Free Blue Movie by Terry Southern

grips and gaffers, thus seriously jeopardizing the pic’s all-important completion date.
    “Yes sir, boy,” Sid stormed on, “you must really be outta your fucking nut!”
    “Have a heart, Sid,” Morty pleaded, “it’s the only hotel in town, fer Chrissake!”
    “Whatta you mean ‘the only hotel in town’? It can’t be the only hotel in town, fer Chrissake!”
    “Awright, awright, there’s two more,” Morty admitted mournfully, “but they’re complete flea bags, Sid! Believe me, we try to put the apes in one of them, they’ll go absolutely . . . well, it would be a disaster, the union would kill us.”
    “Okay, okay,” said Sid, pacing about, gesturing, making the most of the film’s first production problem. “We’ll work it out, it ain’t the end of the world, right?”
    “Right, Sid.”
    Sid pointed to the phones on the desk and spoke sternly: “Just you find someplace else for the apes to stay, Morty. Got it?”
    “Got it, Sid.” He went straight to the desk, picked up the nearest phone, and started trying to locate Lips Malone.
    Sid joined Boris at the window, rubbed his hands together gleefully, then put an arm around his shoulder.
    “Well, B., we’re off and running! Right?”
    Boris looked at him absently for a moment. “It’ll never happen,” he said.
    “Huh?”
    “We can’t make a film working out of a place like this. There’s no way.”
    Sid looked around the room as though he must surely have missed something.
    “Well, I admit it ain’t exactly the Thalberg Building, but Jeez . . .”
    “That’s the trouble,” said B. sadly, “it is the Thalberg Building. Can’t you feel it?” He indicated something unseen with a slow arc of his hand. “Death—there’s a lot of death here, man. I expect Joe Pasternak to crawl through that door any minute.”
    Sid shot a quick glance at the door, as though it might actually be possible; then he looked back at Boris, and an expression of panic moved into his eyes. “Listen . . .” he faltered, “listen, B . . . .”
    At the desk Morty suddenly began talking in a loud furious voice into the phone: “Where the hell you been, Lips?!? We’re trying to make a picture here, fer Chrissake! Now get your ass over here pronto, we got a problem!”
    “Will you shut the fuck up!” Sid bellowed at him, then turned back to Boris. “B. . . .” he pleaded, one arm outstretched, the other touching his heart, “whatta you doing to me?”
    Boris nodded toward the window and beyond. “Look at that tower, Sid.”
    “What?” Sid peered out wildly, “what tower?”
    “There,” said Boris, pointing with childlike excitement, “isn’t that fantastic?”
    In the distance, just beyond the edge of the town, rose a dark turret—apparently the remains of a castle.
    “A Gothic tower, Sid— that’s where the production office should be. Beautiful!” He turned again to gaze out the window, a soft smile of rapture on his face.
    Sid stared at him morosely. Behind them Morty was still on the phone talking in a low voice. Sid sighed and slowly turned.
    “Morty, would you please get your ass over here, we got a problem.”
    “Don’t move, Lips,” said Morty tersely into the phone. “Be back to you in five.” He hung up and bounded over, assuming a jovial mien.
    “Kanowitz reporting! No job too big or too small.”
    “Uh-huh, well whatta you know about that pile of rock over there?” He pointed to the tower.
    “Whatta I know? I know all about it. We scouted it for locations awready.”
    “Never mind location, would you believe it as a production office?”
    “Are you kiddin’? It’s a ruin, fer Chrissake!”
    Sid nodded, satisfied, turned toward Boris.
    “It’s a ruin, B.”
    “Beautiful,” said B.
    Sid and Morty exchanged quizzical looks, and Sid gave Morty the nod. Morty cleared his throat. “Uh, you don’t seem to understand, B., there ain’t any, well, you know, electricity, things like that.”
    “Get a generator,” said