Tough Guys Can't Act: Norman Mailer's Fascinating Film Legacy

Mailer as the Great Houdini in Cremaster 2


Norman Mailer's legacy as a great American author has been cemented long ago. Interestingly enough, most recently, Mailer's film work has undergone the process of re-discovery culminating with a series of screenings last summer at the Film Society at Lincoln Center.

It is often assumed that Mailer's film career has been a kind of long train wreck while his literary career has been an unchecked march to Mount Olympus. Strangely enough, Mailer's output as an author was often poorly received. In fact, the New York Times noted in today's obituary that few if any of his works were well-received after his first novel The Naked and the Dead.

Mailer the filmmaker and film subject, however, leaves a strange and interesting legacy. This legacy begins with one of the oddest films of the 70's (which is really saying something), Maidestone. Conceived in June 1968, the project started filming just days after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. In the film, Mailer plays Film Director and potential Presidential Candidate Norman T. Kinglsey. As Mailer plays him, Kingsley is a charismatic, sexist artist with a philosophical interest in poitics and boxing. In many ways, this portrayal seems to be something close to the public, even stereotypical persona of the great author.

The film is a mess, but its fame is justified as it has one of the weirdest climaxes in cinema history as Rip Torn (who plays Kingsley's half brother) attacks Mailer/Kingsley with a hammer and Mailer bites off a portion of Torn's ear in a strange, horrific brawl while Mailer's children are screaming. The ending pushes real cinema to its limits and connects the film to the arbitrary violence of its time.

Mailer's film, for all its sensation and connection to the zeitgeist was a financial bomb and wiped him out financially for a time. As Mailer famously put it, "I would have done as well to have bought a yacht, taken it out to harbor, and sunk it."



Work in Cremaster series...

Mailer's most conventional foray into filmmaking was as director of the film Tough Guys Don't Dance. The 1987 film, an adaptation of his novel, involves a severed head, crooked cops and a detective with a past has some of the conventions of traditional film noir. But, the odd, bad performance of Ryan O'Neal and the crazed, charisma of eighties fave Wings Hauser make this a kind of fascinating misfire. Oddly enough, (and rarely pointed out) the film anticipates some of look and feel of Twin Peaks (an idea underlined by the presence of one-time David Lynch muse Isabella Rosselini.




Matthew Barney the All-American avant gardist used Mailer as a kind of icon in his Cremaster 2 series where the great author portrayed the great illusionist Harry Houdini. Mailer's work in Barney's film somewhat grounds the strangeness of the series and Mailer's comforting presence is a relief to the viewer. He also looks great with his snowy hair and Victorian bearing.



Mailer's late acting work took yet another weird turn with his avuncular turn as himself on the Gilmore Girls. It is an odd, but somehow touching performance by the old lion.