Promotional Information

The first biography of the satiric genius who wrote the screenplays for such classic films as DR STRANGELOVE, EASY RIDER, and BARBARELLA.'Terry Southern is the counter-culture's secret genius' INDEPENDENT'The king of writerly cool' EVENING STANDARD

About the Author

Lee Hill has written about literature, film, music, and popular culture for newspapers, magazines, and radio for more than a decade. He first interviewed Terry Southern in 1990, which led to a long friendship and this project. He lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Reviews

'Terry Southern is the counter-culture's secret genius' Independent; 'The king of writerly cool' Evening Standard

Southern's heyday was in the 1960s, when his screenplays for the films Dr. Stranglove, Barbarella, and Easy Rider were the height of cool. Born in Texas in 1924, Southern had a common rural childhood. After a stint in the army, he studied at Northwestern and then the Sorbonne. He explored the drugs, cheap cafes, music, and eroticism of Paris, where Candy was published in 1958 and quickly became a cult hit. Though initially banned in the United States, copies trickled in, and it was finally published here in 1964. It is his screenwriting credits in the 1960s that launched him into the pantheon of celebrity and found him hobnobbing with the Beatles and Stanley Kubrick. But, though his satirical edge influenced such programs as Saturday Night Live and The Larry Sanders Show, Southern's star waned. This biography falls curiously flat, given that its subject wrote some of the zaniest, most influential avant-garde pieces of his day. Journalist Hill, who interviewed Southern, offers no real analysis of how this seemingly ordinary Texan became the epitome of 1960s cool. For larger public and academic libraries. Rosellen Brewer, Monterey Cty. Free Libs., Salinas, CA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.