While during his lifetime, his work became more and more critically derided, there has been a resurgence of interest in American novelist, journalist, and polemic Norman Mailer since his death in 2007. In his heyday, he was considered a provocative artist whose work was often overshadowed by a brazen machismo that put him in horn-locking mode with other men-of-letters of the period, like Gore Vidal, and as a subject of vitriol to emerging philosophies in the late twentieth century (particularly feminism).
Perhaps best known for his non-fiction novel on the Gary Gilmore case The Executioner’s Song and his debut novel The Naked and the Dead plus dozens of reports and essays, some of his work, particularly the ancient-Egyptian-themed novel Ancient Evenings, are being reevaluated as some of his best work. He also occasionally dabbled in the dramatic arts. The most successful of these ventures was his 1967 stage adaptation of his 1955 novel The Deer Park, a Hollywood story that had a respectable run Off-Broadway, but (having read it last year) could prove considerably difficult to stage today.
He also adapted The Executioner’s Song for an extremely well-made television film, which garnered Tommy Lee Jones an Emmy Award. But Mailer would not have been happy simply writing scripts. His personality (particularly in his drinking days) was so large, directing films became a sometime occupation with three experimental films in the ‘60s and ‘70s and a big-budget film in the late ‘80s, Tough Guys Don’t Dance, adapted from his novel. The latter, while receiving a few good reviews, is most famous for the “Oh Man, Oh God” meme that surely made the late Ryan O’Neal wince even many years after.
But his three experimental films that disappeared shortly after their initial premieres, Wild 90, Beyond the Law, and Maidstone, were finally restored and released as part of the Eclipse label of the Criterion Collection. Being in that collection has become a great honor for filmmakers all over the world and the Eclipse label in particular offers even wilder arthouse fare for those who only visit Barnes & Noble during a Criterion sale.
This last weekend, I had my first brush with Mailer’s films with his most famous, 1970’s Maidstone. Experimental films of the time, particularly the ones influenced by the European New Wave, are often exercises in cinematic masturbation, and Mailer’s is no different. But I’d be lying if I wasn’t fascinated by the whole project and found in it something quite remarkable: an improvised film that manages to be both of that moment and countercultural at the same time.
Mailer directs, “writes,” and stars in the story of Norman T. Kingsley, a world-famous film director who has thrown his hand into the race for President of the United States. This idea might have seemed ridiculous in 1970, but with increasingly public media figures finding themselves in office (beginning with George Murphy and, of course, most famously, Ronald Reagan), it doesn’t seem so now.
The film is divided into twelve chapters comprising what was 45 hours of film reduced to a little over a hundred minutes of screentime. For the first eight of so chapters, the film is a linear narrative of Kingsley casting and prepping an elaborate sex film (whether this is a soft-core porn film or an elicit art film is never elucidated), eventually shooting on the grounds of a vast mansion. Documentary style, the cameras follow political operatives as they lay their cards on the table concerning their candidate, whose principal drawback is his association with a group of ne’er-do-wells that include Rey (Rip Torn), a menacing figure who always seems like he may break into violence at any moment. A British journalist chronicles the meetings as well as the shooting of the film, including about fifty people on the estate in various states of undress.
It is hard to distinguish Kingsley from Mailer. Both have avid interests in boxing and flexing, talk in mocking tones to women, have large egos and are cult leaders in their own mind. Increasingly, the line between mockumentary and reality are skewed until the famous end of the picture that shows an actual fight between Mailer and Torn, in which Torn smacked him on the head with a hammer, drawing blood (then, Mailer bit a part of Torn’s ear off). This scene was not originally to be included in the film as neither are acting, calling each other by their real names, the fight apparently resulting in Torn’s frustration with Mailer’s direction which, gathering from the film itself, must have been the lunatic running the asylum.
I was expecting what most folks who’ve seen it see—a good first fifteen minutes, a fascinating last fifteen minutes, and a lot of drudgery in between. But Mailer’s Presidential plot gives a lot of goods in the middle of the film as he tries to put a finger on his positions with Black militants and women’s advocates. Beautifully preserved by Criterion, the scenes of Mailer laying shirtless in the grass making political points capture a moment in time that was a lot like ours now—a society on the verge of imploding. It made me wonder if, in fifty year’s time, someone could watch the early scenes of Maidstone and believe it really happened. In a way, Kingsley foretells of a figure like Trump, who has no shortage of braggadocio and malice and is clearly an outsider figure.
When I watched the film, I thought a lot of Peter Weir’s The Truman Show in the sense that had that movie been made as an arthouse film rather than a commercial vehicle for Jim Carrey, it would have been a truly great film instead of the too-well-staged, slick concoction it became. With Maidstone, you are watching documentary and mockumentary. There are actors attempting to improvise who clearly can’t think of things to say, there are fewer good actors who briefly take you out of the moment, and yet there’s a sort of elegance to it all, even with its cinema verité style camera movement.
If Maidstone could have been forethought rather than improvised, one could see it as being a great movie. But I think its off-the-cuff style brings something of what I wish Truman Show had been—something messier, less easy to pin down. Because of the improvisational nature, Maidstone captures lightning in a bottle and, though some scenes are too long (perhaps padding once he had the structure), it seemed to me vibrant, alive, and fearless—all characteristics of its director. Along with Town Bloody Hall, I think we’re seeing Mailer and, as a preservation of a one-of-a-kind iconoclastic figure, it succeeded in my eyes. I’d rather watch interesting failures any day than polished, turgid drama.
Much has been made of the fight scene. Some say it’s the only thing worth watching, and I disagree. Mailer manages to put together all the concerns of the day—Nixon, Vietnam, the Black power movement, the women’s rights movement, and capture real frustration, real near-implosion. The fight scene is only the icing on the cake as you feel at any moment that the whole thing could go out of control, as the country did, and it does. The fight scene may make it essential viewing, but it is not all that is there.
While it may seem what they call “tone deaf” to even bring up Mailer in a world where masculinity is devalued, I applaud (yet again) the fearlessness and down-beat nature of the films of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s—by far the most creative in film history. Now, maybe Maidstone doesn’t belong in the same category as Bonnie and Clyde or Chinatown, but I think it sits right along with I Am Curious (Yellow/Blue) and other films of that ilk as something worth watching and preserving.
It would be a shame indeed if we only knew Mailer because of his personal problems and his persona. What should be paid attention to is the work. Mailer went into writing plays and directing films to bring his personal ideas to the forms. I think he thought he would change the world. I admire the ambition—such a thing gels with his personality. He belongs to a long line of American writers, like BenjaminFranklin, Vidal, and Harold Bloom who spoke as if they knew everything and were chastised for it even when others had to realize they were right about a lot more than they got wrong. More and more, I want to be moved by the films I see and I have to keep going back further and further in history to find something visceral, something that grabs one’s attention. Maidstone did it. That’s all I ask for.
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