The novel Blue Movie (1970) is Southern's satiric examination of Hollywood, its mores, its goals, its conduct, and its values. The film industry is its essential target, and its ideals are presented as consisting of little other than Money and Sex, the chief concerns on the company lots and at Malibu beach parties. In the novel, Hollywood censorship of blatant sexuality is still strong, outside the realm of stag films.

But one of the so-called great directors, "King" B. (Boris Adrian), almost dreamily plans a pornographic film to end all pornographic films, one "noncontrived," "relevant," "beautiful and pure," and dedicated to "art" and "aesthetics." The film, The Faces of Love, is shot on location exclusively in Liechtenstein, without the knowledge of Metropolitan Pictures' top executives.

The film is almost exclusively a raunchy series of mad orgies, entailing massive ensembles of copulation in a Casbah setting, and other...