Give Me Your Hump: The Unspeakable Terry Southern

We Say...

Review by Ben Schwartz

As wild a ride as the '60s are reputed to be, few people took it like gonzo author Terry Southern. As a screenwriter, he saw the big joke in nuclear war (Dr. Strangelove) and consumer culture (The Magic Christian), and wrote the hippies' epitaph, Easy Rider, before they even knew it was over.

Here, Southern reads his own work in various locales: a room at the Gramercy Park Hotel, the home of sardonic humorist Michael O'Donoghue and at the legendary Siné Café, all in New York City. It was the early '90s, just a couple of years before his death, but the edge hadn't dulled. In "Rimmers," US troops in 'Nam sexually abuse dead Vietcong. In "Chico," the billionaire prankster of The Magic Christian, Guy Grand, discovers a parking ticket on his car; a street punk laughs, and Grand offers him thousands in cash to eat the ticket, then and there, in his unsettling quest to see average Americans debase themselves for money.

There's also LBJ at JFK's coffin, the underage porn star's agent, and other slapstick obscenities. Well, at least something of the '60s won't make it onto your local oldies station.

They Say...

Review by Al Campbell, All Music Guide

The late Terry Southern was notorious not only for co-writing Dr. Strangelove and Easy Rider, but also for two books that would become cult classics and later films: Candy and The Magic Christian. Southern was also fond of inebriation. He could hold his own with other high-profile reprobates like William S. Burroughs and Dennis Hopper. Like Burroughs, Southern had a flair for captivating an audience with his usually slurred inflection. Southern could tell lecherous tales coded in male chauvinism or outright "dirty old man" diatribes, but his disarming aristocratic intonation made him sound like an eccentric uncle telling inappropriate jokes at a family gathering after too many toddies. Give Me Your Hump: The Unspeakable Terry Southern captures that noxious combination of humor and deviance from Southern himself and also brilliantly assembles a motley crew of like-minded characters, including Marianne Faithfull (in a profanity-filled performance that rivals "Why'd Ya Do It" from her Broken English album), Martin Mull, Allen Ginsberg, and Michael O' Donahue. The guest highlight, though, has to be the once-in-a-lifetime combo of Jonathan Winters and Sandra Bernhard, who perform a short play concerning Kafka, Freud, and Kafka's mother. This is a stimulating audio introduction to Southern's work, and, well, just outright crude fun for its own sake.