FILM
DAD STRANGELOVE Boulder filmmaker shines a spotlight on his father’s cinematic legacy BY MICHAEL J. CASEY
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Stationed in Boulder since the early 1990s, Nile is a writer, filmmaker and “the perennial booster of all things my father.” That’s on full display in his 14-minute Gen. Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) learns of a most unpleasant outcome in Dr. Strangelove. Courtesy: The Criterion Collection introduction for The interviews with Pablo Ferro, Norman Decoding won’t take you long in Dr. Criterion Channel’s collection, Terry Jewison, Gore Vidal and others, Nile conStrangelove and The Magic Christian, Southern: Hollywood’s Most Subversive because they’re so funny and absurd you’ll nects Southern’s postwar expat period, the Screenwriter. influence of mid-century jazz, The Paris find yourself rewinding just to make sure Along with Nile’s spotlight, Criterion’s you caught them the first time. They’re also Review and The Beatles. (Southern was program includes the above plus End of immortalized on the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely astoundingly contemporary. the Road (1970) and The Magic So are the ones in End of the Road — a Hearts Club Band album. He’s nestled Christian (1969). Despite Southern’s difbetween Dylan Thomas and Dion DiMucci lesser-known movie Nile hopes more peoferent levels of involvement with each in the second row, fifth from the left.) ple discover thanks to Criterion’s spotlight project — and the difficulties trying to “There’s great depth in Terry’s story that — but those bite a little harder. They’re still retain credit and royalties after they covers a lot of cultural signposts,” Nile relevant after all these years, but time has became hits — his singular voice always says. done nothing to blunt their force. sings. For Nile, that’s evident in the Nile has been using the working title “The culture had reached an apex by monologues peppering each. Dad Strangelove for the doc, but he’s con“You’ll also find [that] in my father’s nov- the time they were shooting in 1968 when sidering changing it to Beauty in Every End of the Road began production,” Nile els. There will be page after page after Form. That line comes from Southern’s recounts. “Bobby Kennedy had just been page, and it’s one continuous utterance script for 1965’s The Loved One and “harshot, and it really influenced the tone of from a character, and it’s often done for kens back to the French surrealists,” Nile that film — and the kind of existential effect,” Nile says. “[It’s] up to individual says. It’s about “making the grotesque extremities portrayed in it.” viewers to decode those.” funny or palatable in some way. Or astonCritical of the Vietnam War and violence ishing.” in general, End of the Road stars Stacy Criterion’s spotlight runs throughout Keach and James Earl Jones at the beginJune. If luck has a say, it will forge a whole ning of their film careers. Each is probing new generation of Southern fans and spur the absolute boundaries of their abilities. interest in Nile’s documentary. He hopes to Nile says it’s “like watching a tennis finish it in the coming year. match.” “End of the Road, for Terry, was supposed to be the beginning of many films he would produce,” Nile explains. “I think ON SCREEN: Terry he saw himself throughout the 1970s Southern: Hollywood’s doing more films like that, that were really Most Subversive pushing the boundaries of what was forScreenwriter is streaming mally — and content-wise — politically and on The Criterion Channel. socially acceptable. But he did not have Want to catch Barbarella the opportunity to make more films after on the big screen? The that.” Denver Film Society will be Why Southern didn’t is one of the quesplaying it at 12 p.m. June tions Nile hopes to answer with a docu14 as part of their Science mentary about his father, one he’s been Friction series. “nursing along for decades.” In addition to Nile and Terry Southern in Southampton, New York circa 1968. Credit: Hans Namuth nce upon a time, American letters were full of subversives, satirists and provocateurs. They made you laugh. They made you think. They changed how you saw the world. The best of them made you uncomfortable within safe spaces and made you feel safe no matter how uncomfortable things got. They helped you grow a thick skin while marveling at beauty in every form. Terry Southern was such a writer. Born in Texas in 1924, Southern would become a versatile essayist, novelist and screenwriter. His books, Candy (co-written with Mason Hoffenberg), Blue Movie and The Magic Christian, are coveted by those in the know. But it’s the movies that made him a legend: Barbarella (1968), Easy Rider (1969) and the painfully funny, eternally prescient Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). “The humor is always humane,” Nile Southern says, quoting writer Lewis Lapham’s assessment of his father’s work. “It’s not a takedown, and it’s not cruel.”
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JUNE 12, 2025
BOULDER WEEKLY