![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/Terrysoutherncopyrightsteveschapiro.jpg\" "\\"Terry")
<\/a>\u00a9 Steve Schapiro<\/p><\/div>Last week, Lorin declared<\/a> June 2010 \u201cTerry Southern Month,\u201d a pronouncement that was greeted with even more excitement and enthusiasm than we had anticipated. (\u201cHell yeah. One of my faves. Bring on June,\u201d tweeted<\/a> a reader. Southern \u201cmakes me want to go out and do things,\u201d wrote<\/a> another.) We ran an excerpt from an interview Mike Golden conducted with Southern that appeared in the spring of 1996 (issue 138<\/a>).<\/p>\n After the jump is, as promised, the exchange in full, where Southern discusses making Easy Rider<\/em> with Dennis Hopper, and the missing pie-fight scene from Dr. Strangelove<\/em>:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We were barge \u201cCaptains,\u201d as they called themselves\u2014rather euphemistically since it was a job so lowly that it was ordinarily held by guys who had been kicked out of the Longshoreman\u2019s Union\u2014old winos and the like, being replaced now by this new breed, the dopehead writer. It was one of those classic writer\u2019s jobs, like hotel clerk, night watchman, fire-tower guy, with practically no duties (\u201cJust keep her tied up and pumped out\u201d). Alex Trocchi found it by chance, wandering around the West Side docks after a few hours at the White Horse Tavern. The guy who did the hiring happened to be Scottish, a Scotsman called Scotty, in fact. So he took a fancy to Alex, Alex being a Ludgate Scholar from Glasgow, who had boss charm besides. (Scottish accent; \u201cHave ye had any experience at sea, lad?\u201d \u201cOnly with small craft, sir\u2014punting on the Clyde and the like.\u201d \u201cGood enough, lad, I like the cut of yer jib.\u201d So Alex was in. And about a half a dozen of us\u2014of similar stamp and kidney\u2014were quick to follow \u2026 under auspices of The Great Troc.<\/p>\n Weren\u2019t they garbage scows?<\/p>\n The ones we were on carried rocks. They were hauling huge boulders up to the sea wall they were building, a great ocean-jetty a few miles offshore. Hauling these rocks down from a quarry at the top of the Hudson, about a three-day trip. And you could take people along. It got to be a social must, going upriver on the barge. Nelson Algren came a couple of times, David Solomon and Seymour Krim, Christopher Logue and Jimmy Baldwin. And, of course, Mason Hoffenberg would come along quite often. I remember once, after a great harsh rave-up, Jimmy Baldwin just sort of collapsed over the side, and Mason had to pull him back aboard. So life on the barge was not without interest.<\/p>\n What were the accommodations?<\/p>\n There was a cabin with a bed and coal stove, and, of course, a deck about the size of a football field. It could accommodate a lot of stowaways, even when it was loaded with these gigantic boulders. Sometimes we would be staked out in the middle of the river, several barges tied together. So we could party. Anyway, it was a good job for a writer in those days.<\/p>\n What was the scene in Paris like in the fifties?<\/p>\n Oh it was terrific because the caf\u00e9s were such great places to hang out, they were so open, you could smoke hash at the tables, if you were fairly discreet. There was the expatriate crowd, which was more or less comprised of interesting people, creatively inclined. So we would fall out there at one of the caf\u00e9s, about four in the afternoon, sip Pernod until dinner, then afterwards go to a jazz club. Bird and Diz, and Miles and Bud Powell, and Monk were all there, and if not, someone else. Lester Young and Don Byas. It was a period when the Village and St.-Germain-des-Pres were sort of interchangeable, just going back and forth. The thing to do was take a freighter\u2014it was the cheapest way to go, a comfortable and interesting way to go because it was long, thirteen days. And the Scandinavian ones had pretty good food. There were only about eight passengers. We\u2019d eat at the Captain\u2019s table\u2014and he was invariably some kind of great lush. So you\u2019d get there\u2014St. Germain, and the town was swinging. Once in a while you\u2019d find yourself homesick, for one place or the other, but it was okay, because both were good places to arrive. Sometimes we would save up some money and just take off, On the Road-style. Sometimes we had a car, other times we took the train. It was always a gas.<\/p>\n Mason was ultrapersuasive. Boss persuasion. One he convinced me to join a kibbutz with him and go to Israel, despite my complete ignorance of anything Jewish. So we packed some books and clothes and checked into the Holland-American kibbutz freighter, into a dormitory-type situation, with about sixty other guys. The ship was still at the dock, we had a couple of days to wait until they got their full roster. So we were pt to work n the hole, cleaning the boilers\u2014an unbelievably shitty job, plunging our arms up to the shoulder into these furnace pipes and bringing out mountains of wet soot. Gross City. Anyway on the first morning when we woke up, one guy is already awake, breaking out over the fact that thirty dollars is missing from his footlocker. Someone else says, \u201cOkay, we\u2019ve got to trust each other. Whoever took the money needed it.\u201d This doesn\u2019t go over too well with the guy who lost the thirty bucks. He\u2019s still ranting. So immediately this tight-knit and brotherly group is divided into two bickering factions. Hardly the utopian camaraderie we had expected. So we split. Went to the White Horse and had a couple of tall ones.<\/p>\n Tell me about Blue Movie\u2014the making of the movie from your novel.<\/p>\n Blue Movie was based on an idea that Stanley Kubrick had. Somebody came by one day with some porn footage. We looked at it, and he said, \u201cWouldn\u2019t it be interesting if one day someone who was an artist would do that\u2014using really beautiful actors and good equipment.\u201d So that was the genesis. Of course I was hoping he would do it as a film. But he\u2019s surprisingly puritanical and shy. When he read part of it, still in manuscript, he said, \u201cCongratulations, you\u2019ve written the definitive blow job.\u201d There actually was a tremendous amount of interest in doing Blue Movie. It nearly happened a couple of times. Ringo Starr had the option for a couple of years. John Cally, who was a very hip producer at MGM\u2014he produced The Loved One, which I worked on, and became the president of Warner Brothers for a brief time\u2014this heavy decision-maker said, \u201cWell now it\u2019s time to do Blue Movie.\u201d He was convinced that the first studio to come out with a quality full-length film showing erection and penetration, using stars, would go over the top. \u201cIt\u2019ll be like Gone with the Wind,\u201d he kept saying. Super enthusiastic about it. So he got Mike Nichols to direct. And since John was practically living with Julie Andrews at the time, he was able to get her of all people, as the girl. John\u2019s diabolical genius envisioned Mary Poppins getting banged for the world. So Mike Nichols was ready to go. I couldn\u2019t believe it. But the whole thing got bogged down in lawyers. The deal fell through, in a grotesque hangup between Nichols and Ringo\u2019s lawyers. But if it had been done, with those kinds of credentials, between Nichols and Julie Andrews, it could hardly have been dismissed as shabby porn.<\/p>\n What was the real story of Easy Rider? There are so many versions of how, and who created it.<\/p>\n If Den Hopper improvises a dozen lines and six of them survive the cutting-room floor, he\u2019ll put in for screenplay credit. That\u2019s the name of the game for Den Hopper. Now it would be almost impossible to exaggerate his contribution to the film\u2014but, by George, he manages to do it every time. The precise way it came down was that Dennis and Peter (Fonda) came to me with an idea. Peter was under contract to A.I.P. for several motorcycle movies, and he still owed them one. Dennis persuaded him to let him (Denis) direct the next one, and, under the guise of making an ordinary A.I.P. potboiler they would make something interesting and worthwhile\u2014which I would write. So they came to my place on Thirty-sixth Street in New York, with an idea for a story\u2014a sort of hippy dope-caper. Peter was to be the actor-producer. Dennis the actor-director, and a certain yours truly, the writer. I was able to put them up there\u2014in a room, incidentally, later immortalized by the sojourn of Dr. W.S. Benway (Burroughs). So we began smoking dope in earnest and having a nonstop story conference. The initial idea had to do with a couple of young guys who are fed up with the system, want to make one big score and split. Use the money to buy a boat in Key West and sail into the sunset was the general notion, and indeed already salted to be the film\u2019s final poetic sequence. We would occasionally dictate to an elderly woman typist who firmly believed in the arrival, and presence everywhere of the inhabitants of Venus; so she would talk about this. Finally I started taping her and then had her rap about it, how they were everywhere\u2014Jack Nicholson\u2019s thing with Easy Rider was based on that. Are you saying that there was no improvisation in the film?<\/p>\n No, no, I\u2019m, saying that the improvisation was always within the framework of the obligations of the scene\u2014a scene which already existed.<\/p>\n Then how did Dennis and Peter get included in the screenplay credits?<\/p>\n After they had seen a couple of screenings of it on the coast, I got a call from Peter. He said that he and Dennis liked the film so much they wanted to be in on the screenplay credits. Well, one of them was the producer and the other was the director so there was no way the Writers Guild was going to allow them to take a screenplay credit unless I insisted. Even then they said there was supposed to be a \u201ccompulsory arbitration\u201d because too often producers and directors will muscle themselves into a screenplay credit through some under-the-table deal with the writer. They (the WGA) said I would be crazy to allow it and wanted to be assured that I wasn\u2019t being coerced or bribed in any way, because they hate the idea of these \u201chyphenates\u201d\u2014you know, writer-producer, director-producer\u2026because of that history of muscle. Anyway, we were great friends at the time, so I went along with it without much thought. I actually did it out of a sense of camaraderie. Recently, in Interview, Dennis pretty much claimed credit for the whole script.<\/p>\n Writers appear to be treated like the lowest of the breed in the film biz.<\/p>\n Yes. Except we still have persuasion.<\/p>\n What was it like working with Kubrick?<\/p>\n Working with Stanley was terrific, although the circumstances may seem peculiar\u2014in the backseat of a big car. The film was being shot at Shepperton, outside of London, in the winter. So he would be pick me up at 4:30 in the morning and we would make this hour-long trip to the studio. It was a big Bentley or a Rolls, so the passenger part was something like a railway compartment, with folding-out writing desks and good lighting. It would be pitch-black outside and really cold, and we would be in this cozy-rosy compartment, in a creative groove, working on the scene to be shot that day.<\/p>\n Writing it? Or rewriting it?<\/p>\n Well, let\u2019s say trying to improve it. Kubrick would say, \u201cNow what\u2019s the most outrageous thing this guy would say at this point?\u201d and hopefully I could come up with something like, \u201cIf you try an perversion in there, I\u2019ll blow your head off.<\/p>\n Keenan Wynn to Peter Sellers in the phone booth?<\/p>\n Yes. Col. \u201cBat\u201d Guano (\u201cIf, indeed, that is your name\u201d) to Group Captain Lionel Mandrake. The thing about Kubrick is that he\u2019s not only extraordinarily creative, but he will encourage the other person to go all out, and not try to keep a \u201creasonable lid on it.\u201d Stanley\u2019s like a kind of chess-playing poet. One side is very scientific, the other poetic.<\/p>\n Over the years I heard talk of a \u201cmissing scene\u201d or a sequence that was deleted from Strangelove. What\u2019s the story on that?<\/p>\n Well that would be the fabulous so-called pie-fight episode. You may recall the scene near the end of the film, in the War Room, after the bomb has been dropped, when Strangelove suddenly stands up from his wheelchair, and says, \u201cMein Fuehrer, I can valk!\u201d And he takes a step? Recall that?<\/p>\n I do indeed.<\/p>\n Well, in the missing sequence, after taking one step he falls flat on his face and starts trying to get back in his wheelchair, but each time it scoots out of his grasp. Meanwhile, parallel to this action, in another part of the War Room, the Russian Ambassador is caught again trying to take pictures of the \u201cBig Board.\u201d George C. Scott nails him, and again they\u2019re fighting in the War Room. So Scott exposes about eighteen micro-mini spy cameras on the ambassador\u2014in his wristwatch, cuff links, tiepin, on his ring finger, everywhere. But Scott says, \u201cI think these are dummy cameras. I think he\u2019s got the real McCoy concealed on his person.\u201d And he turns to the detail of MPs who have come in. \u201cI want you to search him very carefully, boys,\u201d he says, \u201cand don\u2019t overlook any of the six bodily orifices.\u201d And the Russian ambassador goes through this quick calculation, \u201cvun\u2026two\u2026\u201d and then when he reaches the last one, he freaks. \u201cVhy you Capitalist swine,\u201d he says, and he reaches out of the frame, gets something and throws it at George C. Scott. I should mention that we have previously established a huge catering table that was wheeled in, laden with food, so they don\u2019t have to leave the War Room during this crisis. The ambassador reaches out of the frame, grabs something from the table and throws it at Scott. We don\u2019t see what it is immediately but Scott ducks, and this big custard pie hits the president in the face. The mere indignity of this is so monstrous that the president just faints dead away. Scott grabs him and keeps him from falling, and he\u2019s holding him in his arms like a martyred hero. \u201cGentlemen,\u201d he says to the others, \u201cour President has been struck down in the prime of his life\u2026by a custard pie. I say Massive Retaliation!\u201d And he throws something at the ambassador. It misses and hits one of the other Joint Chiefs. So this immense pie fight begins\u2014between Army, Navy, Air Force\u2014a bit of interservice rivalry, if you grasp the innuendo. Now while this pie fight is going on, Strangelove is still trying to get back into this wheelchair, moving like a snake across the floor of the War Room, the chair continuing to scoot out of his grasp each time he reaches for it. Finally he gets to the end of the War Room, and the chair is against the wall\u2014it looks like he\u2019s got it this time. But it scoots away again. So Strangelove pulls himself up so that he\u2019s sitting with his back against the wall. He\u2019s watching the pie fight in the distance. Then his hand\u2014his uncontrollable right hand\u2014reaches inside his coat and comes out with a Luger pistol and points it at his head. He grabs his wrist with his other hand and grapples for the pistol, which goes off with a tremendous bang. Then cut to the long shot of all those generals in freeze-frame. Strangelove says, \u201cEnough of these childish games. We have work to do.\u201d So they all stand there staring at him in complete silence, until Scott recognizes this is the guy to get tight with, so he walks all the way across the War Room floor, and says, \u201cDoctor, may I help you?\u201d And he helps him into his wheelchair. He starts pushing him back across the floor, which by now is so deep in custard pie it resembles a beach\u2014and sure enough we quickly pass the president and the Russian ambassador sitting there crosslegged like two children, doing sand castles, making mountains. And Strangelove says, \u201cAh, too bad. Apparently their minds have snapped under the strain. Perhaps they\u2019ll have to be institutionalized.\u201d And so Scott continues pushing him across to this group of officers and CIA types, who are so covered they look like ghosts. And he says, \u201cWell, boys, I think the future of this great nation of ours is in the hands of people like Doc Strangelove, and I think we owe him a vote of thanks. Let\u2019s hear it for the good Doctor.\u201d And in a really eerie (whispering) voice, they go, \u201chip-hip hooray, hip-hip hooray.\u201d Then he continues pushing him across the floor as they start singing, \u201cFor he\u2019s a jolly good fellow, for he\u2019s a jolly good fellow.\u201d Now this counter camera pulls up so you\u2019ve got this long shot of the ultimate allegiance between this mad scientist and this general from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Then they cut to the explosion and the song \u201cWe\u2019ll Meet Again\u201d comes in\u2014and the credits rise.<\/p>\n That was cut?<\/p>\n Not without good reason. The problem was that Stanley, great genius director that he is, forgot to say to his actors, \u201cListen, what we\u2019re representing here is interservice rivalry, which is one of the most evil things. Each time there\u2019s an appropriation to one group, the other says, \u2018Listen, we\u2019ve got to have that too.\u2019 And there\u2019s no stopping the Pentagon on this level. It\u2019s viscous.\u201d He forgot to tell them it\u2019s viscous. So what\u2019s happening in the pie fight is that people are laughing, and they shouldn\u2019t be laughing. It\u2019s supposed to be deadly serious. But it was such a funny situation that people outside the periphery, including Stanley and myself, were tossing pies into the melee, you see. So it lost its edge. It was like a comedy scene when everything else in the film has been played straight, except once when the Coca-Cola machine spurted in Keenan Wynn\u2019s face. That\u2019s why he decided not to have it in. I saw it again recently and think it holds up well.<\/p>\n Me too. So does The Loved One. It recently came out for the first time on video, after all these years. Why did it take so long?<\/p>\n For some weird reason, they held it back\u2014it\u2019s an MGM film. Haskell Wexler, who was the coproducer and cinematographer, had a copy he sent me, and I got a duplicate made, but you couldn\u2019t get it. The casting on that was great. Remember that sequence with Milton Berle and Margarite Leighton, when the dog dies, and she doesn\u2019t want to let them bury it?<\/p>\n Yeah. That was played really strong. But Rod Steiger\u2014Joyboy\u2014and his mother were too outrageous to describe.<\/p>\n Every time I see Rod Steiger, rather, the few times I\u2019ve seen him, he always talks about that. He was carried away by that role, he got into that role so much. He had his hair in rollers on the set. Running around on the set when he should have been resting. Dishing with the girls. It had such a great cast: John Gielgud, Lionel Stander, Robert Morley, Jonathan Winters, Robert Morse\u2026 <\/p>\n What happened to The Magic Christian?<\/p>\n Well, I had written a really good script of The Magic Christian for Peter Sellers. He and the director, Joe McGrath, were in London, supposedly setting up the film while I finished working on an adaptation of John Barth\u2019s End of the Road\u2014which, incidentally, was one of the most interesting films I\u2019ve been involved with. But instead of waiting for me to get to London, Peter who was always ultrahyper and antsy about everything, gets Spike Milligan and a couple of his Goon Show cronies to rewrite a few scenes\u2014without having ever read the book. Dig that for gross weird. All they knew was that it was about an eccentric billionaire who staged elaborate practical jokes. So they slipped into a bit of infantile self-indulgence, with some pointlessly destructive behavior by Guy Grand. Totally out of character. They had him cutting up Rembrandts for Christsake! So I\u2019m afraid that the film has, in my view, some serious lapses. Peter Sellers bought a hundred copies of the book when it first came out in England. He would give them to friends at Christmas. In fact, he was the one who turned Stanley (Kubrick) on to \u2026 this unique brand of humor.<\/p>\n How did growing up in Texas shape you as a writer?<\/p>\n Well Texas is probably a good place for a boy to grow up, in a Huck Finn sort of way, like one big outdoor playground with a lot of hunting and fishing, Dad-and-Lad stuff going on. But, as Liz Taylor said, \u201cIt\u2019s hell on horses and women.\u201d Because it\u2019s a cultural desert. Once, when I was seven or eight and sick in bed, my mother decided to read to me. The book she chose, for some reason, since her own leaning was more towards Louis Bromfield, was a volume of the great E.A. Poe\u2014The Gold Bug, if memory serves. Well, for a Texas lout, E.A. Poe was heady brew. And it was a perfect turn-on to \u201cQuality-lit,\u201d of a weirdo bent. I was hooked on Poe. And Poe, of course, is the gateway to the greatest. If marijuana leads to cocaine, Poe most certainly leads to Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Joyce, C\u00e9line, Lautr\u00e9amont, Huysmans, Nathaniel West, Faulkner, Sartre, etcetera, etcetera, ad glorium.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last week, Lorin declared June 2010 \u201cTerry Southern Month,\u201d a pronouncement that was greeted with even more excitement and enthusiasm than we had anticipated. (\u201cHell yeah. One of my faves. Bring on June,\u201d tweeted a reader. Southern \u201cmakes me want to go out and do things,\u201d wrote another.) We ran an excerpt from an interview […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[80,78,77,82,79,81,83,30],"class_list":["post-579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terry-southern-month","tag-cinema","tag-dennis-hopper","tag-dr-strangelove","tag-easy-rider","tag-film","tag-movies","tag-screenwriting","tag-terry-southern"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\nSo you can see that during these conferences the hippy dope-caper premise went through quite a few changes. The first notion was that they not be bikers but a duo of daredevil car drivers barnstorming around the U.S. being exploited by a series of unscrupulous promoters until they were finally disgusted enough to quit. Then one day the dope smoke cleared long enough to remember that Peter\u2019s commitment was for a motorcycle flick, and we switched over pronto. It wasn\u2019t until the end that it took on a genuinely artistic dimension. . . when it suddenly evolved into an indictment of the American redneck, and his hatred for anything that is remotely different from himself\u2026and then somewhat to the surprise of Den Hopper (imitates Hopper in Apocalypse Now): You mean kill \u2018em both? Hey, man, are you outta your gourd?!?!\u201d I think for a minute he was still hoping they would somehow beat the system. Sail into the sunset with a lot of loot and freedom. But of course, he was hip enough to realize, a minute later, that it (their death) was more or less mandatory.<\/p>\n