Blue Movie

It's been suggested that this book is not for feminists, but back in the days of radical feminism, I was way out there, 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 far 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 memorable lines. You'll love it.

X-rated movies could be respectable. That was the thinking of the late, legendary director Stanley Kubrick when he went to work on the last movie before his death, the R-rated "Eyes Wide Shut.""Eyes" remains both intriguing and perplexing to me, mostly because it turned out to be such a mess. Like Jay Leno said, it was probably the only movie where the nudity was confusing.What was the point?Tom Cruise had sex with his then-wife, didn't have sex with two women at a party, didn't have sex with a prostitute, didn't have sex with the daughter of a patient, didn't have sex with the daughter of a shop owner, didn't have sex at an orgy, didn't have sex with the prostitute's roommate, and so on and so forth.I watched this flick with a couple friends and when it was over, one of them said, "I didn't go to the bathroom, I didn't go get a drink. I didn't leave the room, and I still don't know what was going on!"Since "Shut" came out three years ago (my God, how time flies), I've tracked down the translation of the book upon which it was based (Arthur Schnitzler's "Traumnovelle," or, "Dream Novel"), as well as a screenwriter's Kubrickian memoir of the work on "Shut" ("Eyes Wide Open," by Frederic Raphael).I remain confused.But recently, I heard about another book that might shed a little light on the subject: Terry Southern's 1970 novel, "Blue Movie."Southern, the screenwriter behind Kubrick's 1964 comedic masterpiece "Dr. Strangelove," wrote "Blue Movie" as his imagining of the director's desire to do an X-rated picture with huge celebrities and fantastic, artful lighting and cinematic breakthroughs.Otherwise short on Kubrickian insights, Southern dedicates the work "for the great Stanley K.," and even has two characters who could be fictional versions the K-man. One is celebrated director King B., or Boris, who is looking for the next thing to astound audiences with; the other is weaselly producer Sid Krassman.Hollywood of the 1960s gets satirically skewered, as Sid and Boris get it in their heads to do exactly what Kubrick dreamed: Make a pornographic film (a blue movie) with celebrities and cinematic triumphs, one that will be shocking to and maybe even respected by the industry.What follows is explicitly graphic madness. The game plan is to make "The Faces of Love," an episodic movie about the different kinds of love.As a hot-shot screenwriter character sums them up, idyllic, profane, lesbian, incestuous, sadism, masochism, nymphomania ... in case you didn't figure it out from the opening line of this review, this is not a novel for the genteel. (A customer review on Amazon.com ponders, is this book the dirtiest ever written?)Big name stars are called in, and the technical, ahem, kinks are worked out, although trouble is always just around the bend.Both Sid and Boris are never really fully realized; they mostly plot their movie or (more often) how to get their actresses into the sack. Southern stretches them as far as they will go, but that's not a great distance.The most intriguing character is Tiny Marie, a loudmouthed, profanity-spewing midget who runs around on the set of Sid's other X-rated films. But even she is only semishocking in this day and age. Southern does have some rather eye-opening moments, but it fails to be earth shattering.The story's all right, but what really makes "Blue Movie" so interesting and worthwhile is the way it's so ahead of its time. (Perhaps one day, a movie based on "Blue Movie" will be made.)Many of the things Southern talks about and portrays as film taboos (as they were in back in 1970) have come true, and rampant even on television. The technical aspects of porn, full-fledged female nudity, oral sex É Entertainment Weekly magazine even recently ran an article on how some legitimate foreign flicks were showing actors having actual sex. It just goes to show how far the American mindset has come.Depending on your interests and beliefs, this can be either a good thing or a bad thing.In the end, Kubrick might have been much better off making a movie out of "Blue Movie." The characters and their motivations are much clearer, and one doesn't require Cliffs Notes or anything in order to get through the book.At the very least, here the nudity makes sense.And in the end, that's really all I ask.

If Tom Wolfe decided to write a NSFW adults-only story about Ingmar Bergman deciding to make a beautifully shot hardcore porn movie and partnering with Russ Meyers as his producer, you might end up with a story like "Blue Movie". Not for prudes or the thin-skinned, but those who appreciate comic absurdity and well-done writing that playfully appeals to prurient interests will love this book.

One of the books I never finished. I found it amusing to start with but it lost me half way through. But I can see how some people would enjoy it - so just about OK.

I've always loved Terry Southern. I'm glad to find this book again. It's a satire of pornography that still applies today, though some aspects are dated. But I recommend it, to those who aren't offended by porn. And I recommend everything else that he's written, especially Red Dirt Marijuana.

This book is almost as funny as his book Candy. It's about a world-famous movie director who wants to make something no-one else has: a high-class artistic stag film. I laughed all the way through it. My only real negative criticism is that I thought the ending to be pretentious.

You can't go wrong with a story about a major motion picture company making a high dollar porno movie-esp. with Terry Southern writing it. He was a screen writer as well as a novelist. ("Easy Rider", "Candy", "Dr. Strangelove", etc

I love Terry Southern but this particular book has not aged well. The year it was published saw the advent of porno-chic and a mass of slick, plotted, well-photographed blue movies. They were so "in" they got reviewed in Variety right along side everything else. Unfortunate timing. Today we have Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac and countless other real-sex examples that make Southern's imagination seem almost childish.Worse than that are the stereotypes that populate the book. They may have been fresh once but they're stale as can be today, and I'm not so sure they were fresh when they were written.Boris is another problem. Now and then things build up to a great Southern line or scene but it's hard to accept the book as satire when the main character Boris is such a blank slate. It begins to make you wonder if you are meant to relate to him as some kind of unrestrained everyman living your fantasy...except it isn't my fantasy and probably not yours either.With Boris such a dull questionable character, everything else begins to fall apart. It becomes harder to accept the racism, misogyny and homophobia as faults of the characters instead of faults of the author. And same goes for the sex scenes, they begin to feel like embarassingly confessional fantasies.I wouldn't advise you start reading Southern with this book. Perhaps even skip it altogether unless you're old enough to remember the pre-Deep Throat era.

Good story which works well

It looks very ordinary, I feel that there is no special scene, but if you carefully read it carefully, there will be unusual findings.

As above.