Maidstone (1970) on Netflix
Norman T. Kingsley, a filmmaker called the American Buñuel, runs for president while shooting a brothel drama in East Hampton. His half-brother Raoul Rey O'Houlihan leans on him for money.
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- Netflix2.3/5
- IMDb4.6/10318 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Featurette
Plot summary
At his East Hampton estate, Norman T. Kingsley is shooting a sexually provocative drama about a brothel. Friends, actors and would-be actresses arrive to audition, and he critiques them hard, asking whether they would undress for a scene and acting out the parts himself. At the same time he campaigns for president, drawing journalists, scholars and African-American radicals who question what he is after, while a secret organization known as PAX,C discusses having him assassinated. A British commentator, Jean Cardigan, keeps watch on him. His half-brother Raoul Rey O'Houlihan depends on him for money, and Kingsley is separated from his wife Chula Mae.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Maidstone (1970)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
SPOILER
While the camera rolled, Rip Torn hit Norman Mailer in the head with a hammer, opening his scalp, and a fight followed. Mailer bit off a small piece of Torn's ear, and Mailer's wife Beverly Bentley and their crying children broke up the fight.- The Maidstone fight footage became evidence in Rip Torn's case against Dennis Hopper, who said Torn attacked him with a knife after Jack Nicholson replaced him in Easy Rider. Torn won by claiming he was on the Maidstone set trying to kill Norman Mailer.
- Maidstone cost $200,000 to produce, which forced Norman Mailer to sell part of his interest in The Village Voice, and the film eventually bankrupted him before it was completed.
- Maidstone was made in five days at different East Hampton estates, and the cast performed with no script and no safety net, frequently unsure of what they were doing.
- The original footage ran 45 hours; the crew spent three weeks watching it and about six months cutting it to 7.5 hours, and an intermediate 3.5-hour version no longer exists.
- An early edit previewed at the Whitney Museum in New York sold about 7,000 tickets over two weeks, breaking several house records, but when Mailer opened the film at The Lincoln on 57th Street it ran seven days and delivered the worst business in that theater's history.
