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Norman Mailer was an artistic and intellectual risk-taker and macho public bad boy who courted controversy and celebrity. Much of his life was lived on a self-promoting, exhibitionistic level. Although his ranting and raving and a seemingly compulsive need to outrage may have had entertainment value, his real significance lay in writing a number of fine books, some of which offered penetrating and profound cultural insights about the nature of American society, while others indulged in sometimes absurd, sometimes excitingly original theories about sex, disease, courage, architecture, and politics. Mailer had grand — or, more accurately, grandiose — ambitions, for he viewed art’s “final purpose was to intensify the moral consciousness of people,” to change our way of seeing the self and society in America. Consequently, he was willing to make great artistic leaps, and at times to look foolish in the process.

Mailer picked up a camera at the end of the ’60s, going into debt in order to show all the underground auteurs and provocateurs how he believed art movies should be made. Mailer completed three films in a rush between 1968 and 1970: Wild 90 (about three gangsters bickering away an evening), Beyond The Law (about cops at a bar, recalling their day to their dates), and Maidstone (about a manipulative, controversial filmmaker who decides to run for president). As such, they’re as valuable in their way as Mailer’s groundbreaking nonfiction novels.
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