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The Mailer Review/Volume 1, 2007/The Untold Story Behind The Executioner’s Song: A Conversation with Lawrence Schiller: Difference between revisions

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The Mailer Review/Volume 1, 2007/The Untold Story Behind The Executioner’s Song: A Conversation with Lawrence Schiller (view source)

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{{DISPLAYTITLE:The Untold Story Behind ''The Executioner’s Song'': A Conversation with Lawrence Schiller}}
{{DISPLAYTITLE:The Untold Story Behind ''The Executioner’s Song'': A Conversation with Lawrence Schiller}}
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{{abstract|This probing interview focuses on Schiller’s involvement with Mailer on ''The Executioner’s Song''. }}
{{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}}
 
 
{{Byline|last=Severs|first=Jeffrey}}


[[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 ''[[Oswald's Tale|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.
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.
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