Nile & Terry Southern and Larry Rivers; 1969. photo (c)Hans Namuth Ltd.
A Shot From the Hip
Managing this Estate has been an eye-opener. As someone who is pursuing a career in the arts myself, I am getting the training of a lifetime: trial by fire. It is as if all the decades Terry spent avoiding the business side of things has come back at me all at once in a very short period. I'm still putting out fires that have been burning for more than 30 years. On the west coast, in New York, in Britain and France! Ancient histories that are suddenly speaking in tongues--to me! Enflamed, hurt egos and horror-show legal documents now begging for attention. What's the point you might ask...why bother? Fortunately, Terry's work and the situations he found himself in are interesting and important in and of themselves--otherwise I would have mothballed everything years ago. There is so much good work he did that remains unknown--it needs to get out in the world, where it can penetrate the American psyche--which is growing more numbingly black and white than when he wrote The Magic Christian over 40 years ago.
The Magic Christian provided a humorous wake-up call to temporarily interrupt the 'myth of progress' and question the whole financial racketeering aspect of how life was being run--by marketeers. As we enter the fourth week of illegal bombing in Yugoslavia, and continue our own horrific extermination of children in Iraq, we must realize as Americans that we have succumbed to the marketeers and mouseketeers of what Terry called "monstro corruption"... Our tax dollars pay for each bomb that is dropped on each nation our government chooses--for corporate interests, mind you--to terrorize. We are supporting a military industrial complex that is being kept alive by the military contractors running this land. From the mini-Civil-Actions in our own backyards--where TCE from Martin Marietta and other 'good neighborhood' companies leach into our drinking water, to the same contractors assigned to clean up our Superfund sites across the country, to the bombs that kill and main abroad, ours is a War Environment posing as a sleep aid.
Terry was, first and foremost, a political being. He sought social justice, and tried to bring a sensibility of progressive humanism to every project he worked on. Humor was his ace--and humor through dialogue his trump. Terry saw the dramatic possibilities in any story where corporate greed was running roughshod over everything, and everyone, else. I met Abbie Hoffman when I was about ten. Abbie was also a master of bringing theater into the process of raising consciousness. Both the Yippies and Terry were targeted by the FBI's COINTEL program--which was essentially a taxpayer- funded war waged against our own citizens--a War at home! As Terry used to say to me about so many things, "That's what we're up against, son!"
It is time for us to wake up from our sleep of comfort! Let us not become a giant convenience mall where our 'neighborhoods' spring up like the overnight wetdreams of SUV salesmen and real-estate opportunists lining their pockets and those of our city councils. Let us not become a land where our own government agencies kowtow to the pesticide industry, the chemical industry and the military--forcing us as a species to wage a race to the top of acceptable levels of toxins entering our bloodstream from our ever more toxic food, land, air and water. It is happening now--everywhere you look.As Terry said, "The world has no right to complacency, whatsoever." If you know someone who has cancer in their family--it is not only the genes that may be a factor--get some real info on what is going on! It is time for a new progressive cinema--where laughs, sex, politics, information, music and catharsis are all rolled into one. A continuation of Terry's 'literature of astonishment,'--a Cinema of Information.
Terry Southern would have found great company and reassurance in Amy Goodman's Democracy Now!--broadcast every morning on Pacifica--which has consistently been on the cutting edge of reporting--since the 100 days of Congress and the Republican's Contract On America. Terry never used a computer in his life--but if he had, he would have also checked into these sites, for sure:
rachel's weekly: environmental/political news
essential: Ralph Nader's umbrella-group site
altx: Literary feast of fictional innovation
Parting shot:
Terry loved collaboration, and approached writing for others like a jazz musician played standards. He wrote dialogue like Bird blew riffs, and he could 'play' in any idiom: from Texas twang to upper-crust British. He loved Charlie Parker. Bird didn't discourage anyone from sharing the bandstand with him either, but I think Terry had a kind of existential belief that people who brought him film projects would somehow provide that same rich environment he was given in the 60s--where solos could break easily from the theme and make a whole new astonishing statement --which, like in jazz, was the whole point. Everyone had to rise to the occasion-and not worry about the bread till the gig was over.
The gig is over but def!, and Terry worried about the bread most of his later life--as any of his friends will tell you--He just never had any after the IRS nailed him, satire died, and the film gigs dried up. There is, however, great value and reward to come from Terry's unpublished/unproduced work. Although The Estate is currently saddled with some debt, I'll be here plugging away until "we get the old tub through!"
--Nile Southern, Boulder, CO
