His fundamental technique is to place actors, trained and otherwise, in roughly planned situations, and to let them improvise freely thence forty. In his first film several Mafiosi are holed up in a room waiting to be rubbed lout; the actors are Mr. Mailer himself and some cronies, and they play affectionately with guns, bottles, women, and each other.
Beyond the Law was much less humorous. One segment had some affecting portrayals of detectives interrogating murder suspects, and for brief moments the film seemed to vindicate the Director's theory of getting closer to the tensions of real life than do the cosmetically perfect creations of most Hollywood hacks.
The Novelist had elsewhere written an essay on his techniques of making films, explained in terms of his latest and longest work, Maidstone. With the intention of recording events truly appropriate to the nature of the medium rather than to the conventions of pre-film literature (the essay tells us,) Mr. Mailer invited a large group of friends, actors, actor-friends, and non-actor non-friends for a week-long party in Easthampton. There, with the use of four estates and the help of three cambers crews, the sol-disant Prisoner of Movies made a film in which "the country has become so absolutely disheveled that a movie director is running for president-and he's also making a paragraphic film at the same time." The director is named Norman T. Kingsley and is played by the director, Norman K. Mailer.
The essay describing all this is laden with references to the then recent assasination of Bobby Kennedy, the strangely ominous atmosphere of the Easthampton party, and suspicions of a spontaneous assassination attempt on Mr. Mailer himself. The denouement of the film came, we are informed, when on the last day of the week Mr. Rip Torn attacked Mr. Kingsley Mailer with a seriously weilded hammer, hit him on the head with the flat of it, and in return had his ear bitten bloody. We wonder whether Mr. Mailer might really have been more pleased with the way the film emerged if the assasin had attacked more viciously, the victim had pleaded vainly for protection from enraptured onlookers, and had died bloodily before the cold eyes of the camera. We of course should have been displeased if this had happened, because Mr. Mailer would not have been able to explain the film to us.
Nor would he have been able to attend the reception that followed the films--which reception was held, through as eleventh-hour tactical decision by Advocate editors, at the lampoon castle rather than at the Advocate Building. The move did not, finally, confound a crowd of well-wishers who had heard Mr. Mailer mention a "libation" that was to follow his address. And so we found Mr. Mailer in the Lampoon banquet hall surrounded by a crush of unexpected undergraduates.
HE WAS, we decided, a man of prodigious endurance and good nature to resume his obliging cocktail-party manner after an already long evening. There he remained until well after midnight, still standing, talking to whomever could get a word in, turning his wit to whatever challenge was offered, land occasionally butting heads with a hairy Welshman named Thomas.
As we listened to him, Mr. Miler complained of the ill effects that drinking from plastic cups has on his bowels. And feeling sympathetic, we offered to find him another real glass to replace the plastic--in exchange for an interview. He agreed, but, once supplied, demurred, and we were only partly consoled by his offer to shake our hand, Others, much more interested in his conversation than in interviews, seemed altogether delighted by his presence. One cheery visitor who has called for drink repeatedly during the lecture did penance at the party by keeping the Guest's glass filled.
Earlier in the evening, Mr. Mailer had told his audience "Left-conservatism's my position. Arose the mob to their folly and the oppressed to their genies." He had also asked all the women of the audience who thought him a pig to raise their hands, and had told the near-unanimous respondents. "You've been raped by the intellectual pigs of the Ladies' Left." We heard no one at the reception engage him in serious political argument. But one wise student asked him whether he had really enjoyed his return to Harvard.
"Drinkin's drinkin' "smiled back the novelist with a curl of the lip corresponding to an aire of Irishness he had taken on for the last part of the evening.
We had to agree, nodded our head, and went home."