It mostly doesn’t work out when novelists become film directors. At best, authors seem to make bizarre cult classics: Tom McGuane’s 92 In The Shade comes to mind, and Stephen King’s Maximum Overdrive has its memorable moments of coke-fueled camp. But both pale to the high weirdness and real-life violence in Norman Mailer’s Maidstone:

From the Criterion site…

Over a booze-fueled, increasingly hectic five-day shoot in East Hampton, Norman Mailer and his cast and crew spontaneously unloaded onto film the lurid and loony chronicle of U.S. presidential candidate and filmmaker Norman T. Kingsley debating and attacking his hangers-on and enemies. This gonzo narrative, “an inkblot test of Mailer’s own subconscious” (Time), becomes something like a documentary on its own making when costar Rip Torn breaks the fourth wall in one of cinema’s most alarming on-screen outbursts.

This week we celebrate the birthday of Rip Torn who turned 85 on February 6. Here’s Maidstone…

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Today we celebrate the long strange life of actor, writer and director Buck Henry whose contributions to Saturday Night Live and scripting of The Graduate were crucial contributions to the countercultural voice that paved the way for the best of today’s contemporary comedy. Buck is 85 on December 9. Here he is discussing his twisted, gnarly, celebrated writing…

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Seems there’s always a significant anniversary to recount this year. Here’s another remembrance: this one marks five years since the death of Dennis Hopper.

Hopper was an actor, director, writer, photographer and art collector. He was good at each of them and occasionally great at every one.

Here’s a compilation of Hopper interviews presented by Charlie Rose in memoriam…

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In 1999, the documentary film American Movie captured the day-to-day struggles of Milwaukee based independent filmmaker Mark Borchardt. At the beginning of the film, Borchardt outlines a feature film he’s struggling to make. That film is called Northwestern, but Borchardt switches gears and decides to finish his short film ,Coven, in hopes that a successfully distributed short will allow him to secure funding and distribution for his masterpiece.

The doc is a classic that pictures Borchardt and his oddball film company in the throes of trying to realize what seems like an impossible dream: to create a great work of art while simultaneously tripping over themselves, their bad habits, troubled lives and the pressures of grinding out a creative life in the midst of working class America.

The doc made Borchardt famous and his finished cut of Coven proves that his dream of being a filmmaker was fueled by real vision and energy all along: The film is shot in starkly contrasting blacks and whites and Borchardt’s spooky framing of the desolate Wisconsin countryside in winter recalls George Romero’s compositions of the Pennsylvania countryside in Borchardt’s favorite film, Night of the Living Dead. And the director’s turn in front of the camera in the lead role of a writer struggling with drugs and alcohol is also commendable.

In the film, Mike is a freelance writer who’s barely making a living. He takes pills to work long hours and drinks so he can sleep. After a close call that lands him in the hospital, a friend convinces Mike to attend a support group meeting. But is the group just the helpful organization they claim to be or something more sinister?

Here’s Coven…

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