Customer Reviews

Blue Movie (Plume)

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This was my third trip through Terry Southern's version of Hollywood, and I rarely reread. This is one hilarious novel. Funny, erotic, surreal, offensive, all the things a good book should be.

The main premise of the book is simple: what if Hollywood's greatest director decided to make a high-budget porn film. Good actors, good lighting, good writer, good director (of course), everything missing from garden-variety smut.

They are able to secure funding and Southern takes us through every step of the filming process. Casting, all the behind the scenes politics, rewrites, and especially the shooting.

Southern writes explicitly of all the action that is to take place on screen. So, if you are offended by explicit descriptions of varied sex acts, then this book is not for you. Everyone on this film is obsessed by sex, and there is as much going on off screen as there is on.

If that were all this book had to offer, I would say skip it, but Terry Southern is a man who can write. This may be smut on the surface, but underneath, it's literature. He knows when euphemism will work better than directness, and when to "cut away" from a scene--when enough is enough.

So, if you are interested in what happens during the making of a film--of any kind--then read this book. If you are interested in good writing, then read this book. And, especially, if you want to have a good, rollicking time, then read this book.

For those familiar with Southern's screenplay for "Dr Strangelove" and his famously raunchy novel "Candy," "Blue Movie" will be a delightful pousse-cafe. Hot on the heels of his historic collaboration with Stanley Kubrick, Southern explores a simple thesis: what if a great film director decides to make a movie with explicit sex scenes involving A-list actors? (Far-fetched, you say? At one point Mike Nichols was set to direct Julie Andrews in the film version of this book.) But Southern is less interested in making grand statements on cinema and sex than in exploding their myths, preferably with a great gas cloud of black humor. "Blue Movie" is not for the feminist or the easily-shocked; but for the reader in search of the hipster's guide to porno filmmaking, it is indispensable.

The Dirtiest Book Ever Written? Perhaps. In terms of its content, Blue Movie puts the Marquis de Sade to shame. Not only is it more prurient than the good Marquis' works, but its a lot funnier. As a result, every reader to whom I have recommended it has said that it is the funniest book they've ever read, but not at all dirty.

Terry Southern was one of the 60's bad boys, politically to the Left, not quite avant garde, a "dirty" writer. He has penned a hilarious story about the making of a porn movie. There is nothing to say but that the characters are as outrageous as the action and this is NOT a book that goes from one ribald act to another. It is (truly) about making a "blue movie". I still smile when I think of the dialogue (quote unquote) as the evil, Yankee soldier prepares to deflower the helpless, Southern beauty. The book has a very satisfying ending.

What if a stag film, one of those cheaply made, low-grade film quality adult boff movies, were made with a big budget, with big name stars, at feature film length? That's what Boris Adrian, a.k.a. King B or simply B, a well-respected star director who's won Oscars with his revolutionary and visionary styles who has entered a creative drought for the past two years, wonders aloud to Sidney Krassman, his gross, hefty, and profane producer after an evening spent watching stag films at the home of eccentric, vivacious, multi-handicapped Teeny Marie.

Sid gets three million dollars for production costs. Yes, Boris's movie will be made, but the proviso that it will be filmed and exclusively exhibited in Liechtenstein, that postage stamp sized principality sandwiched between Switzerland and Austria, with the government providing the funding. That would be a boon to a country with the lowest per capita income in Western Europe.

The movie, titled The Faces Of Love, is to be an anthology of erotic love, of twenty-five minute segment stories. Getting the budget money, and production crew is no problem. What about the performers? To that end, Boris procures Angela Sterling, an actress clearly based on Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield, and America's top draw, someone who wants to be seen as more than just a T&A actress, the French lesbian actress Arabella, and prim but pretty British actress Pamela Dickensen. The only big trouble may come from Angela Sterling, who is also the mistress of Les Harrison, vice president of Metropolitan studios, and whose presence on Boris's movie was the result of a breach of contract from a movie funded by Metropolitan. The movie would take advantage of some recently lifted restrictions and challenge some movie taboos, with each story representing a theme such as miscegenation/multiple partners, the first experience, which is a lesbian one, a priest and a hooker, and brother with sister.

As this was written in 1970, four years after the demise of the notorious and increasingly irrelevant Hays Code and two years after the imposition of the MPAA ratings, Blue Movie is well-placed, coming out at the dawn of a brief newfound cinematic freedom.

Sprinkled with lots of four-letter words, mostly by Sid, with plenty of explicit passages and even a few chapters, funny characters such as Feral, a Senegalese extra whose equipment gets many reactions, Tony Sanders, the writer who's a veritable goofy but creative genius, and of course Sid, who's crass, vulgar, but funny. He tells a topless and quite chesty waitress, "Do you have a cold?" When she asks him what makes him think that, he says, "Oh I don't know why. Your chest looks all swollen." Boris's laid back, thoughtful personality makes him a pretty appealing character. The bash at big studios is apparent. Some chapters depict the actual shooting and discussion of scenes in the film, special apparati used in adult scenes, which film buffs may appreciate.

The book ripples with the usual irreverence Southern gives, outdoing The Magic Christian and Candy, two novels that were done as movies.

Which brings me to this: if Blue Movie had been made into a film back in 1970, I'd put Peter Fonda as King B, Vic Tayback (Mel from the Alice series) as Sid, Mamie Van Doren as Alice, Jeanne Moreau as Arabella, and Robert Wagner as Les Harrison. And as Pamela was described as someone resembling Susannah York, why not? And of course change the bummer ending. That'd be something.

light satire about the making of a 'Blue Movie." The world's most accomplished filmmaker decides to make a dirty movie using top-notch actors, excellent production values, and a great script. Personally if I were a woman I'd find the book somewhat offensive and misogynistic, since all of the male characters use the women for their personal goals, sexual and artistic. Politics (racial and sexual) aside, the novel's a light, fun read. The archetypes are all there - the pretentious, artsy director; the perpetually stoned, crazy writer; the sleazy, obscene producer; and the emotionally unstable actress. If you are looking for a light, breezy novel and are not offended by explicit sex and racial stereotypes, then give it a try. It's fairly funny. The dialogue is great. The prose style is in the bare-boned, minimalist style of Raymond Carver. This was my first Southern novel, but I think I'll try some of his other stuff, when I'm looking for something profane and funny. It bears mentioning that the book was dedicated to "the great Stanley K." It's hard not to think if the director in the book was based on Kubrick, with whom Terry worked with on Dr. Strangelove. (BTW - Terry Southern contributed to another seminal film of the 60's - Easy Rider, but you all already knew that)

Southern dedicates this book to Stanley K., for whom he wrote the Dr. Strangelove screenplay. It would have been GREAT to see Kubrick do an on-screen version of this wonderfully satiric novel!

An obvious poke at the Hollywood self-styled 'artistic' community, Blue Movie reads more like an excerpt of Hustler's Letters than a standard novel at times. The world's premiere director, for the sake of 'art', wants to film a porn flick that isn't merely gratuitous sex within a thin plot -- like the stereotypical stag film. However, as the novel unfolds, it becomes apparent to the reader that this is futile despite these grand delusions of art - the story of their escapades mirrors a stereotypical porn movie plotline itself - this book isn't merely ABOUT filming a BLUE MOVIE, it's a self-contained BLUE MOVIE in itself!

Recommended.

It's been suggested that this book is not for feminists, but back in the days of radical feminism, I was one, and this book was a favorite, always great for laughing hysterically and reading aloud to friends. It's a very funny, dirty book, not a polemic! I think it makes the men look even weaker and sillier than the women. I must have read it, or at least favorite scenes, hundreds of times. How I wish they'd made it into a movie! The ending is great, and involves the VATICAN. Lots of great lines. You'll love it.

If you have a high threshhold for raunch, you may find this the funniest novel you have ever read. I know I did. I laughed so hard I had to put the book down and regain control.

What if the world's most respected film director was handed millions to make the poshest hardcore movie ever? Teaming up with sleazeball producer Sid Krassman, he brings aboard the cream of international film stardom. Think stars like Marilyn Monroe, Jeanne Moreau, Nicole Kidman, Steve McQueen, Arnold Schwarzenegger -- all in their prime.

The progress on the set starts to spin out of control when egos clash, stars begin to lose their nerve, drug use goes rampant, extracurricular sex spreads, etc. The gimmick is that the film will only be shown in Lichtenstein, a real but rinky dink principality on the Austria/Switzerland border.

Terry Southern -- the most literate hipster in the American canon -- was a genius of the outrageous and this is his masterpiece. His deadpan approach and his keen understanding of the male fantasy life (gotta admit, very un-PC) put it across.

It also has, IMHO, the most erotic "BJ" scene ever written.

And the ending is the sharpest satirical stab of all. Priceless.

Dig it.

quite simply a perverted joy,from begining to end..with some of the most hideous and realistic,hollywood characters..continues in
the great traditions of the last tycoon,the day of the locust and what makes sammi run.but with much more monstrous honesty..
a massive underated american classic,but be warned it is filthy.