Blue Movie

by Terry Southern

  The audience was composed of C.D. and Les Harrison, and the slides were, in fact, exactly what Lynx had represented them to be, featuring, as they did, Angela in every conceivable situation—indeed, “position”—of stardom compromise.

  Old C.D. was sobbing quite openly, while the vindicated Les attempted to share the grief, tears streaming down his upturned face, one arm around his dad, occasionally gripping his shoulder, whimpering and wincing as he did, in some curious (perhaps due to his recent M-run) Pavlovian-like reversal, as though each grip of reassurance on dad’s shoulder was an injection of recognition and security into his own. Finally the old man actually pulled away, as if wanting to do his thing alone—or, quite possibly, out of sheer annoyance.

  In any case, when the lights went up, it was Les, presumably anticipating an emotional finale from dad, and wishing to prolong their shared experience, who forced his own grief to a crescendo, burst into tears anew, and groped blindly for his father’s shoulder, as though at last they would weep together and be the closer for it . . . or, at least in terms of corporate structure.

  But the only effect it appeared to have on C.D. was one of embarrassment—an embarrassment which then seemed to call forth a certain inner strength, or dignity—iron-in-the-soul style—from the old man.

  “Get hold of yourself, boy!” he admonished, shaking his son with one hand, wiping tears from his own cheek with the other. “Do you really think that this . . . this little nobody . . . is going to make one iota of difference to the profit-and-loss sheet of Metropolitan Pictures?!? One year from now?!? Two at the most? With all the . . .” he fumbled a bit, clearly improvising, “the . . . new stuff that’s coming up—new ideas, new material, new faces . . . the era of the super-star is over, son . . . the economics of film-making today simply are not compatible with budget allocations of exorbitant fees for the actors.” He grasped his son’s shoulder, Caesar style. “It’s a responsibility, . . . a responsibility we have to the stockholders.” And then, in a tender fatherly way, he handed him his handkerchief. “Here, son,” he said softly.

  “Thanks, Dad,” said Leg, equally soft, touching the handkerchief gingerly to his eyes, then unfolding it and blowing his nose—an action which caused C.D. to grimace in annoyance. “Goddamn it, boy, that one’s hundred-year-old Irish linen!” He snatched it from him. “You just don’t have any sense of style, that’s the goddamn trouble with you!” He looked at the disarrayed handkerchief, shaking his head in concern, then crumpled it and stuffed it into his side coat-pocket.

  “Sorry, Dad,” Les mumbled, eyes averted, going the full S/M route now.

  The old man coughed and chortled, slapping Les on the back reassuringly. “Well, what the Sam Hill, son—it’s only money. Just like that little nobody, no-talent, no-heart, sleep-anywhere tramp of an extra, Angela Sterling . . . only money.” He wagged his head sadly, put his arm over his son’s shoulder, and continued in tones of fatherly confidence, “Well, that’s not what makes this old world go around, my boy . . .” and he looked up to Lynx Letterman—he who had been sitting there, eyes without expression, waiting with reptile patience—“Right, Lynx? I mean, no offense, I’m sorry to have to say those things about the girl, I know you were very close, but—” He broke off, shrugged, eyes filling with tears again, “What else can we do?”

  Lynx coughed, cleared his throat, waited a second, and made his pitch: “What you can do, Mr. Harrison, I’ll tell you what you can do. You and your son—as vice-president in charge of production—what you can do, and what you should do, and must do . . . out of respect for the vast majority of the Metro stockholders who have trusted you, and who have put their confidence in you both—you and your son—what you must do now is repay that confidence! And by that I mean that we—that is to say, you and Les—have got to persuade Angie to kill the picture . . . I mean, I found out she hasn’t signed yet . . . no contract . . . no release . . . nothing—just a lousy letter of agreement that wouldn’t hold up in a Tijuana post office.”

  As Lynx spoke, his listeners’ eyes began to clear, then to harden, with remarkable similarity.

  “If you show her these pictures,” he continued, indicating the slides in a gesture of distaste, “and if you tell her that she will be absolutely destroyed by this film, that you will personally see to it that she never works again, and that what’s more you are suing her for twelve million dollars. Well, if you do that, and then I say it’s all true . . . I’ll just bet my sweet ass she walks.”

  24

  “I’VE BEEN THINKING about that ‘Profane’ sequence,” Tony was saying to Boris at lunch. “You remember you mentioned ‘a nun and a gambler,’ or ‘a hooker and a priest’? Well, dig—suppose we go the priest route . . . but instead of a hooker, the chick is some kind of nut—I mean, not just sexually, but like physically weird, and he still wants to fuck her. But we don’t know that yet, right? I mean, it could open in a very conventional way—church, Sunday morning, he’s in the pulpit, doing his thing, she’s third-row center, digging him over her hymn book—but demurely, because she’s boss respectable, wholesome, clean . . . knee-length dress, white gloves, Easter bonnet, beige pumps, seamless stockings, the full fifties schmear, right? Padded-bra and garterbelt time right? Quarter pound of deodorant and six ounces of Listerine . . . very clean woman . . . ‘Mrs. Midwest Front Porch Swing,’ toast of the Great Silent Majority, queen of artifice. Okay, he’s got eyes . . . goes over to her place after church . . . for a little ‘spiritual counseling,’ right? . . . makes his move, shoots his best shot—I thought that might be a fun title, incidentally—His Sunday Shot, ha. Anyway, he gives her a big, wet, soul, tongue kiss—and, because she responds so warmly, he takes the liberty of forcing her hand down to grasp his divine joint, which he had had the presumption to expose during the soul kiss. Naturally, our heroine is plenty keen for some of this hot Presbyterian cock straight from the pulpit, but not before she had taught him the fundamental precepts of existentialism, you dig? So with ‘Preacher Malone’—I thought we might actually get Lips to play it—trousers off now, his rude donkey-cock extended grotesquely in front of him, chasing our heroine about the room, grabbing at her—and during this, by the way, there occurs what you might call a ‘running dialogue,’ right? Ha. Anyway, so she’s telling him about the ‘historical irresponsibility of the Church,’ and how the ‘concept of faith has merely served as a convenient receptacle for Man wishing to shirk his own responsibilities to Man,’ and so on, you know, lay out the whole Jean-Paul store . . . and all the time she’s telling him this, he’s in what you might call ‘hot pursuit,’ trying to nail her, finally getting all her clothes off—you know, all the weird American middle-class harness stuff—so then he thinks he’s got her, but on the next grab, part of her body comes off . . . like a wig, or a leg, or a breast—”

  “It’s fantass,” said B. “And I know exactly who to play it.”

  “I’m hip,” said Tone, “but dig—so then it gets really weird, like surrealistic, where it turns out that everything about her is false. Even her cunt is false—she has a false cunt. So in other words, this gradual dismantling finally reduces her to absolutely nothing—like, in the end there’s nothing REAL left of her to fuck. So he puts back on his white collar—and his trousers—and goes home.”

  “All a dream?”

  “Maybe.”

  “That’s heavy, Tone.”

  “Well, that’s what you pay old Tone for, eh? Heh-heh.”

  “Heavy . . . but not very erotic, Tone.”

  “I thought you wanted some comic relief here.”

  “Yeah, but . . . couldn’t she suck his cock or something? I mean, aside from the funny parts?”

  “‘Suck his cock’!?! Christ, man, there’s so much cocksucking going on already in the picture that it’s liable to get blasted as some kind of weird fag-cocksuck film or something.”

  “Okay, not suck his cock, but . . . something. I mean, we can’t just suddenly do some kind of . . . Three Stooges bit r
ight in the middle of the picture.”

  Tone was irate. “‘Three Stooges’?!? Are you kidding? That’s Beckett, for Chrissake!”

  “Okay, okay, but we’ve got to have something . . . less esoteric . . . less high brow . . . something people can relate to.”

  “How about that ‘anal-tongue’ bit you mentioned?”

  “Hmm . . . wait, I know what we’ll do—we’ll let her think of something when she gets here.”

  “Dig it.”

  So they put in a call to Malibu, to the inimitable Teeny Marie.

  25

  IT WAS NOT UNTIL about an hour before wrap time—after a great deal of hemming and hawing (and then only because she couldn’t bear being thought of as “square”)—that Debbie had finally agreed to try the love scene with Dave, or at least had agreed that they would get under the blankets together, naked, and hold each other close . . . which they did, and, after a bit of nervous giggling, tickling one another, and kidding in general, they had just about settled down enough to try a take.

  “Well, Dave,” Boris asked, “how does it feel?”

  “Groovy,” said Dave.

  “Debbie?”

  “It feels nice,” she said, “nice and warm,” and she snuggled up a little closer.

  “Well, I think the way it should happen,” Boris went on, “is that after you lie there for a minute, embraced, and you’re no longer cold, you begin to feel, you know, sexually aware of each other’s presence—and so, Dave, you slowly take the blanket off, to look at Debbie’s body, which you’ve never really done before—I mean like deliberately.”

  “But isn’t it supposed to be cold in the room?” the girl wanted to know, instinctively grasping at straws.

  “Not anymore. Remember, the scene opens with you both asleep, under separate blankets . . . the fire is very low, the room is cold—Dave wakes up, shivers, puts some more wood on the fire, sits in front of it, huddled in his blanket . . . then you wake up and ask him what’s wrong. ‘I’m freezing,’ he says. ‘So am I,’ you say. He moves closer, still shivering, a genuine chill, teeth chattering, that kind of thing, so you say ‘Maybe we should get under both blankets . . . until the room is warmer.’ And that’s what you do. I know it may be cheating a little, timewise, but we’ve got to lose the blankets—I mean, we can’t put the camera under the blankets. Dig?”

  “Dig it,” said Dave, and then to Debbie: “Okay, Sis?”

  “Well, gosh . . .” she sighed, “I guess so.” “Everything’s cool, Sis,” he went on, “just stay loose,” and then to Boris, “About how slow with the blanket, B.—like this?” And he moved it down, gradually uncovering her. ‘Wow, Sis,” he admitted softly, “that is a pretty wild bod you’ve got going. Yeah, I think I’m going to dig this.”

  She giggled, grasping the top of the blanket just as it passed her navel, “Well, you don’t have to pull it down all the way now! I mean, they’re not even shooting!”

  “That’s perfect, Dave,” said Boris, “just take it a fraction slower—we’ll get a little tantalization time going for us.”

  “Dig it,” said the young man. “Mr. Adrian,” Debbie called, now demurely holding the blanket just below her chin, “when we make the shot, do you think it would be possible to get just a few of these people off the set?”

  Boris smiled. “Somehow I thought you might get around to asking that. Yes, of course,” telling Fred the First to clear all but essential personnel from the set.

  And it was just then that Angela arrived, looking very distraught indeed.

  “I’ve got to talk to you,” she said, looking everywhere but at him, “there’s something I’ve got to tell you.”

  Because they were nearly ready to shoot, his first impulse was to give her a momentary brush, but she appeared so seriously upset that he decided against it.

  “Okay, let’s go to my trailer,” he suggested, since that happened to be the place of privacy most convenient to the new set. “You go on,” he added, “I just have to speak to Tony for a second.” While she went ahead, he stopped by the set, and took Tony aside. “Listen, I’m going to talk to Angie for a minute, she seems to be flipping out. But we’ve got to keep this thing going between Debbie and Dave—if we work it right, I think they’ll actually do it—so why don’t you go over the lines with them, try to get them excited, tell them about your own sister-fucking fantasies. Okay? Besides, it’ll give you a few shots at Debbie’s perfect cooze and knockers. Right?”

  “‘Full rehearsal,’ I’ll tell them.”

  “Well, as long as they don’t actually make it—I mean, we’ve got to save that for the camera . . . it might be a one-shot. Ha.”

  When he reached the trailer, he found Angela sitting on the edge of one of the chairs, hands clasped in her lap, staring down at the floor.

  “What’s wrong, Ange?”

  “I can’t be in the picture.”

  Boris silently counted to eight—a number which he (sometimes) considered of occult significance. “Why do you say that?”

  “Well . . . Mr. Harrison, who’s head of the studio, and his son, who’s vice-president in charge of production, they’re over here now, and so is my agent, Mr. Letterman . . . and they explained to me how it would destroy my career completely, and how I could never work again, ever, if I went through with it—and they showed me a bunch of stills from the picture, and I could see what they mean, how a lot of people might not understand that it was art—”

  “Stills?” said Boris, frowning. “What are you talking about?”

  “You know, color slides—from some of the scenes we did.”

  “Those dirty bastards” he muttered, “they must have bribed someone at the lab . . .”

  “And then they told me that they were ready to sue me for twelve million dollars if I didn’t do what they said—and I don’t think I even have twelve million dollars. So you see, I just don’t have any choice.”

  Boris leaned back, staring at the ceiling without expression; then he took a deep breath, and slowly expelled it. “Listen,” he said softly, “you know what those people are, don’t you?”

  “Huh?” she looked at him as if he were obviously crazy. “Are you kidding? Well, of course, I know what they are!” She gave a snort of contempt. “I bet I know them one helluva lot better than you do! C.D. is head of the studio, and Les is vice-president in char—”

  “No, no, I mean what they really are. Angie, they’re parasites . . . leeches . . . vultures. They feed on other people’s talent . . . they’re merchants . . . merchants of crap. They have no interest in art . . . or in truth . . . or in beauty—their notion of beauty doesn’t go beyond a Vegas chorus line. They have one interest, Angie . . . power. Power through money. And that’s it—that’s how simple they are. Simple and corrupt.”

  She shook her head like she might not have been listening. “They told me not to come here, or talk to you any more . . . they told me you’d say all that—all those things you’re saying right this minute, about art and so on. But they said it didn’t make any difference, it’s an exploitation film no matter how you slice it.”

  Boris gave a short laugh. “That’s very funny. Tell me something, Angie . . . why do you think they’ve kept you doing those tits-and-ass movies all this time? Why do you think you’re still known as the ‘queen of the tits-and-ass flicks’? Don’t you understand? They’re the ones who do the ‘exploiting.’ Christ, Angie, I thought you wanted to change that image.”

  She looked at him with a terrible frown. “Oh yeah? Well, I got news for you . . .” What had begun as a merely defensive, almost apologetic attitude, was transforming—through the miraculous alchemy of guilt and adrenaline—into a cornered-cat viciousness: “. . .we talked about that part of it too—I mean, just how the hell is me getting fucked, on camera, by a bunch of . . . stupid . . . dumb-ass . . . nigger extras going to help my image?!?”

  Boris sighed, and after a minute, he got up and walked to the door, where he stood looking down at his han
d on the knob. “Okay, Angie,” he finally said, “I guess I was wrong about you . . . I thought you had . . .”—he broke off with a shrug—“well, never mind, I’ve got to get back to the set . . . so, you know, do whatever you have to.” He opened the door, and started to step out; then he turned and looked at her again. “Maybe you’re right,” he said, with a soft smile, “about fucking ‘nigger extras’—maybe you should have stuck to seventeen-year-old ‘seconds.’” And he left, closing the door behind him.

  “Deb got too horny,” Dave jokingly explained, when he reached the set, and found them under separate blankets.

  She squealed with delight. “You’re the one who got too horny!”

  “Listen, B.,” said Tony, “we worked out a great scene. We actually ran through it—well, right up to the nitty-gritty part, and it’s beautiful. Dig this: first, he uncovers her, looks at her body, then he touches it—you, know, like ‘wondrously,’ first her face, then slowly moves his hand down . . . over her throat, her shoulder, her breast, the curve of her waist, her hip, along her thigh, moving to the back of it, behind the knee, along the calf . . . then slowly up again, stopping on cooze, and at the same time bringing his lips forward to her breast. Right? Okay, meanwhile, she’s started moving her hand over him, beginning the same way, but beginning after he did, so by the time he gets back up to the cooze, she’s arriving at his—pardon the expression, Debbie—cock, which by now, needless to say, is plenty erect.”

  “You ain’t just a’ jivin’!” Dave interjected, and Debbie giggled and squirmed in her blanket.

  “Now, dig,” Tony continued to Boris, “all this is happening with no dialogue . . . just exploring each other’s body, with an innocent sense of wonder, not even kissing . . . I think if we save the kiss for the climax—save the kiss until they’re actually coming . . . together . . . it could be fantastic—it would really be a kiss then, wouldn’t it? I mean, they’ve never kissed before—except, you know, brother and sister style, on the cheek, or lightly on the lips—so that when they finally do this full-on, open-mouth, lots-of-tongue, hot, wet, soul kiss while they’re coming . . . well, that will be like the real taboo-breaker, the kiss, even more than the fuck. Dig?” He looked from one to the other.