Buzz Farbar
Bernard "Buzz" Farbar, a close friend of Mailer's who acted in and co-produced his films, appeared in The Deer Park: A Play, and is a dedicatee of Why Are We in Vietnam? (where his name was famously misspelled "Farber").
Bernard “Buzz” Farbar was a close friend of Mailer’s who co-produced his experimental films Wild 90 and Beyond the Law, produced the recording accompanying The Bullfight (67.20), appeared in The Deer Park: A Play (67.13), and is a dedicatee of Why Are We in Vietnam? (67.15) — where the tipped-in first-state dedication misspelled his name “Farber.”
The friendship surfaced in 1984: discussing Tough Guys Don’t Dance (84.17), Mailer told People (84.20) of a federal attempt to record him incriminating Farbar in a drug case — an effort that failed as to Mailer but sent Farbar to prison for eight years; Farbar later took his own life. Mailer called it “especially reprehensible … when the government tries to get a man to entrap his friend,” and drew on the episode for the novel’s friend-entrapment subplot.
Related pages
- Why Are We in Vietnam? | The Bullfight: A Photographic Narrative with Text by Norman Mailer | Tough Guys Don’t Dance
- The Deer Park: A Play (67.13)