University of Virginia Library

On The Films Of Norman Mailer

By Jeffrey Ruggles
Cavalier Daily Staff Writer

The English Department will
sponsor three showings of Norman
Mailer's new film, "Maidstone,"
tomorrow. Thursday, at 4:30, 7:00,
and 9:00 in Wilson Hall
Auditorium. Admission will be
$1.00.

There is probably no living
American writer with a greater
reputation than Norman Mailer.
The boundary between literature
and journalism becomes less and
less clear, as Mailer goes from
writing about the 1967 March on
the Pentagon, to the astronauts on
the moon, to woman's liberation,
to the Ali-Frazier fight. And, of
course, he reigns as most
controversial candidate ever for
Mayor of New York.

On the way, like many other
writers-Cocteau, Pasolini, Sonntag,
for example-Mailer has turned to
films for a while. Although his
movies have been very
characteristically Mailerian, the
kink of overpowering
self-confidence which has served
him so well in his writing has not
been so successful at cinema.

Great though his
accomplishments have been, Mailer
can tend to overestimate them, and
ignore the work of others. An
earlier film than "Maidstone," "Wild
90," can serve as a guide to the
Mailer approach to film.

"Wild 90" is about some
gangsters who are hiding from some
other gangsters. Most of the movie
takes place in one room, where the
gangsters are visited by friends,
family and police. The leader of the
gangsters is played by Mailer.

Within the given roles and given
situation, the actors improvise their
parts. Mailer considers this
improvisation the solution to the
problem of awareness of the camera
in documentaries. He calls it
"existential" acting. It is much the
same approach as appears in a film
like "Trash."

As Pauline Kael in the New
Yorker pointed out, Mailer seemed
to be unaware of the improvisation
done on the part of filmmakers like
John Cassavetes or Jean-Luc
Godard; he seemed to imagine that
he had created this new form, when
not only had it been done before,
but Mailer could have avoided some
of the errors which these earlier
efforts had overcome.

For "Wild 90" Mailer hired
D.A.Penncbaker, maker of the Bob
Dylan film "Don't Look Back," to
do the camera work. It is largely
done in cinema verite style, that is,
the camera hand held or on the
cameraman's shoulder.
Unfortunately, much of the cinema
verite seems fake, done not out of
necessity but to duplicate another
style.

The only information available
about "Maidstone" is that it's about
a pornographer making a
pornographic movie. From his past
results we might expect it to be low
budgeted and perhaps unpolished in
its technique, but there is a good
chance Mailer has read the
criticisms of his affected sloppiness
and improved his skills. Whatever, it
is certainly a good opportunity to
see a film, as yet unreleased
commercially, by one of the largest
creative forces in New York,
America, and the world today.