{"id":205,"date":"2013-03-01T03:33:45","date_gmt":"2013-03-01T03:33:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mediafunhouse.com\/blog\/?page_id=205"},"modified":"2020-12-07T02:45:10","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T07:45:10","slug":"provocation-and-preversion-southern-style","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/mediafunhouse.com\/?page_id=205","title":{"rendered":"Provocation and “Preversion,” Southern-style"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two new books and a home-video release revive interest in a sublimely talented, and artfully warped, writer<\/span><\/p>\n

(First published on time.com and used with the written permission of the author and publication of first instance.)<\/span><\/p>\n

By Ed Grant<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the decade and a half that Terry Southern enjoyed fame as one of America\u2019s pre-eminent satirists, he tackled every \u201cgrand theme\u201d he could get his hands on: greed (The Magic Christian<\/em>), politics and war (Dr. Strangelove<\/em>), drugs and youth rebellion (Easy Rider<\/em>), death (the script for The Loved One<\/em>), alienation and the media (the script for End of the Road<\/em>), and, with particular relish, sex (the novels Candy<\/em> and Blue Movie<\/em>).<\/span><\/p>\n

What followed this period of critical and popular acclaim, however, was a quarter century in which Southern published a scant few articles and short stories, and one eloquent, compact novel that sank without a trace. During his \u201cboom period\u201d his screen credits included milestones like Strangelove<\/em> and Easy Rider<\/em>, contributions to campy time capsules (Barbarella<\/em>), and uncredited work on high-profile projects (The Collector<\/em>, Casino Royale<\/em>). From 1971 until his death in 1995, only one movie \u2013 a dreadful Whoopi Goldberg vehicle called The Telephone<\/em> (1988) — had Southern\u2019s name attached to it. He was rumored to have \u201clost it,\u201d alcohol and drugs having blunted his satiric edge. When mentioned at all, his name was preceded by the amiable but career-killing sobriquet \u201cswinging\u2019 sixties icon.\u201d Though his ardent admirers continued to stress the ways in which his best work continued to inspire later generations of humorists and screenwriters, the question remained: What the hell was Terry Southern doing all those years?<\/span><\/p>\n

Two new books do much to answer that question. The first, A Grand Guy: The Art and Life of Terry Southern<\/em> by Lee Hill, charts Southern\u2019s personal and professional highs and lows \u2014 and the star-studded array of folks with whom he shared them. The second, Now Dig This: the Unspeakable Writings of Terry Southern<\/em>, is an anthology of previously uncollected writings and interviews that appeared in a range of publications, from the \u201cquality-lit\u201d (Southern\u2019s phrase) mag The Paris Review<\/em> to Puritan<\/em> (the adult publication that was so explicit it was sold shrink-wrapped). Both books fill a significant void, offering evidence that Southern remained a potent, wildly creative scribe during his last 25 years on this planet. His skill in career-planning never matched his consummate wit and imagination (in fact he was a dismal dealmaker), but at least now his \u201cinvisible\u201d years have yielded a number of characteristically strange and amusing stories, articles, and anecdotes.<\/span><\/p>\n

A Grand Guy<\/em> makes it clear that Southern\u2019s finest creation was himself. The small-town Texan essentially reinvented himself after serving in WWII (he took part in the Battle of the Bulge), and taking advantage of the G.I. Bill to study at the Sorbonne. He eliminated his twang in favor of a precise, nearly British cadence, his Lone Star patois giving way to a flash, mockingly hip mixture of jazz lingo, eccentric abbreviations of names (as in \u201cSam\u201d Beckett and \u201ctip-top Tenn\u201d Williams), the errant French phrase, and the occasional dip backward into down-home aphorisms. The following example of his odd parlance, found in Now Dig This<\/em>, finds him lecturing about the way that the critical establishment has long ignored Poe\u2019s novel The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym<\/em>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c…the systematic exclusion of this longest and very ambitious work of the most celebrated author in the history of the country smacks a little too strongly of the old gestalt \u2013 if you follow my drift. [They prefer] instead that the image of the \u2018divine Edgar\u2019 remain essentially that laid down by the late great Chuck Baudelaire, and the rest of the \u2018frog elite\u2019 (specifically Rimbaud, Mallarm\u00e9, and Val\u00e9ry … with the incredible Verlaine abstaining \u2013 though not, scholars please note, through gayness alone).\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

From Paris to Greenwich Village to mod London, Southern befriended some of the greatest writers, artists, and musicians of the day, spending hours sharing their pet indulgences. His status as a cooler-than-cool pop-culture icon was solidified by his appearance (shades and all) in the pantheon of heroes that populate the cover of the Sgt. Pepper<\/em> album. Hill emphasizes that Southern created the \u201cgrand guy\u201d persona to deal with an innate shyness; Southern\u2019s collaborator Nelson Lyon is quoted as saying that as Southern grew older, he became a victim of his alter ego, \u201ctrapped in the cliches and hip jargon\u201d that defined him in the eyes of friends and colleagues.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the 1970s, Southern became \u201cunfashionable\u201d in the movie industry, due to several factors (changing regimes, the death of the \u201csmall\u201d Hollywood film with the advent of Spielberg and Lucas, a reputation as one who \u201cindulged\u201d quite a bit). His position as a \u201cname\u201d journalist-in-residence on Rolling Stones tours had the same sad, resigned air as Ken Kesey\u2019s travels with the Grateful Dead. Given the nature of his later professional endeavors (including the script of an unfunny 1980 hardcore porn comedy, Randy the Electric Lady<\/em>), the sweetest surprise waiting for Southern fans in A Grand Guy<\/em> is the revelation that he remained a productive and prolific writer during his \u201cinvisible\u201d years. Though project after project went into turnaround, and ideas were hatched that seemed doomed from the start, Southern did produce completed screenplays for all of them. Some of the most valuable passages in Hill\u2019s book offer tantalizing glimpses at these heretofore unseen scripts, including a project instigated by Peter Sellers about a meek, mild-mannered Pentagon auditor who stumbles onto the labyrinthine workings of the international arms trade.<\/span><\/p>\n

The dilemma central to Southern\u2019s life, post 1969, can be summed up in one question: why did he continue to labor on screenplays after it had become painfully evident that the mainstream movie industry (as well as the independent sphere, which he had helped to jumpstart with Easy Rider<\/em>) had no interest in his work? Throughout these lean years, Southern could have easily veered back into what he called the \u201cquality lit game,\u201d given his well-respected status in the literary community. The most cogent explanation for Southern\u2019s peculiar decision to stick with the film world can be found in his 1962 essay “When Film Gets Good…” (included in Now Dig This<\/em>): \u201cIt has become evident that it is wasteful, pointless, and in terms of art, inexcusable, to write a novel which could, or in fact should, have been a film.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Issues of creativity and expression aside, there was another, more concrete reason why Southern stuck with the movie biz: he acknowledged in an interview (also included in Dig<\/em>) that \u201cit is highly rewarding in the financial sense…\u201d Therefore, owing quite a bit to the IRS, he looked forward to scoring a \u201cbreakthrough\u201d film project that would simultaneously solve his financial troubles and resuscitate his standing in the Hollywood community. The juiciest anecdotes in Hill\u2019s biography detail the curious way in which he pursued this breakthrough: in true self-destructive, Wellesian style, he hooked up with a variety of collaborators who were immaculately talented, but were further along in their alcohol- and drug-dependency than he was (Hill sketches Southern as a functional \u201cuser\u201d whose biggest weaknesses were drink and Dexamyl \u2014 used to complete manuscripts on short deadlines): William Burroughs and a far-gone Dennis Hopper on an adaptation of Burroughs\u2019 Junky<\/em>; Larry Flynt and Hopper on a biopic of Jim Morrison; singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson, another \u201cgrand\u201d soul, on the aforementioned Telephone<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The only thing missing from Hill\u2019s excellent biography is the voice of the Master himself. Although the book\u2019s subtitle emphasizes Southern\u2019s life and art (and it is obvious that, after a certain point, his behavior in public became his \u201cart\u201d) sadly there are few quotes from Southern\u2019s published work. Therefore, the uninitiated are urged to supplement Grand with a look at Southern\u2019s finer writing, preferably Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes<\/em>. Those who are content to know Southern\u2019s work through viewings of Strangelove<\/em> and Easy Rider<\/em> will still be in for a treat, though, as they encounter \u201ca certain yrs tly\u201d (as Southern often referred to himself) and the \u201cultrafab\u201d folks with whom he shared his life and times.<\/span><\/p>\n

Offering an industrial-strength dose of Southern\u2019s own special brand of high weirdness, Now Dig This<\/em> contains some of the most profound, and downright silliest, things the man ever came up with. It is, in short, the \u201cnext book\u201d Southern fans have been waiting for all these years.<\/span><\/p>\n

Clearly a labor of love, the book is carefully structured, with Southern\u2019s serious thoughts on literature, cinema, and drugs bracketing his work as a short-story craftsman, a critic, a New Journalist, and a writer of blissfully puerile \u201cletters.\u201d The pieces were selected and edited by Nile Southern, writer and son of the Grand Guy, and Josh Alan Friedman, musician, author of the terrific Tales of Times Square<\/em> and a series of venomously funny cartoons, and the son of brilliant novelist Bruce Jay Friedman.<\/span><\/p>\n

Besides two wonderfully candid interviews with Southern \u2013 in which he notes, among other things, that the film director is, for the most part, \u201can interfering parasite,\u201d and \u201cmuch of your time [as a screenwriter] will be spent in a creative wasteland\u201d — the single most revealing piece in Dig<\/em> is \u201cKing Weirdo,\u201d his ode to his first literary hero, Edgar Allen Poe. Southern\u2019s singular fascination for Poe\u2019s duplicitous frame device in A. Gordon Pym<\/em> — which insists that the story you\u2019re reading is an account of actual events submitted to Poe — is reflected in several of his own short stories, including the marvellously titled “Heavy Put-Away, or a Hustle Not Wholly Devoid of a Certain Grossness, Granted,” found in this collection. An account of a mean prank worthy of Flannery O\u2019Connor at her darkest, Heavy is one of Southern\u2019s most pointed comments about human nature, and a perfect example of his crisp, succinct approach to writing (one can think of several crime novelists \u2013 e.g. think Donald Westlake \u2013 who would have spun Heavy into a full-length \u201cscam\u201d novel).<\/span><\/p>\n

The most extreme and hysterical inclusions in Dig<\/em> are short \u201cletters\u201d Southern concocted for the National Lampoon<\/em> and the private amusement of his friends. Affecting an offhanded style, Southern gleefully raises the bar for bad-taste humor in these pieces, delivering bizarre gross-outs and politically incorrect (understatement) proclamations while tweaking various bastions of civilized behavior. Although the letters read like spontaneous creations, lacking the craft and precision of Southern\u2019s best work, their surprisingly crude contents do satisfy his cardinal rule for successful writing: namely, that it possesses the \u201ccapacity to astonish.\u201d The closest equivalents to a piece like “Hard-Corpse Pornography” (in which Southern outlines a necrophilic act practiced by soldiers in Vietnam) are other willfully perverse works by brilliant entertainers, like the later, cruder songs of one F. Zappa, or the dazzlingly vulgar Derek and Clive trilogy of albums by Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Like those gents, Southern seems delighted to let his libidinous imagination take flight, but also delivers some devastatingly surreal satiric images \u2014 witness an account in one of the two Vietnam-related letters of fetishists (we will allow the enterprising reader to discover the true nature of the fetish) sporting jewelry composed of a certain part of the human rear-end. An ugly image to be sure, but one that deftly and savagely parodies the old Nam-era \u201cjungle warrior\u201d tradition of making a necklace out of the ears of one\u2019s slain enemies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Naturally enough, the spirit of the \u201960s, \u201ca magical era, an era of change and astonishments\u201d pervades the book. Southern\u2019s status as one of the forefathers of \u201cNew Journalism\u201d is reinforced here with “Grooving in Chi” a first-person account of the \u201cpolice riot\u201d that occurred at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. Dig ends on a somewhat somber note, though, as \u201960s survivor Terry recalls good times he shared with old friends (including Frank O\u2019Hara and Abbie Hoffman) in a series of eulogies and tribute articles. These pieces make one lament the fact that Southern never got around to writing his proposed memoirs. Taken together, Grand Guy<\/em> and Now Dig This<\/em> do an admirable job of filling that gap \u2013 as well as increasing the average reader\u2019s awareness of Southern\u2019s strange and marvelous legacy.<\/span><\/p>\n

The two new volumes offer a good introduction to Southern, as does www.terrysouthern.com the official Terry Southern homepage maintained by Nile S., which offers rare writings and assorted Terry-iana, as well as info on the as-yet-unreleased Southern tribute CD (recorded by Southern and a sterling cast, including Jonathan Winters and Southern disciple \u201cMr. Mike\u201d O\u2019Donoghue, shortly before Southern died). Further exploration of his small but influential body of work in print and on film is necessary if only to discover his dazzling inventory of effects. Certain works are dispensable (Telephone<\/em>, Randy<\/em>, the wonderfully funny but \u201chigh concept\u201d novel Blue Movie<\/em>), others are sadly unavailable (the elegiac, touching novel Texas Summer<\/em>, the low-key experimental End of the Road<\/em>, and the grimly funny The Loved One<\/em>), while the seminal works are waiting to be experienced (or re-discovered) at local stores or through Internet vendors.<\/span><\/p>\n

Southern\u2019s first novel, Flash and Filigree<\/em> (1958), was written under the influence of Henry Green, a dialogue-driven, slightly surreal British novelist of the same period. The book is constructed around three masterful set pieces: a curious encounter between a creepy doctor and his long-winded patient; the taping of a TV game show called \u201cWhat\u2019s My Disease?\u201d; and what is without a doubt the ultimate \u201950s seduction-in-a-drive-in scene. Southern\u2019s dialogue is priceless, as the girl implores her fevered date, \u201c\u2026please don\u2019t, really don\u2019t please Ralph I can\u2019t darling I love you please, oh Ralph, please, I can\u2019t Ralph you don\u2019t know please I\u2019d rather die please God oh please God Ralph you\u2019re hurting me oh no\u2026.\u201d Shortly thereafter: \u201c\u2018Oh Ralph,\u2019 she breathed, worshipfully, ‘Ralph.’\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Written with poet Mason Hoffenberg, Southern\u2019s best-remembered comic novel, Candy<\/em> (1964) had a curious history: first published in 1958 under the pseudonym \u201cMaxwell Kenton\u201d by the Paris-based Olympia Press (a firm that printed trite erotica and debuted groundbreaking works like Lolita<\/em> and Naked Lunch<\/em>), the book fell into a strange copyright limbo on these shores. In interviews, Southern quoted the book\u2019s sales at 7 million \u2014 it was a \u201cNew York Times\u201d bestseller in its official U.S. edition, but thousands of copies were sold through bootleg printings of the book by no-name publishing houses, marketed as straight porn. Part in-joke, part social satire and part quickie porno novel, Candy<\/em> is pure Southern. The protagonist, Candy Christian, is one of his finest creations: an update of Voltaire\u2019s Candide, this middle-American college girl offers \u201ccharity\u201d to every man she meets. Though written in the third person, the leering narration synchs up with the mock-erotic dialogue spoken by the characters: Candy\u2019s womanhood is described with phrases like \u201choney-pot,\u201d \u201cjelly box,\u201d and \u201csweetening damp\u201d; her breasts are \u201cpert and inquisitive,\u201d and she beseeches a homeless hunchback, to whom she is being charitable, \u201cHurt me as they have hurt you \u2026 Give me your hump!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The Magic Christian<\/em> (1959) remains the most jarring and original in Southern\u2019s slim bibliography. Entirely episodic, the book follows millionaire Guy Grand (stated goal: \u201cmaking it hot for them\u201d) as he uses his untold wealth to pay for elaborate scams and pranks, some of which prove that everyone has their price (money is dumped into a heated vat filled with blood, urine, and manure \u2014 to see how many folks will dive right in), while others are carried off simply to disrupt the status quo (a shrieking pygmy is hired to run a large corporation; a man smashes crackers with a giant sledgehammer on a crowded Manhattan street corner). The book clearly tapped into the zeitgeist of the time: the pranks and scams pulled off by Grand prefigure the performance-art \u201chappenings\u201d of later years, the carefree antics of Ken Kesey\u2019s \u201cMerry Pranksters,\u201d and the media-grabbing events staged by Yippies Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.<\/span><\/p>\n

While Now Dig This<\/em> is an entertaining, well-assembled collection of Southern\u2019s writing, the \u201cgreatest hits\u201d book he himself put together, Red-Dirt Marijuana<\/em> (1967) shows the true depth of his talent, as the reader sees him adopting different styles and narrative voices, and nailing every one. The contents include Faulkner-like tales of a Texan adolescent (later reworked into Texas Summer) , an inner-city delinquent saga, a blissed-out, Kerouac-like account of a road trip, a journey into the mind of a tormented worker in the Paris metro, and an artfully drawn portrait of a wannabe hipster who hangs around black musicians (titled “You\u2019re Too Hip, Baby,” its milieu may be dated, but its message is timeless). The most significant entry is his pioneering work of new Journalism, “Twirling at Old Miss,” in which ever-libidinous Ter visits a baton-twirling academy in Mississippi (where, curiously, the girls all seem to talk like Candy Christian) mere days after Faulkner\u2019s funeral. His novelist\u2019s eye colors his perceptions: \u201cNext to the benches, and about three feet apart, are two public drinking fountains, and I notice that the one boldly marked \u2018For Colored\u2019 is sitting squarely in the shadow cast by the justice symbol on the courthouse fa\u00e7ade \u2013 to be entered later, of course, in my writer\u2019s notebook, under \u2018Imagery, sociochiaroscurian, hack.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As for Southern cinema, one is surprised, given the fact that his \u201cgrand guy\u201d persona was flamboyant and larger than life, that he never became a performer (like his comrades Burroughs and Mailer); his shy demeanor was doubtless the deciding factor. He can be seen in only four films: The Man Who Fell to Earth<\/em> (as a journalist, in the restored version), the documentaries The Queen<\/em> (where he judges a drag contest) and\u00a0Burroughs<\/em>, and the infamous Rolling Stones film-portrait Cocksucker Blues<\/em>. The last\u2013mentioned has never been officially available (the Stones hate it \u2014 but tend to excerpt it in their authorized video compilations), but it offers the longest glimpse of Southern onscreen. Shaggy and stoned, he dallies with what appears to be a powder as he declares \u201cCocaine\u2019s so expensive that I don\u2019t think it\u2019s possible to develop a habit.\u201d The camera swerves away at two intervals during his sequence \u2014 filmmaker Robert Frank tended to do this when his subjects were \u201cindulging.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

As a screenwriter, Southern\u2019s best-known work is undoubtedly Strangelove<\/em>. Kubrick retained his services to turn the movie\u2019s source-material, a rather starkly serious novel, into the \u201cnightmare comedy\u201d that set the standard for black humor in the \u201960s. Southern\u2019s warped sensibility is stamped throughout the film \u2014 especially in sequences like the one where Col. \u201cBat\u201d Guano (\u201cif that is indeed your name\u201d) suspects Group Captain Mandrake of committing \u201cpreversions\u201d in a phone booth. The other title invariably connected with Southern\u2019s name, Easy Rider<\/em>, demonstrates his mastery at delineating characters through dialogue \u2014 as in the memorable campfire scene where \u201cstraight\u201d lawyer George Hanson (Jack Nicholson), conveys his admiration for Capt America and Billy but predicts that their liberated lifestyle is doomed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Though other Southern-scripted movies are available on video (most prominently Barbarella<\/em>), fans of his work are advised to first check out the film version of Candy<\/em> which recently made its home-video and DVD debut from www.anchorbayentertainment.com. On a par with Skidoo<\/em> (1968) and Myra Breckenridge<\/em> (1970) (both sadly unavailable) in the must-be-seen-to-be-believed category, Candy<\/em> is a 100% product of the 1960s — lavishly budgeted, star-studded, exceptionally drug-inflected sex comedy.<\/span><\/p>\n

A unique roster of stars\u2014including James Coburn, Walter Matthau, and Charles Aznavour) — enjoy the \u201ccharity\u201d offered by Southern and Hoffenberg\u2019s nymphette, while scripter Buck Henry (dare this hardcore Southern fan say it) actually improves upon the novel in two bizarrely funny sequences: Candy\u2019s worshipful encounter with drunk Welsh poet McPhisto (Richard Burton), leading to a more-than-peculiar basement menage a quatre involving her Mexican gardener (a\u00a0Pepper<\/em>-era Ringo Starr doing an incredibly awful accent); and her \u201clesson\u201d with a guru (Marlon Brando) whose accent keeps changing from East Indian to New Yawk in mid-sentence. Henry and director Christian Marquand\u2019s work on the rest of the movie isn\u2019t nearly as successful, or true to Southern\u2019s style (the gaudy trailer included on the DVD edition of the movie has the ironic tag line \u201cIs Candy faithful? Only to the book\u201d). Though the middle section is downright dull \u2014 that\u2019s what fast-forward buttons and chapter stops were designed for \u2014 the finale is the sort of thing that could\u2019ve only been dreamt up in the 1960s: the storyline has been neatly tied up, but the movie carries on, as our heroine strolls through a field, encountering every major (male) character she met previously in the film one by one \u2013 while Dave Grusin\u2019s mesmerizing psychedelic score digs deeply into the brains of all who hear it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Candy<\/em>\u2019s psychedelic glory aside, The Magic Christian<\/em> is, for this reviewer, the most easily rewatchable Southern adaptation. Boasting the only onscreen union of members of the Goons, the Beatles, and the Pythons, the film stands as a kind of watershed in British movie comedy. Like the novel, it is an episodic affair, with some scenes working and others missing the mark (Southern himself disliked an amusing auction sequence written by and featuring a young John Cleese). Unlike the aforementioned psychedelic comedies, the cameos here produce intentional laughter. Laurence Harvey, Christopher Lee, Yul Brynner, and Raquel Welch (as \u201cthe Priestess of the Whip\u201d) all seem to having a hell of a good time \u2014 generally a dangerous sign for a comedy (Yellowbeard<\/em>, anyone?); here, however, the audience has one too.<\/span><\/p>\n

Southern\u2019s ideas live on \u2013 in print, in the movies he wrote, and, strangest of all, in the culture at large. As time moves on, it becomes clearer and clearer that he understood all too well the directions in which American society was headed. In Easy Rider<\/em>, he anticipated the violent events (Altamont, Kent State) that blunted the idealism of the \u201clove generation\u201d; Dr. Strangelove<\/em> was repeatedly cited by columnists writing about the Nixon administration (Henry Kissinger in particular was often compared to the good doctor); Guy Grand was definitely a forerunner of today\u2019s eccentric millionaires \u2014 H. Ross Perot, Ted Turner, and that guy who paid millions to accompany the Russians into outer space; Candy Christian can be seen on daytime talk shows in the form of those young women who talk about the bloodthirsty serial killer they intend on marrying \u2014 \u201ccharitable\u201d lasses indeed. From \u201cThe Jerry Springer Show\u201d to the Supreme Court \u201cselection\u201d of the current President, one doubts that Southern would be a bit surprised at a single contemporary occurrence. Perhaps sociologists should pay more attention to those silly \u201csatirists,\u201d after all\u2026.<\/span><\/p>\n

c. 2001, 2013 Ed Grant<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two new books and a home-video release revive interest in a sublimely talented, and artfully warped, writer (First published on time.com and used with the written permission of the author and publication of first instance.) 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