beep me 911

Sex, sex and more sex is on the mind of Nelson Lyon's experimental 1971 X-rated feature The Telephone Book.  Lyon, who passed away last year, wrote for "Saturday Night Live" and was supposedly with John Belushi on a heroin binge when Belushi died.  Shot mostly in black & white in New York, The Telephone Book has skit-like flair with chirpy Kewpie-esque Alice (Sarah Kennedy) who lives in an apartment of pornographic wallpaper and an American flag bedspread and is obsessed with obscene phone caller "John Smith" (silver-tongued voice actor Norman Rose).   Going through the phone book to find Mr. Smith, Alice meets up with some seedy folk in madcap moments including a perverted, prying psychiatrist (Roger Carmel) and orgy leader and experimental pornographer Har Poon (Barry Morse).  Interspersed with Alice's journey are an array of oddball confessions of sexual fetishes and kinks.  William Hickley plays one of Alice's first sexual partners who has a permanent erection; the film also features Ultra Violet brandishing a whip and then unknown Jill Clayburgh in an eyemask.  When Alice finally meets her John Smith, who creepily dons a pig mask and whose "all talk" nonsensical dialogue is often bleeped out, he gives her a sort of cosmic orgasmic experience.  Raunchy with a satirical edge, Kennedy's bubbly presence (it's a wonder why her career never took off) and Leon Perera's black & white photography is reminiscent of films of the pre-code era.  The Telephone Book seems to end up spoofing a slew of things: pop art (a scene with Warhol ended up cut), therapy, censorship, new wave movies, commercials (many moments are directed and scripted with the zing of a 60s coffee ad), politics, the sexual revolution and the rise of pornographic and X-rated cinema.  Even if it's a purposefully exhausting and dissatisfying watch, there's a lot of thought and spunk to this movie and it ended up being an influential cult film especially on Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris and possibly on Woody Allen and Stanley Kubrick. **1/2

hustling

Hustling is a 1975 TV movie based upon writer Gail Sheehy's expose on prostitution which was published as a book of the same name and also as a 1971 series for New York Magazine entitled "Redpants and Sugarman."  It's hard to believe that this gritty--though tame and not very sexually explicit--look at midtown streetwalkers was on ABC; it's likely it would be relegated to Lifetime these days.  Lee Remick (who would memorably figure a year later as the mother in The Omen) is excellent as the serious and well-meaning trench-coated reporter Fran Morrison (loosely based upon Sheehy) with a wavy bob of grayish blonde hair.  Her interest relaying the stories of the prostitutes is compassionate at first, out of a sort of emotional pity. Quickly Fran learns the economic impact of these women and the danger they're in when she begins interviewing the boisterous and emotionally bruised Wanda (Jill Clayburgh).



Director Joseph Sargent (his crime classic The Taking of Pelham One Two Three from 1974 is glimpsed in a theater marquee in the opening of Hustling) does well with the material, offering a sensitive portrait of Wanda and her cohorts.  Clayburgh was a phenomenal actress, the kind who just naturally offered more in her eyes than what's in the script, and she certainly disappears here (she was nominated for an Emmy Award). Unfortunately she puts on a New Yawk accent in a nasally pitch that's both slightly annoying and artificial.  But the contrast between Remick and Clayburgh is still emotionally rewarding.  There's also a scrappy supporting cast of familiar 70s faces.  The movie is benefited by on-location shots of a New York in its gritty, sex-shop heyday (I believe some additional shots were filmed in Los Angeles as well).  A year later NYC would be portrayed almost like a circle in Hell by Martin Scorsese in the much more hard-hitting Taxi Driver.  **1/2