1987
Mailer's film of Tough Guys Don't Dance is finished, screened out of competition at Cannes (where he sat on the jury in May), and released in the United States on 18 September to largely hostile reviews and a weak opening weekend. He spends most of the year promoting and defending it in dozens of interviews, ranging over all his films and the difference between writing and directing. By fall he has begun to say openly that his novel-in-progress is about the CIA — the future Harlot's Ghost.
Winter and spring — finishing the film, and Cannes
The year opened with Mailer completing Tough Guys Don’t Dance — the final days of the Provincetown shoot reported in January (87.2) — and explaining the Cannon Films arrangement that had him write five drafts of the screenplay and direct (he also co-wrote, with Angelo Badalamenti, one of the film’s songs). In interviews he kept returning to the contrast between the crafts: “Writing is a form of amputation — only a part of you is at work,” but directing “fills you with energy” (87.2a). He also catalogued the other screenplays he had taken on — Godard’s King Lear, Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America, a Meyer Lansky picture, Henry Miller’s Sexus (87.4).
In May the film screened out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival, where Mailer served on the jury; Vincent Canby praised it (87.8) even as the first wave of reviews ran negative (87.7), and Mailer appeared alongside Jean-Luc Godard and Lillian Gish (87.6).
September — release and savaging
After a New York premiere on 16 September (a joint Actors Studio–Cannon Films event at Loews New York Twin, starring Ryan O’Neal and Isabella Rossellini), Tough Guys Don’t Dance opened nationwide on 18 September 1987. The reviews were largely hostile and the first weekend grossed a disappointing $421,390, though the picture later turned a profit (87.27). Mailer promoted it through the Toronto Festival of Festivals and a long sequence of interviews (87.11–87.28), several of which became substantial statements in their own right — David Thompson’s “Mailer by the Bay” (87.10b), Karen Jaehne’s “Mailer’s Minuet” (87.28, where, Lennon says, he speaks better on filmmaking than anywhere else), and David Sterritt’s “Novelist Mailer Turns His Latest Book into a Movie” (87.11a). In The Advocate he answered sharp questions about the antigay characters of the novel and film (87.27a), insisting “none of my characters ever represent my point of view by themselves.”
Fall — the turn to the CIA novel
Amid the film talk, Mailer began to disclose his next major project. In the Hollywood Foreign Press Association interview (87.23a) — an “exceptionally important” 17-page transcript — he announced, perhaps for the first time, that his novel-in-progress was about the CIA, the book that would become Harlot’s Ghost (91.26). The year’s coverage also reached back into his life and friendships: J. Michael Lennon and George Plimpton’s Paris Review portrait of James Jones drew on four of Lennon’s interviews with Mailer (87.10), and Peter O. Whitmer’s Aquarius Revisited gathered an interview centered on “The White Negro” (87.29).
Related pages
- 1986 | 1988
- Tough Guys Don’t Dance (film) | Cannon Films | HFPA interview (the CIA-novel disclosure)
- Mailer's Minuet: 'Tough Guys' Two Left Feet (87.28) | Mailer by the Bay (87.10b) | Novelist Mailer Turns His Latest Book into a Movie (87.11a) | Why Norman Mailer Won't Dance (87.27a) | Harlot's Ghost (91.26)