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Oddly enough the Burroughs film you mention was here last week - and I am still not in it: no one asked ! But I'm grateful, since it is so appallingly bad.
AIR MAIL
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, PHILADELPHIA 19104
Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Department of English D1
Area Code 215 898-7341
June 24, 1984
Dear Wignesan,
Sorry to delay this reply, but your letter arrived just as I was leaving.
Oddly enough the Burroughs film you mention was here last week - and I am still not in it: no one asked ! But I'm grateful, since it is so appallingly bad.
By the way, no one called Karro called me in London to my knowledge - I'd have been glad to give him my bits and pieces for you.
I nearly came to Paris to see the American show but finally found myself too busy trying to get clear for this trip. I have to work on the US to afford it, but it's worth it finally - and this Ivy League joint certainly has money. I have the additional title of Distinguished Summer Visitor, which should make you hoot. But the stint here is ending - after tropical weather which reminded me forcibly of Singapore at its worst.
And now, after trips to New York and Washington, I'm off to Colorado and Wyoming and places even further west.
Thanks again for your letter.
Eric
(c) T. Wignesan - Paris, 1984-2023
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"It came to a head when he got in a fight with Rip Torn and Torn hit him in the head with a hammer."
A feat, to say the least, which is even beyond Mailer's wildest dreams of scariness.
I found the excerpt of Maidstone (not trying just to differ for scoring a point) in the URL you provided extremely film-worthy: arresting, cataclysmic and shocking, the kind no cinéma-verité can pull-off without being poo-poo-ed !
But the anecdote of your front-desk experience in the class-room was really hilarious.... you seem to be everywhere where the real news gets to happen. How's that !!!
Incidentally, that's what Eric Mottram said: he wasn't in the Burroughs film - he was quite simply overlooked and glad about it all at that.
As always, only the very best. TW
Another bad film from that time was Maidstone. As far as I know it was Norman Mailer's only attempt at filmmaking. I believe it was when I was at Atlanta University in 1980 when he came promoting Maidstone and we were in a small classroom with me sitting in the front row student desk. From that vantage point I was subject to the barrage of belches that emitted from him from having apparently eaten the wrong thing or over eaten before coming to talk to us.
He hired Gardner's Island and brought a number of his friends and their wives and girlfriends so that he could play the lech throughout the movie with a license to chase other men's wives and girlfriends. It came to a head when he got in a fight with Rip Torn and Torn hit him in the head with a hammer. The blood was not makeup. It was real.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AzmhorISf4
Mailer said that he had directed and edited the film and it showed. Probably one of the worst movies I've ever seen.
Ron