Too Long
Too much time has passed. I lost the hunger to stay consistent and got flabby with my writing muscles. I need to remedy this and though the easier way would be to do something small to get myself going again, I say to hell with that and will now attempt to do my most dangerous opinion thus far.
The structure I have in mind for this review will be different compared to other pages of madness that have been written on this blog for this will be a review in 2 parts. The first part will be my movie watching genius having to devolve into something academic in order to dive into the mechanics of a novel. A novel I read. From beginning to end. It has been some time since I could admit to having pulled that off. The second part of the review will be the cinematic adaptation of said novel in which the author actually managed to bamboozle money from Cannon films to write and direct it. Creating one of the most critical derided films to come out of the Cannon films library and that is saying something.
The novel/film in question is Tough Guys Don't Dance and the author is a personal favorite of mine and possibly one of the greatest to ever do it in the 20th century; Norman Mailer.
Part I
Me and my boy Mailer
Before traversing through the minefield of reviewing the novel, I would like to say a few words regarding Norman Mailer and his influence along with a couple of those words being that of appreciation.
The first novel of his I ever got around to reading was An American Dream. This being my 23rd year of living and the dreams of writing were still thriving. Loneliness playing a great deal in life at the time which lead me down the rabbit hole of reading since I was too weak to have a taste for any hard drugs but there was enough alcohol around to keep me going. I started the novel but never got around to finishing it and then a year or so later, in need of something to kill the time of sobriety, found the novel again.
Reading it nearly in a day's time and from there, I was hypnotized by the writings of this man but the hypnosis lasted only long enough for me to purchase in a second hand store two other novels of his; Why Are We In Vietnam? and The Naked and the Dead. In that same space & time while traversing in that bookstore I had found the complete short story collection of Bernard Malamud and became hooked on his writings and so those two novels sat on my shelf unread for some time. A few years later, I would find myself bored on another sober Saturday night and with coffee in hand, traveled down the aisles of another book store. One of those big chain affairs since the Libertarian owned one was too far now with my most recent move.
This being a moment in my life where time became much more tangible to deal with and could be spent accordingly to whatever I deemed worthy and it was here that I came across The Executioner's Song. If you have not seen the size of this novel then you do not know of it's girth which is mighty.
A Beefy Boy
Holding a thousand page book feels good but the commitment to reading every single word on every single page is far too tedious of a commitment but then I read the introduction. The one written by Dave Eggers in which he makes the claim that this will be the easiest thousand pages I will ever get to read and so with that challenge along with the possible threat of sending an angry letter in response to how he was wrong, I bought that book on the spot.
It is with some pain that I have to admit that this Dave Eggers fellow was correct and it was the easiest thousand pages I ever got through. I actually ended up writing the man a letter in regard to his introduction to the book along with mentioning my appreciation of Mailer.
The Dave Eggers Letter
What the hell I actually wrote I cannot remember but the fact that he responded is much appreciated for a letter in reply is always a welcome sight.
From this novel, I felt something stir within my psyche that this was an author to read. So I read the 2 previous mentioned novels,The Naked and the Dead and Why Are We In Vietnam?, and now having finished Tough Guys Don't Dance I bring you up to date as to why I would read what some consider to be his worst novel.
Preface to the Novel
This was not a novel that was born out of a desire but more out of necessity. To quote Mailer from his fantastic book The Spooky Art:
“Sometimes you write a novel because it comes out of elements in yourself that-no better word- are deep. The subject appeals to some root in your psyche, and you set out on a vertiginous venture. But there are other times when you may get into an altogether different situation. You just damn well have to write a book for no better reason than that your economic problems are pressing.”
This was the mindset he had when having to sit down and write Tough Guys Don't Dance. Prior to this, Mailer had taken around 11 years to finish his previous novel Ancient Evenings and so with those years in strong focus to 1 project it would be easy to understand that the man was tired and took a sabbath of no writing for 10 months.
The problem being that he had a 2 book deal with his publisher Little,Brown and after 11 years they justifiably did not have the patience to keep paying the writer and so by month 10 of his vacation they asked whether he had another book to turn in or if he was going to pay back the advances of the last past 10 months.
Such a predicament being the running start to the adventure of writing a novel in 2 months time.
“I set out. It's one of the few times I've felt blessed as a writer. I knew there was a limit to how good the book could be, but the style came through, and that is always half of a novel. You can write a very bad book, but if the style is first-rate, then you've got something that will live-not forever, but for a decent time. The shining example might be G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday. It has an undeniably silly plot unless you invest a great deal into it. A worshipful right-wing critic can do a blitheringly wonderful thesis on the symbolic leaps and acrobatics of The Man Who Was Thursday, but actually, it's about as silly as a Jules Verne novel. Yet the writing itself is fabulous. The style is extraordinary. The apercus are marvelous. The Man Who Was Thursday proves the point: Style is half of a novel. And for some good reason, unknown to me, the style came through in Tough Guys Don't Dance. The writing was probably, for the most part, as good as I can muster. The plot, however, was just as close to silly. That was the price to pay for the speed of composition."
With all this in mind, I was quite excited to start reading.
The Novel
It’s starts off familiar enough as these stories go with the main character of Tim Madden being in a bummer of a situation that most murder mysteries adhere to but as the novel goes on there is a sense of something original, i.e. interesting, to the murder mystery going down during the bleak winter season occurring in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
The despondent protagonist Tim Madden, a convicted felon now struggling writer, wakes up on the 20th something day of his wife having left him and repeats the ritual of getting through the day with a couple drinks in him. Fumbling around as a struggling writer and wondering what he was going to do in the near future since all he had as marketable skills was working as a bartender. Not much else work to be had for a guy with a cocaine bust to his name.
Though this night provides a change of pace as he gets mixed up with some out of towners and gets involved into having himself a crazy night out. So crazy in fact that he wakes up the next morning with a hangover from hell and a new tattoo. Then he finds blood on the passenger seat of his Porsche and a blacked out memory of what just happened last night.
He decides to make a trip out to the woods, where he has a marijuana stash, to see if there are any clues as to what happened last night and ends up finding the decapitated head of a woman alongside his stash. He leaves in a hurry and starts to overthink as the novel progresses on whether or not he committed a murder during the aforementioned night.
He goes around town to get more clues about the murder at hand and in doing so meets up with the various weirdo's that Provincetown has to offer during the winter season. Every single one of them giving off the vibe that they know more than they care to share and could have had a hand in the decapitated head in his marijuana stash. The most vicious and likely of suspects being being the Vietnam Veteran/Undercover Federal Agent Alvin Luther Regency.
Not the most unfamiliar of set ups but the point of interest I had and what kept me reading is the fact that the main character is so morose and broken as a man that he sort of fumbles along in the mystery that ends up solving itself right in front of him more so than him going around like a protagonist in charge from a Dashiell Hammet or Raymond Chandler novel trying to solve the crime.
This novel, compared to my limited experience to others in the genre I must admit, differs greatly from the fact that Mailer spends most of his time writing pages about Tim Madden’s past. Not just Tim’s, which we get most of, but of those he knows and their relationship to one another. More and more small pieces of history reveals how much more bigger their world and lives were before ending up in Provincetown.
Obviously the more important of a character to the story then the richer the history will be presented and this is especially true when it comes to the true heart of the novel; Tim Madden and his father. A good chunk of time is spent with Tim thinking about his father and contemplating their relationship as father and son. A situation that is all too familiar in American culture where the father and son are two Men that have little in common in regard to who they are and must maintain a sense of stoicism for any sense of emotion being said or expressed is too strange to be understood between the two. Honestly, near the end of the novel when Tim and his father meet up and just start to hang around and talk is probably the highlight of the book.
Even with all the enjoyment I had reading this it is fair to say that with the 2 month turnaround that the murder mystery in of itself is truly ridiculous. It all turning out to be a combination of a lovers quarrel on one spectrum to a revenge plot devised by a man who was spurned after a marriage gone wrong with these two crashing together to form the crux of the mystery. Tim Madden stuck in the middle making this a tragedy that rides the line between comedic and dramatic. Mailer somehow pulling it all off as he himself writes between the lines of ludicrous and unbelievable and somehow someway makes the novel feel grounded enough to make it all work.
Overall the novel far excels the standard practices and expectations of a murder mystery by rising above the threshold of just being another piece of genre fiction. Even with a murder mystery that doesn’t offer a ton of thrills there is enough intrigue to keep the pages moving becoming a novel with a murder mystery inside it more so than a murder mystery novel
Part II
Norman Mailer The Filmmaker
Upon researching the adaptation of Tough Guys Don’t Dance, it came as a great surprise to see that earlier in life Mailer had gone on to have a semi-successful underground career in film-making. With the consensus being the culmination of all his techniques learned and talent grown during his underground years transcending into his cinematic adaptation of Tough Guys Don’t Dance.
Obviously as a fan of his novels and of low budget do it yourself cinema, it was an easy decision to dive into his work and with Criterion having released all three films together released under their Eclipse banner, I happily bought them and prepared myself to see the trajectory of Mailer’s growth as a film-maker.
Wild 90
A 90 minute cinematic adventure of Norman Mailer and his two buddies, Mickey Knox and Buzz Farbar, playing gangsters having to hide out in a studio apartment in Brooklyn from a job gone wrong. At least that’s what I came to understand as far the plot of the film is concerned.
There isn’t much of plot since there wasn’t a script to begin with but just the central idea of 3 guys hanging around and saying whatever comes out of their head. A continuous series of tangents that ultimately go nowhere as the title cards of one night passing after another are the only real measures of time passing.
The film starts off on the 20th something day of them hiding out in an apartment and their behavior towards one another gets more and more rambunctious as the nights go on. Crude behavior with crude language to match all throughout. Mickey Knox is the real star by stealing the show with his quips being the sharpest.
There is one moment early on where I felt as though it was just documentation of 3 persons talking shit to each other and what follows will be a transcription:
The Scene
The Characters: The Prince, Cameo, and Twenty Years
3 gangsters sitting around and talking shit. Cameo looks at Twenty Years with a fuck you look.
CAMEO
Look at those buttons pop.
The Prince looks over at Twenty Years and joins in.
THE PRINCE
You're gettin' fat in your asshole.
Twenty Years looks over The Prince then looks at Cameo with a fuck you look.
TWENTY YEARS
You cheap fuck. Look at this. We're all eatin' and drinkin'.
What'd you pay for here? The Kleenex? The tissue?
Cameo takes a sip of his coffee as Twenty Years continues to berate him.
TWENTY YEARS
You brought that up with ya, huh?
Cameo puts down the coffee and reaches into his pocket.
CAMEO
I'll tell you what I'll do.
TWENTY YEARS
You're the cheapest white man I know.
All the money you have on you is from me.
Cameo pulls out a roll of cash and starts counting it in front of the two.
CAMEO
Put up or shut up.
TWENTY YEARS
I never seen so many singles in my life.
CAMEO
See that?
TWENTY YEARS
That's what we call a nigger roll, baby.
One 20 on the outisde-ooh!- and singles inside.
End Scene
Having heard some racist shit from various persons throughout my life it was fairly easy to come to the conclusion that that phrase regarding the money roll being said out loud made me gravitate towards the idea that this is a phrase said by someone who had been around a block or two of certain areas where mentalities such as this grows. A layer of realism placed on top of this strange film that makes it stand out compared to other films trying to evoke that same feeling.
For it is that sense of “realness” that many films try to provoke but ultimately in their search for it end up creating something a little too artificial. This film though manages to feel real from the crude and rude conversational naturalness with the overall mood feeling more like documentary of 3 jerks than anything else which is why it’s possibly one of the first movies that is worth hearing more than seeing since the fly on the wall shots aren’t all that interesting to take in since those are improvised as well. The language though, there is something tangible there to appreciate for what they say is way too convincing to think of it other than just reality.
As the movie goes on, they continue on their shit talking with various people coming around to the apartment to visit the 3 men in hiding and they all interact and improvise until the movie sort of just ends.
A film that is the absolute definition of perfect background noise to play when throwing a party and not all your guests are planning on showing up. Or maybe you are a lonely person and need to have something that sounds human but is not necessarily the physical presence of another human being. Or whenever you need to have people talking nearby bug you as you try write but refuse to accept the fact that nothing is coming out of the pen no matter if you were alone or there are some assholes nearby bothering you.
Beyond the Law
Norman Mailer’s 2nd film takes place in a single night split between a police precinct where the dredges of policing is seen at its most vile in the various interrogation rooms with various suspects with the other half taking place at a nearby bar where a trio of cops meet up with some girls and relax after such a hard day at the office.
From the very start of the film, it is easy to see the growth of Mailer’s film-making prowess from his first film to his second. There is a structure, a very loose structure, to the film that gives it an easier pace to bear more so than the running wild tangents of Wild 90 as well as being able to make certain characters stick out as being far more memorable than just a memorable quick quip or two to remember them by.
The scenes in the police precinct are for the par as low budget films go with single room scenes taking up a majority of the time spent there but they hit a nerve of reality that few films with similar raging cops seem to hit. This “Reality” I mention though is most likely not an actual representation of “Reality” when it comes to police work but there is something palpable here that made me feel that this is “Real”. It’s most likely the fact that there is a richer situation at hand for the actors to improvise with since the film cuts willingly from one interrogation to another with no true sense of there being an ending regarding the fate of any of the suspects and their predicament.
Then the other half of the movie taking place at a bar to show the personal lives of three cops played by Norman Mailer, Mickey Knox, and Buzz Farbar, the 3 stars of Wild 90, where the three are playing the meanest cops around but out of the precinct at the bar, their whole agenda is to just try and impress some late night girls with their tales of policing while avoiding the troubles of the personal lives like girlfriends and wives.
Mailer though plays the outlier of the three. Playing the lieutenant/leader of the bunch who roams around from interrogation room to interrogation room as a big man in charge. Never flinching or dropping a bead of sweat when the mayor shows up regarding a complaint he received regarding their methodology.
Off the clock he heads to a small restaurant, one where he visits often since he knows the waiter’s name, where he meets his wife. The only person that could conceivably go head to head with him as she drops the bomb of wanting a divorce. He doesn’t know how to react to this and starts to insult but he knows that won’t work. It won’t get the response he needs so he goes off into the night and crashes the little party his underlings are having.
The night goes on and gets worst with the two girls leaving them high and dry with the two underlings then leaving the lieutenant alone with a woman suspect that they had interrogated earlier in the night. The lieutenant loosens up a great deal but when his wife appears he settles back down and accepts the fact that the party is over.
The mood of the picture is what sells it for me as the characters and their motives are so genuine. The documentary style keeps the movie moving along as there is never a standing still camera shot in any of the interrogations but when the personal lives come to play, there is no means for the camera to be anything but still to watch the drama unfold.
These cops are mean because that is who they are. They are conniving because that is who they are. Their goals are ultimately selfish and when having to face the consequences of a decision made outside of their control, they react like children until an adult arrives and says ‘Stop’. From his underground stint, this film is my favorite of the 3.
Maidstone
The culmination of Mailer’s efforts and knowledge of film making at this point in time would end up in his 3rd film Maidstone. A pseudo-documentary following around a man named Norman T. Kinglsey, played by Norman Kingsley Mailer, as he goes about in making a hardcore adaptation of Bunuel’s Belle de Jour while at the same time considering and contemplating his political possibility of running for president.
I doubt Mailer went to tremendous lengths to portray Kingsley as the most ego driven person to ever sit down in a directors chair but by god, he does a great job in being just that. Showing off his acting abilities during the pre-production process by being tremendously brutal to every young woman trying to vie for his attention for a starring role and then ceremoniously chopping them down to size with every comment regarding every insignificant beauty standard that they fail to achieve.
There is only so much ego that a film director can share on a set and so when
he isn’t directing, Kingley spends the rest of his time answering
questions from interviewers ranging from left wing feminists to black
militants with the results of their reactions seeming more real than
fictional. Political tangents that don’t necessarily go anywhere
interesting in of themselves but act as moments of character building
for Kingsley as a whole.
The film making process itself is hardly seen at all with just moments of a camera in shot filming a scene that neither the film nor the viewer can easily interpret as something understandably and as the supposed film within a film goes on, the range of madness seemingly rises higher and higher. Scenes of personal relationships are few and far between the madness on screen but when those moments suddenly appear, it’s a strange sobering feeling felt as Kingsley is confronted with the consequences of his many outrageous actions.
The feeling of documentary this time around leading to a more relaxed structure with each section being named and numbered as it trudges on to the ultimate climax where the presentation of reality and fiction are so blurred that it could leave you confused as to what exactly what the film is as Mailer as himself congratulates the cast and crew for the hard work they just pulled off but something is amiss. It doesn’t end there as Rip Torn is on the edge being unable to decide whether he is existing in a film or in reality.
Throughout the film, underneath the main narrative is a group that appears every so often continuing a conversation regarding how they plan on assassinating Kingsley. The theme of assassination being prevalent but not just by this shadow group planning one but this film being in production right around the time of Bobby Kennedy getting killed adds a strange mood on top of its hectic visuals, and as the film nears the end Rip Torn gets himself a hammer and tries to kill Kingsley. Or is he trying to kill Mailer?
The scene in question is one that I had knew about and had seen before but in the context of the film as a whole, it was something that I believe every filmmaker strives to achieve in getting on film. A true moment of spontaneity so compelling that you can’t look away.
All in all, Maidstone manages to rise up to a level of greatness that was unexpected and if there was a film to be remembered as Mailer’s best effort in film making then this is it.
The Guy’s Of Toughness That Do Not Dare To Dance Review
Now having gained the knowledge of the films that Mailer went about making before this particular picture, I have the advantage of seeing what some consider to be a truly terrible film while others believe it to be his best film and unfortunately, I would have to agree far more with the former than the latter.
The film adaptation of Tough Guys Don’t Dance moves away from the structure of the novel, one where paranoia and intrigue rules the overall mood of the murder mystery, and instead follows the tried and true measure of film noirs by having the main character Tim Madden recollect and narrate every event that has happened to him in the past week regarding the murder mystery he got himself involved in. Telling all this to his father who arrives far earlier in the film than the book and doesn't leave as strong as an impression even though its Lawrence Tierney playing the father.
Outside of this big break from the novel, there are other differences from various characters with various subplots being taken out and the shortening of certain sequences that in the novel takes only a few sentences to get across and in a film would have taken much longer to try and sell the idea. It makes sense in constructing a novel adaptation as to why these choices were made, especially for a film running nearly 2 hours time, but what ends up as a final product is something altogether uneven.
The stuffed pace of the film leaves the viewer no chance to breathe and take in the sights and sounds of the murder mystery that the main character finds himself in. There is no real reflection or consideration or contemplation that takes place in the film as it shuffles quickly from Tim Madden narrating one scene transitioning to another. Remembering character names is a talent when sitting down to watch this.
The score for the film is some of the most forgettable pieces of music I have ever had the opportunity to hear which is such a great shame. The work of Angelo Badalamenti varies depending on who his collaborators are with some of his most memorable music coming about from working with David Lynch. It’s a great shame that the music isn’t as strong or memorable except for that one piece playing a couple time throughout to create a dramatic expression.
The most memorable piece that plays is the one playing during that infamous scene of Ryan O’Neal screaming ‘Oh God! Oh Man!” which apparently was a scene that Mailer had demanded O’Neal say verbatim instead of being able to try and work with the material to make it stronger. O’Neal is giving it all he has in that scene and it’s not necessarily one I can join in the laughter of others when watching when knowing what the deal was during the production of this film.
The performances I have to admit, or at least I will acknowledge that I enjoyed them, are pretty good for the most part. Ryan O’Neal looking like a drunk who is on the edge of losing it is an easy look for him to pull off on the outside but the emotional highs of such a task seemed to just be outside his reach. Any scene of him having to interact with others passes off as convincing but having to interact with an object while holding a conversation is where you can see the cracks of his confidence of performing. Isabella Rossellini is good in the small amount of time she has as well as the shallowness of the material she has to work with but it is Wings Hauser’s performance that steals the show and is worth the price of admission.
It’s been reported and acknowledge by Mailer himself that he had many of feuds while making this film but it is apparently the working relationship with Wings Hauser that was the most troubling. Hauser would later on acknowledge that his favorite part of the film-making process was when he was able to go home when it all said and done. The performance he gives though is one of greatest balancing acts in acting for you can see the madness in his eyes in every scene and that just beyond that madness, just a millimeter away or so, you can feel as though he is absolutely about to go ape shit or just start to guffaw out loud at the lines he has to recite.
It is such a fantastic force of menace he plays all throughout and sadly, there is little to any sense of his madness being anything but a show since he doesn’t do much of anything in the movie except talk. Talking about the murder mystery, about the suspects in the murder mystery, about the past of the characters involvement with each other before the murder mystery, and most of all why the murdering and mystery came to be in the first place. It’s plot important but sure makes the film drag on and its not just his character but every character that opens their mouth. All of them just talking.
With the lack of improvisation, it is interesting to see that Mailer went for a more constrained style compared to the documentary style that he had done in his underground career. There is not a single camera movement that had any sense of spontaneity but instead, each shot seemed to have been meticulously planned to just be this one single shot. Strangely enough this restraint reminded me of the visual style of Ozu or Bresson except the material here is in no way transcendental but just jelly fillings of a genre movie. I can only assume that this rigidness involved a producer on set making sure that he got his shots in but it could also be a lack of imagination on Mailer's part. I can't be certain of either scenario and can only speculate though.
The fact that Cannon films went about in giving money to Norman Mailer to direct an adaptation of his novel is certainly a strange decision that ultimately lead to this strange film that they probably didn’t count on getting. It’s a shame Mailer didn’t continue on with his what he learned during the early part of his film-making career specifically with that documentary style since that look alone could have possibly brought a stronger sense of paranoia that the movie is lacking and the novel is swelling with.
The Mailer Conclusion
Though his film-making career isn’t anything to truly exclaim and shout to the ends of the world that these films must be seen, there is merit. Obviously the first 3 films from the underground era offer an interesting lesson to any fans of no budget cinema and the measures in which reality & fiction can blend to leave you uncertain of the two when it comes to film-making. To aspiring filmmakers though, there is a greater lesson to be learned which is to see what films could be outside of the expectations of what they should by others. Mailer went out with his own money and made an interesting movie, a pretty good movie, and a great movie. That ain’t too bad for someone that just went out and about to make a film.
As far as Tough Guys Don’t Dance, though the novel isn’t great there are certain ideas and themes in it in which a great movie could come to be and unfortunately this isn’t it. It’s not necessarily the most interesting of film noirs nor good but it is an interesting case study as to what shouldn’t be done when going about in crafting one.