Overexposed: My First Taste of Filmmaking

Abstract

MY FATHER, NORMAN MAILER, once wrote that film exists somewhere between memory and dream. We recall a film--a good film--the way we recall our memories: fragments crystallized in our minds as visuals of a dream (or a nightmare)--points of light dredged up from our subconscious. I experienced my first taste of filmmaking when I was five years old. I was unwittingly a glorified extra--a day player in the parlance of the biz--and had my debut as a witness to the near death of my father at the murderous hands of Rip Torn. The film was Maidstone, the third and final attempt at underground filmmaking--cinema verite style-- that my dad attempted in the late Sixties. The cast was comprised of friends, ex-wives, sports and movie stars, and of course a few gangsters thrown in for good measure portraying some warped and far out version of themselves--persona extensions on steroids-if you will. They were summoned to Gardiners Island--a bucolic piece of land somewhere off the coast of the Hamptons--to vow their allegiance or disaffection of a certain Norman T. Kingsley (portrayed by who else), who happened to be a retired porn director running for President of the United States. Why not, after all? Qualifications for higher office being what they are you might argue that it was a prescient conceit. Those who arrived immediately drew tags from a hat identifying whether they became friend or foe to the candidacy. Though technically neither side knew the other's position, over three strenuous days the cast would exercise their voices, feelings, prerogatives and, in one case, an assassin's impulse. And like those stories you hear of people being invited to spend a weekend in jail, some as jail birds, others as the jailers, who take to their role with psychotic zeal so too did the denizens on Gardiner's act out their respective parts with manic intensity. I can't help but look at Maidstone--when I can look at it all objectively--as a testament to why the Sixties ultimately imploded. The movie embodies indulgence to the point of mental hazard. And yet the film stands the test of time as a sociological statement. Cutting to yours truly, for some reason in the midst of preparation for the film, one or both parents decided it was a good idea to bring the family along. Let the kids enjoy the great outdoors while the elders make a movie or some such thought must have filtered through their minds. So into the vortex trotted my older sisters, Danielle, Elizabeth, Kate, my younger brother, Stephen, and myself. We soon found ourselves unwittingly part of the cast, filmed as cherubs wandering through the fields of the island. But that's where the idyll ended. …