10,115
edits
The Mailer Review/Volume 1, 2007/The Untold Story Behind The Executioner’s Song: A Conversation with Lawrence Schiller: Difference between revisions
The Mailer Review/Volume 1, 2007/The Untold Story Behind The Executioner’s Song: A Conversation with Lawrence Schiller (view source)
Revision as of 09:27, 7 July 2020
, 7 July 2020Move tweaks.
(Created page.) |
m (Move tweaks.) |
||
| (5 intermediate revisions by the same user not shown) | |||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
{{DISPLAYTITLE:The Untold Story Behind ''The Executioner’s Song'': A Conversation with Lawrence Schiller}} | {{DISPLAYTITLE:<span style="font-size:22px;">{{BASEPAGENAME}}/</span>The Untold Story Behind ''The Executioner’s Song'': A Conversation with Lawrence Schiller}} | ||
{{MR01}} | {{MR01}} | ||
{{abstract | {{Byline|last=Severs|first=Jeffrey|abstract=This probing interview focuses on Schiller’s involvement with Mailer on ''The Executioner’s Song''.|url=https://prmlr.us/mr07seve}} | ||
[[Lawrence Schiller|Larry Schiller]] is just back from China. I meet him at his Los Angeles home on January 14, 2007, one day after his return from interviewing 17 contemporary Chinese artists and their families. Schiller’s goal is to build from their stories an intimate history of China from the end of World War II to 2001. When completed, the book will join a long list of media projects he has created, usually in intense collaborations with co-authors and screenwriters, and often with controversy as his backdrop. After making a name for himself as a photojournalist while still a teenager in the 1950s, Schiller got Jack Ruby’s deathbed interview, made headlines with his coverage of the Manson Family murders, and spent time with Timothy Leary. For his buying of exclusive rights to true-crime stories, he came to be regarded by many as “a world-historical ambulance chaser,” in ''Time'' magazine’s words. In forty years of journalism Schiller’s collaborations have included a biography of Lenny Bruce (with Albert Goldman); W. Eugene Smith’s photo essay on pollution in Japan, ''Minamata''; and books on master spy Robert Hanssen and the Jon Benét Ramsey murder. He has also produced or directed more than fifteen television films, winners of five Emmys. | [[Lawrence Schiller|Larry Schiller]] is just back from China. I meet him at his Los Angeles home on January 14, 2007, one day after his return from interviewing 17 contemporary Chinese artists and their families. Schiller’s goal is to build from their stories an intimate history of China from the end of World War II to 2001. When completed, the book will join a long list of media projects he has created, usually in intense collaborations with co-authors and screenwriters, and often with controversy as his backdrop. After making a name for himself as a photojournalist while still a teenager in the 1950s, Schiller got Jack Ruby’s deathbed interview, made headlines with his coverage of the Manson Family murders, and spent time with Timothy Leary. For his buying of exclusive rights to true-crime stories, he came to be regarded by many as “a world-historical ambulance chaser,” in ''Time'' magazine’s words. In forty years of journalism Schiller’s collaborations have included a biography of Lenny Bruce (with Albert Goldman); W. Eugene Smith’s photo essay on pollution in Japan, ''Minamata''; and books on master spy Robert Hanssen and the Jon Benét Ramsey murder. He has also produced or directed more than fifteen television films, winners of five Emmys. | ||
But Schiller will likely be best remembered for his work with Norman Mailer. Schiller conceived of ''[[Marilyn: A Biography|Marilyn]]'' in 1973 and ''[[The Faith of Graffiti]]'' in 1974, bringing together photographs and Mailer’s text for each. More recently he did interviews in Belarus with Mailer for ''[[ | But Schiller will likely be best remembered for his work with Norman Mailer. Schiller conceived of ''[[Marilyn: A Biography|Marilyn]]'' in 1973 and ''[[The Faith of Graffiti]]'' in 1974, bringing together photographs and Mailer’s text for each. More recently he did interviews in Belarus with Mailer for ''[[Oswald’s Tale]]'', and Mailer wrote the screenplay for ''American Tragedy'', from Schiller’s best-selling book (with James Willwerth) on the inner workings of the O.J. Simpson trial. In between came Schiller’s and Mailer’s greatest achievement: ''[[The Executioner's Song|The Executioner’s Song]]''. Over two nights in July 1976, three months after his release from prison, longtime convict Gary Gilmore murdered gas station attendant Max Jensen and hotel manager Ben Bushnell near Salt Lake City, making away with meager amounts of cash. When Gilmore, convicted, refused appeals and demanded to be executed, he attracted worldwide attention. Shot by firing squad on January 17, 1977, he became the first inmate put to death in the U.S. in ten years and the first since the lifting of a four-year national moratorium on the death penalty. | ||
As readers of Mailer’s Pulitzer Prize–winning “true life novel” know, Schiller sensed a great story in Utah shortly after learning of Gilmore’s suicide pact with teenage mother Nicole Baker Barrett, his lover in the weeks prior to the killings. Schiller’s quest, to buy the movie and book rights to Gilmore’s story and interview him on death row, had its critics. In a 1977 profile, ''Esquire'' dubbed Schiller “Agent of Death” for his tactics. But in a consummate twist of Mailer’s self-consciousness about media, Schiller’s own deals would become the central conflict of the second half of ''Executioner’s Song'', itself a product of those deals. Schiller later directed a television miniseries from Mailer’s screenplay, which was nominated for an Emmy. Tommy Lee Jones won the Best Actor Emmy for his portrayal of Gilmore. | As readers of Mailer’s Pulitzer Prize–winning “true life novel” know, Schiller sensed a great story in Utah shortly after learning of Gilmore’s suicide pact with teenage mother Nicole Baker Barrett, his lover in the weeks prior to the killings. Schiller’s quest, to buy the movie and book rights to Gilmore’s story and interview him on death row, had its critics. In a 1977 profile, ''Esquire'' dubbed Schiller “Agent of Death” for his tactics. But in a consummate twist of Mailer’s self-consciousness about media, Schiller’s own deals would become the central conflict of the second half of ''Executioner’s Song'', itself a product of those deals. Schiller later directed a television miniseries from Mailer’s screenplay, which was nominated for an Emmy. Tommy Lee Jones won the Best Actor Emmy for his portrayal of Gilmore. | ||
| Line 18: | Line 15: | ||
Schiller and I spent only six hours together, but in that time he revealed to me details of his often stormy relationship with Mailer, his encounters with Gary and Nicole, and the many deals he pulled off in making the book and film. | Schiller and I spent only six hours together, but in that time he revealed to me details of his often stormy relationship with Mailer, his encounters with Gary and Nicole, and the many deals he pulled off in making the book and film. | ||
''JS'': You started your career as a sports photographer, correct? | '''JS''': You started your career as a sports photographer, correct? | ||
''LS'': My younger brother and I were raised as athletes. We enjoyed playing tennis. When he beat me in the 11-and-under I realized that I was more heavy than he was. My way of participating in athletics from then on was to become a sports photographer. My father was a photographer and ran a portrait studio in San Diego and eventually opened a camera store in Pacific Beach. He gave me a camera when I was young, about 12, 13 years old. So I started taking pictures at a very young age of sports people because it was my way of taking part in athletics. | '''LS''': My younger brother and I were raised as athletes. We enjoyed playing tennis. When he beat me in the 11-and-under I realized that I was more heavy than he was. My way of participating in athletics from then on was to become a sports photographer. My father was a photographer and ran a portrait studio in San Diego and eventually opened a camera store in Pacific Beach. He gave me a camera when I was young, about 12, 13 years old. So I started taking pictures at a very young age of sports people because it was my way of taking part in athletics. | ||
I learned the skill of anticipation. To be a good sports photographer in those days, you had to, because there were no motorized cameras. If you throw a ball in the air there is a moment in which the ball is motionless before it starts to come down. And if you capture it at that moment, even at the slow shutter speed needed for shooting in color, it will be needle sharp. | I learned the skill of anticipation. To be a good sports photographer in those days, you had to, because there were no motorized cameras. If you throw a ball in the air there is a moment in which the ball is motionless before it starts to come down. And if you capture it at that moment, even at the slow shutter speed needed for shooting in color, it will be needle sharp. | ||
| Line 477: | Line 474: | ||
{{Review|state=expanded}} | {{Review|state=expanded}} | ||
{{DEFAULTSORT:Untold Story Behind The Executioner’s Song: A Conversation with Lawrence Schiller, The}} | |||
[[Category:Interviews (MR)]] | [[Category:Interviews (MR)]] | ||