Blue Movie

by Terry Southern

  They reached the door of the trailer and stood there.

  “Hmm,” Boris murmured. “Well, I was just thinking it might . . . loosen things up a bit.” This was almost true; the psychological strategy, which he had contrived with Arabella, had been simple: the more they could get Pamela Dickensen to do in front of a crowd, the more they could then get her to do when alone. But there was another reason as well.

  “You see,” she continued, “this is all quite new to me . . . I mean, I consider it a very great privilege, an honor really, to work with you—and with Arabella, whom I’ve always admired tremendously—and I understand what is required of me in the love scenes, and I’m prepared to do that—I admit I’m not entirely certain about what you . . . well, what you hope to achieve by being so explicit, but I have confidence in you . . . in your integrity, and in your artistic ability, and in Arabella’s. What I do not understand is why you allow all of those idle people to stand there, ogling the undressed actors. I simply can’t believe that Arabella hasn’t complained.”

  “Not a peep.”

  Pamela shook her head, and sighed. “Astonishing.”

  Boris smiled. “Maybe we should all undress—how would that be?”

  She managed to return the smile, rather weakly. “Somehow I don’t feel that’s the solution.”

  “Okay, we’ll clear the set. Just me, Tony, the cameramen, and the soundman. How’s that?”

  She seemed greatly relieved. “Thank you,” her smile warmed considerably. “I’m sorry to be such a prude—but I was afraid it would affect my performance.”

  “Yes, well of course that’s the most important thing of all. And I know you’ll be great.”

  She touched his arm. “Thank you again—excuse me, I’ll just see about the underpants.”

  Boris watched her step up into the trailer, satisfied that when he cleared the set now, she would feel considerable obligation to do the scene well—which was the real reason, of course, for not clearing it in the first place.

  12

  AFTER RESHOOTING THE GIRLS’ approach to the water, from the rear and the side—this time in their panties (Pamela’s white, Arabella’s light blue)—both cameras were moved out onto the water.

  In the first shot, the girls had gone into the water only up to their thighs.

  Helen Vrobel dried their legs, and it was shot again, this time from the front angle. In order to get the proper perspective on this shot, it was necessary to have one of the cameras well in front of the actors, almost, in fact, in the middle of the lake. This was anticipated, and a twenty-one-foot motor launch had been brought to the site early that morning. The setup, however, proved unsatisfactory—the motion of the boat, though extremely slight, caused the image to waver—and for a while it appeared there was nothing for it but to construct a stationary camera platform atop sunken pilings . . . a job which, under the circumstances, could have taken half a day. Sid was flipping. “For Chrissake, B., if we have to keep those two broads an extra day, it’s going to cost us thirty fucking grand!”

  “I need that shot, Sid.”

  “Oh Christ, Christ, Christ . . .”

  But then Boris solved the problem—by placing the camera on the opposite shore of the lake, and shooting with a six-hundred-millimeter lens. This time the girls went into the water over their breasts, and then, without getting their hair or faces wet, made the first motions of swimming, before the scene was cut. This completed their approaching and entering the lake; the next three shots called for: (1) playing and swimming in the water, (2) coming out of the water, and (3) making love. In order to better control their appearance—of hair and make up—Boris decided to shoot the love scene before shooting the swimming sequence.

  “I guess we’d better talk about this,” he said, and he told the first assistant, Fred Johnson—best known as Freddie the First—to call a tea break, while he and Tony sat down on the grass with the two girls—who now looked so very young it was unnerving. Du Couvier, the facial magician, had transfigured them into the quintessence of fifteen-year-old schoolgirls—giving Arabella the classic Parisian gamin look of straight black hair, short with bangs that came just to brows above dark eyes sparkling with intelligence and mischief . . . and to Pamela, auburn tresses which fell past her shoulders in two marvelous braids, a pink ribbon in each. Miraculously, neither face appeared to have on it a trace of makeup, but looked freshly washed, radiant with milk-fed health, and very very young.

  “Did Arabella tell you,” Boris asked Pamela, “that this is a true story—that it actually happened to her, right here?”

  “Yes, she did,” said Pamela, flushed and nervously vivacious, “I think it’s absolutely charming . . . and in such an enchanted place!”

  Arabella reached over and squeezed her hand.

  “Pamela,” she said, “you remind me so much of her.”

  Pamela averted her eyes. “I’m glad,” she said softly, quite embarrassed.

  “. . . but you are even more special.” Arabella continued, “more beautiful.”

  Now Pamela was blushing, exactly like the schoolgirl she appeared to be. “Thank you,” she murmured.

  “Well,” said Tony, “this looks like it’s going to work out all right.”

  Pamela giggled awkwardly. “It’s all so strange,” she said.

  The second assistant arrived with tea in four styrofoam cups.

  “Good tea,” said Boris, after trying it.

  Tony took a sip. “Fan-fucking-tastic,” he said dryly, poured it out, and half filled his cup from a pint bottle of Scotch he had in his pocket.

  “Tell me,” Boris continued gently to Pamela, “have you ever had any . . . experiences like this—I mean, you know, with a woman?”

  She shook her head, the two ribboned braids wagging childishly. “No . . . no, not really. Certainly not like in the script, I mean, being kissed that way and everything.”

  “Are you going to pretend,” asked Boris “that it’s a man doing it?”

  Arabella was sharply annoyed. “That won’t be necessary,” she snapped, “just let her respond quite naturally. It will be all right, I promise you.”

  “I really don’t know,” said Pamela, “I’d like to do it in a sort of, you know, method way, if I can. In any case, I’m sure I can handle it somehow—now that all those people are gone. Thank you so much for that, Boris.”

  Arabella reached out for her hand again. “It will be fine, you will see.”

  Pamela managed to return her smile—weak but brave, lamb-going-to-slaughter style.

  “Okay,” said Boris, standing up, “let’s give it a whirl.”

  The script called for the girls to come out of the lake, holding hands and laughing, both admiring Pamela’s breasts and commenting on how much they had grown since last year.

  “Go back in the water for a minute,” said Boris, before they started the shot, “just up to your waist—we’ll take care of the rest.”

  When they came out, he pointed to a spot on the ground, “. . . now here’s where we’ll play the scene,” he put a leaf on the grass, “this will be your mark, Pam—you’ll be standing like this, a three-quarter profile into the camera, when she starts, you know, caressing you. Okay? And Arabella, you’ll be like this, three quarters away, and cheat a little to the left with your body, so we can see what’s happening, you know, between your hands and her breasts and all that, okay?” Without waiting for a reply, he turned to Du Couvier’s assistant, a curious-looking young man who was standing nearby with a large makeup case. “Okay, get the top part of them wet, and fix the nipples. Be careful with Arabella’s face.”

  The young man came forward with his case, took out an atomizer, and sprayed each upturned face with a glycerin solution, which stood on their skin like drops and droplets of water, but with a more positive light refraction, and with no effect on their makeup. He then repeated it on the rest of their top parts, front and back.

  “How are the legs?” asked Boris.

 
The assistant shrugged. “My mix always better,” he said in a heavy French accent, and added sardonically, “if you want the serious realism.”

  “Okay,” said Boris, “go.”

  The assistant took a towel, and began vigorously wiping the water off their legs, to prepare them for the glycerin spray.

  Tony, nearby, laughed at the irony of it, quaffed a big swig from his styrofoam cup, and muttered, “in-fucking-sane!”

  Next came the nipples. The assistant supplemented the traditional Folies Bergère (and Krassman) technique (ice cube with hole in center, twirled about nip) with an immediate follow-up of Supercainal, an aerosol pain-killer containing a super-powerful “freezing-agent.”

  Pamela Dickensen, who was familiar with these methods only by remotest hearsay, drew back indignantly when the assistant seized her superb left breast in one hand and started to apply the cube with the other.

  “I think I can manage that myself,” she said, with a toss of her head more suited to a powdered coif than her own present pigtails.

  The assistant gave a mighty shrug of disdain and handed her the ice. “Avec plaisir, mon chou.”

  While Pamela daintily applied the ice to herself, Arabella allowed, or rather supervised, the assistant—thrusting her own proud breasts forward, speaking rapidly and imperiously in French: “Encore pour l’autre! . . . Pas si vite! . . . Doucement! . . . Maintenant plus vite! . . . Les voilà! Bon . . .”

  When it came to the Supercainal, however, it was she who protested—not Pamela.

  “No, no, no,” she said to Boris aside, “she will not be able to feel anything in her breasts if you use that! I need her feeling for the response!”

  “Well, we’ve got to keep those nipples out there, you realize that, don’t you? Otherwise, we’ll lose the shot.”

  “They will be out there, Boris, I promise you that—the ice will put them out there, and I will keep them out there!”

  “Hmm,” he supposed she was right. He glanced down at her own breasts, and nipples, which seemed to be literally pouting forward in annoyance.

  “How about you? Are they going to stay like that?” She looked down as though she had forgotten about them. “Ha, you see! Mine will keep out there too! Certainement! I am very excited, chéri!” And she impulsively leaned forward and kissed his cheek. “It was good, chéri,” she whispered, “the coming in my mouth. I can still taste it. Now I let you try anything, sometime. Soon. But do not permit them to freeze her nipples, yes? Je t’adore!”

  The first take went pretty much as planned. The girls tripped in, toward camera, from water’s edge, hand in hand, dripping, laughing, shaking their hair, wet panties clinging, nipples standing out like four rosebuds.

  Because of the nature of the sequence—its content, the character of the girls, and the obvious Alpine background—Boris had decided it would have to be a French setting. The dialogue therefore would be in that language. Pamela, of course, did not speak French well enough to make a master track, so it was decided since this was a medium shot, wherein lip movements are not critical to sound-sync, that Arabella would speak French, and Pamela—who, beyond a certain amount of very girlish sighs, moans, and sobs, didn’t have much dialogue anyway—would respond in English, which would later be dubbed into French. In this way, Boris felt, neither would be distracted, or inhibited, by having to think about saying something very personal in a foreign language.

  The scene opened with the goddesslike Arabella affectionately teasing, cajoling, flattering, and high-jiving the enchanted Pamela—while they both joyfully admired her newly developed breasts, with Arabella playfully touching the nipples, fondling them, and finally, kissing them, circling each slowly with the tip of her tongue. She stopped and raised her lips to Pamela’s mouth . . . gentle and tentative kisses which soon became deep, tongue-probing, lip-biting, almost carnivorous—while her hands moved over Pamela’s body, as gingerly and electric as a Geiger counter . . . but then began to grasp and squeeze, causing the girl to wince with pain, either real or assumed, remaining ecstatically closed-eyed as Arabella began her sensual descent . . . from the lips, to the throat, to the shoulders, to the breasts . . . and down, slowly, to the navel, tonguing there, and along the top of the precious panties—whereupon began a new line of action . . . hands gently peeling the panties down, and the famous mouth-tongue covering every inch of perfect Pamela-tummy as it was gradually unsheathed.

  “You better cut it,” said Lazlo, “I’m not getting anything but the back of her head.”

  “It’s okay,” said Boris, “I just want to let them warm up—put it on Pamela’s face.”

  Watching Pamela’s face, it was impossible to tell where the acting left off, and the reality began. The action called for her to remain standing for a moment after Arabella had dropped to her knees and started kissing her. She was to respond in a tenderly affectionate way, gazing down at Arabella, gently stroking her hair with one hand, the other instinctively raised across her own breasts—though not concealing either of them. Then, as her feelings of affection gave way to those of excitement, she was to go closed-eyed, head back, both hands down now, one on Arabella’s head, the other on her shoulder. And as she gave herself over completely to the feeling, she would allow Arabella to gradually pull her down to lie on the grass. The transition was carried out quite gracefully, so that Pamela now lay on her back, and Arabella knelt beside her, fondling her breasts and kissing her clitoris.

  “Get in tight on Arabella’s face now,” Boris whispered to Lazlo, “try to get her mouth . . . her tongue.”

  The assistant cameraman slowly turned the focusing ring, but Lazlo shook his head. “It’s not registering—we’ll have to light it from the side . . . somehow.”

  And it was about then that Pamela reached her saturation point, at least for the moment.

  “Please . . . ,” she said, “can we stop for a moment to . . .”

  “Okay, cut,” said Boris, and went over to where they were helping Pamela with one of the robes Helen Vrobel brought out to them. “That was beautiful,” he said, “really beautiful.”

  “I’m sorry I had to stop,” said Pamela, “I just felt it was getting out of control—I wasn’t able to concentrate on what I was doing.”

  “How did it feel, chéri?” Arabella wanted to know.

  “Well, it’s really quite extraordinary . . . I mean, that’s the difficulty, it’s so terribly distracting.”

  “Maybe you should just sort of go along with it,” suggested Boris.

  “Well, I did . . . up to a point, then it seemed . . . well, it just got to be a bit much.”

  “But you didn’t come, chéri.”

  This thought seemed to agitate Pamela considerably. “Well, I didn’t come—no, of course not . . . I mean, I don’t very well see how I can do that, and still know what I’m doing. Good heavens, I practically forgot where the camera was just now!”

  “Don’t worry about the camera,” said Boris. “Just try to relax and enjoy it.”

  Arabella agreed heartily. “Oh yes, if you just relax and enjoy it, it will be such a wonderful scene . . . so beautiful.”

  Fred the First came over then and said that Du Couvier was waiting in Arabella’s trailer, to check her makeup.

  She kissed Pamela on the cheek before getting up. “You are ravishing,” she whispered, and hurried off.

  Pamela sighed. “Oh dear, I just wish she weren’t quite so . . . zealous at it—I’m not at all sure I can cope.”

  “How do you mean, ‘zealous’?” asked Boris.

  “Well,” said Pamela, somewhat at a loss, “I really don’t know—I mean, I guess I just didn’t know they did it like that—I thought it would be more of a . . . kissing, instead of . . . that.”

  Boris was intrigued. “Instead of what?”

  “Well, I’m not entirely sure, you see—it feels more as if she were sort of . . . well, sucking it, and then sort of, I don’t know . . . biting it. I must say, it’s the most unnerving sensation I
’ve ever experienced.”

  Boris regarded her quizzically. “Didn’t any . . . man ever do that to you?”

  “No,” said Pamela primly, “decidedly not. Kissing it, yes—but not that . . . not doing that.”

  “Hmm . . .”

  “I’m not suggesting, you understand, that I’ve led a particularly sheltered life—I’ve had the usual number of affairs, etcetera—it is simply that I have not, or had not, encountered an experience—or sensation, if you like—such as this. Now you’ve both suggested that I just ‘relax and enjoy it’ . . . even to the point of having an orgasm—well, you don’t need an actress for that, Mr. Adrian, you merely need a . . . well, that sort of girl.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Boris saw the white terrycloth robe as Arabella stepped from her trailer, in animated converse with Du Couvier. He felt he didn’t have much time. “Surely you can’t believe,” he said to Pamela, after fixing her with his most darkly serious look, “that there isn’t more to the role . . . the character . . . than that? I know that you must recognize the symbology, and the parable, underlying the sequence—perhaps the most important sequence in the entire film.”

  “Well, I do like to think that there’s more to it than just . . . well, of course I’m sure that there is more to it than that—otherwise, none of us would be here—”

  “Right,” Boris said hurriedly. “Listen, I’ll tell you what—I’ll ask Arabella to, you know, sort of take it easy, so to speak . . . and you, in turn, try to . . . well, kind of go along with it . . . like method, okay?”

  He gave her a solid wink of conspiracy, just as Arabella arrived, glowing.

  “Bon,” she said, “now we work, yes?”

  Boris got up, and helped Pamela to her feet. “Yes, let’s,” he said in his best Laurence Olivier manner, “we’ll take it from the top, shall we?”

  Pamela looked at him beseechingly, before moving a few steps away so he could speak to Arabella alone—but it was Arabella herself who seized the opportunity. “Well,” she whispered urgently, “how did she like it?”