The Inimitable Norman Mailer

Watching Norman Mailer shuffle slowly across a stage at age 84, hunched forward and clutching two canes, is as good a reminder as any to "Dance, dance, dance" while you still can as Dougy (Lawrence Tierney) says in Tough Guys Don't Dance.
I went to one of the evenings of The Mistress and the Muse: The Films of Norman Mailer, a retrospective taking place during the next two weeks at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Paley Center for Media and Anthology Film Archives. Sandwiched in between a screening of the adaptation of his 1984 novel Tough Guys Don’t Dance and Maidstone, a film shot in the Hamptons in the summer of 1968 and released in 1971, was Mailer himself.

Maidstone is one of Mailer's earlier films -- improvisatory semifictional cinéma vérité. They're worth seeing, writes A.O. Scott in the New York Times "for the insight they provide into the ideas and ambitions that fueled Mr. Mailer’s writing in the 1960s and ’70s, the wildest, most productive and most contentious period in a career that has never been especially calm or easy to comprehend." With all due respect to Mr Scott, what's not to comprehend? The man liked to fight and he liked to fuck. He also liked to watch others fuck. And of course there were drinks and drugs. But more than that, he liked to share what he liked to do with others. Or, as they say, he liked to live large. In Maidstone his sexual energy is palpable, almost visible emanating off his person. His chest hair, like his sexual appetite, borders on primitive.

"Fame was not only his burden, but also his subject and his method," wrote Mr. Scott.

I watched Mr. Mailer tonight as he strained to hear the questions (he's very deaf now) and worked hard to keep his feet, clad in black sheepskin Ugg boots despite the heat, from shaking. He coughed as he spoke and told the audience that he has respiratory troubles, yet his voice held such enthusiasm as he proudly announced that he'd been married six times, fathered nine children, served time in jail, gotten into fights. This is a man who took his own life by the jugular and got lock jaw as he bit down hard. I picture him, as he was in the final scene in Maidstone bloodied and crazy-eyed, almost tearing off Rip Torn's ear with his teeth [Torn had attempted to assasinate Norman T. Knigsley (Mailer) and Mailer was outraged that he'd dare. Torn's response: “When — when is an assassination ever planned? It’s done, it’s done.” ]

Here, a couple of classic comments that Mr Mailer made this evening:

On why he made Tough Guys Don't Dance: "I made the move to convince other directors and producers to let me make more movies."

On writing scripts: "Movies are more spooky [than novels] because you're taking reality and distorting it. It's very intense."

On directing: "Sometimes when an actor improvises a line [like Lawrence Tierney did with the line "I coulda told him never to call an Italian small potatoes" in Tough Guys] you almost want to say 'no' even though you know it's good. Your authority when directing a film is so tenuous. To those of you out there who want to be directors I say Godspeed. It was certainly one of the most interesting activities I ever undertook."

On terrorism: "America is essentially a Christian country. Americans find it hard to work six days a week and knock over the next guy to get ahead and then go to church on Sunday....We needed to create a villian large enough for the essential spiritual crime of capitalism. For a long time that was communism. Now it's terrorism and none of our politicians have the wit, the grace, or the courage to attack it for what it is. It's bullshit mountain."

On space travel: "Now that I'm 84-years-old I couldn't give a God damn if we ever get to Mars."

On criticism: "If you didn't like the movie, you can find friends."