82.22a

“Norman Mailer Tackles the Screen.” Article-interview by William Wolf. New York, 8 November, 86–87. Interviewed about the film version of The Executioner’s Song (79.13), Mailer says that the execution scene “just knocks me down every time I see it.” Asked if he considered departing from the book in his screenplay, he said, “I’m not sure it could be done in a good way, because what you had there was invaluable. There was a flavor of the real. How do you throw away the book? Do you write an imaginary story about a man like Gary Gilmore? Then you’re throwing away the reality.”