The Terry Southern Summer Film Festival
continues at 7:00 p.m. Monday night at the Boulder
Public Library.
next
screening:
—
END OF THE ROAD —
Monday, July 13
The impressive, often
outrageous films Terry worked on between 1964 and 1970 will play throughout
the summer on Monday nights.You won't want to miss the rarely screened
The Loved One (6/8) and End
of the Road (7/13), and of course the bookends of the '60s:
Easy Rider (6/29) and Doctor
Strangelove (5/18).
Here is the schedule
(screenings on Mondays, 7:00 p.m., Boulder Public Library)
DR STRANGELOVE:
5/18
THE COLLECTOR: 6/1
THE LOVED ONE: 6/8
THE CINCINNATI KID: 6/15
BARBARELLA: 6/22
EASY RIDER: 6/29
THE MAGIC CHRISTIAN: 7/6
END OF THE ROAD: 7/13
Monday May 18
Dig This—A Dose of Terry Southern
Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying
and Love the Bomb
Directed by Stanley Kubrick, with Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling
Hayden, Slim Pickens (1964). U.S. Air Force General Jack Ripper goes mad
and sends his bomber wing to attack the U.S.S.R. Convinced that communists
are conspiring to pollute America’s "precious bodily fluids,"
Ripper invokes ‘Plan R’—which cannot be aborted. Hysterical
scenes in the War Room where President Muffley meets with his advisors
and the Soviet ambassador, who reveals that the U.S.S.R. has buried a
secret "Doomsday Machine" that will destroy all life on Earth—if
nuked. Peter Sellers plays three men trying to avert disaster: British
Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, the only person with access to the demented
Gen. Ripper, U.S. President Merkin Muffley, who must placate a hopping-mad
drunken Premier Kissov, and the Advanced Weapons and Research advisor
to the President, the enigmatic Dr. Strangelove. The film was inducted
(by President Clinton) into the National Archives as a National Treasure.
“Where you find smugness,” Southern once said, “you
find something worth blasting.” Listed at number 3 on American Film
Institute’s 100 Top Movies. Based on the novel Red Alert, by Peter
George. Screenplay and adaptation by Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern and
Peter George.Notes by Nile Southern. (93 min.) As an added feature, local
author/filmmaker Nile Southern presents a short sample of his personal
documentary-in-progress—DAD STRANGELOVE; or, How I Learned to Stop
Worrying and Love My Dad. The film will be a son's quest to re-discover
his father's legacy in today's media-saturated times. Nile, who won Colorado's
'Book of the Year' for The CANDY Men; The Rollicking Life and Times of
the Notorious Novel, Candy (Arcade, 2004) introduces Dr. Strangelove,
and takes questions after the screening.
Monday June 1 Dig This—A Dose of Terry Southern
The Collector
Directed by William Wyler, with Terence Stamp, Samantha Eggar, Mona Washborne,
Maurice Dallimore U.K./U.S.A.—1965). A socially withdrawn bank clerk
has a hobby collecting butterflies. He comes into a large sum of money
and buys a country house. Unable to make himself at ease socially, he
starts to plan on acquiring a girl friend—in a manner similar to
the way he collects butterflies. He prepares the cellar of the house as
a kind of collecting jar, and begins stalking his victim.Terry had written
an elaborate and Poe-like plotline to facilitate the girl’s escape—but
the studio rejected it. Nevertheless, Southern’s touch can be seen
in the sparse, often loaded dialogue. Based on the novel by John Fowles. (119
min.)
Monday June 8 Dig This—A Dose of Terry Southern
The Loved One
Directed by Tony Richardson, with Robert Morse, Jonathan Winters, Rod
Steiger, Roddy MacDowell, Sir John Guilgud, Anjanette Comer, Dana Andrews,
Liberace (1965). This film has become a cult classic - especially
in Hollywood, as it is a great send-up of the studio system, and also
the “death industry'” (i.e., Forest Lawn, where some of the
scenes were shot). Based on Evelyn Waugh's novel, co-written with
Christopher Isherwood, shot by Haskell Wexler, and edited by Hal Ashby
– this was Terry Southern’s entry into a hip, collaborative
Hollywood of 1965. The marketing tag-line was “the motion picture
with something to offend everyone!” – but it actually is a
poet’s view of the loss of innocence and grandeur in an ever-commercialized
and psychosis-inducing dreamland: Los Angeles. (122 min.)
Monday June 15 Dig This—A
Dose of Terry Southern
The Cincinnati Kid
Directed by Norman Jewison, with Steve McQueen, Edward G. Robinson, Karl
Malden, Rip Torn, Ann Margaret, Tuesday Weld (1965). This lavish production
set in New Orleans captures the alienated life of a card shark.The film
reveals Terry Southern’s ability to do “straight” stories
with a flair. Director Norman Jewison, upon seeing Terry after many years,
said, "There's the man who saved Cincinnati Kid"—by making
it relevant to its times—and avoiding formulaic conventions.The
film has been voted “best gambling movie ever made” by the
Punter’s Gambling Association in the UK. Produced by John Calley—who
had hired Terry Southern on The Loved One. (102 min.)
Monday June 22 Dig This—A Dose of Terry Southern
Barbarella
Directed by Roger Vadim, with Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law, Anita
Pallenberg, Milo O’Shea (France/Italy—1968). Barbarella,
a 41st-century sexy space-agent/astronaut, is sent on a mission to pacify
a planet and must find an evil scientist in a city where a new sin is
invented every hour and devious devices are deployed to test the limits
of pleasure. On her perilous journey the “pretty pretty”
Barbarella teams with a blind angel and battles the Black Queen. The
film captures both the fabulousness and indulgent excess of the 1960s
style as well as campiness (music by Bob Crew Orchestra) and psychadelia.
Jane Fonda’s jaw-dropping looks, combined with witty intelligence
and humor make the film and character one she still remembers fondly.
With eight credited writers, Southern’s lines are stand-outs. Based
on the French comic by Jean Claude Forest. (98 min.)
Monday June 29
Dig This—A Dose of Terry Southern
Easy Rider
Directed by Dennis Hopper, with Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson,
Karen Black, Phil Spector (1969). Two young bikers sell some dope
in Southern California, stash their money away in their gas-tanks and
set off for a trip across America, on their own personal odyssey looking
for freedom from the rat race. On their journey they encounter bigotry
and hatred from small-town communities who despise and fear their non-conformism. They
also discover simple kindnesses and alternative communal living. When
they arrive at a diner in a small town, they are insulted by the local
rednecks as weirdo degenerates. They are arrested on some minor pretext
by the local sheriff and thrown in jail where they meet an alcoholic lawyer
played by Jack Nicholson. He gets them out and decides to join them on
their trip to New Orleans in time for Mardi Gras.Terry Southern once wrote
that the film came down to “killing a couple of guys because of
the length of their hair.” (95 min.)
Monday July 6
Dig This—A Dose of Terry Southern
The Magic Christian
Directed by Joseph McGrath, with Peter Sellers, Ringo Starr, Richard Attenborough,
Isabel Jeans (U.K..1969). Guy Grand, Terry Southern’s most
anarchic and relevant character today, is a billionaire who spends his
millions "making it hot for them.” The film has an all-star
cast and includes cameos by Roman Polanski, Yul Brenner, Raquel Welch,
John Cleese and others in their 1960s prime. The novel was cited recently
in the Washington Post as predicting the culture of public excess seen
in Reality TV shows like NBC’s Fear Factor. (101 min.)
Monday July 13 Dig
This—A Dose of Terry Southern
End of the Road
Directed by Aram Avakain, with Stacy Keach, Harris Yulin, Dorothy Tristan,
James Earl Jones (1970). Suppressed for decades and long considered lost,
this film was shot two weeks after Bobby Kennedy's assassination—the
film captures via the catatonic main character the metaphorical destruction
of 1960s idealism, and signals a prescient critique of the irresponsible
"me" generation to come. Shot in the Berkshires by Gordon Willis,
this is the true dawn of Independent Cinema. Directed by Southern’s
hipster beat roommate and editor of The Miracle Worker, Aram Avakian.
The dense, hallucinatory soundtrack was created by legendary Jazz composer
Teo Macero, and Avakian’s brother, CBS International record-producer,
George. The film, which Southern co-produced, has a harrowing (non-graphic)
abortion scene, an existential, anti-war sentiment and an Actor’s
Studio cast (many in their first starring roles) who play with an intensity
rarely seen. For more information: http://www.terrysouthern.com/road.htm
(110 min.)
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