Norman Mailer

"Are you all truly idiots, or is it me?" he spits at a studio audience during a TV interview. Never one to mince his words, Norman Mailer was at once a journalist, novelist, poet, filmmaker, political activist, mayoral candidate and hell-raising socialite. Every aspect of his life was prolific and controversial, down to his six wives, nine children and numerous affairs. Even his relationship with the country he loved to write about was full of turmoil. "I love this country. I hate it. I get angry at it. I feel close to it. I'm charmed by it; I'm repelled by it." Mailer didn't just write about major US events, he lived them from the frontlines. Yet he was never in any doubt about his motives for throwing himself into the thick of the action, admitting that what he wanted from his stint in the army during the Second World War was to produce the greatest novel written about it. A subversive blending of reality and creativity was something that extended into all corners of his life and art. "He took journalism and made it into this imaginative construct." A keen boxer, his ex-wives all remember a passionate and charming but aggressive man, constantly on the edge of his temper. For the first time, Adele Morales Mailer, his second wife, talks about her experience of being stabbed by Norman as they hosted a cocktail party. "He said, "don't touch her, let the bitch die". That will be seared in my memory forever." The man who once announced, "The greatest trouble with this country is that it is insane", came ironically to be widely regarded as an American icon, wildly living out his own definition of his beloved nation. From Marilyn Monroe hiding in her bedroom from him to him head-butting Gore Vidal, from debates and ideas to sex tapes, orgies and drag queens, this fast-paced doc offers a wonderfully revelatory profile of an iconic figure of 20th Century Americana.