Blue Movie

by Terry Southern

  “We had the lez sequence.”

  “And that was great. Lez, I dig—two chicks fucking, or whatever they’re doing—beautiful. I mean, that turns me on—but two guys, hairy legs, hairy ass-holes, hairy cock and balls—forget it.”

  “What if they’re beautiful . . . young, beautiful . . . Arab boys, fourteen or fifteen, slender as reeds, smooth olive skin, big doe-brown eyes . . .”

  “You mean, like chicks?”

  Boris regarded him curiously. “No man, I mean we’ve got an opportunity here, and a responsibility, to lay it all down—and I just don’t think we should blow it. I mean, I don’t want to cop out on some aspect of eroticism simply because I don’t happen to dig it personally.”

  “Yeah?” Tony snorted, “. . . okay, why don’t we do some full-on S M? You know, burning off nipples, tearing out clits, that sort of thing. . . . Or how about some coprophilia? How about that, B.? We’ll do the definitive cinematic treatment of shit-eating. I mean, there are certain people who claim that’s the greatest.”

  Boris cocked his head to one side, smiling, slit-eyed, doing his Edward G. Robinson: “I like the way you handle yourself kid—how’d you like to fight for money?”

  Tony drank, shaking his head in true despondence. “I really don’t know, man . . . I mean, I know I couldn’t write a good nipple-burning scene, or a good shit-eating scene . . . and I don’t think I could write a fag-fuck scene . . . I mean, not a good one—not like, say, Genet could . . .”

  Boris considered it, preoccupied, moving the felt-tip pen silently back and forth across the page, slowly obliterating what he had drawn. “Have you ever had any homosexual experiences?”

  Tony made a face, shaking his head. “No, man . . . well, I mean like not since I was eleven or twelve.”

  “What happened then?”

  “What happened? Well, we just fooled around with each other’s cocks, that’s all—I mean, we got hard-ons, and then we . . . Christ, now I can’t remember what the fuck we did do. . . .” His brow darkened, trying to recall, and he sighed, “Oh yeah, now it comes back . . . wow, ha . . . well, what we used to do—my friend and I . . . Jason, his name . . . Jason Edwards—we’d be in this tree house we built, and we’d jerk off together . . . sort of competitively, you know, like see who could come first, or most . . . or farthest—that was the best, we’d stand up for that one, like in a spitting contest. And, dig, he was about six months older than me, or anyway a little more hip than me because he had this sister—she was fifteen—and he’d get these diagrams out of her box of Tampax, these drawings of Tampax being pushed up into the vage, with one finger, and he’d show them to me, and he’d say: ‘Look, this is where you put your thing, right in there.’ Fantastic! I mean, in these drawings, these profile cross-section diagrams—of uterus, womb, tubes, etcetera—the artist, for some weird reason, always gave the figure a . . . marvelously rounded, pert, provocative, Jane Fonda type ass! Well, I think that’s how we made the association . . . I mean, the idea of the ass—his and mine-being some kind of possible substitute for the cooze . . . or at least for jerking off, which was where we were at that moment. Anyway, we tried it a couple of times—but it didn’t particularly grab me . . . I don’t even remember if I came . . . I mean, the thing I was into then was watching his sister undress—we would watch her through the bathroom window, and she would stand in front of the mirror and massage her breasts, and that was pretty wild—and I began to use her as a jerk-off image . . . my first jerk-off image—I mean, aside from the Tampax-girl diagram, which didn’t really count because she was faceless . . . even headless and shoulderless, for Chrissake! And legless! Absurd. The point is, those couple of times I fucked Jason in the ass I was actually pretending it was his sister I was fucking.” He looked up at Boris then, and chuckled dryly as though aware he might be taking himself too seriously. “Pretty healthy imagery, eh, Doctor? None of your proverbial ‘cocksucking queer’ in that kind of relationship, right?”

  Boris smiled, and went into his Strangelove accent. “Iz true you hafe tole zee abzolute trut? No suck? Nicht kommen ven cornhole?”

  “Nope,” Tony shook his head sadly, “that was it.”

  “Rather a sheltered existence . . . for one who hopes to capture the elusive feelings . . . fears . . . hopes of the legendary Everyman.”

  “Yeah, well, the thing is I’ve got a good imagination . . . you dig? And all I’m trying to say about using a fag sequence for the movie is that we would end up using chick values . . . or rather, non-gay values toward chicks. I mean, if you try to romanticize fucking a young, supple, smooth-skin boy in the ass, then what you’re really talking about is fucking a chick. Right?”

  “In the ass?”

  “Oh wow . . . in the ass, in the cunt, in the armpit—I mean, someplace . . . but it’s still a chick . . . a soft, warm, cuddly, smooth-skinned chick—not some bony, hairy ass-hole!”

  Boris nodded thoughtfully. “I just wanted to give it a fair shake before we dumped it . . . you know, kick it around, run it up the pole and see if anybody salutes.”

  “Or,” said Tony, “as the great S. K. Krassman would say, ‘Stroke it a while and see if we get any jissem.’”

  “Right,” said B.

  Tony sighed. “And now we know.” He took a drink. “I thought I was about to get the ax.”

  “And I thought you were about to walk.”

  “Never, maestro.”

  “Well, what we’ve got to decide is how many episodes—four of twenty-three, or five of eighteen. Now it’s going to be very tough, maybe impossible, to keep the lez and the nympho segments under twenty-five minutes each—there’s just too much happening in them—so that leaves us with forty minutes, ideally, for the rest of the picture. Okay, we’ve still got ‘Idyllic’ ‘Profane,’ and ‘Incestuous.’ I just wonder if there’s time to do all three. Now I feel pretty strongly about the ‘Profane’ one—you know, “The Nun and the Gambler,’ ‘The Priest and the Hooker,’ something along those lines—could even be funny. A little of the proverbial ‘comic relief,’ eh, Tone? Ha.”

  “We’ll have to keep it in taste.”

  “No toilet jokes about the priest.”

  “Right.”

  “Now let me ask you this—what about the biggie? How’s that shaping up in your great gourd? Mother-son? Father-daughter? Brother-sister? I think we’ve got to follow our most personal impulses on this one. Now tell me, had you rather fuck your daughter, or your mom . . . assuming, natch, that your mom is a trim thirty-two or thirty-three?”

  “Thirty-two or thirty-three? Christ, is that possible? I mean, how old does that make me?”

  “Sixteen or seventeen.”

  “Hmm,” Tony raised his brows, obviously intrigued, “a trim thirty-two or thirty-three, eh? Red hair?”

  “Could be.”

  “Wait a minute. I think I’ve got an idea—let’s talk about the ‘Idyllic’ . . . you know, I said before when I was fucking Jason I’d pretend that it was his sister? Well, that wasn’t quite true—I mean, I’d pretend that it was her all right, the same girl, but I’d pretend that she was my sister . . . dig? See, I never had a sister, and I used to construct these great fantasies about having a beautiful sister and being very close, like a twin maybe, having this fantastic rapport with her, and then making it. I mean, what could be more romantic . . . more idyllic? I think I could write a beautiful sequence about that, B., I really do.”

  “Hmm, that’s pretty wild—combining the ‘Incestuous’ and the ‘Idyllic.’ Now we’re going to run short, for Chrissake.”

  “I can get twenty-five minutes out of that—Christ, I could get twenty-five hours out of it.”

  “What age would they be?”

  “Young, but mature—I mean, not thirteen or fourteen, but sixteen or seventeen, maybe eighteen, old enough anyway to know what they’re doing.”

  “Okay, groovy. Start writing it. How about if we get Dave and Debbie to play the kids?”

  David and Deborah R
oberts were actor and actress, very young and beautiful, brother and sister, siblings extraordinaire.

  “Wow . . . that’s gotta be sen-fucking-sensational!”

  FOUR

  The mark-inside was

  coming up on the Rube

  . . . and that’s a rumble

  nobody can cool

  Burroughs

  Naked Lunch

  1

  ANGELA STERLING, LITHE and rounded in her famous wrapper of blue brocade—a gift from Hans Heming—which she wore during most of her movie-mag interviews (hence its fame), strode across the Casbah boudoir set to where Boris and Lazlo were working out the first shot. Grips laying cable and gaffers driving nails stopped work like the freeze-frame in a movie, all heads turning as though swiveled by a single wire, every gaze riveting the fabulous face for an instant before dropping abruptly to a region below hip-line, where the blue wrapper parted with each long-limbed stride, flashing a stretch of famous bare thigh like a stabbing knife.

  “We’ll open with those stock exteriors,” Boris was saying to Lazlo, “beginning with the long, wide aerial, to establish that it’s Morocco, and we’ll stay with that, down, down, down, right to this window, and then we’ll pick it up inside, dig?” With his view-finder to his eye, he backed slowly away from the window, continuing: “We’ll pick it up right here at the window, like a perfect reverse, and we’ll keep the camera moving at exactly the same pace that it came down, pulling back from the window very slowly, avoiding the bed for the moment, going for details of the room—exploring, lingering—and this could be quite long, because we might use it behind titles . . . then finally, of course, we end up on the bed, where they’re making love. . . .” He lowered the viewfinder, and looked at the cameraman, “And you’ve got to work out the move, Laz, so that it’s logical and inevitable we end on the bed—not just because there happen to be a couple of people fucking on it, but because the directional symmetry of the camera movement requires it. It’s got to be inherent in the move—so we better make it generally a left-right move, and vaguely clockwise . . . I think that will work. Okay?”

  “Okay,” said Laz, already studying it, retracing the move Boris had indicated.

  Boris turned to Angela, sitting on the edge of the bed, watching and listening in much the way she had sat on the edge of her chair at Actors Workshop.

  “Sorry,” he said, taking her hand, “we were right in the middle of something.”

  She smiled up at him, shaking her head, eyes glistening—her adoration radiant. “No,” she said softly, “it was wonderful—it’s such a . . . privilege to be, well, you know, sort of ‘behind the scenes’—I mean, creatively, with someone like you.”

  He smiled and sat down on the bed beside her. “Have you read the script?”

  “Oh it’s beautiful,” she sighed. “I’m not sure I understand it, but I do know poetry when I see it, and I love poetry.”

  The “script,” as he called it, was scarcely more than an outline, an incoherent mishmash of sensual scenes intercut with childhood impressions—which he and Tony had thrown together the night before, solely for her benefit.

  “I thought the childhood scenes were so marvelous,” she exclaimed; then, with dark concern: “Do you think Jen can handle it?”

  Boris patted her hand. “She’ll be perfect.” He looked at her for a long moment, head to the side, as though calculating a risk. “Tony says you’ve been talking about a double.”

  “You mean for the lovemaking scenes.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Well, I just naturally assumed . . . I mean, if they’re going to actually make love . . .”

  He laughed in a chiding way. “But you’ve been studying at the Workshop—didn’t they even teach you how to make love?”

  “Oh Boris, really,” she turned aside as if she could somehow dodge the painful remark, but then she had to face it. “You mean, when you show . . . well, show it going in and everything, you want me to actually be doing it?”

  “Arabella did.”

  She was very impressed. “Arabella? Really?”

  “And Pamela Dickensen.”

  She was not impressed. “Oh well, Pam . . . she would.” She tossed her head haughtily. “She’s still working for two-fifty a picture, isn’t she? I know, we have the same agent.”

  “She wasn’t doing it for money, Angie,” Boris said gravely. “She did it because she believed in the film.”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” said Angela, her brow crinkling, “I thought they were doing the thing about lesbians.”

  “So?”

  “So, where does the lovemaking come in?”

  “They made love, in their own way.”

  “You mean kissing each other? Oh come on, Boris, there’s a big difference between that and being fucked on camera!”

  Just off the set, not far from where they were sitting, a curious assembly was in progress. Under the supervision of Freddie the First, about twenty-five Senegalese were being lined up and sorted about. Having been recruited by able Morty Kanowitz from the African quarter of Paris and off the streets of Morocco itself, they were of various ages and various shapes, though all of them—either by girth or by height—seemed larger than life; and, collectively and singly, they were the color of anthracite coal: the purest of black, highlighted, or so it seemed, by glints of blue.

  “You’re not anti-spade, by any chance, are you?” asked Boris.

  “Huh?” Angela, who had been staring at the milling group with a sort of dumb consternation, turned to face him again. “No, of course not.”

  “Have you ever made it with a black?”

  She adjusted her wrapper, so that at the part, where it had been swinging open, one side now carefully over-lapped the other. “What difference does that make?” she asked coldly.

  Boris shrugged. “I was just curious.”

  “Well, as it so happens, I haven’t. For one thing, there’s just never been any . . . occasion. I mean, I don’t think I even know any Neg—spades, blacks whatever it is you call them now.” She looked back at the assemblage. “My God, they’re really black though, aren’t they!?! Christ, I’ve never seen any like that before!”

  “Does it turn you on at all?”

  She looked at him again, eyes going up in a gesture of exasperation. “No,” she said evenly, “I can’t say that it does.”

  “You think you’ll be able to play it?”

  She was breathless with her reassurances. “Of course, darling, I’ll be able to play it! It’s just that I couldn’t actually do it—I mean, if I had to actually do it, I wouldn’t be able to play it. Don’t you see?”

  Boris nodded. “That makes sense,” he said. “Okay, we’ll try it your way.”

  She squeezed his arm, beaming gratefully. “Oh thank you, Boris, you won’t regret it.”

  He returned the squeeze with a smile. He had never, of course, expected her to do the full-pen scenes without a double; but, through his insistence on it, he had managed to put her on the defensive—and that was a score, natch.

  2

  KRASSMAN

  HOTEL IMPERIAL

  VADUZ, LIECHTENSTEIN

  ARRIVING 1700 HOURS THURSDAY 26TH. PLEASE

  HAVE SCRIPT AND SHOOTING SCHEDULE MY ROOM

  PENTHOUSE SUITE HOTEL IMPERIAL BEFORE THAT TIME.

  REGARDS

  L. HARRISON

  Sid paced up and down the office, waving the cable about frantically. “Well, boys, the shit is about to hit the fan!” He turned imploringly to Boris. “B., what the hell are we going to do when the Rat Prick sees what’s happening here?”

  Boris sat slumped in a chair, his head resting in one hand, eyes closed. “I don’t care what you do—just keep him away from the set. I don’t want him on the set, and I don’t want him looking at any footage.”

  Sid threw up his arms. “Oh sure—and just how am I going to do that?”

  “By force. We’ve got two guards—hire two more.”

  Sid
gave a sign to Mort, who immediately left the room to take care of it.

  “And listen, Sid,” Boris continued, without raising his head, “keep him away from Angie—I don’t want him fucking up her head at this point.”

  Sid rolled his eyes in despair. “Oh great, ‘Keep him away from Angie,’ he says. She’s under contract to him, she’s in default of contract—Christ, that’s the first place he’ll go.”

  Boris shook his head. “We’re going to have trouble with her if they start rapping—she’s shaky enough as it is.” He opened his eyes and looked up wearily at Sid. “Didn’t you see her this morning? Christ, she’s scared shitless of all those black cocks. A couple of times I didn’t think she was going to make it through the scene.” He stretched and yawned. “It’s very simple, Sid—just don’t let them be alone together.”

  Sid became quite irate. “Then you’re going to have to start fucking her, damn it!” He paced about, wringing his hands, his face twisted with anguish and apprehension. “I mean, she’s here four or five days awready, the most beautiful girl in the world, and nobody’s fucking her! How do you think that makes her feel?!?”

  Boris laughed. “Well, we thought you’d have it covered, Sid.”

  Sid grimaced. “Okay, look, it’s outta my league, right? I mean, Christ, I’d give five years of my life to fuck Angela Sterling . . . but it’s outta my league, okay, I know that . . . but you and Tony . . . I mean, what the hell’s the matter with you guys? You into some kind of fag bag awready? What’re you guys, On dope or something?” He paused and wagged a severely accusing finger at Boris. “I mean, one of you guys better start taking care of business, and fucking that broad!”

  Boris shook his head, blinking his eyes. “Wow, am I tired . . . Christ, I don’t think I could get it up, Sid. Listen, why don’t you just give her some head?”

  But Sid was adamant. “I’m serious, B.—I tell you, the first thing Les Harrison is going to wantta do is get laid . . . relax his tension after the trip, right? Okay, who’s he going to hit on? Angie, right? Well, if she’s not getting it from one of you guys, then she’ll get it from him, for Chrissake! I mean, broads feel . . . insecure when that hole is empty—believe me, I know!”