Birthday:
01-31-1923
Deathday:
11-10-2007 (84 years)
Birthplace:
Long Branch, New Jersey, USA
Biography
Norman Kingsley Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007) was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, activist, filmmaker and actor. In a career spanning over six decades, Mailer had 11 best-selling books, at least one in each of the seven decades after World War II—more than any other post-war American writer.
His novel The Naked and the Dead was published in 1948 and brought him early renown. His 1968 nonfiction novel Armies of the Night won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction as well as the National Book Award. His best-known work is widely considered to be The Executioner's Song, the 1979 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Mailer is considered an innovator of "creative non-fiction" or "New Journalism", along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe, a genre which uses the style and devices of literary fiction in factual journalism. He was a cultural commentator and critic, expressing his views through his novels, journalism, frequent press appearances and essays, the most famous and reprinted of which is "The White Negro". In 1955, he and three others founded The Village Voice, an arts and politics-oriented weekly newspaper distributed in Greenwich Village.
In 1960, Mailer was convicted of assault and served a three-year probation after he stabbed his wife Adele Morales with a penknife, nearly killing her. In 1969, he ran an unsuccessful campaign to become the mayor of New York. Mailer was married six times and had nine children.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Norman Mailer, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
His novel The Naked and the Dead was published in 1948 and brought him early renown. His 1968 nonfiction novel Armies of the Night won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction as well as the National Book Award. His best-known work is widely considered to be The Executioner's Song, the 1979 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Mailer is considered an innovator of "creative non-fiction" or "New Journalism", along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Wolfe, a genre which uses the style and devices of literary fiction in factual journalism. He was a cultural commentator and critic, expressing his views through his novels, journalism, frequent press appearances and essays, the most famous and reprinted of which is "The White Negro". In 1955, he and three others founded The Village Voice, an arts and politics-oriented weekly newspaper distributed in Greenwich Village.
In 1960, Mailer was convicted of assault and served a three-year probation after he stabbed his wife Adele Morales with a penknife, nearly killing her. In 1969, he ran an unsuccessful campaign to become the mayor of New York. Mailer was married six times and had nine children.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Norman Mailer, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Read morearrow_drop_down
Their works
- Release swap_vert
- Title swap_vert
- Ratings swap_vert
close
Ragtime
Act like Stanford White
event1981 star_border 7
top_panel_open
A young black pianist becomes embroiled in the lives of an upper-class white family set among the racial tensions, infidelity, violence, and other nostalgic events in early 1900s New York City.
Keep the River on Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale
event2000 star_border 6.3
top_panel_open
In 1955, Tobias Schneebaum disappeared into the depths of the Peruvian Amazon. He had no guide, no map, and only the vaguest of instructions: Keep the river on your right. A year later Schneebaum emerged from the jungle…naked, covered in body paint, and a modern-day cannibal. Titled after Schneebaum’s 1969 cult classic memoir about his formative experiences living in the Amazon, Keep The River On Your Right is the extraordinary stranger-than-fiction story of Schneebaum’s return to the jungle, 45 years after his original visit, to reunite with the very tribesmen he loved and who gave him nightmares for nearly half a century. A deeply affecting and searing portrait, sibling filmmakers Laurie and David Shapiro capture a man in utter conflict, a fearless adventurer, and one of the most charming, enigmatic, and perplexing men ever captured on screen.
King Lear
Act like The Great Writer
event1988 star_border 6.1
top_panel_open
A descendant of Shakespeare tries to restore his plays in a world rebuilding itself after the Chernobyl catastrophe obliterates most of human civilization.
Norman Mailer: The American
Act like Self (archive footage)
event2012 star_border 7
top_panel_open
A provocateur, a rebel, a performer, and a true American, Norman Mailer never stopped giving people something to talk about. This documentary goes beyond the Mailer of the bookshelves and NY Times best seller list to Mailer the social critic, family man, filmmaker, and lover. Here's a look into the life of a complex, intellectual, working class hero. With never before seen footage of Adele Morales Mailer's startling revelations after being stabbed by her husband. Featuring unseen footage and interviews from wives and lovers, enemies and admirers, his children and the man himself.
The Capote Tapes
Act like Self (voice) (archive footage)
event2021 star_border 6.4
top_panel_open
Newly discovered interviews with friends of Truman Capote made by Paris Review co-founder George Plimpton invigorate this fascinating documentary on the author (and socialite) behind Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood, while situating Capote in the 20th-century American literary canon.
The Outsider
Act like Self
event2005 star_border 6.2
top_panel_open
Nicholas Jarecki follows director James Toback on the 12-day shoot of his thriller, When Will I Be Loved -- a movie made without a script or distribution deal.
Beyond the Law
Act like Lt. Francis Xavier Pope
event1968 star_border 4.8
top_panel_open
Takes place over the course of one feverish night in a Manhattan police precinct and neighboring bar.
Maidstone
Act like Norman T. Kingsley
event1971 star_border 4.1
top_panel_open
Over a booze-fueled, increasingly hectic five-day shoot in East Hampton, Norman Mailer and his cast and crew spontaneously unloaded onto film the lurid and loony chronicle of U.S. presidential candidate and filmmaker Norman T. Kingsley debating and attacking his hangers-on and enemies. This gonzo narrative, “an inkblot test of Mailer’s own subconscious” (Time), becomes something like a documentary on its own making when costar Rip Torn breaks the fourth wall in one of cinema’s most alarming on-screen outbursts.
Wild 90
Act like Prince
event1968 star_border 4.9
top_panel_open
Norman Mailer’s first feature filmmaking effort stars the director and his two longtime collaborators Buzz Farbar and Mickey Knox as a trio of gangsters holed up in a ramshackle New York apartment, drinking, braying, and fighting.
New York in the Fifties
Act like Self
event2001
top_panel_open
New York in the Fifties is the story of a unique time and place, when New York was the hotbed of new artistic expressions, free love, drinking, hot jazz, and radical politics.
The film combines stunning archival footage of New York with interviews and footage of icons of the day-Kerouac, Ginsberg, Baldwin, Mailer, Basie, etc. Offering modern day perspective and reminiscences are writers, actors, and artists such as Joan Didion, Robert Redford, Nat Hentoff, Gay and Nan Talese, John Gregory Dunne, William F. Buckley, and Calvin Trillin-all part of the rich cultural and artistic scene of the time. Based on the best-selling book by Dan Wakefield, the film also traces Wakefield's restless rebellion in conformist Indianapolis, and his escape to New York with dreams of writin ga novel, falling in love, meeting like-minded souls and questioning the meaning of life.
Town Bloody Hall
Act like Himself
event1979 star_border 5.6
top_panel_open
Norman Mailer and a panel of feminists — Jacqueline Ceballos, Germaine Greer, Jill Johnston, and Diana Trilling — debate the issue of Women's Liberation.
The 50 Year Argument
Act like Himself
event2014 star_border 6.6
top_panel_open
Follows the waves of literary, political, and cultural history as charted by the The New York Review of Books, America’s leading journal of ideas for over 50 years. Provocative, idiosyncratic and incendiary, the film weaves rarely seen archival material, contributor interviews, excerpts from writings by such icons as James Baldwin, Gore Vidal, and Joan Didion along with original verité footage filmed in the Review’s West Village offices.
Hello Actors Studio
Act like Self
event1988 star_border 6
top_panel_open
After Lee Strasberg’s death in 1982, the most prestigious talents from the Actors Studio assumed the leadership of this exceptional organization. For the first time ever, filmmakers have been allowed to film their work.
L'étrange festival
Act like Himself
event2001
top_panel_open
Documentary produced and broadcast in the show "Court Circuit" on Arte.
What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael
Act like Self
event2019 star_border 6.6
top_panel_open
Pauline Kael (1919–2001) was undoubtedly one of the greatest names in film criticism. A Californian native, she wrote her first review in 1953 and joined ‘The New Yorker’ in 1968. Praised for her highly opinionated and feisty writing style and criticised for her subjective and sometimes ruthless reviews, Kael’s writing was refreshingly and intensely rooted in her experience of watching a film as a member of the audience. Loved and hated in equal measure – loved by other critics for whom she was immensely influential, and hated by filmmakers whose films she trashed - Kael destroyed films that have since become classics such as The Sound of Music and raved about others such as Bonnie and Clyde. She was also aware of the perennial difficulties for women working in the movies and in film criticism, and fiercely fought sexism, both in her reviews and in her media appearances.
When We Were Kings
Act like Self
event1996 star_border 7.7
top_panel_open
It's 1974. Muhammad Ali is 32 and thought by many to be past his prime. George Foreman is ten years younger and the heavyweight champion of the world. Promoter Don King wants to make a name for himself and offers both fighters five million dollars apiece to fight one another, and when they accept, King has only to come up with the money. He finds a willing backer in Mobutu Sese Suko, the dictator of Zaire, and the "Rumble in the Jungle" is set, including a musical festival featuring some of America's top black performers, like James Brown and B.B. King.
Will the Real Norman Mailer Please Stand Up?
Act like Self
event1968
top_panel_open
Portrait of Norman Mailer at the time of the Pentagon demonstrations in 1967, documenting Mailer's involvement and arrest, together with two TV appearances and shooting on the set of his second film 'Beyond the Law'.
How to Come Alive with Norman Mailer
Act like Self (archive footage)
event2023
top_panel_open
From Brooklyn beginnings to literary pantheon, Norman Mailer's unorthodox trajectory spans marriages, offspring, and accolades. An unprecedented glimpse into the preeminent 20th-century author's private and public worlds through intimate biography.
Double Pisces, Scorpio Rising
event1970
top_panel_open
One of the human trio is Dick Fontaine, the director, a thin, long-haired youth who has put together this highly personal exercise on something or other that runs, mercifully, for 58 minutes and comes from an English group of movie folk called the Tattooists. The second visitor to the animal abattoir is a pretty girl. The third is a porky, middle-aged man addicted to the expression, "Ya know?"
The two men carry on a running argument about whether they should make a picture about pigs. "Are we making a movie, ya know?" says Fatso. "Where is it, ya know?" Then a bit later: "I'm making a movie about pigs, ya know?"
Year of the Woman
event1973
top_panel_open
Utitlising humour, fantasy, animation, poetry and theatrics, Hochman and her crew challenge the male establishment for ignoring the first meeting of the National Women's Political Caucus and Shirley Chisholm's bid for US vice-president.
365 Day Project
event2007 star_border 10
top_panel_open
This exhibition focuses on Jonas Mekas’ 365 Day Project, a succession of films and videos in calendar form. Every day as of January 1st, 2007 and for an entire year, as indicated in the title, a large public (the artist's friends, as well as unknowns) were invited to view a diary of short films of various lengths (from one to twenty minutes) on the Internet. A movie was posted each day, adding to the previously posted pieces, resulting altogether in nearly thirty-eight hours of moving images.
Mailer on Mailer
Act like Himself
event2000 star_border 5
top_panel_open
Norman Mailer frankly discusses American culture, politics, literature, and his own tumultuous life.
Henry Kissinger: Secrets of a Superpower
Act like Self
event2008 star_border 10
top_panel_open
Though Henry Kissinger is often giving short statements to the media, he refuses detailed interviews about his own life. Now he has agreed to answer questions about his person in an extensive documentary.
Inside Deep Throat
Act like Self
event2005 star_border 6.4
top_panel_open
In 1972, a seemingly typical shoestring budget pornographic film was made in a Florida hotel: "Deep Throat," starring Linda Lovelace. This film would surpass the wildest expectation of everyone involved to become one of the most successful independent films of all time. It caught the public imagination which met the spirit of the times, even as the self-appointed guardians of public morality struggled to suppress it, and created, for a brief moment, a possible future where sexuality in film had a bold artistic potential. This film covers the story of the making of this controversial film, its stunning success, its hysterical opposition along with its dark side of mob influence and allegations of the on set mistreatment of the film's star.
The Battle for 'I Am Curious-Yellow'
Act like Self (archive footage)
event2003
top_panel_open
A documentary about the film, I am Curious-Yellow (1967), and how it made it into the USA and changed film in USA forever by breaking the USA Obscenity Codes.
The Education of Gore Vidal
Act like Self (archive footage)
event2003 star_border 6
top_panel_open
A contrarian and wickedly funny man, this PBS American Masters special explores Gore Vidal's extraordinary life and work, joining him at his cliff-side villa in Ravello, Italy.
Baby Trouble Hole
Act like Interviewed
event1996
top_panel_open
Malga Kubiak stars in her exploration of sex and self. One woman's love to her own body interlaced with maggots; mixes x-rated porn. Voyeuristically titillating this avant-garde study of horrors of sex.
Empire City
Act like Self
event1985 star_border 9
top_panel_open
A film essay contrasting the modern metropolis with its "golden age" from 1830-1930, with the participation of some of New York's leading political and cultural figures. Made at a time when the city was experiencing unprecedented real estate development on the one hand and unforeseen displacement of population and deterioration on the other. Empire City is the story of two New Yorks. The film explores the precarious coexistence of the service-based midtown Manhattan corporate headquarters with the peripheral New York of undereducated minorities living in increasing alienation.
Oh My America
Act like Himself
event2000
top_panel_open
Norman Mailer profiles life in America since the Second World War. Farewell to the Fifties. Mailer fought for his country in the Second World War- an experience that inspired his novel The Naked and the Dead. But, disappointed by post-war America, he grew to despise the fifties.
Cremaster 2
Act like Harry Houdini
event1999 star_border 6.3
top_panel_open
CREMASTER 2 is rendered as a gothic Western that introduces conflict into the system. On the biological level it corresponds to the phase of fetal development during which sexual division begins. In Matthew Barney's abstraction of this process, the system resists partition and tries to remain in the state of equilibrium imagined in Cremaster 1.
Diaries, Notes, and Sketches
Act like Self
event2013 star_border 7.4
top_panel_open
An epic portrait of the New York avant-garde art scene of the 60s.
Marilyn Monroe: Still Life
Act like Self - Writer & Filmmaker
event2006
top_panel_open
Survey Marilyn Monroe’s life through photographs, from Hollywood stills to candid pictures snapped on the streets of New York.
Today
Act like Self (1 ep.)
event1952 star_border 5.5
top_panel_open
Today is a daily American morning television show that airs on NBC. The program debuted on January 14, 1952. It was the first of its genre on American television and in the world, and is the fifth-longest running American television series. Originally a two-hour program on weekdays, it expanded to Sundays in 1987 and Saturdays in 1992. The weekday broadcast expanded to three hours in 2000, and to four hours in 2007.
Today's dominance was virtually unchallenged by the other networks until the late 1980s, when it was overtaken by ABC's Good Morning America. Today retook the Nielsen ratings lead the week of December 11, 1995, and held onto that position for 852 consecutive weeks until the week of April 9, 2012, when it was beaten by Good Morning America yet again. In 2002, Today was ranked #17 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest Television Shows of All Time.
The Merv Griffin Show
Act like Self (1 ep.)
event1962 star_border 5.6
top_panel_open
The Merv Griffin Show is an American television talk show, starring Merv Griffin. The series ran from October 1, 1962 to March 29, 1963 on NBC, September 20, 1965 to August 15, 1969 in first-run syndication, from August 18, 1969 to February 11, 1972 at 11:30 PM ET weeknights on CBS and again in first-run syndication from February 14, 1972 to September 5, 1986.
The David Susskind Show
Act like Self (2 ep.)
event1959 star_border 5
top_panel_open
The David Susskind Show is an American television talk show hosted by David Susskind. The program began its existence in 1958 as Open End, and was broadcast by WNTA-TV in New York City. The title referred to the fact that the program continued until Susskind or his guests were too tired to continue late on a Sunday night.
PBS News Hour
Act like Self (1 ep.)
event1975 star_border 5.4
top_panel_open
America's first and longest running hour-long nightly news broadcast known for its in-depth coverage of issues and current events.
Gilmore Girls
Act like Norman Mailer (1 ep.)
event2000 star_border 7.9
top_panel_open
Set in the charming town of Stars Hollow, Connecticut, the series follows the captivating lives of Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, a mother/daughter pair who have a relationship most people only dream of.
The Oscars
Act like Self (1 ep.)
event1953 star_border 7
top_panel_open
An annual American awards ceremony honoring cinematic achievements in the film industry. The various category winners are awarded a copy of a statuette, officially the Academy Award of Merit, that is better known by its nickname Oscar.
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
Act like Self (2 ep.)
event1962 star_border 7.4
top_panel_open
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson is a talk show hosted by Johnny Carson under The Tonight Show franchise from 1962 to 1992. It originally aired during late-night. For its first ten years, Carson's Tonight Show was based in New York City with occasional trips to Burbank, California; in May 1972, the show moved permanently to Burbank, California. In 2002, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson was ranked #12 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.
Apostrophes
Act like Self (1 ep.)
event1975 star_border 8.5
top_panel_open
Apostrophes was a live, weekly, literary, prime-time, talk show on French television created and hosted by Bernard Pivot. It ran for fifteen years (724 episodes) from January 10, 1975, to June 22, 1990, and was one of the most watched shows on French television (around 6 million regular viewers). It was broadcast on Friday nights on the channel France 2 (which was called "Antenne 2" from 1975 to 1992). The hourlong show was devoted to books, authors and literature. The format varied between one-on-one interviews with a single author and open discussions between four or five authors.
The Dick Cavett Show
Act like Self - Guest (10 ep.)
event1968 star_border 6.6
top_panel_open
The Dick Cavett Show has been the title of several talk shows hosted by Dick Cavett on various television networks.
Show more expand_more
keyboard_double_arrow_down