Net Notables

In tribute to Norman Mailer (1923-2007), I am reposting this clip, which comes from his 1970 film, MAIDSTONE.

In the summer of 1968, the elegant resort town of East Hampton, NY witnessed a bizarre invasion of the celebrities and unknowns, professional actors and amateurs, assembled by Norman Mailer to make a movie in which he would be both director and star.

Mailer, who had already made two unconventional experimental films, was determined to give his revolutionary philosophy of cinema its first full-scale test. His object was to rescue the screen from conformist make-believe, to dissolve the line between fiction and actuality, to set the stage for an explosion of human passions. What resulted was MAIDSTONE.

Mailer played a character named Norman T. Kingsley, a filmmaker who is contemplating a run for president. His half brother in the film is played by Rip Torn. Allegedly, Torn took his part too seriously and attacked Mailer with a small hammer, and Mailer retaliated by nearly biting off Torn’s ear. This clip shows the actual fight.

(Personally, I think it was staged ahead of time and got out of hand, why else would the camera crew still be wandering around filming Mailer and his family after production had allegedly ended.)

from “The Lives of Norman Mailer” by Carl Rollyson:

Outraged by the way Mailer had tricked everyone into thinking a film of novel significance was in the offing, Torn refused to accept the ending of MAIDSTONE and attacked Mailer during the filming of him with his family the day after the director had declared the movie over. Charging Mailer in an open field, Torn hit him three times with the flat side of a hammer, pulling his blows but doing enough damage to draw blood. Four of Mailer’s children — Dandy, Betsy, Michael, and Stephen — were terrified, screaming after Torn’s assault on their father.

Mailer was furious. Calling Torn a “crazy fool c***s**ker”, Mailer wrestled him to the ground, biting & nearly tearing off Torn’s ear. Calling Mailer “brother” and insisting the film would make no sense without the assassination attempt, Torn traded insults with Mailer and yet kept reminding him that this was the story Mailer had planned, that Mailer had even seen him coming with the hammer and had not tried to get away.

When Mailer would not acknowledge the justice of Torn’s words, Torn called him a “fraud”, a charge Mailer later had to countenance, for in the editing room he found that he did not have a movie without the dramatic explosion, the assault not only on Norman T. Kingsley but on Norman Mailer, the half-sincere, half-bogus filmmaker and politician who had to be called to account by a real actor who took his role seriously, as though he were, in Mailer’s words, his “true brother”.

The psychological reality of MAIDSTONE was the actors’ expectation that Mailer would be attacked, and so Torn “attacked out of all the plots of other actors” and became, Mailer realized, “the presence of the film, the psychological reality that became a literal reality out of the pressure of all the ones which did not.”–Subcin

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