“Categories are just critics’ attempts to bring order to a complex aesthetic universe.” And so, Mailer’s adaptation of his own 1983 novel, shot on location in his beloved Provincetown, is blessedly uncategorizable: part detective fiction, part “Grand Guignol” comedy of manners…“or tragicomedy without manners.” “Tough Guys Don’t Dance is going to be a movie that drives critics insane because it doesn’t straddle two forms. It straddles about four or five.” An alcoholic writer and ex-con emerges from a blackout to find a severed head in his pot stash. What emerges from there is a full immersion cinematic experience. Beautifully shot by John Bailey, with an unforgettable cast that includes Ryan O’Neal, Isabella Rossellini, Frances Fisher, Wings Hauser, Penn Jillette, Clarence Williams III, Lawrence Tierney, and Debra Sandlund.
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“In June of 1968, in the wake of the assassination of Robert Kennedy and the attempt on the life of Andy Warhol, the elegant resort town of East Hampton witnessed a bizarre invasion of celebrities and unknowns, professional actors and amateurs, black radicals and underground superstars, assembled by Norman Mailer for a movie in which he would both direct and star. Shot by D.A. Pennebaker and Ricky Leacock, Maidstone, Mailer’s third and most ambitious film, concerns the exploits of highly popular, yet esoteric, film director Norman T. Kingsley.... Described by Mailer as ‘a guerilla raid on the nature of reality,’ Maidstone sets the stage for an explosion of human passions in its volatile mix of existential politics, direct cinema and sexual intrigue that dissolves the line between fiction and actuality.”—Michael Chaiken
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