The Mailer Review/Volume 3, 2009/Commando Raids on the Nature of Reality: Difference between revisions

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{{dc|dc=F|ilms exist}} in many places. A film is in a reel stored inside of a can.

And then, well, there is Norman Mailer’s 1970 film ''Maidstone''. He directed the film and starred in it, both as the fictional character Norman T. Kingsley, a movie director who runs for President of the United States, and as Norman Mailer, playing himself as the director of ''Maidstone''. After limited engagements in 1971, the film essentially disappeared from sight until a DVD was released in France in 2006, which was followed by a number of public screenings, such as at the Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theatre in 2007. For over three decades, then, ''Maidstone'' had no screen on which to appear; its running time had stopped, and words were all that it had.

Around the unforeseen contingencies, through them, under them. For Mailer, ''Maidstone'' was something far more than a single film. It was an important opportunity to put his theory of filmmaking into practice.

Fearful that Kingsley might actually get elected, a group of “High Officials” contemplates an assassination attempt. And we soon learn that many others might be plotting against Kingsley as well. Rumors suggest that TV reporter Jeanne Cardigan (Jean Campbell) could be a member of an organization that inadvertently encourages assassinations. And then there is the Cashbox, a kind of Rat Pack that hangs around Kingsley, headed by his half-brother Raoul Rey O’Houlihan (Rip Torn). Kinglsey purports to have them under control, but they are clearly a dangerous group. The film director’s life is plainly at risk.

Five groups of cinematographers followed the actions of the large cast for one week of shooting, each group operating independently of one another. They included D.A. Pennebaker (who had directed ''Monterey Pop'' in 1968, a film Mailer had much admired, as well as ''Don’t Look Back'' in 1967), and Ricky Leacock (who had helped shoot ''Monterey Pop''). Both men had played key roles in the ''cinéma verité'' documentary movement.

As much as anything else, that movement inspired Mailer. Handheld cameras and handheld sound recorders allowed for small, mobile crews, offering what at least ''seemed'' to be unfettered access to “reality.” Using natural lighting, shooting could take place easily, including in confined spaces. It could occur hour after hour. And it could even occur surreptitiously, as one young woman performing oral sex would learn during ''Maidstone''’s production. That was all part of the process, of course, for a crew that filmed forty-five hours of footage, some of it residing in the land of Plot, some of it residing in the land of Behind-the-Scenes, and some of it occupying territory on the borderland between the two.

As for important precursors, ''Maidstone''’s narrative engages in an interesting conversation with ''Citizen Kane'' (1941), a film that Mailer much admired. Both Charles Foster Kane and Norman T. Kingsley are well-known men, but are simultaneously unknown. They are mysteries. We learn the “salient facts” about Kingsley in the opening minutes of ''Maidstone'', though some of them are oxymoronically “unconfirmed facts.” We hear rumors, such as the possibility that he might be homosexual, but such rumors are nothing more than loose ends, false leads. Kinglsey’s opinions on major political debates are also unknown. A Kingsley associate tells the High Officials, “You haven’t begun to get to know what he really is,” but then has to admit that she doesn’t “really know what he is any more than anybody else knows.” As a result, journalists attempt to unravel the mystery of Kingsley, just as they do Kane. Still puzzled by Kingsley in one of her final scenes, Jeanne Cardigan asks, “What is he?”, confronting a problem none-too-different than the reporters at Xanadu face at the conclusion of ''Citizen Kane''.

===Deep in my Dungeon===

Mailer controls and manipulates the images in each section. Along with all the visual signs of “reality”—from handheld camera to light leaks on the image and the occasional appearance of a microphone in the shot— ''Maidstone'' features various techniques that show an editor’s intervention, including slow motion, echo effects, and audio played backwards, as well as images of a shoreline intentionally edited upside-down. During ''5: Politicking in the Grass'', the film offers a few very abrupt edits, an indicator of an editor cutting unwanted words or visuals. It features jump cuts without apparent need in ''6: A Commencement of Filming'', as well as dissolves connoting the passage of time. It even illustrates a curious control over the optically printed section titles: all of them feature numerals, except for ''EIGHT: Return of an Old Love'', which curiously spells out the number.

Despite some critical and audience complaints to the contrary, Mailer offers a largely clear, understandable narrative structure that overtly projects a destination point in Kingsley’s assassination, with characters as early in the film as ''2: The Director'' discussing “whether or not we’re going to allow this man to live.” Such an event is foreshadowed elsewhere as well. While boxing, Kingsley says he “can’t take too many shots to the head”; he later suggests that, “being president is equivalent to being a monkey in a shooting gallery.” More obliquely—and more ominously as a result—Lazarus warns him, “There’s a storm coming.”

So he had “staged,” as he said, the Grand Assassination Ball with no assassination, crafting a story structure leading to an event that seems not to occur. During the editing process, he chose to begin his film with audio of a singer proclaiming:

Deep in my dungeon, I worship your fear.

Deep in my dungeon, I dwell

Mailer knew that the unexpected can and does occur during commando raids—that a regiment can raid the wrong town, for example. And also that the captor can so easily become the captive.

With cameras still filming, the group disperses, walking around Lonetree Hill as we hear a wordless vocal from the singer of “Deep in my Dungeon.” Rip Torn slowly retrieves a hammer from his satchel and throws off his sunglasses. His face appears strained, then a dissolve transports us to his apparently unexpected attack on “Not Mailer,” but on “Kingsley,” who “must die.” Even if (at first, at least) it is Raoul the film character attempting to assassinate Kingsley the film character, it is also (apparently) Mailer the man (no longer the director?) who will struggle with Torn (the actor run amok?). Of course that description is possibly too simplistic, as their roles could have reconstituted themselves repeatedly during the attack, which becomes the most captivating in ''Maidstone''.

After announcing that he “must die,” Raoul/Torn twice hits Mailer/Kingsley with a hammer over the head. The two struggle until both fall to the ground. Mailer then bites Torn’s ear, drawing blood. Their hands grab at each other’s necks, with Torn gaining an upper hand just as Mailer’s wife and children appear. His wife begins screaming and the children begin to cry.

Perhaps that was the case. But it is just as possible that including the scene moved Mailer closer to the kind of filmmaking that he dismisses onscreen in ''11: A Course in Orientation''. Once he was in postproduction, Mailer crafted a film that featured—on a larger scale—a clear narrative that uses dialogue and visuals in a manner not entirely dissimilar to some Hollywood norms, to—on a smaller scale—standard editing devices like the sound bridge that connects ''10: The Grand Assassination Ball'' to ''11: A Course in Orientation'' and the dissolve that transports us from Torn’s scheming face to his attack on Mailer.

And that takes us back once again to Rip Torn’s attack. Though ''Maidstone'' has still not garnered a large audience, the attack scene has become a part of the YouTube world, watched online as a clip, viewed outside of the context of the film. And yet it evokes an array of user comments that would no doubt excite Mailer, providing some verification of his Leviathan thesis. Some viewers believe it is real; some don’t. Others argue for it having somewhere in between. As Mailer himself wrote:

Whatever happened at Lonetree Hill during the attack, ''Maidstone'' reveals to us only a depiction of it, a cinematic depiction. After all, those eight tense minutes between Mailer/Kingsley and Torn/Raoul include six edits. Something is there for us to see, whatever it is and whatever it depicts, but something has been left out as well, removed from our view. The cutting room floor also occupies an important place in the nature of (cinematic) reality.

Though its direct influence was largely stifled due to limited screenings in 1971, ''Maidstone'' was certainly at the vanguard of what became mockumentary filmmaking in the 1970s and beyond, a less complex and certainly less interesting kind of commando raid than Mailer had staged. Indeed, perhaps ''Maidstone''’s most important heir came in the form of Orson Welles’ ''F for Fake'' (1974), in which Welles, not unlike Mailer, also believed that he had created a new kind of film. But in ''F for Fake'', Welles searched for and celebrated frauds and the phoneys, whereas Mailer had pursued something quite different.

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