Subject: Violence of Choice
To: REDACTED
From: REDACTED
Date: REDACTED


What you’ve described isn’t analysis paralysis. It’s sacrament. A sacrament of curation. The kind of ritual only those with taste—real taste—can experience. This isn’t indecision. It’s high-functioning aesthetic possession.

So no, it’s not just normal. It’s a kind of rite. You’re not indecisive—you’re overwhelmed by abundance. And that’s the curse of the connoisseur. The sommelier of cinematic disintegration.

To the outsider, it might look like neurosis. But to those of us with... appetites—the kind that crave architecture in dialogue, perfume that smells like betrayal, and music that throbs like suppressed memory—this is holy ground.

I’ve spent whole nights in my climate-controlled media room, staring at perfectly aligned VHS sleeves under soft halogen light, paralyzed by indecision. I gaze into my custom-built media wall—Italian walnut veneer, recessed LED lighting, temperature-controlled. I let the covers speak. Not the titles. The feel. The texture. The ones that hum at the right frequency of existential despair.

Do I want neon detachment or velvet collapse tonight? Pornographic gaze or surreal decay? Do I want to feel like I’m inside a Japanese fashion magazine from 1983—or do I want the hollow ache of a Malibu sunrise after too much ketamine and emotional betrayal?

It’s not a choice. It’s a seduction.

If I were to define analysis paralysis, quickly and off the cuff, here it is:

The Hunger
Vamp
Into the Night
Liquid Sky
Risky Business
Body Double

I didn’t list movies. I listed symptoms. And together, they form a syndrome.

It’s a definition, yes—but not one you’ll find in a DSM entry. It’s more evocative. A cinematic taxonomy of paralysis—the kind brought on not by ignorance, but by too much awareness. Too many aesthetics. Too many textures.

The Hunger is immaculate. That opening sequence alone—Bela Lugosi’s Dead, Bauhaus thrashing in that underground club, cutting between their performance and Bowie and Deneuve seducing and draining anonymous club rats—it’s pure style. Decadence rendered in smoke and strobe light. I’ve watch that intro on loop, every time. It's hypnotic. Visual heroin wrapped in YSL gauze.

And Catherine Deneuve in that film... she’s not acting. She’s gliding through it. Eternal, pristine, utterly detached. Everything about her—her posture, her voice, the way she plays with time and affection like she owns time and mortality—and she does—it’s old money vampirism.

The way she moves through that Manhattan townhouse... 

She oozes generational wealth.

The kind of presence you don’t fake—you inherit it with antique silver and a villa in the Loire Valley.

Bowie, of course, is angelic. That clinic scene—the decay, the rapid aging—he plays it like a man watching his reflection corrode in real time. It's almost too intimate. And Sarandon... well, she’s fine. She tries. But she’s just a guest in their world. Like a Bergdorf sales assistant briefly invited into a private showroom and mistaking it for a promotion.

There’s something unsettling and exquisite about her—those wide, searching eyes, slightly asymmetrical, that soft, unpolished sensuality. Is it imperfection beating perfection? That’s the entire point, isn't it?

What was it—the lighting, the wardrobe, the cigarettes, that soft voice like suede...? I don't know and don't ask.

If you’re into that kind of velvet-gloved nihilism, pair The Hunger with Possession next time. Or even Liquid Sky. Keep the vibe decadent, unhinged, preferably European. The kind of films that make you feel like you’re drowning in silk sheets and existential dread.

Vamp, though... now that’s a wildcard. It’s absurdist trash in magenta lighting, with Grace Jones looking like a nightmare designed by Jean-Paul Goude. It shouldn’t work. But it does. That albino street gang alone? Iconic.

Katrina's Club by Jonathan Elias is an absolute sleaze-synth masterpiece—the kind of track that doesn’t just play. It oozes. Smoke machine ambience turned into sound. You hear it and instantly, you're in some anonymous downtown club that reeks of hairspray, clove cigarettes, and spilled Campari.

It’s not trying to impress you. It’s trying to seduce you while keeping a knife hidden behind its back.

People talk about Tangerine Dream, Carpenter—yes, fine, all the greats. But Elias delivered something that was more boutique. More couture horror. That track, specifically, feels like a midnight fashion show staged inside a ritual sacrifice in the woods. It’s dark. Decadent. But strangely playful. Like if a Casio keyboard and a dominatrix had a one-night stand during a blackout.

You know what pairs with Katrina’s Club? Chrome furniture. Mirror walls. Dry martinis without vermouth. And a vague, persistent sense that someone is watching you from behind a two-way mirror.

Honestly, if I could have that track looped in the elevator of my building, I would. Most people wouldn’t understand. But that’s the point.

Then there’s Goldblum and Pfeiffer in Into the Night. Personally? I prefer older Pfeiffer. Or her sister from Vamp. Curveball? Sure. But Dedee has this almost accidental charisma—bubblegum chaos. She’s not refined, not iconic, but there’s a punky sensuality to her. Like the girl at the bar who laughs too loud but somehow ends up in the VIP room before you even know who invited her. She has fun. She is cute. And that makes her magnetic.

She’s not old money. She’s not even new money. She’s bartender dating a coke dealer energy—and somehow, that’s exactly what the scene needs.

Older Michelle? 

Infinitely more attractive than her early ingénue days.

Scarface-era Pfeiffer is icy, yes—but brittle. She plays Elvira like a walking headache in a Halston slip dress. All nerves, cheekbones, and dead eyes. Beautiful, sure—in that aspirational, Palm Beach trophy-wife way—but it’s the kind of beauty that feels high-maintenance, impatient, and ultimately fragile. You look at her and think: yes, she’s young, she’s stunning, but she’d ruin your life—and your weekend.

Goldblum in Into the Night is perfection because he’s unraveling quietly. There’s something compelling about a man who’s not in control, but still dresses well. His performance is all hesitation, wide eyes, insomnia-ridden charisma. He doesn’t chase Michelle—he drifts toward her like a man walking into the ocean at 3 a.m., fully clothed, not sure if he wants to drown or be rescued.

He said he was immature during filming? Good. That rawness makes him dangerous. Not like De Niro, or the brooding Mickey Rourke type. No—Goldblum’s danger is intellectual. Subconscious. It’s in the way he watches. The pauses. The way he looks like he knows something you don’t, but isn’t sure how to say it without making it weird.

He has that tall, slouchy, almost haunted quality—like he just stepped out of a philosophy lecture and into a noir chase scene. The kind of man who listens to Ornette Coleman, drives aimlessly at night, and knows where to find real Turkish coffee at 4 a.m.

Michelle and Jeff are mismatched in all the right ways.

She’s sleek chaos and honeyed manipulation. He’s barely holding it together, politely unraveling in slow motion. That’s why it works. It’s not chemistry—it’s existential magnetism.

Goldblum, especially in the '80s, had that rare quality: he made awkwardness erotic. The silences. The nervous hands. The slight stammer. It’s not insecurity—it’s depth. A man who’s been thinking too long, feeling too much, and just wandered onto a film set with perfect lighting.

People love him because he’s the opposite of the clean-cut male lead. He’s not trying to impress you—he’s trying to understand why he wants to impress you. And that’s far more dangerous. Far more seductive.

That whole performance feels like a jazz solo at the edge of a nervous breakdown. And I’d watch it every night if I could.

Risky Business isn’t just a movie—it’s a temperature, a texture, and yes, very specifically, a smell. That humid, late-night Midwestern city air, laced with lakefront breeze, cigarette smoke from someone’s older brother, and perfume drifting off the collar of a girl who just stepped out of a cab. It’s Calvin Klein Obsession mixed with suburban rebellion. You can inhale the entire film.

Chicago in that movie has a scent that’s part wet pavement, part cashmere, part desperation with good bone structure. It’s not New York grit or L.A. gloss—it’s that soft, strangely innocent Midwest hedonism. Risk, but not too much risk. It’s the smell of a kid who’s about to become someone else but hasn’t yet burned the training wheels.

And Cruise, in that era—pre-Scientology, pre-dental overhaul, post-Taps but before the manic smile became his brand—he’s soft, tense, primed. That scene with the Ray-Bans and the white shirt—every frame of it smells like:

Top Note: Baby powder
Heart Note: Anticipation
Base Note: Moral collapse

The whole movie is drenched in the scent of teenage capitalism—Ferraris, call girls, Princeton interviews—all wrapped in a mist of cigarette haze and late-night stereo hum.

Tangerine Dream’s score?

That synth line during the train scene with Rebecca De Mornay—slow, pulsating, erotic—it’s practically a scented candle. 

Love on a night train. 

My favorite. 

I’ve walked through the Gold Coast at night chasing that exact feeling. You can’t bottle it. You can only remember it. Or manufacture it artificially—in a living room, with dimmed lights, a glass of bourbon, AC and that soundtrack on vinyl...

When I think of Liquid Sky, I think of Billy Idol, shirtless in that pseudo-industrial penthouse, leering like a peroxide vampire—everything lit like a Calvin Klein Obsession ad gone off the rails. That loft in Hot in the City. Concrete. Chrome. Heat. And that Rebel Yell energy bleeds into Liquid Sky—aggression wrapped in aesthetic. The defiance of form. The theatricality of destruction.

Anne Carlisle in Liquid Sky—playing both Margaret and Jimmy—is genius. She slinks through that New York No Wave fashion underworld like some genderless, drugged-out insect. The makeup. The voice modulation. The detachment. It’s disturbing. And beautiful.

Aliens that come to harvest orgasmic endorphins from heroin users? That’s not sci-fi. That’s fashion editorial philosophy. An anti-narrative wrapped in latex and lit with electroluminescent rage.

Razor-sharp. Postmodern. Laced with amphetamine elegance. Most people wouldn’t understand. But they’re usually wearing Dockers.

You know what pairs well with that energy? Grace Jones and Patrick Nagel.

Yes—that’s exactly what Liquid Sky is. It’s Patrick Nagel on acid, locked in a SoHo loft with a Korg MS-20, a heroin-chic model, and a VHS camera. Painting with neon instead of gouache.

Margaret is a Nagel woman. All cheekbones, asymmetry, and disaffection. Like she was manufactured in a Miami gallery, dipped in opium, and shipped to SoHo in a Lucite case.

Structural makeup—isn’t just costuming. It’s war paint for the post-human.

That era—early '80s New York, the death throes of disco, downtown art, Club 57, Danceteria—it wasn’t about beauty. It was about weaponizing beauty. Making it alien. Dangerous. Disposable. Exactly like Nagel’s women—untouchable, unknowable, always about to vanish into the next clean line or mirror.

If Liquid Sky was hanging in the Gagosian, I wouldn’t blink. It belongs there. Preferably beside a Warhol silkscreen and an unattended line of coke on a glass table.

And Body Double?

It isn’t just perfect.

It’s honest.

Cinema that doesn’t pretend to be pure. It knows exactly what it is: voyeurism weaponized. Sleaze meticulously composed—like a Helmut Newton photo with a switchblade taped behind the frame. De Palma understood what most directors are afraid to admit: looking is power. Watching. Staring. Obsessing. That’s the real act. The violence? That’s just foreplay.

Melanie Griffith is exceptional.

Pre-surgery.

Short haircut.

Soft voice.

“Makes you hot, doesn't it?”

And that Frankie Goes to Hollywood scene—my God. 

People laugh. They say it’s absurd. They’re wrong. It’s genius. Porn choreography layered over synth-pop euphoria. A nightmare edited by Giorgio Moroder. It’s not camp. It’s heightened reality. 

De Palma saying: This is what you want, isn’t it? 

Flash. Skin. Danger. Come closer.

Frankie was never a band. It was an event. A hyper-stylized art bomb detonated in Thatcher’s backyard. They didn’t release music. They weaponized it.

“Relax” wasn’t a song. It was a dare.

And like all beautiful, toxic things... they imploded. Not in disgrace—in style. No slow decline. No Vegas comeback. Just a final, lacquered kiss goodbye.

That’s how you exit.

Not with a whimper.

With eyeliner smudged and your boots still wet from the last rain-soaked afterparty.