I would die for you in secret

We were just kids, babe - a webweave

Taylor Swift for 'The Life of a Showgirl'

Taylor Swift reveals that she won't release any bonus songs for 'The Life of a Showgirl'

"There's no other songs coming. With Tortured Poets Department I was like, here's a data dump of everything I've thought, felt or experienced in 2 or 3 years, here's 31 songs. This album is 12. There's not a 13th. There's not other ones coming. This is the record that I've been wanting to make for a very long time. Every single song is on this album for hundreds of reasons, and you couldn't take one out and it be the same album. You couldn't add one and it be, it's just right. That focus and that discipline with creating an album and keeping the bar really high is something I've been wanting to do for a very long time. I tend to love to write lots and lots of music, so it's a temptation to release lots of music. But oftentimes I wanted to do an album that was so focused on quality and on on the theme and everything fitting together like a perfect puzzle that these 12 songs for my 12th album- I feel like we achieved that, and I'm really happy about that."

'No one ever leaves a star. That's what makes one a star.'

Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950) is probably the most movie-besotted movie of all time. Start with the premise. Gloria Swanson, a silent-film star whose career was derailed by the talkies, is Norma Desmond, a silent-film star whose career was ended by the talkies. Her butler-chauffeur, Max, turns out to be a once-acclaimed silent-film director and Norma’s ex-husband. He’s creepily–and brilliantly–played by Erich von Stroheim, a once-acclaimed silent-film director who’d been reduced to playing character parts, mostly Nazis in World War II-pictures.

The most meta scene comes shortly after screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) takes up residence in Norma’s decrepit mansion, where he serves as a combination amanuensis/boy toy. He tells us that Norma throws regular movie nights, just for the two of them; Max is projectionist. The repertoire, of course, is her own films. We see a bit from one of them, a scene where the young Norma’s face is illuminated by candles.