Reflection: Norman Mailer’s “Maidstone”

Faced with the daunt­ing deci­sion of which repere­tory film to see the other night, I decided to check out the one on my short list that wasn’t on video. And I’m quite glad that I did.

Anthology film Archives has been run­ning this Norman Mailer ret­ro­spec­tive for some time and I’ve con­sis­tently missed every sin­gle film. Until they ran it, I didn’t even know he’d ever made a film, but now I just want to see his whole library. Mr. Mailer’s writ­ing, which I am admit­tedly behind in read­ing, is deli­ciously erratic. He is able to both keep a nar­ra­tive run­ning while dis­sect­ing the cli­mate of our cul­ture and even preach­ing his own solu­tions for prob­lems. Back when the film was made, in 1970, peo­ple like Mailer were much more aware about the dan­gers posed by the gov­ern­ment than we are today. I don’t mean we don’t rec­og­nize our prob­lems, it’s just that even our rad­i­cals now still believe in America. Back then, the world was lit­er­ally end­ing and it seemed to some like the coun­try might well fall in on itself. This was the golden age of espi­onage and assas­i­na­tions, and the rav­ages of the Vietnam War mixed in made it impos­si­ble to believe this was a world worth hold­ing on to. This is evi­dent in much of Mailer’s writ­ing in those days.

So give the man a cam­era.

He had the best of com­pany at the time. Ricky Leacock and D.A. Pennebaker, prob­a­bly the great­est doc­u­men­tar­i­ans of all time, were on board for “Maidstone”. The film, shot in the period of a week, fol­lows the fic­tional film­mak­ing process of Norman T. Kingsley, played by Mailer, a pos­si­ble Presidential can­di­date and poten­tial assas­si­nee. The film feels like a doc­u­men­tary, and in many ways it can be con­sid­ered one. I imag­ine if Pennebaker were sit­ting across from me right now he’d tell me the fact that it was some­what scripted wouldn’t affect the real­ity of the film.

It’s hard to explain what hap­pens in the film. It must be viewed if you want to under­stand it, which is part of why I enjoyed it so well. When a film is so inde­scrib­able, it means it is a good film and a ter­ri­ble novel, which makes me feel good about film. But I’ll tell you how Mailer describes it onscreen. He dis­cusses the vary­ing lev­els of real­ity that hap­pen at one time. He never intended the pic to seem real, but rather many real­i­ties hap­pen­ing at once. Perspective shifts quite often in the film in hopes of mak­ing the audi­ence con­sider which real­i­ties may be real and which not. For one to begin to under­stand what the film­mak­ers set out to do, you really have to pick which scenes are real and which imag­ined.

I was sur­prised at how well Mailer was able to under­stand cin­ema given his lit­er­ary back­ground. Not that I’m in any way sur­prised. After all, he changed what the writ­ten word could do in many way. The film has a num­ber of won­der­ful scenes, but the most mem­o­rable would cer­tainly have to be one of the final scenes, where an irate Rip Torn attacks the direc­tor with a ham­mer (pic­tured right). Immediately, the shirt­less Mailer, hav­ing now dropped his screen per­sona as the shoot has wrapped, erupts on torn and the scuf­fle becomes a fight to the death. Mailer tries to bite Torn’s ear; they punch each other and roll around on the ground until Mailer calms the hys­ter­i­cal actor down, only for it to erupt again and even worse. Mailer’s kids see what’s hap­pen­ing and start scream­ing and cry­ing, his wife comes over and pulls them apart and chas­tises Torn, who is now on the verge of tears. He claims the only rea­son he did it was that the film couldn’t end with­out Kingsley being assas­si­nated, so for con­ti­nu­ity pur­poses he would have to kill Mailer.

This whole moment was entirely unplanned and com­pletely real, includ­ing the blood run­ning from Mailer’s head down to his chin and then drip­ping. The scene is so fas­ci­nat­ing because the cam­era goes on right as it begins, and the film­maker makes no attempt to break up the bloody bat­tle, which must have caught him by sur­prise. (there were about a half dozen cam­era ops on the film, but even money Pennebaker was rolling dur­ing this scene) There is a purity to the scene not scene in other parts of the film, and it comes at a time where we have now returned to our real­ity as Mailer has revealed his bag of tricks already. Initially, you won­der if this is just another game, but as it becomes more and more bru­tal you ques­tion what kind of men would play such an awful trick on the audi­ence. Mailer’s point of real­i­ties and sub-realities is fur­ther proven as the scene spins out of con­trol.

Mailer has directed only 4 films, 3 of them col­lab­o­ra­tions with D.A. Pennebaker. I’m rather upset with myself for only hav­ing seen this one, but I can tell you that if a print ever makes it to your town, you had bet­ter not miss this. If you love writ­ten nar­ra­tive and hate naked women you might want to sit this one out, but then again if that describes you then what the hell are you doing with your life? If you want to know what this medium is capa­ble of, then seek it out and enjoy.