Blue Movie [Paperback]

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.