man's head. Horrible noise.
I haven't heard Erase Erata and for some reason I can't find any of the music either... maybe you have a track to share?
I found Metallic Falcons cause I love Matteah Baim as an artist, and she's the main character in this band. Also I'm a huge fan of Red Bone Slim (Bianca Casady of cocorosie) and she runs the voodoo-eros label. If you would like I can email you my favorite track?
hearts,
xkj.
I second/share xkoesj' american history X trauma. yes ouch!
Hey Coop'
Yeah I think My Little Eye is really underrated.
Shit I totally forgot The Evil Dead.
Honourable mention to Exorcist 3 too.
FUCK that 1900 scene sounds so nasty...hmmm I think I might have to rent it now.
YES! American History X scene the sound of teeth craping on a pavement! Oh man that kills me.
Ok my list:
1) Scene in the rectum club in 'Irreversible'.
2)Scene in Gasper Noe's 'I Stand Alone' when the butcher punches his pregnant wife in the stomach - the sound is so harsh - and seconds later he dismisses the unborn kid as 'hamburger meat'
3) Dogfight scene in Hubert Selby's ‘The Room’.
4) Windmill scene in ‘Frisk’ – Thanks Coop!
5)Banned From TV - I started watching these DVDS of uncensored footage of shocking real-life events caught on camera -car crashes, suicides, shark attacks and people being burnt alive. This really left me feeling strange and fucked up.
6) Bumfights - documentary style showing homeless people fighting and attempting amateur jackass style stunts in exchange for money, alcohol, and other incentives. I began watching this thinking it would be like Jackass but quickly it became clear it wasn’t funny - just cruel and plain evil.
7) When I was about 6 I opened the front door and my cousin jumped out with his face made up like Spiderman. I freaked the fuck out and was so traumatised that for months later I couldn’t sleep alone and needed a member of my family to stay by my bed til I feel asleep.
8) This documentary about bouncers/doormen I saw on BBC - I fucking hate watching fights, I just freak out, I can’t handle real violence and this documentary captured this massive 30min fight that just kept stop-starting. I couldn’t turn over I just had to keep on watching but yeah it was awful.
9. As coop said when Bob climbs over the couch, he looks 15foot tall. There were so many T.Peaks moments to pick from but that one really fucked me up.
10. Video footage of a woman being raped by a pig, I saw this on Rotten.com whilst browsing gross out stuff at college with some of my friends. I watched 10 seconds and had to run to the window for air, it felt like I was gonna vomit.
Fuck this was really horrible to compile. Im go chill out and watch some Roseanne episodes on DVD. I started buying the boxsets and now im hooked, what a great great show.
I recently read 120 days of Sodom for the first time. The part permanently burned into my brain comes towards the end, when it's all (I guess) notes and stuff: "He fucks a goat from behind while being flogged; the goat conceives and gives birth to a monster. Monster though it be, he embuggers it."
I just collapsed. I've never been quite so delightfully shocked. The miracle in the book isn't the fact that a man can impregnate a goat, which gives birth immediately, but that the guy's sex drive is such that he fucks this horrible thing. I'm obsessed with that part. I've pushed the book on all my friends and we've had drawing contests to see who can most memorably render the "monster". I wanted to make it a scene in our "Horror Hospital"-movie. The scene where Doug calls Trevor, and Trevor asks him to explain the review they've gotten in the local newspaper. Anyway, in the film, Doug was supposed to be jerking off while on the phone, and when he comes on his stomach, his sperm are huge like tadpoles and flopping around like stranded fish, and he throws them away. They land next to his cat, and jump toward it. It would pay off later, we would see the cat with these awful half-cat, half-Doug kittens. We really worked a lot on it, painting small guppys white, while a make-up friend of ours worked on these disgusting appliances for the kittens. But the whole day-after-thing in the script got cut, and we couldn't find any other place for it (and it would have been too huge a hassle, ultimately). I was really sad to see it go.
"Irreversible" is a shocker, sure, but I think it really falls apart at the end. I was waiting for some surprise to be sprung that would make sense of it all, but it never came. The message didn't seem to be anything beyond "your life could be turned upside down any second, so value your happiness". But man, that first hour. The whole scene in the gay club is just insanity. The finding-the-rapist-scenes are pure adrenalin rush. And the rape scene ... well, at least it doesn't lie.
Have anyone seen the film "À ma soeur!" by Catherine Breillat ("Romance")? It was called "Fat girl" in England and the US. It has this absolutely shocking, sad, unfair final scene that comes from nowhere. I felt pretty violated when it was done.
I'd never mistake you for George Clooney, Dennis. But you and George (who's exceptionally cool) would make a great couple.
Can't think of any freak out moments from films, but can think of several from life. The scene in "Mysterious Skin" where Joseph Gordon-Levitt picks up The Wrong Trick is something I've come close to several times in my younger days. That's a scene that's freaked many people out.
Marcus Hu swears by him, but I find Gaspar Noe too calculating to be truly interesting. Catherine Breillat as well.
"Marie Antoinette" is premiering at Cannes. Loved Sophia Coppola's two previous features, so I'm looking forwards to it.
Jefferson Airplane's song "Lather" so traumatized me as a child that I can scarcely listen to it now, 25 years later, without cringing.
I was trying to think of some traumatic film or tv moments and there are some, but I just feel sick thinking about it. But I have to say that the American History X suggestion rang a queasy bell with me.
I definitely agree with you about the Death Museum or whatever. I think that having a curiosity about violence or exploring how it works is different than relishing it. You can be curious and respectful at the same time. After all, violence doesn't look like it's going anywhere so we might as well try to explore and understand it.
Trauma:->
But one thing did happen to me when I worked in the Rikers Island that I will never forget. I did a mental health evaluation on an inmate who was new to the jail. He told me that he was accused of raping a little girl (12 or so), but denied doing it (they don't claim to be innocent as often as you might think btw). I told him to keep that to himself because inmates don't do well if other inmates find out that sort of thing... I don't know how they found out, but the others took him into the toilet and shoved a roll-on deodorant so far into him that it perforated his liver and was removed from the upper right quadrant of his abdomen. I felt like there was something I could have done, but I don't know what. One of the guards suggested that I might have had something to do with the inmates discovering his crime. The guard said this as a compliment to me. I was friendly with that guard and the thought that he would think me capable of doing something that could lead to something so horrible and that he would then be proud of me for it... that was the most traumatic part.
Ugh. Now I feel sick, but there's my moment. Happy thought: I don't work in Rikers Island anymore... Can we do Happy Thoughts next time? lol.
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'Requiem for a Dream' was like a punch in the gut the first time I saw it. I remember just sitting and staring at the screen for a long time when it faded to black. Not one scene in particular but the character of the mother in general and her dying obsession with fitting into her favorite dress again. It haunts me.
Ditto Breillat's 'Fat Girl.' Brilliant, terribly distrubing and hardwired to my brain.
Ditto 'Irreversible' Madness.
Ditto 'American History X' Ouch!
When I was kid, even with all the rated R movies I got to see, none of them scared me like this made- for-TV movie called 'Dark Night of the Scarecrow.' It's about a bunch of rednecks that crucify a retarded kid in a field (like a scarecrow) and blast him up with rifles. Well, the next day he's not out there hanging in the field and of course they start to die one by one. I'm sure it would be ridiculous if I watched it today, but as a kid, I couldn't sleep for days.
dough_wasted:
For me the whole point in Irriversible was that after the whole 'find the rapist'-part it went back in time showing for good these lives were before. That made those awful scenes even more dramatic and awful. That's what I loved about the movie, after all that horror he actually managed to make those scenes even heavier by going back in time.
Oh oh oh I forgot watching one of the beheading videos online. That was really awful. The images weren't that awful (low quality pixelated), it really was the sound that made me really sick to my stomach. Brrr... also the thought it was a real person and all.
ooh, everybody's trauma's all come back now. thanks dennis! excorsing demons here.
very traumatising was the scene in the fassbinder querelle movie, where quereelle the sailor gets fucked on the table by the huge negro barkeeper, I was early teenage when I saw it. I think cause I never saw gay sex before and this man was so brutal and big. it did not help that one of the other visitors in the theatre took off his shoes at the moment which produced a hideous smell of sweat!
Made-for-TV Frankenstein. When I was eleven, I watched this at my friend Lewis Ramsay’s house. I don’t remember much except the ice at the end. We slept in the garden on his trampoline and soon got naked - it was the tropics - to compare erections. We didn’t know what to do with our erections so we took it in turns to get on top. After a while we decided to take our erections to the street, on our bikes, like knights with lances drawn. We got as far as the driveway before Mrs Ramsay swung a flashlight on us. What the hell are you doing? Get inside. Only faggots do that. The next day I stared at the water in my parent’s swimming pool. I didn’t tell them for years. Part of me definitely froze. I was never friends with Lewis again. Now I just wonder what would have happened if we’d made it outside.
That Big Brute was Gunther Kaufmann -- one of the loves of RWF's life. He was the offspring of a German woman bla American G.I. When Fassbinder married Ingrid Caven, Gunther was Best Man.
And being Fassbinder he spent the wedding night with the best man rather than the bride.
He was especially obsessed ith him during the shooting of "Whitey."
"Beware of a Holy Whore" is about the shooting of "Whitey," and those that were there claim it's RWF's entirely self-serving take on what went on when that film was made -- his obsession with Gunther naver mentioned in it.
xkoesj:
Yeah, I get it, of course, but it all seemed so shallow and pretentious, Monica Bellucci sitting in the park reading An Experiment with Time, the flashing "Time destroys everything" - ooooo. I think Noe clearly got a huge kick out of orchestrating the first hour, so much so that he was unable to find anything to temper it with later in the film, leaving the whole nightmare to go unanswered and to assert only itself.
Make no mistake - I'm a big fan. Ever notice how people go, "it's just trashy exploitation"? Yeah, well, it very well might be, in the end, but WHAT trashy exploitation! I dare any director to find the skill and will to pull off what Noe pulls off in the first hour of sheer gut wrenching experience. You don't watch Irreversible, it happens to you.
re: shooting of whitey
I don't know a RWF movie by that name. but then he made a few movies a year so thats no suprise i guess.
I have to bring in Acuarela Discos web and i can to see Guia (Guide) book review. You appear in a pretty picture with a nice smile. Is bad day for me
"Whitey" was never released in the U.S. But you can get it now on DVD.
a few traumas:
ok, apart from the Hammer Frankenstein film and the Satie music I mentioned the other day,
1. A 50s hollywood 'sword and sandals' epic called 'The 300 Spartans' which i saw on TV when I was 5 or 6 I think. I was enjoying the movie so much... the costumes, characters, action, adventure etc. Then at the movies finale the entire Spartan army (who have been cast as the 'good' side, or at least the ones you identify with) are massacred. I was utterly distraught and couldn't beleive that was the end of the film - it was almost as impossible to absorb for me as the first time you're told about death as a kid.
2. Seeing a bit of the Godfather on TV at 12 or 13, the scene with the horse's head. I skipped the rest of the movie and wondered for a while if I'd ever be able to sleep again.
3. A short piece of pulp fiction called 'Never Talk to Strangers' I read in my early teens. In less than fifteen pages as I recall it told of a naive provincial girl on her first visit to London who gets picked up by a very normal seeming guy at the station. She goes back to his seedy bedsit, is slipped a spiked drink... as I remember, the very last paragraph began something like, 'as she came around he had sawn off both her legs and was starting on her arm..." I remember staring at the expanse of blank page after that paragraph, mentally begging for a reprieve. I think I was equally traumatised by what had been depicted and what I interpreted as the gleeful sadism of the author toward me, the tender reader.
4. A few years after reading that, me and my first girlfriend getting stranded age 16 in central London after a gig. We hitched a lift back to the suburbs with a really dodgy, middle-aged, unlicensed cab driver who took us to his seedy bedsit in a totally unfamiliar area. He fed us whiskey in ceramic mugs from a bottle out of a big box he had under his bed and rolled up the most mind bending joint I've ever had. After we'd turned down the offer of sharing his bed, we tried to sleep on the floor. Unbelievably there was also a raging lightning storm going on outside. At some point around dawn we fled in abject terror, but unscathed.
5. My favourite trauma! This is actually my mum's trauma but it's one that's inspired my work a lot so I'm including it...
When she was a kid she received an edition of Dickens 'Christmas Carol' as a school prize, containing Arthur Rackham's fantastically ornate and grotesque illustrations. One of the pictures, depicting Scrooge in a dark room at the moment he thinks his dressing gown is a ghostly apparition, scared her so much that she had to have the book itself removed from the house. She had a similar reaction to a reproduction of a renaissance painting of St Sebastian in a book owned by my grandfather. The idea that, from a subjective point of view, an image can be so powerful that even the closed book containing it becomes malign is amazing to me.
6. American Psycho: the one work of art that's totally floored me even in adulthood. I feel kind of ashamed to say it, as I admire Ellis's work, but I couldn't read more than about a fifth of that novel. It's personally interesting for me to think about why I find Dennis's work so incredibly inspiring, or Huysman's La Bas, or Story of the Eye or numerous other works, but couldn't handle that.
7. Snuff movies - I've never seen one or anything purporting to be one, but I could (and have) write entire essays about why the very concept has profoundly disturbed me since I first read reports about their supposed existence in my teens.
Thanks (!) for Trauma Day, Dennis, and for sharing yours... This is such an interesting subject and it's one of the reasons a close friend introduced me to your work some years back...
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Seeing Jaws and Jaws II as a child were traumatizing to a certain degree. I've always been capable of still swimming in the ocean but with a very watchful eye, fearing that at any second I could possibly be mauled by a shark, possibly a Great White.
When E.T. had a second run in the theaters, like not long after it was initially released, my family took me to see it again. Outside of the movie theater that night, I witnessed, along with everyone else outside of the theater, a mother and her two children (a five-year-old and a three-year-old) get hit by a car in the street. None of them died, but I recall seeing the bone sticking out of the mother's fractured leg, the three-year-old's bloody and what seemed like enlarged head, and the distance from where they were struck to where the five-year-old landed on the sidewalk. There were many people crying, and the mother was screaming. We watched E.T. after that.
My father took me to my first horror movie in the theater when I was four. I saw The Brood. It freaked me out. I kept thinking that faceless little people were moving around in the last row of the movie theater. As he took me to more horror movies, I began to enjoy them more than fear them.
That's it for me. I can't think of any books that traumatized me. Oh, as for TV, probably all the commercials and TV movies having to do with kidnapping tended to make me nervous as a child. The whole Adam Walsh kidnapping went on when I was a child, so following the media around that and the made-for-TV movie, I feared being abducted and then beheaded by strangers.
robert
ah no thank god I didn't like the movie! it's like the filmmaker didn't really read "Frisk" at all.
haha but I liked Parker Posey in it.
alas I shall email the photos to contact@denniscooper.net.
hahaha you can pick one.
viva twin peaks!!!
1. when i was small my dad would put on televised cock fights on tv i'm a pussy so i hate cock fights
2. i don't know the movie name of the movie but it's an asian karate type you know movie tarantino would like and a man starts throwing a little dog into the ground over and over and over i was with friends and it was only this week but they were watching the movie and i just started crying and screaming and screaming at them to change it you know in my very uncool way change it fuck you what the fuck is wrong with you what the fuck is wrong with you what the fuck is wrong with you and they were laughing couldn't stop and they were laughing but i don't know if it was at me or at the dog but they wouldn't change the chanel and for some reason i didn't think of getting out of the chair
3. i read a book or my mother read me a book i was small it was about you know a baby horse i don't know the name stolen by a gypsy boy and their adventures but the horse loved the boy and the gypsy boy didn't know it because the gypsy boy had never received love and only abuse and then the boy and the horse grew up and the boy and the man he became would abuse the horse but the horse always loved him loved him and loved him and never stopped and then the boy who became the man became a theif also because what can a gypsy do and then in the final chapter the horse gets killed saving the boy who became the man who became the thief and the man finally understood that the horse loved him but it was too late so i cried and cried because i guess i'm a pussy so my mother continued the chapter until the horse was in heaven with god who would always love him and know he was loved but then after i don't know if right then or a few years later i read the chapter and that's not what happens he just dies
4. full metal jacket my father took me into one room my mother in another watching some other movie with too much sex in it for my father to agree for me to see it so i saw full metal jacket because that's not so much sex i can't remember anything about it other than a man who killed another man in a bathroom a soldier but the soldier did it wrong because he didn't kill the man with the right identity i mean the man was his enemy but not someone he didn't know so that was not right he had to kill the man he didn't know in another country and my father explained it to me but i still don't understand i just know he would smile and smile
5. when i got a hard on as a teenager watching a clockwork orange she had a tape or a dvd i don't remember with a friend and she was very fat very pretty but i just couldn't handle so much of a woman so much not because i didn't like her clothes it's just not you know something i could handle and at one part i got a hard on probably because really deeply i'm a bad person and then she thought it was for her so i still remember the embarrassment and i didn't know if i should do it so that she wouldn't know i was bad or if i was even more you know bad if i did it for that or
there are lots but i don't remember right now and can't remember any of the good traumas and i have good traumas things that affect but that turn out good or maybe all my traumas are good
ok
i put the pic but in my journal and not here because i'd feel AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH if you put me here so exposed instead of in the little dark corner that is my blog plus i couldn't do what i want to do
i like to say hi to yuri because it's like he's a figment of my imagination in the way i know him from second hand accounts and he seems like the kind of person who would understand why i'm so the way i am and then i know it's because i think you understand the way i am and then i'm happy because i think hey yuri is the way he is and he has someone like you know you and maybe someday who knows you never know
ok
c.
D., I sent several pictures for you to choose from, since making that sort of choice is not easy for me. I hope you got them. My email's been gummed up for a while, and I didn't realize it.
Also, check your email for a typical, but important question about the trailer.
Be well. Thanks.
N.
oh and i remembered an interview you did fucked me up for days and weeks and a little bit still when you spoke of you know people who get their appendages i don't want to say it because maybe somebody doesn't know it and what happened to me you know the red badge of courage thing that happens blaming plants for the cruelty of man and because i'm going to die will happen to them
you know the worm thing i think it's called don't ask if you don't know you don't want to know i won't talk about it
D., Sorry if I'm on repeat again here, but my comment seems to keep disappearing, no matter how often I post it.
Anyway, I sent you several pictures, but my email has been gummed up, so I hope you got them.
Also, please check your email for a question about the trailer.
Thanks, peace.
N.
tender prey
i was so stupid i mean i still am but i was so stupid as a kid so i gave american psycho the book to this girl because she liked francesca lia block and so did i so i thought somehow that those two things could be liked together and she hated american psycho and she asked me to give her back all the books about francesca lia block she had given me lent to me and then i told her but i haven't read them yet and she said that's ok you won't like them but i still think maybe i could like them even if i liked american psycho but i think maybe now i won't like them anymore because i'm like a man kind of and so my time is past liking bret and francesca at the same time i think i could have done it maybe
TRAUMALINES:
This is a very stupid trauma, but one that's particularly relevant for my life. I was at a "Hollywood" party when I still lived in LA. It was my boyfriend's manager's birthday party -- maybe her 40th. She was dancing amongst all the other entertainment industry people in her living room and her shirt lifted up as she danced. I said, "Nice fat rolls" just as the song ended. I didn't like her, but I didn't want or mean to ruin her birthday either. I can't get over it and it happened over five years ago.
Also, thinking of standing on the sandy cliffs in the Marin Headlands (the park on the north side of the GG Bridge) -- the tought of them collapsing and falling into the shark-infested cold rocky ocean below keeps me up a lot at night. I think it would be the worst way to die.
Also, being underwater.
oh and in hbo I was what 14? or something they showed this video of this guy who got caught no he didn't he taped rapes and they showed one of them but they blurred the faces but you could see the bodies and as she's resisting he suddenly punches her out like not like TV you know the kind where it looks like the fist is the center of gravity and you're caught into the fist like you're falling on the floor
ok i have to stop i'll keep writing about this stuff forever and ever and who cares i mean it didn't happen to me it's like i'm appropriating you know somebody eselse's trauma
I love your writing Dennis, but the first time I read Frisk (at 17)I was so traumatized that I had nightmares for months. I think this shows how profound the work is and how brilliant a writer you are.
First reading S/m porn on the internet( at 15): the trauma was in the fact that I enjoyed it and especially sided with the sadist. This terrified me because I saw something in myself that I didn't think was there.
Grad school: I'm not kidding. This has been the most traumatic moment of my life.
Realizing there was no Santa: I was quite young, maybe 5, and I watched this pound puppies Christmas special. Anyways, the homeless people don't get visited by Santa in the cartoon. I was so horrified by this that I realized there couldn't be a Santa Claus because if he was as good and giving as everyone said he would give more to the homeless kids. So I went to my mother with my theory. She was shocked, but she had to tell me the truth. This was my first crisis of faith i think! haha
Catholic School:
We had to say we loved god more than anyone else, and I wouldn't because I didn't. So they called my mother at home and told her of my sinful ways. (2nd Crisis of faith)
They wanted me to say that "if I should die before I wake" prayer each night, and sent a note to my mother explaining. I not only refused to say the prayer because I did not want to die, but I was unable to fall asleep without heavy parental coercsion for years. (3rd crisis of faith)
My many other traumas are too personal to mention...
Oh and my other traumas:
-The Emmett Till Photos
-Southern hanging photos
hey...i just got back from All Tomorrow's Parties at Camber Sands. I feel like I've missed a lot, the film lists are all so awesome...I'm a huge horror fan and my list of films to see has just doubled, so thanks. I'm especially excited to see Night Of The Demons.
I had such a great time at ATP. Boredoms were incredible, as too were Lightning Bolt (who played 4(!) times)...other highlights were New Pornographers (it was cool to see them play with Dan Bejar from Destroyer and extra cool when they finished with Sing Me Spanish Techno) and Dinosaur Jr (who I never expected to be as blown away by as I was...freak scene and little fury things were especially great.) So much other fun stuff too...Broken Social Scene, Dungen, Electrelane etc etc.
I think my highlight of the festival was watching R Kelly's 'Trapped in The Closet' on the ATP TV channel...Oh my god it's the funniest, most brilliant, most genius piece of tv I've EVER seen. Here's a clip from what is pretty much the heart of this emotional rollercoaster...it's not exactly complex, but just so you know the cop has just come home and suspects his wife of cheating:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4AOJ1hzVms
---
Christopher Michael Stamm: This is a bit late with regards to when you were talking about him but I'm also a huge huge Haneke fan...I thought you might like to read this list by him that he did for Sight&Sound's top 10 films of all time list from 2002. It's a really great selection that got me into tarkovsky, paolini and cassavetes:
Au hasard balthazar (bresson)
Lancelot du lac (bresson)
mirror (tarkovsky)
salo (pasolini)
the exterminating angel (bunuel)
the gold rush (chaplin)
psycho (hitchcock)
a woman under the influence (cassavetes)
germany year zero (rossellini)
l'eclisse (antonioni)
---
Congratulations regarding the Lambda award Dennis.
james.
ok last comment
where's antonio?
traumatic media moments..
1) I was 9 or 10, trying to find a blank vhs and ended up watching the start of a documentary on prositution. Being an inquisitive kid I kept watching of course... then nearly vomited at the part where a prostitute was using a cheese grater on a 70 year old man. It still turns my stomach thinking about it now.
2) a friend wanted me to watch Requiem For A Dream.. something about character development within the film.. all was fine until the montage scene (I'm sure you know the one).. the way the slimey old guy says 'ass to ass'.. and the look on the girls face. It turned out my friend had gone to the bathroom at that point and was completely unaware of that scene. He has been apologising to me ever since.
Dennis, I want to send a picture but I won't be able to get one in until tommorrow! So be it. Maybe I'm supposed to remain unseen. Hope you're well.
my quickie media traumas, the ones that come easily to mind:
1. ca 1974, i was 6, caught a glimpse of the TV news at a friend's house (we weren't allowed to watch TV at home) and saw soldiers carrying a man by his wrists and ankles, while other soldiers hacked at his middle with machetes. I felt nausueaus and couldn't finish my bologna sanwhich. The image haunted me for years, early testament to the brutality of the state. [It was during the peasant revolt in Zimababwe (Rhodesia)].
2. Bruce Lee/Enter the Dragon. My mom took my sister and I to see it when I was about 5. The bad guys are heroin dealers who pack the stuff in foil like tamales and smuggle them in big blocks of ice. The ice blocks move on conveyer belts which i quickly confuse with the circluar saws which rise up from the wood floor and gut hapless captors who are forced to lie flat on their backs awaiting this ripping disembowlment. By the time Bruce Lee fights the main bad guy and gets his famous bloody abdominal slashes, I'm totally freaked out.
For years I woke in the night, panicked that Bruce Lee would be sitting on the toilet in our hall bathroom and I would never be able to leave my room, lest I find him bleeding there. Since my stepdad was a junkie and I often helped his mother make tamales, wrapping them in foil and then packing them in the icey freezer, I felt sure there were also circular saws waiting to rise out of a floor somewhere and that everything awful was real and possible.
Partly it is, isn't it?
xo
5 pop culture trauma:
1) 1982: A close up of Corrine Clery (of Story of O fame) shooting up heroin in her pussy in "fatal fix" AKA the Tunnel, with Hulmut Berger as a ex-hustler drug addict attempting to turn is life around with a Predenders soundtrack.
2) 1980: Reading "Grisélidis Courtisane" where a swiss prostitute writes in her little black book minimalist details about her tricks to remember their preferences, the price...
3) 1979. A bookstore clerck showing me a Tom de Finland comic in the backroom of his store.
4) 1980: The Foetus eating scene in Joe d'amato "Antropophagous was really transgressive (cut from the american release (Grim reaper)
5) 1986: Reading Bret E. Ellis "Less Than Zero" and wanting to move to LA.
All this cinematic horror moves me to thoughts of its opposite.
In no particular order:
"L'Atalante"
"Lola"
"Hallelujah the Hills"
"The World of Henry Orient"
"If. . ."
"Igby Goes Down"
c -
oh, I guess you've finished posting... I just got back...
wanted to ask you about Francesca Lia Block as I don't know who she is - a novelist?
Has anyone heard the rumour that Clooney's gay? That was news to me until yesterday, but seems so believable when you think of a few things.(Or am I the only one who hasn't heard?) Also why do they say Cruise is gay ? Can't see it. I wish they would state their evidence.
TV/Film Traumas:'Mystery and Imagination', 60s Brit TV series I saw when very young - 'Room 13' episode: person in room 12 or 14 (there was no 13) keeps seeing these shadows from a window outside his of witches demons etc. That's all I remember. Probably it was the unknown as always that most fired the imagination.
The Exorcist,first time, at 15. Coming out into blazing sun and a clown in the street. Also a micro- quick insert of the demon's face in the DVD rerelease - a sort of evil 'Well?' look I had to keep repausing to convince myself wasn't real...
First time the Daleks apeared on Dr.Who. David E, I seem to (mis?)remember a comment on your blog disparaging Russel T Davies (Brit creator of Queer As Folk, which is on another level to the US one and one of the best things ever on TV) for ressurecting Dr.Who. Well his revamp is Brilliant - the suicidal Last Dalek In The Universe - 'I-am-a-lone-in-the-un-i-verse' and the bisexual hunky sidekick (in real life a Scots gay actor) who gives The Doctor (a Brit icon) his first gay kiss on national TV at 7pm...
You mis-remembered, Joe. I quite like Russell T. Davies. And while I certainly am aware of "Dr. Who," I've never actually watched any of it in any of its incarnations.
http://ehrensteinland.com/htmls/bride/g001/b_russelltdavies.shtml
selltdavies.shtml
I seriously can't believe that not a single commenter mentioned Tras el cristal by the Spanish director Agustí Villaronga (released in English under the name In a Glass Cage.
I saw it for the first time in college. I was around 19. I am definitely scarred for life.
I think I'll blog about it since tomorrow is picture day. (Damn I don't think I have said the words "tomorrow is picture day" since 1991 -- totally different context, but hey, maybe it is the Dennis Cooper Blog Yearbook).
Anyhow, I will post soon, but for a nice concise summary of what goes on check out this Australian Government Document in which the film was
"refused classification".
Oh yes, I remember that one.
Hated it.
Ifyou want a truly transgressive gay film see "O Fantasma"
Dennis, were the yaoi artists' who adapted your work male or female? I'm fascinated by yaoi manga, particularly in the conventions used by female artists to depict m/m relationships/sex for primarily female readers. Please do a yaoi day! I'd love to hear your thoughts on the genre.
And 3 media related traumas:
1. I was traumatized by a drivers' education film shown at my high school. We were told that it was a film of actual car wrecks, complete with bloody, mutilated bodies. I wouldn't know, because I shut my eyes before the film began and pressed my hands against my ears. My brain created its own graphic imagery to match the muffled screams.
2. In 1970, when I was 11 and living in Birmingham, the F.B.I. was searching for Angela Davis. Since she had family in the city, there were endless announcements on local t.v. that she was armed, dangerous and possibly in the area. I was afraid to go outside, convinced that Angela Davis was going to kidnap me. (Alas, she did not.) This may not qualify as an official trauma since it had no lasting effect. I met her briefly, years later, and was totally charmed by her beauty, intelligence and girly pink running shoes.
3. The Screaming Skull, a 50's horror film featuring actors I don't remember and a plot I've forgotten. But there was a skull. It screamed. I was probably 6. And I still have a phobia about human skulls.
hey dennis,
just wanted to congrulate you on the longeivety and subtly of your work. was riding to a job trial last night- didn't get the job- and i finally got God Jnr. six months after the fact.
people coming and going, the conversations overheard.
and dennis a couple more things you mentioned you liked christos tsolakias dead europe. i saw him speak recently at an emerging writers festival here in melbourne. it was one of the most passionate speeches i'd seen in a while. the link is here.
one last thing before i take up too much time did the email with the questions get passed along to you?
scott
David,
Thanks for the sugguestion. I will definately seek it out.
I am not sure it is about "like" or "hate" for Tras el cristal. I would love to hear any more you have to say about it. I don't know if I'll ever see it again, so I am going just on memory.
It seemed like a stunt more than a cri de couer of any legitimate sort.
Oh god yes, drivers' ed films. Wheels of Tragedy definitely traumatized me. I remember one shocking moment when ambulance personnel were lifting someone's dead body off the pavement and part of the head remained adhered to the road surface. A couple of years ago someone made a documentary, Hell's Highway, about the strange people who produced those films. No way can I watch that. Although I would like to see the film the same people made about child molesters.
ok so i just remembered i forgot the link.
here it is: http://emergingwritersfestival.org.au/
strange for me but my most tramautic moment are associated with smells.
for fourteen months i worked as door bitch at a gay cruising lounge here in melbourne. the worst part of the job was cleaning the bins in the room afterwards. bucket loads of cum and sweat and anal mucous. made my gut wrench and want to vomit.
most gut wrenching movie experience:
the scene in requiem where the guy shoots up into his bursted infected arm. had to watch that scene through fingers and whenever i watch the film again will turn my back on the screen.
also any scene at all with shooting up sends shivers up my spine especially as it shows the blood being sucked up into the syringe.
i have a lot of issues with the body and fluids especially body fluids that are associated with life (i find the smell of shit interesting.) still trying work through all that shit. it's irrational/paranoid and a lot of people seem not to fully understand it.
ah this is turning into a therapy session and that's the least of everyone elses concern.
scott
"The performances of 'I Apologize' in Barcelona are in early November. The 10th and 11th, I think."... is it sure Mr.Cooper?
Let I think inside of my entrails, I´ll find you there! I´m looking for, but I´m really timid!
Your other guy.
Regards to all family!
dear dennis
today my first trauma is that i lost a very dear friend..some lost child like me that has gone for ever...
he died this friday and I just knew yesterday.
I can't belive it..
But that is life...
so this trauma that is not a media trauma , flickers around every second now....
in my soul...in my heart..
I feel like Hamlet holding the skull of his friend..
to be or not to be..
yes..
he was...and i am...
I wish I win a prize that will say I can transform reallity and travel to the hades and see my friend...
I used to dedicate him some songs from Nico...Inocent and vain..specially.. Konig..or my Heart is empty...
first traumas...
national anthem playd by the end of a radio session. by nite on a solo trumpet
that will freack the hell out of me..
and I was allways going to sleep before the sound come..but some times the sound catched me and was horrific..it covered me with fear sticky and dump....
the tv had a series called Jeckill and Hide..the doctor will transform by only getting his eyes like this very pale blue and a lill dot...
it was terrifiying..very sinister..
i was in my room after the movie and my dad will call my name from out side the window..was sumer..and I scream like a mad like the "phsyco woman in the shower".....and that nite I had some of my usual epileptic atacks....qall the neigbourd had heard it!
I was having the first comunion..
my parents bring clowns!
I hated clowns I used to be so scared specially of the one who play the smart white face with a raised thick black eyebrow....
that nite I had my first asthma attack!
I was at my uncle's house cose he was very ill they did the party there...when the clowns ask for the lost boy comunion kid to give me a lollipop...
I just run and hided under the bed of my uncle...
oh oh!
still give me the creeps so much.....
sorry my friend still flickers around...
this traumas are not many but strong...
I wish I could remember more..
but the present has swallow me up..
how lost now!
DENNIS:
Well, you've already picked ONE of my traumatic moments... well sort of. KILLER BOB from Twin Peaks fucked my shit up as a kid, but the part where Laura opens her bedroom door in FIRE WALK WITH ME (and sees BOB crouched and hiding behind the dresser, well... holy shit!)
As for other traumatic moments...
SEEING Pasolini's film of SALO. I've heard you're no a fan of the film Dennis, but YIKES, that's a fucked up, relentless movie.
The RAPE scene in Noe's IRREVERSIBLE... ahhh!
Robert Blake in the party scene in Lynch's LOST HIGHWAY... now unfortunately even scarier!
The slaughterhouse scene in Fassbinder's IN A YEAR WITH THIRTEEN MOONS. Me being a vegetarian didn't help, but Jesus Christ. Amazingly, this is also my favorite film by Mr. Rainer Werner "Genius" Fassbinder
And I'm sure there's even more!
Regards,
Garrison
DENNIS:
Well, you've already picked ONE of my traumatic moments... well sort of. KILLER BOB from Twin Peaks fucked my shit up as a kid, but the part where Laura opens her bedroom door in FIRE WALK WITH ME (and sees BOB crouched and hiding behind the dresser, well... holy shit!)
As for other traumatic moments...
SEEING Pasolini's film of SALO. I've heard you're no a fan of the film Dennis, but YIKES, that's a fucked up, relentless movie.
The RAPE scene in Noe's IRREVERSIBLE... ahhh!
Robert Blake in the party scene in Lynch's LOST HIGHWAY... now unfortunately even scarier!
The slaughterhouse scene in Fassbinder's IN A YEAR WITH THIRTEEN MOONS. Me being a vegetarian didn't help, but Jesus Christ. Amazingly, this is also my favorite film by Mr. Rainer Werner "Genius" Fassbinder
And I'm sure there's even more!
Regards,
Garrison
I don't think Clooney's gay, though I wouldn't be atall surprised if he felt the "urge to merge with a splurge" from time to time. Having been in Clooney's presence six or seven times over the past few months at various parties, receptions press events and alike all I can say is George, of you're reading this, call me.
He's truly a delight.
Cruise, by contrast, is completely insane. Go to the "Library" at my website www.ehrensteinland.com
Read the threatenting letters from his lawyer.
another trauma just came back, while reading the comments:
dr. who!!!
I just so one or two glimpses of it, but after that never dared watching an episode again.
I generally don't scare with movies, though I will admit that Cronenberg's films freak me out... especially "Shivers". That whole "body horror" thing. But there is one scene I'll never forget. The end of the film "Don't Look Now" (1973). Saw it a few years ago in a college film course. The ending is really creepy, though if you try to describe it to someone else it sounds laughable: "Donald Sutherland gets his neck sliced open by a psychotic deformed dwarf woman serial killer". Then I had to walk back to my car and it was night and there was fog eveywhere... freaky... Actually, that whole film was pretty unnerving, now that I think back.
I found Sotos' work a little hard to take too at times, even though I've pretty much read everything he's ever written.
What a great subject, traumatic moments inflicted by art.
Led Zeppelin, "Black Dog," 1975
Naked Lunch, 1977
The floor of the Red Room in Fire Walk With Me. For some reason that floor totally fucks me up.
Romance/porn novels, Sidney Sheldon etc., ages 10-14, with now-extremely-fake-seeming depictions of sexual pleasure all from the consciousness of male characters or the occasional very depraved female one, entwined with weird obsessions about race and class
"George: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday" in the Between C and D anthology in 1990
Puppets in the TV shows "Stingray" and "Thunderbirds" circa 1966. I was too young to be sure that they weren't human.
The movie A Clockwork Orange circa 1976
Chinatown, when Jack Nicholson hits Faye Dunaway and forces her to confess to incest with her father, 1975
The ending of Todd Haynes' Safe
That "Museum of Death" sounds like the most obnoxious thing ever.
I would SO watch a Gaspar Noe film of a Dennis Cooper novel. Damn.
Mr. Dennis,
This sounds like a personal challenge. You write your Bresson and I will write my Sparks. I accept the challenge.
But also with respect to Sparks, contact me. They're playing in Paris in the very near futrue you know.
I was never scared by twin peaks as a child. I really liked it. Maximum Overdrive scared the piss out of me. So did Roald Dahl's The Witches. And Chuckie (killer toys? did they want to give kids a complex?) When I was maybe 8 or 9 I was home alone and the phone rang. I picked it up and it was a wrong number. It was some man looking for a woman who's number must have been close to ours because people were always calling asking for her. He apologized and then imparted to me that he was fucked up cause he had woke up horny. He asked me if I knew what that was like. I told him I did and he sounded shocked and said he was surprised that I could get horny because I sounded so young. I told him my mom was calling me, which she wasn't, and I hung up the phone. I felt excied and ashamed at the same time. And I've never told anyone else until just now.
With respect to the Museum of Death, I found it very interesting. Although it seems to be objective regarding death, I am sure there are holes in that theory. Nevertheless I found it enlighened. For someone who went through numerous traumatic death moments, I found it interesting.
I mean why not put 'death' on a museum level? Besides the obvious photos of death there is also the stuff pets, doctor's tools regarding the measurment of death and so on. It is as memory serves me, the whole aspect of cultural death.
It is going to affect every living person, so why not dwell in it in a museum setting?
And a slightly different subject matter, Sparks rule!
one of my traumas with art was reading my first Andrea Pazienza's story, when I was fifteen or so. Pazienza had just died, and innocently I bought one of his posthumous comic books at the newsstand. All I knew about comics back then was Peanuts, Bretecher, Reiser, Moebius, stuff like that.
I was not expecting the violence, the heroine, the evilness, the funny stuff, and the most beautiful drawing hand ever seen. It was all disturbing and attractive. Shocking.
p.s. taking about drawing, I just sent you a self-portrait Dennis, unfortunately past the limit of monday night. I hope I am not very too late.
1.- A Chien Andalou (When a lady eye is cutting for a clasp
2.- Erect dick and bonzo burning vietcom in Persona of Ingmar Bergman
3.-Birds of America Lorrie Moore
4.-Nausee Sartre
5.-PJ Harvey Live
6.-Joe Dallessandro
7.-Doctora Laura Program
8.-Present For Ruthann in Alaska's Doctor . A tomb. I was tinhkink in death all this summer.
9.-American Pshycho Book
10.-Bergman Films
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