Blue Movie

by Terry Southern

  “You son of a bitch! Have you forgotten that Dad gave you your first goddamn job?!?”

  This caused Sid to go wide-eyed with indignation. He began pounding the desk and shouting. “Job!?! Job!?! You mean he gave me the first shit-end of the stick I ever got, that’s the job he gave me! He beat me for two-and-a-half points of gross, that’s what he did! The old bastard is still making money off Sid Krassman!” Having put this last notion actually into words seemed to give it a reality it might not otherwise have had, and Sid was overcome by the sheer monstrosity of it. “He’s . . . he’s a criminal,” he stammered, then recovered, shouting again, “and you can both go fuck yourself!” And he slammed down the phone, just as Boris came in. “Can you imagine the nerve of that rat prick Les?” he demanded, pointing at the phone, “telling me old man Harrison give me my first job! When the fact is he stole my two and a half percent of the gross!”

  Boris lay down on the couch. “Poor Sid,” he sighed, “always living in the past.”

  “I told him to go fuck himself, B., I swear to God I did.”

  Boris rested the back of one hand over his closed eyes. “You did, huh?”

  “Beach Ball,” Sid reminisced, “cost four-ten, grossed six million. I’d be a rich man if it wasn’t for that old cocksucker.”

  “I want to use Arabella for the lez,” said Boris. “Can you get her?”

  “Huh?”

  “The picture, Sidney,” Boris explained without opening his eyes, “remember the picture? Remember the lesbian sequence?”

  Sid brightened. “Arabella for the lez sequence! Terrific, B.! Now you’re talking marquee!”

  Arabella was a celebrated French actress of great talent, and spectacular beauty—only slightly fading at thirty-seven. She and Boris were close friends and had worked together on several films, at least two of which had won them both many awards. She was an extremely serious artist; she was also notoriously lesbian, having publicly so proclaimed, and moreover, had lived quite openly for many years with a series of equally beautiful, but successively younger, girls.

  Sid was amused at that aspect of it, and guffawed coarsely. “Boy, is that ever type-casting! I’ll tell her we’ll get her a gold-plated dildo! Haw-haw! When do you want her?”

  “Find out when she’s available—we may want to go with that sequence first, if Nicky can’t finish his casbah in time.”

  5

  FOR THEIR SOUND STAGES Morty Kanowitz had leased a huge derelict building, formerly a button factory, on the opposite side of town from the airstrip. It was here that Nicky Sanchez would conceive and build whatever interior sets they could not locate in or near the town.

  Raphael Nicholas Sanchez. Born in the smoke-black slums of Pittsburgh in 1934, the youngest of seven boys and a girl. It was a family with two preoccupations, steel mills and baseball—neither of which seemed to grab the young Raphael, he who showed a marked preference for playing with dolls, jacks, and hopscotch with his sister and her girl friends, and a little later, in trying on their clothes.

  Now, at thirty-five, he was considered one of the world’s top art directors, or “production designers,” as he called it, and had worked with Boris on several of his best films. Throughout the years he had continued to determinedly favor women’s clothes over men’s—though he did manage to limit his expression of this, in public at least, to an endless variety of cashmeres in powdery pastels, sandals, and skintight pocketless slacks with zippers anywhere but in the front. His manner, perhaps in overcomp for the extreme sordidness of his Pittsburgh childhood and the subproletarian level of his education, was exaggeratedly effete—even to the point of occasionally swooning. He adored Boris, was jealous of Tony Sanders, and loathed Sid beyond imagining.

  Fastidiously picking his way through the maze of cables and carpentry in progress, he now escorted the three of them around the half-finished Casbah set—only occasionally pausing to compliment one of the younger laborers on his work: “Beautiful, darling, just beautiful!”

  They entered what was obviously going to be the heiress’s boudoir, and stood before the monumental, ornately canopied four-poster bed in the center of the room.

  “Well,” said Nicky with an elaborate sigh, “I suppose this is where a lot of the, pardon the expression, ‘action,’ will take place. Like it?”

  “Dig it,” said Tony, genuinely impressed.

  It was, indeed, an extremely rich and impressive room, a saga of ebony and gold—the bed, a luxurious expanse of gleaming black satin, its four posts regal with huge carved golden serpents, supporting a fantastic canopy of rose-tinted mirror.

  “A fun set, Nicky,” quipped Sid, “but will it dress? Haw-haw!”

  “Oh dear God,” murmured Nicky, closing his eyes in exasperation, and then very crisply: “You can go back now, Sid—they’ve finished cleaning your cage.”

  Boris was meanwhile moving slowly around the bed at different distances from it.

  “These two are wild,” explained Nicky, indicating where two of the walls would break away to give the camera a longer shot.

  Boris nodded. “It’s great, Nicky, just great.”

  “Perfect,” Tony agreed.

  “Terrif, Nicky,” said Sid, “terrif!”

  Nicky was about to express a bit of blushing pleasure at their praise, when Sid’s face clouded over, and he pointed to an opening in the set.

  “Is that a window, for Chrissake? That’s going to give us trouble, Nicky.”

  He was referring to a wide empty space opposite one side of the bed—which at present looked out on an assortment of struts and guy wires securing that side of the set.

  “Yeah, we better get rid of the window,” said Boris. “I don’t want to use any back projection. What was going to be outside it anyway?”

  Nicky became wide-eyed with apprehension. “Oh, the lights, darling! The twinkling lights and music of the Casbah! The romance of the Casbah! Oh, we’ve just got to have the window!”

  He looked beseechingly from Boris to Tony for some sign of support, but Tony only shrugged. “With all that fucking going on, Nick, we won’t be shooting much out the window.”

  “But maybe you will need some place to cut away to!” Nicky exclaimed, “. . . if only for the sake of taste!” He turned haughtily from Tony, and pleaded with Boris: “Listen, I’ll make the mat myself! It’ll be perfect, B., I promise you!”

  Boris considered it, doubtfully. “You can try it, Nick, but it can’t be hokey. In fact, you better make up two walls—one with the window, and one without—so if the mat turns out Mickey Mouse, we can use the other wall.” He turned to Sid. “Okay, Sid?”

  “Got it, King,” said Sid, making a note of it in a little black book.

  “Thank you, B.,” said Nicky, his voice soft with gratitude.

  “It’s a great set, Nicky,” Boris assured him, putting one hand on his shoulder as they all started to leave. Then he suddenly stopped, and turned back toward the set with a frown. “Wait a minute, there’s something wrong . . .” He stared at the bed for a moment. “Those sheets won’t work. We’ll be shooting black cock against black sheets—we’ll lose all definition.”

  “Hey, you’re right,” said Tony.

  “Good heavens,” said Nicky, “who would have thought of that?”

  “Too bad,” Boris mused, “I sort of liked the sinister quality of it. Black satin.”

  “The come would of looked good on black,” said Sid, and watched Nicky shudder.

  Tony shrugged. “Why don’t we go the pristine route? White satin sheets, with a nice white crucifix above the bed. Same thing as sinister, same effect.”

  Nicky was shocked. “The same? What on earth do you mean?!?”

  Sid was also disturbed. “Oh, fer Chrissake, not a crucifix!”

  “Well, I don’t know about the crucifix,” said Boris, “but white’s no good. Too stark. And with white you always blow some of the blond quality. How about pink satin? We’ll get good definition on both of them with pink,
and,” he pointed to the canopy, “it’ll go with that mirror.” He looked at Tony and smiled. “Might even work in a line about ‘la vie en rose,’ right, Tony?”

  Tony laughed. “Beautiful. Give the scene a little prestige—something for the critics to get their teeth into.”

  Sid greedily made a note of it in his book. “Now you guys are talking box office!” he said with glee, then implored, “but for Chrissake, let’s lose that fucking crucifix!”

  6

  A SUNNY JUNE MORNING with the splendor of pine and snow-capped peaks all around them. Boris and Sid sat in the monstro Merk, parked alongside the airstrip, waiting for the plane to arrive from Paris with Arabella. Boris slouched in one corner of the huge seat, perusing an old German racing form he’d found in a drawer in his hotel room, while Sid, beset by his chronic nervousness at any approach of the great or near-great, leaned forward, forehead perspiring as he fidgeted, loosening then tightening the red silk scarf at his throat, and lit another cigarette.

  “You really think she’ll do it, huh?”

  Boris folded the paper, glanced out the window, then back, unfolding the paper and shaking his head. “It’s weird,” he muttered, “you think you know something pretty well—like German,” he indicated the paper, “then you come across it in a different aspect, one you’ve never seen before, and you realize you don’t know it at all. I can’t understand a single word of this.” He folded the paper again, dropped it on the floor, and stared out the window. “I guess it always happens when you get into areas of specialization.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Sid, pulling at his scarf again. “Listen, you really think she’ll do it—Arabella, I mean.”

  Boris regarded him curiously. “Why not? She’s a very serious actress.”

  “Yeah, I know, I know,” said Sid, shifting about on the seat, rubbing a hand across his forehead, “that’s what I mean.”

  Boris continued to look at him for a moment, then smiled. “Art, my boy,” saying it lightly and looking out the window again, “she’ll do anything for art—the perfect darling.”

  Sid was greatly relieved by Boris’s tone, and began pulling himself together. “Yeah, right. Well, listen, what’s she like anyway? I never met her, you know.”

  Boris shrugged. “She’s a groovy lady.”

  “Yeah?” Sid’s somewhat guarded lasciviousness began to ooze out in the form of a half-twinkling smile, or leer. “Guess you and her are, uh, pretty close, huh?”

  Boris continued to gaze out the window. “Closest,” he murmured.

  Sid nodded knowingly.

  “Yeah, I read about it in the columns—when you did that first picture together.”

  “That was bullshit.”

  “Yeah, well, sure I know that,” Sid pursuing it with an odd delicacy and restraint, “but you must of . . . must of, uh, made it with her sometime.”

  Boris looked at him, shook his head, and sighed. “She’s lez, Sid—you know that.”

  “She’s lez, she’s lez,” Sid’s exasperation exploded. “She’s got a cunt, ain’t she?!? I mean, down there between her legs, there’s a hole, right?!?”

  Boris remained patient. “Sidney . . . she does not dig men.”

  “So she doesn’t dig men. I mean, if you’re so close she ought to let you fuck her anyway. Who knows, maybe she’d like it.”

  “Who wants to fuck a dyke?” asked Boris, and leaned back, closing his eyes.

  Neither spoke for a moment or two, then Sid blurted it out: “I do! I’d love to fuck a dyke! A beautiful dyke! Can you imagine making a beautiful dyke come? It must be fantastic! But more than anything in the world I’d love to fuck her! Arabella! I mean, didn’t you ever look at her ass? Those tits? Her incredible legs? That face? You can’t tell me she doesn’t need to be fucked! I swear to God, B., and this is no shit, I had fantasies, wet dreams, a million jerk-offs, you name it, about that broad for the last twenty years! Ever since Bluebird of Happiness, her first picture, seventeen years old!” He paused, shook his head, and continued sadly: “Even after . . . after I knew she was lez, I still wanted her, maybe more than ever. I kept thinking, ‘If I could just get it in her, it would change everything’!” He threw up his hands in helpless despair. “So now you know. Christ, I must really be sick in the head, huh?”

  Boris laughed softly, reached over, and patted his arm. “No, no, no, Sid, you’re just a good . . . redblooded . . . American. . . boy. Wanting to fuck all the dykes and save them. Very commendable I’d say—a sort of one-man Salvation Army.”

  Sid had to chuckle at the image, then they both looked up at the sound of the approaching jet.

  “Well, speak of the dy—, I mean, devil,” said B., and Sid rapidly began to straighten his scarf.

  “Listen, B.,” he pleaded, “promise me you won’t say anything to her about that . . . I mean, jerking off and everything. Okay?”

  “Okay,” said Boris, opening the door.

  “I still have hopes, you know,” said Sid, only half jokingly.

  “I know,” said Boris, and laughed. “Lottsa luck.”

  7

  FOR ARABELLA, IT WAS soon apparent, Liechtenstein was a place of tender memories—because it was here, many summers before, as a schoolgirl on holiday from her Paris lycée, she had frequently come to visit her cousin, Denise. And it was here, too, she had first known romance.

  “There was the most wonderful place,” she was saying to Boris now, as she moved about the room, unfolding things from a suitcase which lay open on the bed, and hanging them in the closet—doing this in a smoothly efficient manner, swift but unhurried, with no wasted movement, and the grace of a cat, “. . . a beautiful place,” she continued, “where we always went for . . . picnic.” She smiled at Boris, uncertain of the word. “Picnic, yes?” Her accent was slight, and altogether delightful, her voice melodious—and though her English was nearly perfect, the care with which she selected each word gave her speech a charmingly tentative quality, deceptively coquettish.

  Boris lay back on the couch, hands clasped behind his head, watching her. “Yes,” he nodded, “picnic.”

  “I will take you there,” said Arabella, hanging up a velvet jacket the color of blood. “It is ten minutes by car from Vaduz.” She turned and leaned her back against the closet door, closing it. “Now tell me about the picture—do I wear lots of beautiful beautiful clothes?”

  “You take off lots of beautiful beautiful clothes.”

  “Oh yes,” she laughed and crossed the room. “Well, it would not be serious picture unless I did that, would it? Now tell me, did my car arrive from Paris?”

  “It’s parked in front of the hotel,” said Boris, regarding her with amusement. “Didn’t you notice it when we got here?”

  “No,” she said, raising her brows in an exaggeratedly imperious manner, and playfully mimicking his own flat weary tones, “I did not ‘notice it when we got here.’ I never notice things like that.” She bent over and kissed his cheek. “And, chéri, when I am with you, I do not notice anything else at all!” She glanced at her watch. “Now listen to my good plan. It is almost time for lunch, yes? We go to the charcuterie, we get nice things—pâté, artichaut, cold duck, cheese, whatever you feel . . . we get a nice bottle of Pouilly Fuissée . . . then I take you to my picnic place—my secret picnic place,” adding this last softly, not looking at Boris now, but out the window, and speaking as though from a distance, “. . . it is suddenly important to me . . . I feel it strongly.” She turned to him again, with a special smile—one that reflected a genuine camaraderie, along with just a touch of the bittersweet remembrance of things past; in her own way, she was extremely romantic. “It is good, yes? My plan? And you can tell me about the picture.”

  Boris nodded. “It is very good, your plan.” He stood up and stretched. “How about if Wardrobe gets your measurements before we go? It’ll only take a second.”

  Arabella drew herself up to her full hauteur once more. “My measurements?”

  �
�Does Helen Vrobel know them?”

  The news seemed to interest her. “Helen Vrobel is on this picture?” Then she dismissed it with a shrug of let-them-eat-cake indifference. “Helen Vrobel knows my measurements,” she said matter-of-factly. “Helen Vrobel has my patterns—for everything.”

  “All right,” said Boris, putting his head to one side, studying her body. “They can’t have changed much. Looks okay to me. Let’s go.”

  Arabella laughed. “‘Looks okay,’ does it? Good.” She took his arm, and then started out. “My measurements,” she said distinctly, “have not changed one centimeter since . . .” She searched for it.

  “Since Bluebird of Happiness?” suggested Boris.

  She threw him a quick look of astonishment, but he only smiled. “Exactement, chéri,” she said evenly, “not one centimeter since Bluebird of Happiness.” And she leaned over and, very gently, bit his ear.

  8

  THE PEARL-BLUE Maserati sucked at the surface and whined over the empty Alpine road like an artillery shell, drifting through the long sloping curves as if it were making turns inside a pneumatic tube. It was Arabella’s claim, and probably true, that Fangio himself had taught her to drive. Be that as it may her skill was extraordinary. To say that she drove like a man would be misleading; with the finesse of a Grand Prix driver, yes, but loose, no sign of the uprightness that may accompany intense concentration—driving, it seemed, with more ease and grace than a man, allowing her to maintain her animated, half-theatrical monologue without interruption, even to the point of favoring Boris with a brief but devastating smile while she shifted down going into a seventy-mile-an-hour curve.

  He watched her face, aware of her mild exhilaration, and long since satisfied about her motives.

  “I make the car respond to me,” she had once explained, “. . . like a woman, yes? With another woman, I am dominant, n’est-ce pas? With the car, it is the same—I am master—that is why I like it. You understand?”