Camera Angeles: Reporter On The Set of Tough Guys

By Bonnie Barber

Provincetown has been a creative haven for artists and writers for over eighty years, but the writer who has made the heaviest imprint on Provincetown's sands in the latter half of this century is Norman Mailer.  At age 64, Mailer has mellowed considerably from his early days in Provincetown, a time when he was best known for throwing wild parties and for being locked up on drunk and disorderly charges after a night of carousing on Commercial Street--actions that served to enhance Mailer's reputation as the bad boy novelist of his generation, a reputation he seemed to relish and encourage.  But the volatile Mailer has curtailed his combustibility of late to add a new title to his distinction as one of America's preeminent literary figures cum celebrities; that of major motion picture director.

With this new occupation came new responsbilities.  Mailer had to prove to Hollywood studio heads late last year that he could bring in the film adaptation of his 1984 murder mystery Tough Guys Don't Dance, on budget and on time.  He brought the film in under budget and completed it a day and a half under the film's forty-one-day shooting schedule in mid-December.  And it was all done away from the watchful eyes of Hollywood, in Provincetown, the sight of so many of Mailer's past triumphs and, sometimes, dismal failures.

Mailer first came to Provincetown in 1942 as a Harvard undergraduate who dreamed of being a writer.  When he returned  to Provincetown in 1946 after a hitch in World War II, he sequestered himself in a Beach Point cottage to work on his first novel.  That book, The Naked and the Dead, brought the twenty-four-year-old writer acclaim and adulation and firmly ensconced him as a rising American literary force.

But movies were always Mailer's dream, and he wasn't content to simply conquer the publishing world.  He wanted to take Hollywood by storm too, and live the life of a successful screenplay writer.  As he told a friend at Harvard, all he wanted was to be a good professional writer.  That friend, George Washington Goethals, related in Peter Manso's book: His Life and Times: "He said his aspiration was to be a good enough professional to go to Hollywood and write scripts, make some good break, and screw a different woman every night."

After an unsuccessful foray in Hollywood, Mailer returned to Provincetown in 1950.  He had one screenplay under his belt, which was never produced by a studio, and a host of other projects that he had turned down.  He did get a book out of his stint in Hollywood though.  The Deer Park, which was published in 1955, chronicled the lusts, loves, and ambitions of the celebrity inhabitants of Desert D'Or and their groupies.

Mailer never abandoned his motion picture dreams, however.  These dreams eventually grew, from a desire merely to write screenplays, to wanting to direct a big-budget film of one of his novels.  When Mailer finally attained this dream last fall, he managed to secure the best of both worlds; he brought Hollywood to Provincetown for the making of Tough Guys Don't Dance.  

Althought a more inexpensive location in North Carolina was considered for the film's backdrop, it seemed inevitable that Mailer and his film crew would wind up in Provincetown.  In transplanting a California film crew and cast to the narror streets and the dunes of Provincetown, Mailer seemed to be asking his seaside mistress to reward him him once again with her magic touch.

The film company that gave Mailer the financial means to direct Tough Guys Don't Dance was Cannon Films, a Los Angeles-based company headed by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. Despite the critical and commercial failure of three experimental, improvised films Mailer had directed and financed in the late 1960's--Wild 90, Beyond the Law, and Maidstone--the two Israelis were willing to give Mailer a chance to try his talents at directing a major motion picture.  They struck a deal: If Mailer agreed to write the screenplay for King Lear, a film project of avant-garde director Jean-Luc Godard, who has a penchant for not adhering closely to scripts, Cannon Films would give Mailer a $5-million budget to write the screenplay and to direct Tough Guys Don't Dance.  Tom Luddy, a producer with Zoetrope Studios in San Francisco, who helped arrange the deal with Cannon, would be the producer.

When filming began in late October, Mailer was obviously elated to be fulfilling his directorial dreams.  He bounded around Outer Cape locations, from Uncle Tim's Bridget in Wellfleet, to the Methodist cemetary in Truro, to Provincetown Airport, buried in a navy blue parka to fight the often brutally cold weather, with a black knit ski hat perched atop his silver curls.  Despite the biting chill, heavy winds, driving rain or snow the film crew encountered on any given day, Mailer's cherubic face was beaming more often than not.  He clapped his hands together frequently, although it wasn't clear whether this was the result of nervous energy or excessive enthusiasm.  His excitement was contagious, and his energy and vigor astounded crew members.  Although many of the crew were half his age, they had difficulty keeping up with Mailer's whirlwind pace.   He swigged orange and lemon-lime Gatorade during breaks in filming, and joked that he was a testament to the product's claim of infusing those who drink it with energy and endurance.  "If I drink enough of this stuff, I'll get another book out, no problem," Mailer chortled.

Even actress Isabella Rosellini, who reportedly was not enamored of Mailer's directorial style, tactfully avoided answering a question about Mailer's directing at the Cannes Film Festival in May, by commenting instead on his boundless enthusiasm and energy.  "Hmm. Well, it was wonderful to watch him having fun.  He got up at dawn and loved making ever part of the film," Rossellini was quoted in the Boston Globe.

Rossellini, who refused to give any interviews while filming in Provincetown, saying that she never discusses a film she is working on until it has been completed, was not the only actor disenchanted with Mailer as a director.  Wings Hauser and Frances Fisher also had disagreements and misunderstandings with Mailer on the set, and voiced their unhappiness in an interview for a Newsday article.  Actor Ryan O'Neal, however, called Mailer one of the best directors he has ever worked with, and praised his skills as an "actor's director."

Besides some strife on the set, Mailer also had to contend with a strike against Cannon Films by the International Alliance of Theater.