by Mark Demetrius
Worth: $18.00
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Cast:
Norman Mailer
Intro:
... gets better and better as it goes on.
The title — not explained until late in the piece — may be curious, but this is actually a conventional documentary. The man himself was anything BUT conventional. By his own description, Norman Mailer was a mess of contradictions; first and foremost, he was a really great writer.
Super-intelligent (he entered Harvard at 16), Mailer was a soldier in World War Two, which became the subject of his enormously successful first novel The Naked and The Dead. The central — also ghastly — event in his life came many years later, however: the night he stabbed his second wife with a penknife at the party to kick off his mayoral campaign. Fortunately, he redirected his violent side to more creativity.
There’s so much fascinating archival material here: Mailer’s TV argument with Gore Vidal … Scenes from his bizarre and ill-advised film Maidstone … interviews with many members of his huge family — he had six wives and nine children – and with critics and the like … The famous 1971 ‘Mailer vs. women’s liberation’ forum … and footage relating to The Executioner’s Song, that masterly study of a psychopath … But the biggest chunk is from a late-in-life though not recent (he died in 2007) interview with Mailer himself.
This film gets better and better as it goes on. Mailer was not just a literary giant. His life was remarkable too, and his penchant for deep philosophical and socio-political enquiry continued and deepened. He could be very funny and also truly profound. “Finally,” he proclaimed, “becoming more adventurous is the key to it all.” Now there’s a thought.
