[This one is for the book nerdlings... I'm looking at you, Laura June...]
from subcin:
Norman Mailer created a film in the late 60s called MAIDSTONE. He played the part of a famous movie director who is considering a run for the presidency. Rip Torn played his potential assassin. At the end of filming, Rip appeared to get a little too far into his role, and he attacked Mailer on camera with a hammer, drawing blood. Mailer retaliated by viciously biting into Torn’s ear, drawing even more blood. This is the fight.
It’s debatable how “surprised” that Mailer was by the attack, but it should be noted that he still had the camera crew hanging around and filming, the day after production had allegedly “ended” on the picture. However, the blood from both men is undeniably real, as are the horrified reactions of Mailer’s children (his wife, on the other hand, seems to be overacting badly). Torn’s ear was damaged so badly, he had to have it partly stitched back on later that day, so though he claims that he “pulled” the hammer blow to soften the impact, Mailer definitely didnt hold back in his bite.
For more info, have a look at my tribute page to “Norman Mailer: Filmmaker”, located at: http://subcin.com/mailer.html
Filed under: cool Jews, superficial reflections
I think the fact that not only is the film crew there after shooting was wrapped, but they filmed this rather than trying to break it up says its staged. Although my guess is its something Mailer and Torn thought of at the last minute and didn’t think to tell Mailer’s wife.
well, I dont know… in the bio of Mailer that I read, it made it pretty clear that the whole production was a bizarre postmodern (and drug fueled) experiment, and it doesn’t seem odd to me that someone with a huge ego like Mailer would always want cameras rolling around him, anyways. I am getting a coy of the movie; I’ll let you know what I think when that comes in!
I like the fact that you are literally baiting me with literary references. Literally.
[...] In his oft-cited essay of the same name, “The White Negro,” Norman Mailer — several years before he tried to bite off Rip Torn’s ear — characterized the psychopath as someone who is “trying to create a new nervous system” for his or herself. Generally we are obliged to act with a nervous system which has been formed from infancy, and which carries in the style of its circuits the very contradictions of our parents and our early milieu…. It is … not only the ‘dead weight of the institutions of the past’ but indeed the inefficient and often antiquated nervous circuits of the past which strangle our potentiality for responding to new possibilities. [...]