More Mailer Stuff

Continuing a Mailer theme from the previous post, here are a couple of Norman Mailer-related YouTube items that might be of interest. First, his 1970 film Maidstone, a mostly failed experiment in improvisational filmmaking that is memorable only for the late scene in which a young and stoner-eyed Rip Torn physically attacks Mailer while the camera rolls. Neither of these gentlemen is exactly a brawler. To say that they fight like little girls would be an insult to little girls. The whole movie is worth watching once, though, the way a time capsule is worth opening--but only once. (The fight begins at about 1:34:00.)






Second, and considerably more entertaining, is this mid-1980s clip from The Tonight Show in which the late Joan Rivers attempts to interview Mailer (who's plugging Tough Guys Don't Dance) while Shelley Winters interrupts with a fantastic (in all senses) 'memory' of Mailer meeting Marilyn Monroe at a Henry Wallace rally in 1948. Mailer's response is pretty good, but Rivers is, of course, funnier.