Maidstone

Mailer plays a 'character' called Norman T Kingsley, an avant-garde film-maker (he's also running for President) who harangues, provokes and debates with a number of people gathered as he's preparing his next movie. Despite a thin try at a story, some bluff spouting about exploring the nature of different 'realities', or about creating whirlpools of energy and then following them through, it's not really worth treating this farrago - in which the name of the game is 'let's play football with other people's psyches' - seriously as a film. Lawrence Durrell has treated the 'reality' theme much better in novel form; Cassavetes has coped far more honestly and delicately with the fine line between people acting themselves and projecting their abilities on to 'characters'; this is simply 110 minutes of pure Megalomailer.