Norman Mailer: The American (2010)

A provocateur, a rebel, a performer and a true American, Norman Mailer never stopped giving people something to talk about. This documentary goes beyond the Mailer of the bookshelves and The New York Times best sellers list to the social critic, family man, filmmaker and lover. Here is a look into the life of a complex, intellectual, working class hero. Born in Long Branch, NJ and growing up in Brooklyn NY, Mailer began his long career as a writer at Harvard University. He wrote over 30 books and covered every major event in U.S. history including: the Apollo 11 launch, the deaths of John F. Kennedy and his assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, the 1968 Democratic National Convention and subsequent riot, the Berkeley Free Speech Movement march on the Pentagon, Muhammad Ali and George Forman's Rumble in the Jungle and many more. He not only wrote about these events, but he lived them. He delved into the lives and psyches of the famous and the infamous, from Marilyn Monroe to Hitler. The documentary includes never before seen footage of Adele Morales Mailer's startling revelations after being stabbed by her husband and also features footage and interview from wives and lovers, enemies and admirers, his children and the man himself.