July 21, 2007

Norman Mailer vs. Rip Torn. In 1970, Norman Mailer directed and starred in a controversial film called Maidstone, which blurred the lines between fiction and reality -- especially the day after the shoot ended, when Rip Torn attacked Mailer with a hammer. (You can view the attack, and the fight that resulted -- which may or may not have been staged -- in the first link.)
posted by HawthorneWingo 17 years ago
  • Okay, maybe this was the apex. Great post, HW.
  • He also apparently threatened Dennis Hopper with a knife. Although it may have been the other way around. He also threatened Desmond Morris with a sawn-off Gibbon. Although I may have made that up.
  • The fight looks very staged to me. Who brings a hammer to a fight and then doesn't bother using it?
  • Brilliant post. Cheers
  • So if you're Norman Mailer & you get beaten up by Rip Torn, is he Mailer than thou?
  • I'm as jaded as the next dude, but the clip gives me a queasy feeling. Interesting stuff, HW!
  • "I'm sorry, dad." Jaysus, the drugs were indeed better back then. Love how cockmonkey Mailer's fist priority is to claim the other guy is hurt worse than him. What a wizened nonce.
  • C'MON 'MAILER THAN THOU'. IT WAS GOOD!!!
  • *finally gets it* yes, it was rather.
  • Was the Werzog somehow involved in this film?
  • Well, he's omnipresent, so, yes.
  • The Werzog gave immaculate birth to film with his masculine, iron ovaries; film and Him are inseparable.
  • Speaking of Werzog, how about Mailer vs. Klaus Kinski? Would've been cool. I knew somebody who lived near Mailer in Stockbridge, MA for a while. The neighbors generally viewed the guy as a pathetic old man with a trophy wife who was once, in his youth, a pretty good writer. Sometimes too much testosterone is just too much testosterone. BTW, Abiezer, I really, really like "wizened nonce" and will adopt this phrase into my personal lexicon of Tasty Verbage.
  • I've been too far away from Monkeyfilter if Werner Herzog has become Werzog; however, here's a much better brotherish person for Herzog than that asshole Mailer.