Norman Mailer's Thoughts On State Violence

"[T]here are two kinds of violence: individual violence and the violence of the state. The violence of the state is not just wars, it's also concentration camps...There can be violence in total censorship. Anything that cuts off expectations from people, possibilities from people, anything that compresses people by external government force is the violence of the state....Individual violence is very often the natural answer of people to the collective violence of the state." --Norman Mailer, from Mailer: A Biography by Hilary Mills (Empire Books, 1982), Page 36.

The Million-Dollar Porn Flick

Most porn films are (by Hollywood standards) cheap and cheesy. That's why it's too bad that porn star-turned-magazine publisher Gloria Leonard and famed novelist Norman Mailer weren't able to collaborate on the first million-dollar Triple X-rated film. Their prior commitment to other projects nixed it. The backers, Midwestern magnates, Leonard tells Lili Anolik of The L Magazine ("Normy Makes a Porny," Feb. 2, 2011) wanted "the Gone With the Wind of fuck films." There's no doubt that with Mailer's involvement, the film would have been classy, historic, and very controversial. Would it have made money? Who knows? Maybe another literary genius will tackle such a project.