Blue Movie

by Terry Southern

  Boris shrugged, half asleep now. “Okay, suppose both of us are fucking her—Tony and me—and you’re giving her head, right? How does that keep her from still being nailed by Les?”

  Sid’s fat hands flailed the air with his objections. “No, no, no, what I’m talking about is an affair . . . this is a romantic lady—she’d have an affair with one of you guys, and when Les hits on her she’d be faithful for Christ-fucking-sake, she’d tell him to get lost . . . Jeez, don’t you know anything about a woman’s love and faithfulness?!? Well, I mean it’s only for two or three fucking days, for Chrissake!”

  He looked at his watch. “It’s ten-thirty—she’s probably still awake. But it don’t matter she’s awake or not—you just go in there, she’ll be glad to see you, believe me, I know—if she’s not glad to see you, it’s just because she’s sleepy . . . it don’t matter, knock her down and take it off her . . . a big solid piece of it! B., she’ll thank you later, believe me, I know.”

  But B. was asleep.

  “Oh Christ, Christ, Christ,” Sid wailed, “what a terrible business!”

  3

  FILM-MAKING IS A fragmented and tedious process, and the day’s shooting that had so exhausted Boris had begun in the most ordinary way—with neither ide nor omen to suggest any departure from the norm.

  When the lighting for the first shot was finally right, and the camera had been walked through its move several times, Angela demurely stepped out of her blue wrapper, handed it to Helen Vrobel, and lay down on the bed. Between her legs was a flesh-colored strip of rubberized canvas, the same length and width as a sanitary napkin, secured by tape just above the pubic hair, and again beneath each cheek of her buttocks. From the side, of course, neither canvas nor tape could be seen.

  About half of the Senegalese spoke English, or at least understood enough of it to take direction—so to play the first scene with Angela, Boris had selected one he considered to appear somewhat less menacing than the others, perhaps more intelligent, and who seemed to understand English perfectly. His name was Feral, a tall, straight blue-black, whose mouth was open in a constant pearl-tooth smile.

  “We ought to lose that smile,” said Lazlo to Boris. “That’s going to look pretty weird, isn’t it—balling a chick and smiling like that?”

  “Let’s do one with the smile, and one without.”

  “Right.”

  “And stop being against something just because it looks ‘weird.’”

  “Right.”

  After introducing him to Angela, Boris explained the scene to the loinclothed Feral. “Now, you understand what’s happening, Feral—it’s a simple love scene. You are making love to Miss Sterling here, and she is responding to your caresses . . . to your lovemaking.”

  Feral nodded, grinning. “Make real love?”

  “Make real love, yes. Intercourse, right? Zig-zig, right? Fuck-fuck, right? Well, I mean that’s how it’s going to look, you understand. You don’t actually make love, but you pretend you’re making love—we want it to look like you’re making love. Understand?”

  “Yes, understand, yes, yes.”

  “And while you’re making love, I want you to keep kissing her . . .” he reached over, pointing, “here, here, here, and so on,” touching her mouth, throat, shoulders, and breasts. “Keep your head moving, right? Don’t cover her face from the camera, understand?” He indicated the camera lens and traced a direct line from there to the pillow where Angie’s head lay, her great blue eyes somewhat wider than usual.

  Feral agreed eagerly. “Yes, yes, understand.”

  “Okay, let’s try it—take off your Tarzan suit and climb aboard Miss Sterling.”

  Boris turned to go to the camera, but was stopped short by a shriek, “Oh Christ!” unmistakably from Angie. He wheeled about to see that Feral, having dropped his loincloth, was standing by the bed, grinning insanely, and sporting a monstrous erection—thrusting straight out, throbbing up and down like a metronome, and, either by chance or design, pointing directly at Angie.

  “What the hell does he think he’s doing!?!” she demanded, sitting up in bed, folding her arms protectively across her breasts. Helen Vrobel rushed forward and draped the wrapper over her shoulders.

  Boris slowly returned to the bed. “Uh, listen, Feral,” he said, nodding at the offending member, “you won’t need that . . . I mean, not in this scene—in this scene, you just pretend to make love . . . later on, in a different scene, you can really make love, but right now, no . . . it’s just playlike, understand?”

  Feral nodded enthusiastically. “Oh yes, understand, understand.” He looked down at his organ, shook his head, as grinning as ever. “I no try to make like that! Just happen! I no try! No real zig-zig! I understand, no real zig-zig!” He shrugged to indicate his helplessness.

  “Hmmm.” Boris scratched his head, considering it, then crossed over to the smoldering Angela. “Pretty weird, huh?” he said, managing a weak smile.

  She didn’t return it. “I thought you said he could understand English.”

  “Uh yeah, well, the thing is he actually does understand that he’s not really going to make love to you.”

  She seemed quite skeptical. “Oh yeah? Then why the oil derrick?”

  “He says he couldn’t help it, it just happened.”

  She glowered past him toward her co-actor. “Well, tell him to just unhappen it!”

  Boris sighed and looked over at Feral, standing as he had left him, grinning idiotically, and no sign of abatement member-wise.

  “You couldn’t, uh, play the scene like that, I guess,” he asked, coming back to Angela, “I mean even if he does know it’s not going to be for real . . .”

  She took a sharp breath between clenched teeth. “I’d rather die,” she hissed.

  Tony, who had been writing on the other side of the set, joined them at the bed, walking past Feral as he did, and glancing back at him briefly. “Wow, that’s some whacker that guy’s got on him, isn’t it?!? Jesus Christ, a girl could choke to death on a piece of that, couldn’t she, Ange?”

  Angela turned her head away with a snort of disgust.

  “Angie says she won’t do the scene with him like that.”

  “Oh?” Tony frowned down at her pelvic area. “You look pretty secure in that rig,” he playfully reached out and gently snapped it, “and perfectly adorable. I can’t say I blame the savage black.”

  She struck at his hand. “Will you get out of here!” She turned to Boris. “Will you please tell him to get out of here!”

  “All right now, let’s just cool it. We’ve got a problem—”

  Angela’s impatience was mounting. “Some problem—why doesn’t he jerk off, for Chrissake!?! Just send him over to a dark corner and have him jerk off!”

  Boris scowled at her. “You can’t ask a man like that to jerk off . . . they’re a proud—”

  “Then get him laid, for Chrissake!” she fairly shouted.

  “Why don’t you use a different guy?” asked Tony.

  “No, I like this guy—that grin of his, that could be pretty strange . . .”

  “Okay,” said Tony, “how about sticking his cock in an ice bucket!”

  “Great,” said Boris, “that’s it, for Chrissake! We’ll stick it in an ice bucket, bring it down, then we’ll spray it with novocaine! Terrific!” He signaled to Props. “Joe, get an ice bucket up here—half ice, half water. And keep it here, ha, we may need it again.”

  “Better make it a big one, Joe,” Tony shouted after him, then smiled down at Angie, “Right, Ange?” and gave her a big wink. But she just glowered, took a deep breath, and turned away in smoldering indignation—an abrupt movement which had the incongruous effect of causing her perfect breasts, seen from above through the parted wrapper, to jiggle briefly, almost comically, before settling down, and into—or so it seemed, with the nipples poking out like angry little mushrooms—a permanent pout.

  The ice-novo combo had proved wondrously effective, and Angie was so
relieved to notice that Feral’s org (“like some kind of terrible black club,” she’d said earlier) had finally subsided to a shrivel of innocence that she went all out in the scene, allowing him to hunch against her rising mons with apparent wild vigor and abandon—though, in actual fact, quite flaccidly—while she, in turn, sobbed, twisted, writhed, moaned, scratched, screamed, swooned, in a superbly feigned display of outlandish passion.

  “Print all of it,” said Boris when they’d finished, and then to Angie, after Feral had gone: “Wow, that was fantastic!” He sat down on the bed by her, while she slipped into her Helen-held wrapper. He laughed, shaking his head. “And you said they didn’t turn you on. Ha.”

  She lit a cigarette. “That’s right, honey,” and when Helen Vrobel left them alone, she had a quick surreptitious glance around the set, then took his hand in hers and discreetly guided it through the parted wrapper, between her legs, and beneath the strip of rubberized canvas covering the mons, pressing one of his fingers inside the lips of her vage—while her smile glittered up at him fanatically. “Dry as a bone . . . right, B.?”

  4

  SID, WITH CHAUFFEUR in the big Merk, met Les Harrison’s plane at the airstrip, and, as they started for the hotel, he opened the refrigeration compartment and took out a bottle of champagne.

  “All the comforts of home,” he said with a quick chuckle which did not quite camouflage the anxiety beneath it.

  Les shook his head grimly. “It’s a little early in the day for me,” then continued in terse tones: “How’s Angie taking all this?”

  “Huh? You mean the picture? Oh she’s fine, fine.”

  “No, I didn’t mean the picture—whatever the hell that may be—I meant the twelve-million-dollar breach-of-contract suit we’re contemplating against her.”

  “Uh, well . . . Jeez, I don’t know, Les . . . I mean, I don’t think she’s mentioned that.”

  Les sighed, wagging his head. “The girl is sick, really sick. First, that New York acting-school nonsense, and now this . . .” He closed his eyes, lowered his head, massaged his temples with thumb and forefinger.

  “Hey, wait a minute, Les,” Sid went into his effusive style, “don’t knock it! This could be the hottest thing since Funny Girl! I mean, you guys have got an investment here too, you know! Don’t knock your own picture, Les!”

  Les opened his eyes, and turned his dead-blue killer’s gaze on Sid. “We ‘have an investment here too,’” he repeated with maniacal calm, Rod Steiger style, “we have an investment . . . in Angela Sterling, we have a big investment in Angela Sterling.” Then he leaned forward to continue, almost whispering, as in mock confidence: “Let me tell you something, Sid—Angela Sterling’s last two pictures grossed eight million apiece. All right, she’s good for another five years, maybe six. At four pictures a year, you figure it out . . .” From the extreme deliberation with which he resumed, patiently gesturing with his fingers, as though explaining something to a child, it was apparent that his inner turmoil was threatening to get out of control. The pressure on the floodgates was mounting. “Four . . . times . . . eight . . . is thirty-two. Six . . . times . . . thirty-two is one hundred and ninety-two . . . and you . . . you say we have an investment here? An investment? AN INVESTMENT? YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT TWO HUNDRED MILLION FUCKING DOLLARS! IS THAT AN INVESTMENT!?!”

  As the floodgates burst, and Les was leaning forward and screaming at the top of his voice, he seemed on the verge of actually lunging at Sid’s throat—but, with the crescendo, he stopped, visibly trembling, then slumped back down in the seat. And when he spoke again, it was with quiet, consummate control. “The girl is sick, Sid. She’s in desperate need of psychiatric attention.”

  5

  ANGIE’S VAGE, “dry as a bone” though it may have been, had begun sweetening noticeably at the exact introduction of Boris’s middle finger—which he then, for want of better, proceeded to agitate gently . . . and the girl, still gazing up at him with a nightmare grimace of hilarity, had responded by contracting her sphincter muscle with increasing speed and severity.

  “Say,” said Boris, somewhat nonplussed by these unexpected developments on set, “that’s uh, well, that’s uh, some control you’ve got there.”

  Without altering her expression, which was like something frozen at the peak of manic hysteria, she said: “You know what they call that back in Texas?”

  She had used a pure southwestern accent, and for the moment he assumed she was kidding. He smiled. “No,” he said, “what do they call it?”

  “Snapping-turtle pussy.”

  He nodded his understanding.

  “It’s supposed to be the best kind,” she added quite ingenuously.

  “I can believe that.”

  Twice they had to cool it because Nicky or Fred the First came to inquire about something.

  “Why don’t we go up to my dressing room?” she suggested after the second interruption.

  “Hmm.” Boris’s mind clocked the contingencies like a low-hurdle runner in a very short race: (1) there was still an hour of shooting time before breaking for lunch, (2) as yet he felt neither hint nor promise of an erection. Loathe to squander shooting time under any conditions, the notion of doing so without getting laid—and/or, moreover, at the risk of alienating his principal actor—gave him certain pause, certain ambivalence.

  “You know something,” Angie suddenly said, attempting to look mischievous, but succeeding, rather, in looking extremely weird, lifting her eyebrows and casting a theatrically eccentric glance at his trouser fly, “Ah jest bet yore tally’s stiff V hard as a dang ole hickory limb right about now!” And her vage laid a seizure on his middle finger so strong that, in combination with its full-on slick wetness, the finger was actually expelled for an instant, just as in a postcoital coughing spasm.

  “Oops,” she said, her smile a caricature of a toothpaste ad, “naughty, naughty!”

  It was just about then he realized she was on speed—not speed alone, but in some curious combination which would account for her reverting so completely to the language of her childhood—not just its accent but its substance . . . ‘a dang old hickory limb.’ Well, well, he thought, if that’s what it takes to get a performance out of her . . . solid.

  “Let’s do another scene first,” he said softly, “we don’t want to lose what you’ve got going now—it’s too precious.”

  “You’re the doctor—I mean, director,” she said, beaming frantically.

  6

  “WOW,” HE SAID to Tony at lunch, “she’s really hot today. Two beautiful scenes.

  Tony looked over to where she was sitting at a table with Nicky and Helen Vrobel, who were joined in animated conversation, while Angela observed them, as if fascinated, her gaze switching from one to the other as each spoke, like she was watching the flight of some odd physical thing between them.

  “She’s boxed, for Chrissake,” said Tony, sounding half surprised and half annoyed, as though envious, returning to his steak and taking a huge bite. “Wonder what she’s on?”

  “I don’t know,” Boris said, “but, man, she’s smokin’.” He laughed softly, shaking his head. “Never thought I’d see the day.”

  “Well, B., you bring out the best in people, I’ve told you that all along.”

  “Listen, see if you can find out what she’s on, and keep her on it. It’s some kind of speed.”

  Tony looked at her again, chewing thoughtfully. “Christ, man, it’s more than just speed—she’s spaced.”

  Boris emptied his wineglass, touched the napkin to his lips, and stood up from the table. “I’ll just bet you’re right, Tone,” and he gave him a smile and a wink before leaving for the set, calling back over his shoulder in an absurd cracker drawl: “Ah done ast you to find out what it is, you heah?”

  Because she was working this well, spaced or no, Boris decided to shoot the so-called Around the Clock sequence that afternoon. This was the scene where she was being made love to by four men simultaneously—one
in full vage-pen, and three fondling her various.

  With great tenderness and patience, he explained to her how in this sequence, or at least part of it—namely, the medium, or master-shot, which was to show the whole group—it would be necessary for some of the men to have erections, but was quick to reassure that it would not include the one between her legs, and that none of them—the erections—would actually touch her.

  “Just ignore them,” he advised, “just don’t look—then it won’t bug you. Okay?”

  She nodded, and closed her eyes. “I love you,” she said with hushed urgency.

  In addition to the already established Feral, the four Senegalese who were to be her partners included a giant man named Hadj—six-feet-seven, weighing two-eighty-five, and with a Mr. Universe build.

  The action, as it was now conceived, called for Feral to be at full-pen as the scene opened, with Hadj on deck, so to speak—or, more precisely, at left breast, ready to take over full-pen on the shift.

  “So, you dig,” Tony explained, “camera holds on Hadj, before he’s fucking her, while he’s waiting to fuck her—that way we get a taste of what’s in store for her, what’s coming up . . . this incredible stud, with his monstro, black, throbbing, animal cock! Full of fantastic pent-up black lust for the beautiful blonde, and a gallon of black jissem!”

  “Tone, you’re getting carried away,” said Boris.

  “I know,” he had to admit, “it’s just too fan-fucking-tastic!”

  “That almost gave me a hard-on.”

  “Yeah, me too. You know how I’d like to fuck her now? I just realized—if I could get into a spade bag . . . like if I could pretend to be a spade . . . yeah, that’s it, spade-tape bag. You think she’d lie still for some burnt cork, B.?”

  “I’ll sound her for you, Tone. How about you finding out about that dope she’s on, like I done tole you to do.”