by Lee Hill
Still the early seventies seemed ripe for mind-expanding forays into the erotic. At least that was the idea behind Fourplay, an ambitious anthology film pitched by Carl Gurevich in the winter of 1973. Drawing upon a mysterious source of capital (eventually $700,000), the neophyte producer hired a group of writers—Jack Richardson, Bruce Jay Friedman, Dan Greenburg, and Southern—to write four half-hour original scripts exploring sexuality in our time, or something to that effect. John G. Avildsen, the director of Joe, which starred Peter Boyle as a right-wing construction worker turned vigilante, agreed to direct one of the episodes. This creative team, rounded out by coproducer Amy Ephron, then Greenburg’s sister-in-law, began preproduction.
As documented in an amusing Playboy article by Dan Greenberg, Southern’s contribution was a piece called “Twice on Top.” In imagery and tone, it resembled something from Luis Buñuel’s Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie or Phantom of Liberty period. Rip Torn had agreed to play the part of a judge who sentences a woman to be executed because of her failure to climax. Gurevich and Southern eventually fell out over the latter’s apparent failure to deliver. According to Amy Ephron, Southern had written two scripts—one called “Slippery when Wet,” about a group of swingers at a Long Island house and “Twice on Top.” Gurevich asked for a rewrite and Southern apparently merged part of “Slippery” into “Twice on Top.” He also tried to convince Gurevich to get William Claxton to direct his segment. Gurevich dubbed Southern a hustler, “a Bobby Riggs of the literary world,” using his $10,000 script fee to run up restaurant and hotel bills instead of sitting down to write.
Foreplay, as the film was finally known, stumbled into a few theaters in 1975 sans Southern’s involvement. Most of the film was structured around Avildsen’s contribution, “Inaugural Ball,” written by David Odell, in which the president’s daughter is kidnapped. The ransom consists of forcing the president and first lady to have sex on national television. Zero Mostel played the leader of the free world.
In the midst of teaching and gigs like Foreplay, Southern began work on his first novel since Blue Movie, Double Date. Southern wrote a treatment to get an advance from Dell and fleshed out the book as a possible screenplay. Both dealt with the elaborate efforts of Jimmy Wilson, a trendy young stockbroker, to date two women, Pamela and Vickie, at the same time. He does this by pretending to have a twin brother, Rod, a laid-back, longhaired swinger. Jimmy’s ruse becomes more complicated to sustain when the women demand more of Jimmy and his fictional brother. Double Date would explore the moral as well as sexual implications of Jimmy’s con:
[Jimmy] is now, in effect, screwing four different girls at the same time. It is a grand ego-trip for him, and his highly buoyant spirits reflect his sense of triumph.
Gradually though he becomes vaguely disturbed by the realization that both girls have betrayed him—Pam by making it with “Rod,” and Vickie by making it with “Jimmy.” As Jimmy, he quizzes Vickie about her feelings for “Rod,” and as Rod, he quizzes Vickie about her feelings for “Jimmy.” Both girls, of course, firmly deny any interest beyond mere friendship, and that due to the fact that “he is, after all, your brother.” Yet, as Jimmy, he knows that “Rod” has been clandestinely screwing Pamela; and as Rod, he knows that “Jimmy” has been clandestinely screwing Vickie.
On the other hand, from the girls’ point of view:
(1) Pamela knows that Rod is screwing both her and Vickie.
(2) Vickie knows that Jimmy is screwing both her and Pamela.
(3) Pamela does not know that Jimmy is also screwing Vickie.
(4) Vickie does not know that Rod is also screwing Pamela.
(5) And neither girl, of course, suspects that Jimmy and Rod are the same person.
Southern selected an Arthur Miller quote as an epigraph for his novel-in-progress: “There is no power on Earth that can break the grip of a man with his hands on his own throat.”
Double Date excited sufficient anticipation that Jann Wenner wrote to Southern on June 20 and July 16 asking to see excerpts. Wenner was hoping to boost the sales of Rolling Stone with a peek at a counterculture hero’s latest salvo at establishment mores. Given the prominence Hunter S. Thompson achieved through Rolling Stone, Southern’s lack of response seemed puzzling. Southern eventually stopped working on Double Date, much to Dell’s displeasure. The material that survives is sketchy but tantalizing. Double Date foreshadowed David Cronenberg’s masterful 1988 film Dead Ringers, where twin gynecologists pretend to be the same man in order to share the bed of a movie-star patient. Distracted by money problems and the allure of another Strangelove lurking around the corner, Southern lacked the commitment and focus to take the premise to the limit.
During the summer of 1973, Southern exchanged a series of letters with Kubrick. In one he broached the issue of whether there was anything Kubrick was mad at Southern for. Kubrick replied: “Have no concern about yours truly being against his true friend. I have nothing but great fondness and respect for you, and wish that there was something we could do together.”
In another letter, Southern asks Kubrick about permission to use of his Blue Movie points (which Southern and Kubrick jointly owned in a complicated deal) to keep the IRS at bay. All Kubrick could really do was not stand in Southern’s way if and when a movie deal became possible.
These pressures were not made any easier to endure when Southern read an article by Sam Merrill called “Mason Hoffenberg Gets in a Few Licks” in the October 1973 issue of Playboy.
Hoffenberg was currently living in Woodstock, New York, hanging out with the Band’s Richard Manuel and doing very little except drinking. He had managed to kick heroin after entering a methadone program. The interview was conducted in a bar where Hoffenberg downed eight vodka martinis without looking any the worse for it. The bulk of the article simply recorded Hoffenberg’s acerbic comments on his situation. However, the sarcastic asides about Jack Kerouac and Henry Miller eventually drifted over to a foul-tempered assault on his more celebrated Candy collaborator. Among the gibes were such black pearls of bitterness as “Terry screwed me,” “I’m the guy who turned him onto everything in Paris,” and “Terry is a good rewriter and he writes some funny shit himself but he always grabs top billing.”
The last comment Southern found particularly hurtful. It was an accusation that had haunted him in his work on Dr. Strangelove and Easy Rider. Now here was Mason, whom he had stood loyally by in their dispute with Girodias, dismissing him as a hack, square, and drunk. Instead of dismissing Mason’s comments as typically grumpy Masonisms, Southern vowed he would sue. In a lawsuit he filed against Mason and Playboy, he would allege that Mason’s characterization of him as an alcoholic had cost him some valuable screenwriting jobs.
As understandable as Southern’s sense of betrayal was, Mason was right. Southern was an alcoholic, albeit a functioning one. He drank at various times of the day to buoy his spirits or hide his shyness. It was the cause of bitter arguments between him and Gail, who often had to drag him back to the car when he fell asleep after a heavy evening at Elaine’s or some other funky bistro. Southern was in no danger of ending up a skid-row bum, but he drank too much for his own good. Still, coming from a major junkie like Hoffenberg, the “alcoholic” tag stung.
At Christmastime, Southern heard that Henry Green had died on December 13, 1973, in London. They had been out of touch since 1960. Green, who hadn’t written anything since that time, had ensconced himself in his Belgravia flat to get down to some heavy drinking and frantic inactivity. His last days were one long dying sigh.
Southern had successfully transcended Green’s influence in his novels after Flash and Filigree, but his infatuation with film would probably have puzzled Green. Green recognized that Southern shared his precious and fragile gift for shaping language and narrative. While Southern might have been better off dedicating himself to expanding the limits of the novel, he was too restless and curious to let the shyness he shared with Green mutate into isolation and ali
enation. Still Southern was paying a price for the choices he had made in leaving Quality Lit for the film world. As Southern threw himself into screenplays and treatments over which he had less and less control or emotional involvement, an odd kind of creative laziness was reinforced. Southern was becoming less and less choosy about what he wrote. As 1973 came to a close, Hoffenberg’s bitterness and Green’s lonely death cast a long shadow.
Blue Movie became the next project that seemed to hold the most potential for getting the green light. Southern had somehow convinced Mike Nichols and Warner Bros. to film the novel, in his words, “as a full-on erection-and-penetration movie using big-name stars.” John Calley, who as production chief at Warner Bros. had green-lighted such difficult projects as Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange and John Boorman’s Deliverance, hired Terry to write an adaptation especially for Nichols. Southern flew out to L.A. and began working on the script at the Chateau Marmont.
“As soon as I had this news and was convinced that it was for real, I started immediately, without even getting into a contract, and working and doing it,” recalled Southern. “We did eventually have a script, but the deals didn’t go through. That was as close to a movie ever being made as I ever experienced and had ever heard of. There didn’t seem to be any possible deal-breaking element. It was just a total freak thing.”
Southern completed a promising first draft, but Blue Movie fell apart over a dispute over points between Nichols/Calley/Warners and Ringo Starr, who had the option on the novel. A key stumbling block was that Nichols wanted to retain control over the distribution of points so that he could use them in negotiating with actors—an understandable strategy given the desire to make the adaptation as faithful in its explicitness to the book as possible.
In a letter to Calley dated April 16, 1975, Southern writes: “It is really too grotesquely absurd that what could be a fantastic and innovative (‘the porn to end all porn’) film not be made because of point considerations. After all, if a film makes, as this one could, 200 million what difference does it make if you’ve got one per cent or two-and-a-half per cent…. The main point, John, is this—your instinct, hip savvy, and general know-how told you the TIME WAS RIPE. Well, it is, and it does not depend on Nichols. What about Stanley? Or Coppola?”
As both Southern’s novel and adaptation demonstrate, Blue Movie remains one of the great dream projects of film history. Conceived at a time when mainstream and “adult” filmmakers were looking over the fence at each other with Oscars and dollar signs in their eyes, under Nichols’s direction, the results could have rivaled Dr. Strangelove as a satiric landmark. But as Blue Movie’s auteur character tells his crew, perhaps some things are beyond the magic of the lens:
“I wish I were able to to give each of you a finished script today—but, since I am not, I’ll tell you a little about the film. It’s called ‘Act of Love,’ and that is what it’s about—the physical act of love under various circumstances. I want to do something which has never, so far as I know, been done before—namely, to portray lovemaking as the beautiful thing that it is—not something sordid, or furtive, or ludicrously grotesque…but exquisitely beautiful. You understand we’re not talking about pornography here, we’re talking about the aesthetically erotic…the act of love…. You see…it may not be possible…it may be that there is something so inherently personal about love-making that no cinematic portrayal of it can ever be shared by a theatre audience—an audience of strangers…each self-consciously aware of other’s presence. (Shrugs.) That’s what we shall find out. One thing is certain—we can make a film that is immeasurably more successful in that respect than any film ever made.”
Southern had devoted most of 1974 and 1975 to working with Ringo Starr and Kubrick to get the appropriate clearances on Blue Movie. Southern and Kubrick had a respective sixty/forty split in the novel and on possible options and film sales in the Starr/Warners/Nichols deal. A lot of Terry’s early script work before Warners came on board had been done for a modest couple of thousand dollars doled out by Ringo’s lawyer.
John Calley felt bad about the collapse of Blue Movie. He had always admired “You’re Too Hip, Baby” and asked Southern to work on a script provisionally titled The Paris Musician’s Story.
“[Calley] had the idea of a screenplay set in Paris dealing with those characters,” said Southern. “It did get as far as an outline, which I was paid for, but nothing further was pursued. When Blue Movie fell through, that was really the end of our relationship.”
During the ups and downs of the Blue Movie project, “Fixing up Ert,” a new short story, appeared in the September 1974 issue of Oui magazine. Inspired by an anecdote related to Southern by John Calley, the story was the first of a series of “con game” stories that Southern turned out occasionally from mid-1970 through 1985. Part tall tale, part barroom joke, the story’s flimsy source of inspiration was redeemed only by Southern’s mix of the ribald and genteel. A young stockbroker convinces Ertegun, a hated rival, to drop off some papers at the home of an important client, Duchess Marleton, a Park Avenue matron with an obsession for cleanliness. Ertegun has been told that if he shows up at her apartment and defecates on her carpet when she leaves the room, he will be rewarded with fellatio and other sexual delights. The story’s payoff depends entirely on the reader’s willingness to believe that Ertegun is such a horny fool that he will do anything to get laid, including losing a valuable client. “Fixing Up Ert” was sadly the only kind of Quality Lit Southern appeared to have the patience to see through.
Strange and more dubious projects came over the transom. One dark and stormy night, a six-foot-plus Norwegian director, Ingmar Ejve, showed up at East Canaan like Mark Twain’s mysterious stranger and asked Southern to adapt The Hunters of Karin Hall, an obscure novel by Carl-Henning Wijkmark.
Karin Hall was Hermann Goering’s country estate during the thirties and forties, where the German Luftwaffe commander and invited guests indulged in elaborate feasts, sex orgies, and hunting treks. In the novel, a Swedish athlete is recruited by the British to spy on Goering and finds himself caught up in a series of power plays within the Nazi Party. Full of baroque touches, Terry’s Karin Hall screenplay features this bizarre moment after a wild boar hunt reaches its gory denouement:
WOLKENSCHATZ begins rolling up Goering’s sleeve to give him an injection, notices the two hares tied to his belt.
WOLKENSCHATZ
Ah, a splendid brace of Hungarian hares! Good shooting, Your Excellency!
GOERING (dourly)
Hmm, I think I got a Beater as well.
WOLKENSCHATZ (shocked)
Oh no!
GOERING
Be thankful it wasn’t the British Ambassador!
(Impatiently) Will you hurry?
Wolkenschatz has the syringe prepared, but looks around anxiously.
GOERING (demands)
Now what, in God’s great name?
WOLKENSCHATZ (at a loss)
I’ve nothing to tie off the vein with, Your Excellency.
GOERING (disgusted)
Oh for God’s sake! Use your head, will you? (He looks around.)
WOLKENSCHATZ
A boot-lace perhaps?
Goering’s eye falls on a two-foot length of boar’s intestine lying nearby. He seizes it, ties it around his bare arm above the elbow, holding one end of it (classic ‘Man With Golden Arm’ style) in his teeth.
GOERING (muttering between clenched teeth)
Ingenuity! Where do you think the German people would be today without it? Hit me, Colonel, hit me!
Wolkenschatz deftly makes the injection.
Arlene Donovan at ICM was handling Terry’s film work at the time. Another of her clients was David Newman. He read The Hunters of Karin Hall but wasn’t crazy about it: “Actually I was in the middle of my Nazi period, which a number of us went through. Bruce Friedman is another one. It started with the Albert Speer book, where we became Nazi freaks and read every book about Hitler, Goering,
and Goebbels for about three years. We’re still trying to figure out the reason why all these Jewish writers suddenly became fascinated with the Nazis. I have a lot of theories about it but I knew all about that period and I knew it well. I knew that Karin Hall was where they used to dress up in forest green Robin Hood outfits with bows and arrows, hunt deer or boar and blow hunting horns. Herman Goering and his Nazi crowd. I thought, ‘Ohmigod, Terry Southern and that subject, this is going to be the greatest script since Strangelove.’ And I thought, ‘This is so great, I can’t wait, this is going to be so wonderful,’ and I called Arlene and said Terry asked if you could get a copy of that screenplay to me and she said ‘yes’ and I heard something in her voice that was very reticent.
“[Karin Hall] was like Terry parodying Terry instead of being genuinely outrageous. It was strange, whatever it was. Since then I have read scripts of lesser quality and they’ve been made. Probably if I got a chance to read it again, I would like it a lot more. I remember having this sinking feeling of ‘Oh, what’s happened here?’ because this is not the level of work for Terry. I knew there was no way in the world that I could call anybody I knew and say, ‘Here’s this movie you’ve gotta make,’ because I really didn’t believe that it was. Consequently, I might have mentioned it to somebody, but I didn’t come on strong about it to anybody. So I always felt bad about that. I felt bad that I didn’t like it more and I felt bad that I couldn’t do anything about it.”
Since Southern was the only known element in the Karin Hall package, the Norweigan producers were unable to attract additional backing. Then Ted Kotcheff approached Terry about working on a Watergate script. Kotcheff was finishing work on Fun with Dick and Jane, a comedy starring Jane Fonda and George Segal as an unemployed suburban couple who turn to bank robbing. Southern did some uncredited rewriting on the film’s problematic ending. Warners felt confident that Fun with Dick and Jane was going to be a hit (which it was) and gave Kotcheff development money to hire Southern to write A Piece of Bloody Cake.