Blue Movie Read Free Page B

faltering, “. . . guys who were counting on this picture to get into general distribution . . . guys with families . . . kids . . . toddlers . . .”
    Changed his tune, of course, when attendance pressure moved the film from the Little Carnegie to Loew’s big circuit, breaking all prev.
    But last time out had been the big one: male genitalia. Somewhat flaccid, granted, but still there it was, right up there on the silver screen, bigger than life you might say.
    That was a bit too much—even for those who had cheered him past previous milestones of cinema history. “Well,” they muttered, “this time he’s gone too far!”
    But Boris, of course, knew better. No erection, and no penetration—how to explain that little oversight to the muse of creative romance?
    From his point of view, the stag movies they had just seen were more relevant, albeit unwittingly, to the crucial aesthetic issues and problems presented by the film of today, than were those of the master filmmakers, including himself. He was aware that the freedom of expression and development in cinema had always lagged behind that of literature, as, until recent years, it had lagged behind that of the theater as well. Eroticism of the most aesthetic and creatively effective nature abounded in every form of contemporary prose—why had it not been achieved, or even seriously attempted, on film? Was there something inherently alien to eroticism in the medium of film? Something too personal to share with an audience? Perhaps the only approach would be from the opposite side.
    “Listen, Sid,” Boris was asking now, “those films we were looking at—do you think they could be improved?”
    “Huh? ‘Improved?’ Are you kiddin’?” Understatement always seemed to antagonize Sid. “Christ, I seen better cunt at a senior-citizen trailer camp! Jeez, half the time I didn’t know I was watchin’ a stag film or a dog-show, for Chrissake! Ha, you bet your sweet ass they could be improved! Get some halfway decent cunt in there for openers!”
    “Okay, what else?”
    “Huh? Whatta you mean ‘what else’? What else is there?”
    “Well, that’s what I’m talking about,” said Boris, “the totality of it, not just how the girl looks—that’s only one aspect . . . besides, the redhead wasn’t bad, you know, she could have been very effective; she was wasted, totally wasted.”
    Sid could bear it no longer—he flung his cigarette over the balcony, and struck his fist against his palm in a gesture of complete and bitter defeat. “Jesus fucking Christ, B.!” he said between clenched teeth, “here you are with everything in the world going for you, and you worrying about making some dumb broad hooker look good in a dirty movie! Whatta you, nuts?!?”
    That’s how frustrated and impatient he had become with Boris. During the past two years he had approached him with any number of lucrative, if not exactly original, film properties and ideas—ideas which seemed uniquely suited to the genius and prestige of the master . . . without whom, forget it. One of his so-called “boss projects,” for instance, had been a monumental “fictional documentary,” entitled Whores of the World —a twenty-hour, ten-part film, to be shot in every capital and metropolis of both hemispheres. “Talk about your everlovin’ audience-appeal,” Sid had exclaimed repeatedly, “this baby’s got it all! Sex, travel, human interest! Christ, we’ll give ’em so much fuckin’ human interest, it’ll be comin’ out their ass-hole!” He claimed to have researched the project thoroughly, “. . . at considerable personal expense,” he would always add, paving the way for a handsome reimbursement out of the first front money that might come to hand. The way he envisioned it, the entire series of ten feature-length flicks would take two years to shoot. “Now get this,” he said softly, with a dark glance around the room, as though he were about to divulge the World War III