Life is a latticework of coincidence whether we see it or not. Usually we don't want to see it, worried we'd go crazy if we did. With our blinders up, the coincidence matrix is less a pineal gland-buzzing latticework and more just white noise --the odd splotch of identifiable pattern--a word lining up with a word you're reading or writing or saying at the same second someone on TV is saying it--then back to white noise background before the meaning can be sussed; but dig, when you're 'alight with manic magic' or 'awakened' or 'enlightened' or 'tripping balls' or schizophrenic, or a genius -- then you might be able to behold how every single goddamn moment of conscious existence holds a hundred thousand such linkages, stretching from your mind into the screen and out to America and into biology and macro and micro fractal-ing out and in.Whether or not we can handle it, interconnectivity exists like vast and unknowable tendrils betwixt our eyes, ears, TV, film, music (only what is currently playing in that moment of our perception of course) and the outermost limits of one's living room and mind, connected to the point of Rubik's Cube inextricability; the retinal screen tattoos the wind and the DVD is a mere shard of a windmill, a record of our mind's ability to perceive shapes, faces, voices, targets. Every single element of perceived external and internal reality is an interconnected latticework 'other' staring back at you -- we block it out because otherwise we will go mad - and then art gives us the Perseus Medusa mirror shield by which to cautiously glimpse that which our soul cannot bear.
Mandrake, isn't it true that on no account will a commie ever take a drink of water?
And not without good reason!
Southern dispatches from an era before The Rules refettered our once-unfettered naked lunches, before feel-bad skeeve was restored to sex, before the heavy price tag was re-affixed to free love, and when 'adult' cinema was adult--by adults for adults--and not the sole purview of 'endearingly' foul-mouthed but really sweet nerdy boys, who could be considered men only by sods who'd never seen Mad Men or any film made before 1982. This putsch of maturity and learnedness from the realm of animal sex may have seemed to the easily deluded PC snobs like a victory (1), but they were never good at spotting coincidence latticework anyway, their pineals being so calcified over from pollution of the precious bodily fluids that they're blind to even the idea they might be blind. They've forgotten that when intellectual satire is volleyed at sacred institutions, exposing the truth of the latticework to all our awakened horror it destroys only the dead cells within, leaving the rest vibrant and now hip enough to incorporate its own critique; meanwhile the potty-mouthed prattle of today's grown infants is never a threat to the status quo and can indeed be yoked to the patriarchy's repressive practices. So it is WRITTED! Not one dead cell shall slough!
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| Jane Fonda - Barbarella |
If there's still an author with 'adult' intellect left standing after the PC putsch, who can be lusty without merely lapsing into unconscious misogyny through the sheer 'trying' of not to be, he is well-hidden, and would never dare write a book that could bring us out of this maturity death spiral, or could be made into a film like Candy, which seems to condone molestation, drugging women without their consent, borderline rape, and so forth. Seems being the secret word. Men now feel so bad if we say no to a relationship after saying yes to sex we'd just as soon say no to the whole bloody business, but back then no one was meant to feel bad at all, even for chasing a girl young enough to be one's daughter around the room with one's tongue hanging out. Well, if you neuter your satiric dog, he may stop humping your leg and peeing in the corners, but he's also apt to hide when the burglars of phony morality and 'sacred' patriarchy show up, thus making his entire existence rather pointless. And those burglars he let in are actually squatters who, once ensconced within your walls, shall not leave but proceed to eat your masculine drive down to a mawkish enfeebled little nub, to the point the only sense of power you have comes Cialis for daytime use.
You know what I'm trying to say, the institutional targets most deserving of take-down sit smug behind walls of standards and practice policies while writers are sent scurrying after mundane consensual love affairs, bawdiness relegated to teenagers at band camp or softcore augmentation puerility, and anyone who texts the wrong person at the wrong hour winds up shamed by the nation. And yet did we think we would shame nature? Knowing how little it did for us, sex-wise, would we 80s liberal undergrads have ever gone along willingly with our PC symbolic collective castration if we knew chicks would still pick the brutish lothario's casual lay over our sensitive pledge driving? What's the point of being a feminist if it doesn't get you laid?The vanishing of Southern's ilk is a reminder perhaps that writers are not allowed groupies anymore. Comedy writers now must lament their loserdom, their failure with women, their small dicks. Dying in the desert of the modern masculine they turn back to their buddies for support: bromance, and gay jokes, whistling in the hetero foxhole dark as women become more and more unapproachable, let alone molestable (Jody Hill's Observe and Report a rare, glorious exception). When we do see a famous comic in a standard groupie hook-up its presented in the most mutually demeaning manner possible (ala Adam Sandler in Funny People). In France and England (or Argentina) on the other hand, writers can be pot-bellied and balding, and too drunk to even make it to the party plane, but as long as they've produced books or filmed scripts, they're allowed sex, groupies, and lovely ladies on each arm with no reason to brag or feel bad or be made to look sleazy or pathetic.
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| Southern, centered |
Southern may have been a little sneaky getting some bird into bed but it was under the rubric that both of them would have a good time, that free love was just that - especially if you were a friend of the Beatles and worked with Kubrick. So the high-functioning gropers of Candy may come from Southern perhaps witnessing blokes gone instantly from birdless to beflocked statue status with a single hit record and noted the accompanying changes in their sexual drive and finesse or lack thereof, for 'tis easy to be a stud when you're not actually putting out --once the pants come off all sorts of embarrassing equipment failures can manifest, Cialis for daily use still decades away, uncut coke dust in the wind and groupies impatiently waiting, their plaster cast a-drying as we speak.
Especially when juxtaposed with modern stuff like HBO's use of graphic rutting which stresses the more mutually demeaning and bestial aspects of sex, Southern's brand of erotica is positively life-affirming. Southern takes the Voltaire hint and presents the sex drive, and the naked body with all its hairs and gasses, as incorruptible. Ultimately, what is being satirized is the sexual repression that forces men to strike comically affected postures before becoming slavering beasts when within striking distance of some hottie naif with blonde hair and a pink mini dress, and the way all their strutting and hot air just makes them all the more ridiculous when their trousers are off, for no amount of hot air can smooth the awkward transition from civilized gentleman to a spastically humping mastiff. One look at conservative hysteria over birth control on one end, or the PC lockstep of the other in today's sexual clime, and the once de rigueur Joy of Sex deflates to a pleasant moment before acres of guilt and anxiety and as far as movies are concerned, the kind of ravishment women like to read about in some of the more disreputable Harlequin offshoots is completely out. One false step and you wind up on Lifetime.
Though only based on Southern's original novel (written with Southern's fellow Parisian ex-pat and Olympia Press dirty-lit writer Mason Hoffenberg), adapted for the film by American satirist Buck Henry (coming hot off The Graduate), directed by Christian Marquand (a French actor, as odd and illogical a choice for an American satire as Mike Sarne for Myra Breckinridge [1970]) and filmed by a French-Italian crew, Candy seems, in large part, based on what it has in common with Dr. Strangelove, quintessentially Southern. Both films are savagely honest critiques of America's noisemaker patriotism and paranoia and the sexual puritanism that underwrites it. Kicking things off, Burton is mind-blowingly grandly spectacularly pathetic and hilarious as McPhisto, a grandiose 'dirty-minded' poet making a grand appearance, wind in the hair, electric rock blaring, at a student assembly, brilliantly modulating a cascade of punch lines in a cue card rhythm - "I wrote that," he says after his first poem, long hair and scarf blowing, "laying near death... in a hospital bed... in the Congo" (pause for political righteousness).. after being...savagely beaten... by a horde of outraged Belgian tourists." His fluid Welsh wit makes great rolling use of pauses and accented words as he orates, speaking in Latin only to admit he's not quite sure if it means anything, mentioning his books have been "banned or burned in over 20 countries... and fourteen... developing nations." Shifting from famous genius posing to hangdog contrition as he mentions his book is available, signed by the author for three dollars in cash or money order, even bringing Welsh florid anguish to the mailing address, culminating in "Lemmington, New Jersey." It's a great performance not least for the wry way Burton satirizes himself, and actors in general - the psychosis that can result when one is carried away too firmly by one's own booming mellifluence.
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| Burton, orating with creepy alien hybrid |
Candy: "Oh my gosh, (watching Burton fall out of the car, soaked in whiskey) he's a mess!Moments later MacPhisto has Candy in the back of his Benz (indeed there's the idea he came there expressly to pick out a co-ed) while Zero (Sugar Ray Robinson) drives, though there seems to be a kind of understanding that they share the automobile and get into sexual adventures together ala Don Juan and Leporello (switching roles nightly, perhaps). "Candy - beautiful name," he says as prelim to his attack, "it has the spirit and the sound of the old testament." A Scotch spigot in his glass bottom Benz gets turned on by accident, and McPhisto winds up crawling around, booming about his 'giant, throbbing need' making a play for Candy but winding up pathetically (truly surreal) lapping spilled Scotch off the floor, getting it on his trousers, and ending up in Candy's basement with his pants off, heroically making love to a doll that looks eerily like abductee descriptions of alien-human hybrids while reciting random verses and sobbing heroically as Ringo Starr as a Mexican gardener (terrible enough with his half-assed Alfonso "Stinking Badges" Bedoya-by-way-of-Speedy-Gonzalez accent to be a real adult film actor) paws at Candy on the pool table, all while Zero (Sugar Ray Robinson) helps himself to the basement bar dispensing bon mots ("Quo Vadis, baby!") and beaming so approvingly at the crazy scene methinks I was in the kind of hetero-camp heaven I once believed the sole province of Russ Meyer!
Zero: "Well man, that's the story of love."
Now, alas, the MacPhisto adventure is the the best part of the entire film and even that is marred inn the second part by Ringo's terrible accent and 1/4-assed performance. Luckily John "Gomez" Astin kicks it back into some sort of gear as Candy's swinger uncle, setting up a nice contrast to his square twin brother (Candy's father); the uncle's nymphomaniac swinger-in-furs quipster wife Livia (Elsa Martinelli) tells Candy she'll like New York, where kids "aren't afraid to scratch when it itches" but a drive to the airport finds them all accosted by Ringo's three sisters riding up on motorcycles like banshee harpy wicked witch Jezebel Humongous' gang debs, their long black veils fluttering behind them for a brilliant wicked witch of the west / harpy / Valkyrie / flying nun effect --another high point though once the whips and brass knuckles come out the film starts to just hang there, leading to another mixed segment: Walter Matthau, miscast as a deranged Albanian-hating airborne paratroop general (it should have been George C. Scott or Lee Marvin -- who ever heard of a New York pinko Jew general?) and since when would a general waste his time in the air in control of only a planeload of shock troops? Though he does know how to keep deadpan when mocking military patriotism, Matthau's cadence as he rambles on about having a kid with Candy and sending him to military school lacks the kind of deranged jingoistic ring that Scott brought to both Patton and Turgidson or Hayden to Ripper, it's just depressing to imagine his scenario coming true, that poor kid, the both of them!
But Candy's next adventure involving James Coburn's toreador Hackenbush-ish brain surgeon Dr. Krankheit ("This is a human life we're tinkering with here, man, not a course in remedial reading!") is a most definite second peak. His histrionic operating theatrics might seem a bit Benway-esque but Burroughs was a friend and Coburn has the spirit of the thing in the way, say, David Niven never did in Casino Royale. Like Burton, Coburn modulates Shakespearian antithesis and masculine actorly power, seizing the chance to let his sacral chakras vibrate and hum; aside from Burton he's the only other star in the film's luminary cast to recognize the covert brilliance buried in even the most seemingly mundane lines (which Matthau breezed right over) and to let each word ring like freedom (from sanity). Amping up his patented actorly mannerisms to conjure a physician as liberated but completely insane Wellesian titan-- accusing the audience of thinking what he was a moment ago just saying--throwing his scalpel to the floor and just sticking his curse fingers right into the comatose Astin's brain (one slip and the patient "will be utterly incapable of digit dialing") saluting the crowd with his bloody middle finger in triumph, Coburn is MAGNIFICENT!
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And just when it can't get any better, Anita Pallenberg (alas, dubbed, as she was in Barbarella) attacks as Krankheit's number one nurse; Buck Henry cameos as a mental patient in a straitjacket trying to attack Candy in the elevator; John Huston as a prurient administrator who seems to get off and trying to shame Candy in front of the entire post-op party after she's caught being molested by her uncle; and what a party! Krankheit dispenses B12-amphetamine cocktail shots in the ass like party favors, and the pink-clad nurses wait around like beholden nuns in some religious spectacle for their master to wave his hand. Coburn's medical innovations include a 'female' electrical socket affixed to the back of Candy's father's head, so he can drain off the excess wattage and power a small radio. Again, the kind of thing that modern films would not approve of, i.e. How dare you satirize a litigious, lawyered and humorless institution like the AMA, sir!? For another the president of John Hopkins is a friend of the studio!
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| Candy - w/ James Coburn and Anita Pallenbeg |
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Candy finally winds up in the holy water-flooded mobile ashram of the guru Grindl --played by Marlon Brando -- funny if not quite at the level of Burton or Coburn and stuck in a limbo between sounding strangely like modern Johnny Depp, with an Indian accent that starts out high and fast but quickly unravels into 'Abie the fish peddler' Jewish territory, mining the rhythm of Lenny Bruce as Groucho or Sky Masterson as Peter Sellers in The Party. Brando's way too internalized for Grindl to reach the egotistic grandeur of McPhisto or Krankheit but for fans of old pre-code WB and Paramount comedies it's a gas linking his accents to the ancient Vaudeville rhythms. When he says you 'must travel beyond thirst, beyond hunger" he's noshing on a sausage and sounds like Hugh Herbert, which is great, but it's such a dick move it's hard to feel anything by a sympathy headache for poor Candy if one doesn't have one by then anyway. Once the fake white snow comes down through the open top, Grindl now hopelessly congested and spent after a scant six 'levels' of enlightenment utters his last lines like "you muss fine da sacred boid" with a seeming mouthful of borscht and Godfather cotton. Shocking and racist as it might be to find an actor of Brando's caliber in Indian garb trying to be as downtown hip as Lenny Bruce, and hanging in the sixties equivalent of a shag carpet lined party van, just remember Brando (and Burton) liked working in adult film Europe at the time (when adult meant adult, remember) making things like (the X-rated) Last Tango in Paris, and Bluebeard (both 1972) where they could be in the company of vast acres of underdressed starlets, dining with jet set Italian millionaires who knew the good life in ways Hollywood could never duplicate and free to drink and smoke and screw to excess in a country that understood the joy of the finer things vs. America's globe-destructing pressure cooker of Vietnam and post-Puritan repression.
Which brings me to my final thought bubble --the idea central to Candy's Christian value - which begins with what MacPhisto says in the beginning about being willing to giving oneself freely as the height of human grace. Sure it's a line men use to try and get women into bed but if they didn't try, where would humanity be, and as Lenny Bruce would say, that's the difference between obscenity and humanity. The truth of our 'huge, throbbing need' is unendurable any other way except as a joke that paradoxically lets us save face and free ourselves of it at the same time. It's the last bastion of the healthy human body's societal failings, the hairy gorilla reality that won't ever totally hide underneath the expensive's suit and polished air. We need a forgiving tolerance of this gorilla, because if you denude the beast in the suit only to sneer at him or deliver some drab lecture on morals or objectification, all you do is bum out the world, not enlighten it. Instead, Southern proves 'nothing sacred' is itself the most sacred of philosophies, that there's nothing bad about the human biological system, from sex to eating to shitting to dying ---in Southern's satire human biology, with all its hair and noises and needs, is celebrated, satirized, and forgiven its uncanny otherness, while the moral hypocrisy, the judgment and denial of these bodily inescapabilities, is attacked without mercy and it is these hypocrisies that create the situations wherein men are consistently unable to behave courteously towards the provocation of Candy's nubile wide-eyed innocence.
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| "We are not old men. We are not worried about petty morals." - KR, in deposition |
Perhaps in revisiting Candy we can, as a nation, whisper "Rosebud" for our lost sleddy balls and re-discover how well-read intellectual weight might once again benefit from rabid id-driven boosters in trying to make it through the zipper of hypocrisy and into the stratosphere. Southern was the first to climb up on the A-bomb of sexual freedom in lettres and ride the New Journalism (which he arguably invented) to the primary target, which is your face, and he had the chops to turn on your electric lattice of coincidence-detectors. America was still strong enough to handle any amount of MASH-style shower tent unveiling. America knew that facing its own monstrous extinction with a joke rather than cloaking it all in rhetoric and duck-and-cover exercises was noble, that working through the terror that strikes when a hot blonde girl with no discernible income lands in your lap is heroic, that being able to accept and engage in casual sex with a random girl on your commuter train is brave, while refusing waving a defensive wedding ring and racing out at the next stop is not noble, but shameful indeed (and lord knows I am ashamed for doing it). Gentlemen, we cannot allow a NYMPHOMANIAC gap!
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| From Left: Burroughs, Southern, Ginsberg, Genet |
NOTES:
1. Southern's mincing gay stereotypes (espec. in The Magic Christian and The Loved One)
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