Norman Mailer’s Life Coming to HBO

How many of you are asking, “Who’s Norman Mailer?”

Yeah, we weren’t sure either. Some writer our grandparents probably bought but didn’t read. (Hey, books were cheaper then.)

At any rate. HBO and Tina Brown, another superannuated literary figure (former editor of The New Yorker, a magazine a few people cared about back when a few more people cared about the city of New York) think Mailer’s worth watching. He did stab one of his wives, which, we suppose, TV folks think is cool.

Oh, and he worked on a project with a convicted murderer, which makes Mailer even more cool, right? So the film will be about that, the feisty Jewish writer with the NY Irish accent typing away in the cell of Jack Abbott, the even feistier Irish killer, creating the book The Executioner’s Song, which won Mailer a Pulitzer Prize.

Stephen Schiff will write the screenplay, putting everything into it that made his screenplay, WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS, such a big hit. (Seriously, the screenplay really was a big hit with those who read it; it’s just the film – the sequel to WALL STREET – that tanked.)

Our suggestion for the part of Norman Mailer: Tim Roth. According to people we know who are in the know (read: our Boss, LB and also The New York Times) Mailer and Roth have at least three things in common:

  • Both of them are/were short
  • Both of them are/were Jewish
  • Both of them are/were assholes a******s

Mission accomplished. We’re done here.

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