For Author, It Was a Long Road to ‘Last Exit’ : Movies: Brutal tale of life on the fringes was 25 years getting to the screen -- and is still controversial in Orange County.

Hubert Selby Jr.’s “Last Exit to Brooklyn” is the one landmark American novel you would never expect to see filmed. When it was published in 1964, it sparked an immediate controversy, both legal and critical, for its raw, poetic descriptions of brutal Brooklyn lowlife with uncompromising depictions of violence, much of it sexual, between human beings.

(The controversy still hasn’t subsided--at least not in Orange County, where the Edwards chain last week canceled plans to show the movie at its posh Lido Cinema, claiming the adult themes were inappropriate for that theater; the movie is rated R. The movie is being shown at the AMC MainPlace Six at MainPlace/Santa Ana.)

Selby himself, though, says he always saw “Last Exit” as a movie, even if he did have to wait a quarter of a century for it.

“Anybody who writes as graphically as I do envisions a movie,” he said, sitting in his neat, pleasant West Hollywood apartment. “I’ve always loved movies. Back when I was out of my head, I’d see seven movies a day on 42nd Street. I loved shoot ‘em-ups, Randolph Scott Westerns, especially. That Randy was so cool. I remember when he snuffed out Lee Marvin--and he’d been using his rifle as a crutch.” (It happened in Budd Boetticher’s 1956 classic “Seven Men From Now.”)

“And I love the movie they’ve made of ‘Last Exit to Brooklyn’ for two basic reasons. The first reason is personal, self-serving: They’ve retained the spirit of the book--that dark, oppressive flavor. Second, they made a great movie, in my opinion. That’s a great combination.” The movie is by two Germans, producer Bernd Eichinger and director Uli Edel, who themselves had dreamed of filming “Last Exit” for 20 years.

At 61, Selby is an underground legend in American letters who, thanks to the film, may be on the brink of enjoying a measure of the recognition, not to mention the financial security, that Charles Bukowski now enjoys. If anything, Selby has lived a harder life than Bukowski, and it has taken its toll. At 115 pounds--35 pounds underweight, he says--he seems painfully thin, yet he moves with vigor. The haunted-looking eyes in his gaunt face are a clear, intense blue and as unforgettable as his stories. Selby retains Brooklyn in his voice and has a hearty, uninhibited survivor’s laugh.

“Usually, they hire armed guards to keep the writer away, but I was involved in every aspect of the making of the movie,” he explained. “I read every draft of Desmond Nakano’s script, I was on the set every day and went to dailies. It was a wonderful, breathtaking experience. I liked Bernie so much I even wrote a poem about him.”

Selby is asked whether he approves of the softening of the fate of the prostitute Tralala, in a sequence involving a gang rape that, in the book, ends with a memorably savage killing. “Just because I think the movie’s great doesn’t mean I agree with every shot,” said Selby forthrightly. “. . . Bernd thought it would be better on the screen his way, but he didn’t make any changes for Hollywood reasons.

“I think sex is an attack in many ways. Most people confuse sex with communication and love. ‘Last Exit to Brooklyn’ is about the horrors of a loveless world, and that’s been my main observation all my life.”

Selby, however, was not reared in the world of “Last Exit.” He grew up mainly in Bay Ridge, a middle-class Brooklyn neighborhood where his mother still lives. “My father was a marine engineer, a merchant seaman who later worked in powerhouses. He went back to the sea in World War II, and then I went to sea. I was just restless. I couldn’t stand still, couldn’t stand school, couldn’t stand me!”

At 15 he quit school and left home to work on the Brooklyn waterfront. At 18, on his first voyage on a freighter, he contracted tuberculosis and spent nearly four years in hospitals. It was during this long recuperation that Selby started to read--”I loved S.S. Van Dine and Mickey Spillane”--and eventually discovered he had a desire to write. His mentor was a fellow Brooklynite named Gilbert Sorrentino, who today is a Stanford professor.

“We’d go to Birdland and Bop City and the Royal Roost. I knew enough to keep my mouth shut, which was unusual for me, when the group started talking about William Carlos Williams (who subsequently was to encourage Selby to keep writing) and Ezra Pound. Then I’d sneak over to the library and read them.”

Selby married, and when his daughter was 2 he suffered such a severe asthma attack that he was expected to die. “I had already been given up for dead three times, but again I refused to die. Nobody tells me what to do! But I did have a spiritual experience: I’d either die and regret my entire life or live my life over and then die. I had to do something with my life, so I bought a typewriter.

“I sat there a week, and wrote ‘The Queen Is Dead.’ (It later became part of the six stories that make up “Last Exit,” and the only one based on an actual individual; Selby had heard of the prostitute Tralala but never met her.) I wrote a dozen pages and realized I had no idea what I was doing. I meditated two days.

“Everybody has a million stories--just go to every street corner or candy store in New York and you can hear them. What I must do, I told myself, is to understand them, to get down to their basics, and from their essence, create a work of art.”

The work that emerged, of course, was “Last Exit.” And after its success, Selby resumed his heavy drinking habit. “I’ve always been an alcoholic. I can’t remember when I didn’t want to drink. With money coming in, I had the means to pursue my disease with exuberance.”

At this point, Selby was living in Los Angeles, in one of the many attempts to have “Last Exit” or one of its portions filmed. He was living with a woman who one day gave shelter to a homeless family. A friend came over to see them and ended up persuading Selby to join Alcoholics Anonymous. “I had my last drink on 29 March, 1969,” he said with pride.

Selby resumed writing, published several more novels, moved East for a few years and then came back to Los Angeles in 1983 with the youngest of his four children--he had two children by his first wife and two more by his third (from whom he has been amicably separated for seven years).

“Friends gave us everything. I was on welfare, $400 a month and $78 in food stamps. I would come home and cry, but we prayed together every morning and somehow survived.”

Selby has held so many odd jobs--”very odd,” he emphasized--that he hasn’t the heart to recite them all beyond mentioning pumping gas in San Fernando Valley and a fairly recent stint working weekends as gift-shop clerk at Le Mondrian.

More appropriately, he has for two years conducted a graduate fiction workshop at USC and recently completed a European tour of poetry readings with Henry Rollins. Best of all, he’s at work on a new novel, “Seeds of Passion, Seeds of Pain.” And the screen version of “Last Exit to Brooklyn” might well make him some real money.

As for that prospect, Selby said, borrowing the last line from “The Sun Also Rises”: “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

‘Last Exit to Brooklyn” is at the AMC MainPlace Six at MainPlace/Santa Ana. Information: (714) 972-8500.