blue movie

It was back in 1970 that Terry Southern, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of "Easy Rider" and "Dr. Strangelove," wrote a satirical novel about this very concept: "Blue Movie," in which a Stanley Kubrick-type directs a major actress having actual intercourse in a mainstream film. While that isn't happening just yet — most of the actors in these movies are unknowns who help craft the dialogue through improv — we're getting closer.

"Now more than ever, the time is right for this kind of film. It does have a chance at the box office, to put it crudely," said Southern's son, Nile, an author himself and co-trustee of the Terry Southern Literary Trust.

"Why that is, I think, is a cultural phenomenon, an era similar to the Age of Aquarius in the `60s and films of the `70s like 'Carnal Knowledge,' a similar wanting to connect to the roots of what life is all about and make a statement, as well."

[ Porn, art or a bit of both? ]

The film that Southern refers to is, of course, John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus, which, I'm pretty sure, contains more on-screen penis time than all movies I've previously seen, put together.

I may not watch much porn, but I'm relatively certain it's not much like this, a film that simultaneously deconstructs and reaffirms the mystery of sex, de-eroticizing the act while re-romanticizing the quest. Its embrace of the carnivalesque owes a debt to John Waters but in its moments of emotional darkness it has something more like gravitas. And, jeepers, Sook-Yin Lee is so very very good as the sex therapist who can't have orgasms.

"Mr. Mitchell isn’t the first nonpornographic filmmaker to incorporate sexually explicit material into his work, but he may be the most optimistic and good-natured," says Manohla Dargis, and I'm with her in wanting to buy into Mitchell's optimism, even if it does seem, at this point in history, a bit naïve. I want to believe!