I must confess, I haven't been following the Kevin Smith/Zack and Miri saga, but this item in today's New York Times definitely grabbed my attention, for obvious reasons:

Kevin Smith, the director of the movies Clerks and Chasing Amy, has won an appeal to lower the rating for his new comedy from NC-17 to R, The Associated Press reported. The decision came after the Motion Picture Association of America’s appeals board viewed the movie, Zack and Miri Make a Porno.The NC-17 rating would have barred anyone under 17 from seeing the film...Zack and Miri stars Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks as best friends who try to make a homemade pornographic movie. It is scheduled for release by the Weinstein Company on Oct. 31.

Now, I yield to no one in my admiration for both Smith and Rogen, and after a Google search turned up the info that the film co-stars the great ex-porn performer turned girl next door Traci Lords (as "Bubbles," no less), I have to say -- I seriously want to see this.

Still, there's a part of me that can't help but regret that Smith isn't doing the film version of a similarly themed novel with a frustrating Hollywood history. I refer, of course, to Terry Southern's hilarious and hilariously filthy 1970 satire of Hollywood (and much else) -- Blue Movie.

In case you haven't read it (and you should -- it was reissued in 1996 and you can order it here) it's the story of Boris Adrian (a character explicitly based on Stanley Kubrick, with whom Southern worked on the screenplay for Dr. Strangelove), a big shot director who decides to make the first mega-budget, studio backed, explicitly pornographic movie featuring major Hollywood stars. Mucho nuttiness ensues, and the whole thing ends with a gigantic on-set orgy as masked ninja commandos sent by the Vatican(!) helicopter in and steal the only existing negative of the film.

Southern, who died in 1995, these days isn't as well known as he should be, but he was one of the major American satirists of the 20th century and a lot more, including, briefly, a real Tinseltown mover and shaker; among other interesting accomplishments, he co-wrote Easy Rider. How cool was he? Well, for one thing cool enough to get his mug on one of the most iconic images of all time.

That's him in the second row, fourth from the left, with shades.

In any case, back in 1974 Warner Brothers hired Southern to write a screenplay of Blue Movie, with Mike Nichols slated to direct, but the deal eventually fell apart due to a protracted dispute between Warners and Ringo Starr, who then owned the screen rights (and who had earlier starred in a disappointing film version of Southern's Candy with Peter Sellers). Various other folks have taken a shot at the property over the years, including most recently Michael Dowse, the Canadian director best known (ironically) for the New Pornographer's video "Letter From an Occupant," but as of this writing, there's nothing happening .

Still, we've always thought that Smith's sweetly smutty sensibility would be a perfect fit with Southern's anarchic vision. Heck, as you can see, Smith --

-- even looks a bit like the man himself --

-- and if Zack and Miri is a success, maybe he can be persuaded to give it a shot. In any case, for more on all things Southern, check out the official web-site.