Hippie Hippie Shake by Richard Neville

Author:Richard Neville [Richard Neville]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780715640364
Publisher: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.

The cigar-chomping producer from Hollywood was ‘hiding out’ in Mayfair. ‘I’ve just produced a flop,’ he said. Until then, Judd Benarr had been flying high with a credit on an Elvis Presley vehicle, Double Trouble. ‘But then I had a brainwave, Godamnit.’ Judd splashed bourbon on to ice and recounted the recent disaster – a Western set in England, with Terence Stamp playing John Wayne. It was called Blue. But Judd’s latest idea was bluer. Appetite whetted by the reviews of Playpower, he had wheedled me to this office-in-exile with the promise of a ‘no-holds-barred docudrama’ based on my book. It was March 1970.

‘I’ve just bought the rights to a sex fair in Denmark,’ he said. ‘Mix it up with your stuff and we’ve got a smash. You’re my main man.’ The sex fair started in a week. So far, he had no cast, no director, no crew, no script.

‘Don’t you get it, Dick? It’s hip, it’s hot. A big screen smash about the clash of sexual attitudes between the flower kids of today and the power creeps of yesterday.’

It seemed dubious. But this sex fair was a world first and the one thing he did have was financial backing. ‘Give me the number of your agent,’ he barked.

Days later I was flying to Copenhagen, ‘sex capital of Europe’, with the hastily signed director, Tony Palmer, former producer of How It Is. Three members of the Living Theatre had joined the cast, as well as a Penthouse pet.

The spruced-up inhabitants of this fairytale city showed no visible scars at the plethora of porn, but what lay under the surface? The first day’s shoot was in Palmer’s hotel suite. I was to interview a leading Danish sociologist, Professor Yurngst, a slight man in a houndstooth suit. The professor sat on a stiff-backed chair and marshalled the usual arguments against censorship, while I played devil’s advocate. A woman from the Living Theatre, Jenny, snaked slowly across the carpet to the foot of his chair. I remembered her performance in Paradise Now at the Roundhouse, when she was naked and spit-soaked. The cameras rolling, she unbuttoned the fly of the professor, who had not been forewarned. Yurngst continued to unravel the theories of Wilhelm Reich – that sexual repression leads to violence – which he bolstered with statistics showing that sex crimes had declined since the abolition of censorship. Jenny embarked on a vigorous fellatio. Apart from the beads of sweat on his eyelids and the erratic intakes of breath, Yurngst’s manner was valiantly professorial. His eyes remained camera-glued. Jenny’s lips remained fluid. In the midst of a dissertation on Freud and the libido, the prof suddenly jerked in his chair and let out a couple of gasps. ‘Cut,’ shouted Tony Palmer, immensely pleased.

I was pleased, too. We were the cutting edge of the sex revolution, slashing away at the media, academia, everyday life. This action proved something of vital importance, but, for the life of me, I can’t recall what it was.

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