In the past, Norman Mailer and the movies have made a rough mix. Two Hollywood adaptations of acclaimed Mailer novels, ”The Naked and the Dead”
in 1958 and ”An American Dream” in 1966, strayed uncomfortably away from the author`s literary intentions. ”The Executioner`s Song” in 1981, with a script by Mailer, suffered as a two-part television movie because its boldly dramatized sex and violence were scissored out.
Then there were Mailer`s own filmmaking forays–”Beyond the Law,”
”Wild 90” and ”Maidstone”–16 mm. improvisatory features all released in 1968. Most critics regarded them warily, as Mailer`s home-movie
advertisements for himself, amusing perhaps, but indulgent and inconsequential. When Mailer`s directing is remembered today, it is probably for the rough-and-tumble, real-life fight, caught on camera for ”Maidstone,” in which Mailer`s teeth sank unceremoniously into actor Rip Torn`s unguarded ear.
However, all that was a long time ago, and Norman Mailer, who will be 64 on Saturday, tries again. For the first time in his life, he is directing a scripted movie with a thoroughly professional cast and crew, and with significant money behind it. Cannon Films has provided a $6-million budget for Mailer to compose the screenplay and direct a 35 mm. film of his 1984 novel,
”Tough Guys Don`t Dance.”
The book was written, and also set, in Mailer`s summer residence of Provincetown, Mass., at the end of Cape Cod. Here, Eugene O`Neill penned his legendary theater pieces and the Pilgrims first landed. ”I love Provincetown and thought it would be a wonderful place to make a film,” Mailer says. So instead of returning to his Brooklyn home last fall, he stayed on in Provincetown to shoot ”Tough Guys.” The film stars Ryan O`Neal as Mailer`s anxiety-ridden protagonist, Tim Madden, in search of his missing, perhaps murdered, current wife. Isabella Rossellini plays Madeleine, Madden`s ex-spouse, a world-weary Italian.
`In the early movies, I wouldn`t really call myself a director,” Mailer said, sitting down for an interview. He is between camera setups in the attic office of his Provincetown home, and ”Tough Guys” interiors are being shot below. ”I didn`t spend any time at all with the cameramen. I`d leave it up to them what to film. There were no scripts, and I worked as an actor. I wanted to, so I could push the stories one way or another from the center of the action. Afterwards, I took forever editing them. The last film, ”Maidstone,” has 45 hours of sound and film, and it took me three years to get it down to 90 minutes.”
Was it worth the trouble? Mailer acknowledges the criticism of his 1968 trilogy, but he also feels an affection for his old movies. ”They had great stuff but they also had great flaws,” he says. ”The sound was sub-par. That`s what sank them finally. You could hardly hear them.
”Those movies were done mostly without professional actors, because I didn`t have scripts. But you can`t do a movie with a script without professional actors. That`s my conclusion, unless you have an unlimited budget. But if you`re working on a tight budget as with `Tough Guys,` you`d better have real pros because the irony is, once the production begins, you have no time to spend with the actors. The lighting takes so long, the sound has to work, and so on. We were lucky to have two weeks of rehearsal before we began.”
How did Mailer`s veteran technicians react to being ordered about by a novelist-turned-moviemaker?
”It was no secret to the crew that this was my first movie, by their measure, but I haven`t felt any tension about that. They`ve been wonderful. I feel like the captain of a very good ship with a marvelous crew, and I`m trying to learn how to run the ship. I haven`t directed with any great authority. I haven`t been the kind of director who says, `Get that person off the set,` because I don`t feel that way. I feel relatively relaxed.
”Most of direction is foreseeing problems and making corrections when there are problems. As you get older, you tend to have a lot of small wisdom tucked in about 40 different nooks and crannies, and film directing brings this out. You must know about carpentry, bookkeeping, the whims of actors and actresses–your mind goes to a different place every 30 minutes. I like that.”
Below, Mailer`s elegant two-story brick house on the bay side of the Cape has been made over, the interior redone to match the gaudy, fast-lane personality of Madden`s wife, Patty Lareine (played by Debra Sandlund). Lareine is a determined dyed-blond, and so Mailer`s home is now painted yellow; and lemon-colored paintings, badly imitative of Matisse, clog the walls. The kitchen–another ”Tough Guys” set–is a permanent mess, and bluejeaned, parka-clad crew members race up and down stairs.
On this day, deep in the sixth week of a seven-week shooting schedule, Mailer spends 16 hours sequestered in an upstairs corner bedroom, supervising the filming and refilming of Ryan O`Neal. In bathrobe and underpants, O`Neal, as Tim Madden, is in a despondent mood. His is in mourning for his runaway, missing wife. For the camera, O`Neal climbs out of the bed looking suicidal. He goes into the bathroom and writes the number of days without his wife on the mirror in shaving cream. The shaving-cream scenes are shot many ways, and with various numbers: 21, 24, 27. That`s because O`Neal`s Madden repeats this ritual several times in ”Tough Guys,” on several unhappy mornings.
Ryan O`Neal is very funny, a truly clever cutup, which keeps him alert through so many tedious takes. Once, he walks in the room like a sleepwalking victim of Dracula, declaring, ”The genius returns, hands held high!” Another time, he collapses on his back on the floor, declaring, in a Jerry Lewis-like voice, ”Ryan is tired!” in a mock attempt to get Mailer to stop shooting. And after perhaps the seventh shot of himself placing a shaving-cream ”24”
on the bathroom mirror, he makes a pretend phone call to Cannon`s budget-conscious executive, Menahem Golan, saying ”Menahem? Hello! We need two more weeks shooting the numbers!”
And Mailer? He makes like a true director, not competing, wit for wit, with his star actor. Mostly, he observes, standing quietly by, hands shoved deep into the front pockets of his pants, swaying on the heels of his Nikes. Mailer spends his time consulting with the technicians, discussing lighting and camera angles; and, yes, at least once in the afternoon Mailer peers into the camera to see what O`Neal is doing at the bathroom mirror.
Of course, Mailer`s humor cannot be held completely in check, especially around an old friend like O`Neal, whom he has known for years in New York. They used to box together. While the camera sets up, Mailer wanders over and whispers to his star a smutty story about a staid Harvard University man washing his hands in a men`s room. They both laugh.
A few minutes later, O`Neal races out of the house to change his makeup in a dressing room across the street. Clothed only in his bathrobe, he charges toward the sidewalk, crying out, ”`Blue Velvet`!”
Isabella Rossellini is away in New York for the weekend, but several of the ”Tough Guys” principals have stuck it out in Provincetown. One is veteran Hollywood actor, Lawrence Tierney, who starred in such 1940s ”B”
cult classics as ”Dillinger” (1945) and ”Born to Kill” (1947), and is coming back to major roles as Tim Madden`s longshoreman father. The other is 24-year-old Debra Sandlund, the ”discovery” of the Mailer film, making her movie debut as the blond bombshell Patty Lareine.
The Lareine character Sandlund plays is a rather abnormal one. ”I think you can look at her exterior and decide she`s a bitch,” says Sandlund. In one of the more unusual scenes in the film, Sandlund has to bury a decapitated head. ”I`m off in the woods in my own world, feeling the effects of my life in Provincetown, and the effects of having shot and killed somebody. Norman wrote me a little monologue, a little aria of disconnected thoughts, something very literary. My difficulty was to try to connect those disconnected thoughts. Unlike Patty, I, Debra, haven`t shot anyone ever.”
The ”aria” part was easy. Sandlund holds a master`s degree in music from Northwestern University, where she did theatre and operas. The Mount Prospect native was flown out to Hollywood to appear on several television beauty pageants, and her talent was performing an aria from Rossini`s ”La Cenerentola” (Cinderella). She won a trip for two to the Fiji Islands on Dream Girl USA after compressing the six-minute aria into a compact 1 1/2 minutes.
In August, she moved to LA, got an agent, appeared in one episode of
”The A-Team”; and then, out of nowhere, Sandlund survived four auditions for ”Tough Guys,” landing the precious part as Ryan O`Neal`s homicidal wife. ”The night before callback, I went to a bookstore in Westwood, got
`Tough Guys,` and stood there and skimmed a Mailer biography. I knew little about him. Maybe ignorance makes one less intimidated. At the audition, he was very cordial, and made it all seem like a rehearsal. Ryan and I did scenes together, and Norman directed us. He explained that this character was orginally designed after Roxanne Pulitzer. He showed me her picture and a story about her in Vanity Fair.”
Sandlund, standing in Provincetown several months later, a sensual presence on the set in a tight pink outfit and white boots, smiles at her luck. ”It`s wild to be in LA for only a month-and-a half, and than be flown to New York for a `Tough Guys` costume fitting. But it feels very, very right being here. I feel deserving.”
Back in his attic office, director Norman Mailer is glad to talk about his assembled cast. ”When we auditioned Debra Sundland, everybody agreed that she got the role. I must say, I`ve never regretted it since. She`s terrific. And people who think they know Ryan O`Neal as an actor are going to be surprised. He`s wonderfully adroit, nimble, mercurial. He`s a witty actor. And working with Kubrick on `Barry Lyndon` didn`t do him any harm.”
Mailer hesitates to compare ”Tough Guys” with any other film, though saying that, ”Next to the really hardboiled school it`s more medium-boiled” and that ”of the genre I`m invading, the film I respect the most is
`Chinatown,` a wonderful picture with a wonderful script.”
How does he rate his invasion as a director? ”To begin directing at my age, it`s vainglorious to have any suspicions you`ll end up as a great director. Kurasawa wasn`t made in a day, nor Bergman, nor Fellini. Coppola spends his life breathing films. But I think I can be a good director, and maybe a very good director. I have a literary sense that I can apply to film. Because of my writing background, I have a sense of character that`s probably deeper than a lot of directors`, and actors love if you can tell them about who they are playing. Otherwise, they have a terrible problem creating the characters themselves, and often these don`t fit the plot.”
After five weeks of non-stop ”Tough Guys” shooting, Mailer seems cool, confident, in an amiable mood, and having quite a good time. Could it be that film directing is . . . easy?
”Easier than writing novels anyway,” Mailer answers. ”Writing novels is so lonely, and it demands everything in you. It`s enormous pressure. You never quit the work. As a novelist, I dream about the book and just worry all the time. It`s like being in debt and trying to keep up payments. It`s like being in prison.
”I sleep better as a director than I ever did as a novelist. If I were younger, it might be different. But at my age, my character is formed. It`s not going to be changed directing films.”
