96 Facts About Terry Southern

1.

Terry Southern was an American novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and university lecturer, noted for his distinctive satirical style.

2.

Part of the Paris postwar literary movement in the 1950s and a companion to Beat writers in Greenwich Village, Southern was at the center of Swinging London in the 1960s and helped to change the style and substance of American films in the 1970s.

3.

Terry Southern briefly wrote for Saturday Night Live in the 1980s.

4.

Terry Southern is credited by journalist Tom Wolfe as having invented New Journalism with the publication of "Twirling at Ole Miss" in Esquire in February 1963.

5.

Terry Southern's reputation was established with the publication of his comic novels Candy and The Magic Christian and through his gift for writing memorable film dialogue as evident in Dr Strangelove, The Loved One, The Cincinnati Kid, and The Magic Christian.

6.

Terry Southern graduated from Sunset High School in Dallas, Texas in 1941.

7.

Terry Southern attended North Texas Agricultural College for a year as a pre-med major before transferring to Southern Methodist University, where he continued to cultivate his interest in literature.

8.

Terry Southern's four-year stint in Paris was a crucial formative influence, both on his development as a writer and on the evolution of his "hip" persona.

9.

Terry Southern became close friends with Mason Hoffenberg, Alexander Trocchi, John Marquand, Mordecai Richler, Aram Avakian, and jazz musician and motorsport enthusiast Allen Eager.

10.

Terry Southern met expatriate American writer James Baldwin and leading French intellectuals Jean Cocteau, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus.

11.

Terry Southern frequented the Cinematheque Francaise in Paris and saw jazz performances by leading bebop musicians including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, and Miles Davis, evoked in his classic "You're Too Hip, Baby".

12.

Terry Southern met French model Pud Gadiot during 1952; a romance soon blossomed and the couple married just before they moved to New York City.

13.

Terry Southern met visual artists such as Robert Frank, Annie Truxell and Larry Rivers.

14.

Terry Southern frequented renowned New York jazz venues such as the Five Spot, the San Remo, and the Village Vanguard.

15.

Terry Southern struggled to gain recognition during this period, writing short stories as he worked on Flash and Filigree, his first solo novel.

16.

Terry Southern met two of his literary heroes, William Faulkner and Nelson Algren.

17.

Terry Southern interviewed Algren for the Paris Review in the autumn of 1955.

18.

Terry Southern's fortunes began to change after he was taken on by the Curtis-Brown Agency in mid-1954; through them he had three of his short stories accepted by Harper's Magazine.

19.

In October 1955, Terry Southern met model and aspiring actress Carol Kauffman, and they were married on July 14,1956.

20.

Terry Southern returned to Europe with Kauffman in October 1956, stopping off in Paris then settling in Geneva, Switzerland, where they lived until 1959.

21.

Kauffman took a job with UNESCO, which supported them as Terry Southern continued to write.

22.

The couple made trips to Paris, where they visited Mason Hoffenberg, Allen Ginsberg, and William S Burroughs, and to London, where Southern met Henry Green and Kenneth Tynan.

23.

On his return to Paris in late 1956, Terry Southern showed the story to several people, including Hoffenberg, who thought the character should have more adventures.

24.

Terry Southern encouraged Hoffenberg to write one; this became the sequence where Candy goes to the hospital to see Dr Krankheit.

25.

The book was introduced to publisher Maurice Girodias, probably by Marilyn Meeske, who, according to Terry Southern, thought Girodias would be interested in it as a "dirty book".

26.

In early 1958, Terry Southern made his first foray into screenwriting, working with Canadian director Ted Kotcheff, who had come to Britain to work for the newly established ABC Weekend TV company.

27.

The first major magazine interview with Terry Southern, conducted by Elaine Dundy, was published in UK Harper's Bazaar in August 1958.

28.

Terry Southern met and became friendly with jazz musician and bandleader Artie Shaw, and they began looking for properties together.

29.

Shaw put down a deposit on a farm in East Canaan, Connecticut, but at the urging of a friend Terry Southern convinced Shaw to let him buy the farm, which he purchased for $23,000.

30.

Terry Southern had an essay on Lotte Lenya published in Esquire.

31.

Terry and Carol's son and only child Nile Southern was born on December 29,1960.

32.

Around this time, Terry Southern began writing for Maurice Girodias' new periodical Olympia Review.

33.

Terry Southern began negotiations with the Putnam company to reissue Candy under his and Hoffenberg's real names, and he hired Sterling Lord as his literary agent,.

34.

Partly on the recommendation of Peter Sellers, Stanley Kubrick asked Terry Southern to help revise the screenplay of Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

35.

Terry Southern began to rely on the amphetamine-barbiturate "diet pill" Dexamyl to keep him going through the frantic rewriting process; in later years, he developed a long-term amphetamine dependency.

36.

Kubrick, George, and Terry Southern shared the screenplay credits, but competing claims about who contributed what led to confusion and some conflict among the three men after the film's release.

37.

Toward the end of his work on Dr Strangelove, Terry Southern began canvassing for more film work.

38.

Terry Southern wrote an essay on John Fowles' novel The Collector, which led to his work as a "script doctor" on the subsequent screen version.

39.

The success of Dr Strangelove and the re-published version of Candy was the turning point in Terry Southern's career, making him one of the most celebrated writers of his day.

40.

In early 1964, Terry Southern was hired to collaborate with British author Christopher Isherwood on a screen adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's satirical novel The Loved One, directed by British filmmaker Tony Richardson.

41.

When filming was postponed in spring of 1964, Terry Southern returned to East Canaan and continued work on a rewrite of the script for the film version of John Fowles' The Collector but he eventually withdrew from the project because he disagreed with the change to the story's ending.

42.

Not long after arriving in Los Angeles, Terry Southern met Gail Gerber, a young Canadian-born actress and dancer, on the MGM backlot.

43.

Terry Southern wrote the text for a souvenir book, which featured photos by William Claxton.

44.

Terry Southern was one of several writers who had worked on versions of the screenplay, including Paddy Chayefsky, George Good, and Ring Lardner Jr.

45.

Terry Southern had attempted to get Casino Royale made as an Eon Productions James Bond film, but Broccoli and Saltzman turned him down.

46.

Terry Southern had been introduced to Robert Fraser by Dennis Hopper, and when he went to London to work on Casino Royale he and Gail became part of Fraser's "jet-set" salon that included the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, photographer Michael Cooper, interior designer Christopher Gibbs, model-actress Anita Pallenberg, filmmaker Nicolas Roeg, painter Francis Bacon, producer Sandy Lieberson, Guinness heir Tara Browne, and model Donyale Luna.

47.

Terry Southern became close friends with photographer Michael Cooper, who was part of the Rolling Stones' inner circle and who shot the cover photos for the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band LP.

48.

Terry Southern attended the Cannes Film Festival in the spring of 1966, where he met Andy Warhol and Gerard Malanga, and he remained in touch with Malanga for many years.

49.

Work on Barbarella continued through to late 1967, and Terry Southern convinced Vadim to cast his friend Anita Pallenberg in the role of the Black Queen.

50.

The original screenplay by Terry Southern was rewritten by Buck Henry.

51.

Fonda pitched his idea to Hopper on his return to America, and Terry Southern added his weight to the project, agreeing to work on the script for scale.

52.

Terry Southern eventually shared the writing credit with Hopper and Fonda, but there has been dispute over their various contributions to the screenplay.

53.

Hopper and Fonda later tried to downplay Terry Southern's input, claiming that many sections of the film had been improvised, whereas others involved in the production have asserted that most of these scenes were fully scripted and primarily written by him.

54.

Terry Southern had originally written the character of the small-town lawyer with his friend Rip Torn in mind, but Torn dropped out of the project after an altercation with Hopper in a New York restaurant, in which the two actors almost came to blows.

55.

In 1968 Terry Southern was hired for the production and he worked on a dozen drafts of the screenplay.

56.

Sellers tinkered with it while Terry Southern was working on The End of the Road.

57.

Sellers, McGrath and Terry Southern then traveled to New York on the Queen Elizabeth 2 but the studio then refused to pay for the shoot and it had to be relocated to London.

58.

Terry Southern continued to drink heavily and take various drugs; in particular, his dependence on Dexamyl badly affected his health as he aged.

59.

Biographer Lee Hill suggests that Terry Southern was a functioning alcoholic and that his image was largely based on his occasional public appearances in New York, partying and socializing; in private, he remained a tireless worker.

60.

Terry Southern worked on a variety of screenplays in the immediate aftermath of Easy Rider, including God Is Love, DJ, Hand-Painted Hearts, and Drift with Tony Goodstone.

61.

Terry and Carol Southern divorced in early 1972 but remained on good terms and Southern continued to support and help raise their son Nile.

62.

Terry Southern later became an editor with Crown Publishing, and married critic Alexander Keneas.

63.

Terry Southern covered the Rolling Stones 1972 American Tour, where he met and began a collaboration with Peter Beard, and they worked sporadically on the never-filmed screenplay The End of the Game until Terry Southern's death.

64.

Terry Southern immersed himself in the bacchanalian atmosphere of the tour, and his essay on the Stones tour, "Riding The Lapping Tongue", was published in the August 12,1972, edition of Saturday Review.

65.

Terry Southern wrote a bawdy anti-Nixon sketch which was performed at a George McGovern fundraiser, and "Twirlin' at Ole Miss" was included in The New Journalism.

66.

Terry Southern's students included Amy Heckerling, literary agent Nancy Nigrosh, and Hollywood biographer Lee Server.

67.

In 1973 Terry Southern wrote a new screenplay called Double Date, which in some respects anticipated the later David Cronenberg film Dead Ringers, but he eventually abandoned it.

68.

In early 1974 John Calley hired Terry Southern to write a screenplay of Blue Movie, with Mike Nichols slated to direct, but the deal eventually fell apart due to a protracted dispute between Warners and Ringo Starr, who then owned the screen rights.

69.

Terry Southern's friend Ted Kotcheff hired Southern to write the screenplay for the Watergate-themed project A Piece of Bloody Cake, but he was unable to get the script approved.

70.

Terry Southern accompanied the Rolling Stones on their Tour of the Americas '75 and contributed text to a commemorative 1978 coffee table book featuring photographs by Annie Leibovitz and Christopher Sykes.

71.

Terry Southern made a cameo appearance in the crowd in the scene where Newton is arrested just before he boards his spacecraft.

72.

Terry Southern's script was considered 'below par' and was rejected by Fox.

73.

Terry Southern read from a work in progress at the Nova Convention, opening the second night on a bill that included Philip Glass, Brion Gysin, John Giorno, Patti Smith, and Burroughs himself.

74.

Under the pseudonym of Norwood Pratt, Terry Southern co-wrote the 1980 sci fi-themed hardcore pornographic film Randy: The Electric Lady; director Philip Schuman had previously adapted "Red Dirt" into an award-winning short.

75.

Terry Southern had little to do with the script, but he was paid about $20,000, which was several times more than he had earned from the original.

76.

Terry Southern turned 60 in 1984, and his career continued to alternate between promise and disappointment.

77.

In 1985, Candy and The Magic Christian were reprinted by Penguin and Terry Southern featured prominently in the Howard Brookner documentary Burroughs: the Movie.

78.

In October 1985 Terry Southern was appointed as one of the directors of Hawkeye, a production company set up by his friend Harry Nilsson to oversee the various film and multimedia projects in which he was involved.

79.

Nilsson and Terry Southern then learned that comedian Whoopi Goldberg was keen to take the part and she asked Nilsson and Terry Southern to rewrite it for her.

80.

Terry Southern replaced Torn's chosen DOP John Alonzo with then-husband David Claessen.

81.

Terry Southern and Torn put together their own version, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival in January 1988; New World's version premiered in cinemas later that month to generally poor reviews.

82.

At this point, Terry Southern still owed the IRS some $30,000 in back taxes and $40,000 in penalties.

83.

In February 1989 Terry Southern was admitted to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital, where he underwent surgery for stomach cancer.

84.

Terry Southern landed a job teaching at the Sundance Screenwriters Lab in the summer of 1989.

85.

Terry Southern assisted with the preparation and publication of Blinds and Shutters, a book on the photography of his late friend Michael Cooper, edited by Perry Richardson and published in a limited edition of 2000, with copies signed by Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, and Allen Ginsberg.

86.

Terry Southern met briefly with Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg to discuss his forthcoming adaptation of Burroughs' Naked Lunch, but the meeting was unsuccessful and he had no further involvement in the project, which was ultimately scripted by Cronenberg himself.

87.

Terry Southern's profile was given another small boost by the re-publication of Red-Dirt Marijuana and Other Tastes in 1990.

88.

Peter Fonda reportedly tried to prevail on Terry Southern to give up any claim on Easy Rider in exchange for a payment of $30,000, but Terry Southern refused.

89.

Terry Southern assisted Perry Richardson with another book based around Michael Cooper's photography, The Early Stones, which was published late in the year.

90.

Terry Southern's health deteriorated in the last two years of his life, and he suffered a mild stroke in November 1992.

91.

In September 1995, Terry Southern received the Gotham Award for lifetime achievement by the Independent Film Producers Association at the age of 71.

92.

In 1995, shortly before his death, Terry Southern hired a new agent and began making arrangements for the republication of Candy and The Magic Christian by Grove.

93.

Terry Southern appeared at the Yale Summer Writing Program mid-year.

94.

Franz Douskey, a creative writer at Yale, told a reporter from the Yale Daily that Terry Southern was giving a non-lecture, trying to gasp through calcified lungs.

95.

On October 25,1995, Terry Southern collapsed on the steps of Columbia's Dodge Hall while en route to his class.

96.

Terry Southern was taken to the adjacent St Luke's Hospital, where he died four days later of respiratory failure.