{"id":3436,"date":"2010-11-24T00:19:31","date_gmt":"2010-11-24T07:19:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=3436"},"modified":"2020-04-28T14:17:02","modified_gmt":"2020-04-28T18:17:02","slug":"when-your-name-is-mailer-you-cant-phone-it-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/when-your-name-is-mailer-you-cant-phone-it-in\/","title":{"rendered":"John Buffalo Mailer"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1 class=\"p1\">When Your Name Is Mailer, You Can\u2019t Phone It In<\/h1>\n<h5>With a sheaf of summers in Bar Harbor as his inspiration,\u00a0<em>Wall Street 2<\/em>\u00a0heartthrob\u00a0<strong>John Buffalo Mailer<\/strong>, 32, is daring to live on the knife\u2019s edge, taking on the world as actor, playwright, screenwriter, editor, blogger, and scene-stealer. Would you expect anything less from the son of two-time Pulitzer prize-winning author Norman Mailer (1923-2007), who for decades treasured Maine as his fortress of solitude?<\/h5>\n<p class=\"p1\">December 2010<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/pdf\/Mailer%20Port%20Mag%20Dec10.pdf\">download this story as a .pdf<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><em><span class=\"s1\">Interview By Colin W. Sargent<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-3449\" style=\"margin-left: 6px; margin-right: 6px;\" title=\"mailer\" src=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/mailer.jpg\" alt=\"mailer\" width=\"275\" height=\"282\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Congratulations on your recent role as Robby in\u00a0<em>Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps<\/em>. You were also\u00a0\u201cSpeechwriter No. 2\u201d in <em>W.<\/em>, right? How did you\u00a0first meet Oliver Stone, and how did these acting assignments come about?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\">I first met Oliver because he had read a treatment for a Hurricane Katrina movie I had written. Our mutual friend, Richard Stratton (who plays the prison guard in the first few moments of <em>Money Never Sleeps<\/em>), had gotten the treatment to Oliver and now he wanted me to come to Los Angeles for a meeting. Simultaneously, Laura Dawn, the Cultural Director of MoveOn.org (who also makes an appearance in <em>MNS<\/em>), had asked my brother Michael and myself to produce a commercial suggesting we listen to the Iraq War veterans on what to do about the situation. I took a leap and asked Oliver if he would be interested in directing it, and with hindsight, not surprisingly, he said yes. The weekend is too much of a story to get into here, but suffice to say, meeting with Oliver as a writer was a fantasy come to life; producing a commercial he was directing, that lead me to believe that antacid might just be the most important product on the market and something everyone should pick a company and buy stock in. Nerve-wracking is one way to put it. Bruce Lee once said that the goal is to be like water: Always maintain your own substance while still remaining flexible enough to take on the necessary shape you need in order to deal with the moment at hand. It\u2019s a good idea when working with Oliver in any capacity. If you try to maintain a rigid stance on how you are going to go about doing your part (be it writing, producing, or acting), you are fighting the magic and putting yourself in the jeopardy of not rising as high as he can bring you. Oliver has the ability to pull exactly the performance he needs from you (which in turn makes you shine) in ways that don\u2019t even allow you to know it is happening. At one point over that weekend I produced the commercial for him, he turned to me and said, <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s2\">\u201cYou look like Russell Crowe.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s2\">\u201cI\u2019ll take that,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019ve gotten Jason Priestley all my life.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s2\">He smiled and looked at me with a cross of sizing me up and checking me out\u2013almost undressing my soul with his eyes. Then he grinned.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s2\">\u201cYou could be my Russell Crowe.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s2\">\u201cI\u2019ll be your Russell Crowe, Oliver.\u201d I said it with a laugh, and while I certainly appreciated the comparison, after seventeen years of hoofing it in New York theater as an actor, writer, and producer, I forced myself not to take it too seriously, as I did not know how many more times I could come within striking distance of living my dream, only to see it fall apart for reasons out of my control. So I laughed and we went on going through footage of veterans talking about bringing the troops home.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s3\">Several months later, when Oliver cast me in the role of Paul Medlo, one of the unfortunate troops who lived through the My Lai Massacre, a sizable role in <em>Pinkville<\/em>, one that does not ordinarily go to theater actors with limited film credits like myself, I thought that dream had finally come true. It happened to come at a crazy time in my life, as my father was dying in the hospital and I was flying back and forth between L.A. and New York for callbacks. I did get to tell my dad that Oliver had cast me in the film before he died. There was a good deal of comfort in that. The day after my father\u2019s funeral, I had to fly to L.A. to start rehearsals. It felt like an acid trip. By Friday, when Oliver told me the movie had fall<\/span>en apart and was not going to happen in the foreseeable future, I had to laugh. I had buried my dad the Tuesday before, and tough as I like to think I am, the news that this movie was not going to happen made the death of my father all too real and I nearly crumbled, suddenly weak in the knees now that I no longer had this adventure with Oliver to escape into and put off dealing with the loss of my best friend, my dad.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s2\">\u201cI\u2019ve had a bad week,\u201d Oliver said to me on the phone, sensing a bit of shock on my end. \u201cBut you\u2019ve had a really bad week!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s2\">When I heard he was in New York casting <em>Money Never Sleeps<\/em>, I emailed his assistant, Evan Bates, who told me no one but Shia LaBeouf and Michael Douglas had been cast yet. The next day I got an invitation to go to dinner with Oliver, Shia, Eric Kopeloff (the producer), and Oliver\u2019s mother, Jacqueline. First audition. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s1\">That night outside of the club we went to after dinner, Shia told me that Oliver had spoken to him the day before and told him he was casting me as his best friend. That it was a done deal. Now, Shia is a really nice guy, and I think, looking back on it, he kind of liked me and was just trying to give a guy a little confidence, because I had to audition my ass off for this part. After three rounds, Oliver sent me a text saying, \u201cYou\u2019re good, man. Get ready.\u201d I thought I was in! So much so, that I went up to a buddy of mine\u2019s farm in western Massachusetts to celebrate, not quite breaking, but certainly swelling my nose to twice its normal size by making the foolish mistake of sparring with my pal. When I got the call the next day from my manager telling me it was down to me and two other actors (both badass actors who had an impressive amount of credits behind them that I could not claim), and I would have to do one more audition, I came close to panicking. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s2\">In the end, it may have been the shiner and swollen nose that cemented the part for me, as Robby is a good guy but a bit of a brawler. You never know how these things can shake out. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s2\">Once I had finished the audition, a slight grin formed at the corners of Oliver\u2019s mouth. \u201cSo, I can count on you to look out for Shia?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s3\">\u201cIf you cast me, you absolutely can!\u201d I was about to collapse from the tension of not knowing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cI\u2019m casting you, I\u2019m casting you. Relax.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s2\">\u201cSo, it\u2019s official?\u201d I still had no idea what was going on.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s2\">Oliver extended his hand. \u201cIt\u2019s official.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s2\">Kathleen Chopin, the casting director, gave me a wink to suggest she had been pulling for this and was happy both Oliver and Fox were taking a chance on an unknown. I walked out of her office, took one look at Kathleen\u2019s assistant and the other actors waiting to go in, then allowed myself to drop to the floor and exhale in a way I had never done before. The fantasy had become, once again, reality. Only for real this time. But even in that moment, I already knew the adventure was just beginning. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s3\"><strong>If there were a \u2018word cloud\u2019 for your acting instructions in <em>Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps<\/em>, what would some of those cloud words be? There\u2019s certainly a sense of you grounding Jake\u2019s character as his fellow options trader and Long Island best friend\u2013\u201da deft little performance,\u201d according to ew.com, as well as some tension.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\">\u2018Love,\u2019 \u2018Protect,\u2019 and \u2018Bring The Sex.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>What specific acting considerations did Stone ask you to keep in mind while shooting? Which of the other actors was most helpful to you on set?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\">Oliver was adamant about us all doing our homework and really understanding the world we were embodying. From the accent to the swagger to the energy shots, he wanted us to eat, sleep, dream, and honor where these guys were coming from. Oliver doesn\u2019t go in for judging his characters, which is why he is able to pull off the kinds of movies he does. He comes at it from a genuine sense of curiosity, of wanting to understand his subjects for all their faults and virtues. He asked the same of all us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s3\">Getting to work with this cast was like going to work in my fantasy every day. Each one of them affected me probably much more than they know. Getting to spend a day standing next to Michael Douglas may have been the highlight. We have one scene together at the Metropolitan, where my character is telling Gordon Gekko what an inspiration he was to him growing up as a kid, which amounts to about thirty seconds of film time but took six hours to shoot. As a now iconic actor who started out as a producer, and also grew up under the shadow of a larger-than-life father, Michael has always been an inspiration to me. What I learned that day is he\u2019s also a terrific guy\u2013real, grounded, and humble, yet aware of who he is and what he has accomplished. I was sweating bullets at the beginning of the day, but after about twenty minutes with him, I felt at ease. It was instrumental for my character, who is also talking to a legend he admires in that scene. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s2\">However, Frank Langella and I have become the closest out of everyone I got to know from the cast. Frank is the genuine article, and it is incredible to see him starting to get his due as one of the greatest actors of his generation. He has been generous with offering advice on acting, women, and life. And as a result, the fantasy continues on. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>Your father has written eloquently (no surprise) about his having to climb Otter Cliffs in Acadia National Park as an Episcopalian rite of passage, in <em>Harlot\u2019s Ghost<\/em> and in <em>Esquire<\/em>, saying the black rocks at the base of the cliffs hissed like a gas-station floor. Reading the mutual interview you and he wrote for <em>New York <\/em>magazine, I found myself wondering if you were ever asked to perform the same feat? Or was it at least discussed?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\">Every summer, my father would gather all of my brothers and sisters and cousins and we would train for months, getting ready to hike Mount Katahdin. I was young at the time, and it is really more my siblings\u2019 place to talk about these outings (indeed, several of them have written about those adventures eloquently in various publications), but I will say that the time when it started to hail as we were on the middle of the Knife\u2019s Edge (for those unfamiliar with Mount Katahdin, the Knife\u2019s Edge is a half-mile stretch of small, sharp rocks forming about a three-foot-wide path from one peak to the next, with an extremely steep drop-off on either side, which would most likely send one to an early grave if you were to take a tumble). I don\u2019t think I had ever been quite as scared for my life in the eight years I had been alive, than I was in that moment. When we got to the bottom of the mountain, we all went out for cheeseburgers. I think a part of me understood why my father would push us so much farther than we thought we could go; I had never had a better cheeseburger in my life. He instilled in all of us from a young age that Courage was the highest virtue, and that it was only through confronting one\u2019s fears that life could fully be appreciated. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>Tell us about what you\u2019re writing right now\u2013what this interview is interrupting (sorry), whether it\u2019s a screenplay, novel, article, or non-fiction piece.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s1\">Currently I\u2019m producing a feature documentary about using hip-hop as a core curriculum in inner-city high schools called <em>Follow The Leader,<\/em> directed by David Ambrose; cowriting a screenplay about the life of Rita Gigante; and working on two books, one of which is called <em>An Insider\u2019s Guide to the Heterosexual Underground of Provincetown<\/em>, which is a tour through the last ten years in America, with a focus on exploring the Columbine massacre, 9\/11, the flooding of New Orleans, and the bank bailouts. Which is a good deal of fun, believe it or not. The other book is called <em>3 Days in Detroit<\/em>, which I\u2019m writing with Matt Pascarella. That one is about the experience of going to see Matthew Barney\u2019s opera adaptation of my father\u2019s book <em>Ancient Evenings<\/em>, essentially turning Detroit into his canvas, while also taking a tour through the ghettos and burned-out buildings of a city that can legitimately claim to have 40 percent of its buildings abandoned. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p5\"><span class=\"s2\">In addition to that, I am working on several books with my family and the Wylie Agency of unpublished collected works of my father\u2019s for the Mailer Estate. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>If you were to write a bizzarro sequel to your ebook <em>Music, Food, and Death<\/em> that took place in Maine instead of New Orleans, who would the strippers be? Where is Maine\u2019s underbelly, and who\u2019s running it?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\">Unfortunately, I couldn\u2019t tell you that offhand. But if you\u2019re interested, I\u2019d be happy to put on my investigative journalist hat and get to the bottom of it for you\u2026so to speak. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>Because Maine seemed to be your father\u2019s fortress of solitude across the years, or at least one of his fortresses, you\u2019ve surely spent more than a few vacation days here. Where and when were you here, and what do you like to do specifically when you\u2019re here?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\">My strongest memories of Maine were those summers we spent hiking Katahdin. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>We ran a story this summer, written by an architectural blogger known as the Down East Dilettante, where he describes a fantastic house in Somes Sound, Maine [\u201cFinding Fortune,\u201d Summerguide 2010]. At one point, Norman Mailer suspends his very young son above the surf of this house he\u2019s renting. Was this you, and do you remember this?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s3\">I\u2019m not sure that ever happened, to tell you the truth. While my father always pushed us hard, he was never cruel. He did encourage all my brothers and sisters to jump off the porch into the water. I was too young to even attempt it at the time. I believe he made a deal with my oldest brother, Michael, that if he would jump off, then my father would dive off, head-first. Of course Michael did jump off, and my father was not altogether comfortable with having to make good on his end of the bargain. Luckily, he was madly in love with my mother and was not about to give her the sense that he was scared to do it, so he got up there and even realized there were certain advantages to diving instead of jumping, one being that you have that far less to go when you leap out head-first.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>What other adventures have you had in Maine?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s4\">The most foolish adventure I\u2019ve had in Maine would have to be the time some buddies and I decided to climb the Beehive in Acadia National Park while under the influence of more than one substance. Going up was all well and good, as the path is clearly marked and all types of handholds have been put in place to aid you along dangerous patches. But that wasn\u2019t quite exciting enough for us, so in our tripped-out state, we decided to go down the back side, which remained untouched. About halfway down, I realized that if I fell, it would be the end of me. I have never felt more like one with a rock in my life as I took the painstakingly long journey back to level ground, sweating all the way. It is not something I would ever do again, and I do not recommend it to anyone. But it certainly felt like an adventure. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>Tell us about the Maine that\u2019s yours and nobody else\u2019s.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\">It may be safe to say that the back side of the Beehive is the only part of Maine I could make that claim on, as I don\u2019t believe anyone before or since has been as foolish as we were to try a stunt like that with no ropes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>So far, what\u2019s the best writing you\u2019ve done in Maine, and what were the circumstances? Did you work on <em>The Big Empty<\/em> here at any point? Did you have to distance yourself from New York, for example, while you were writing <em>Crazy Eyes<\/em>? Many people came up to Maine from Manhattan immediately after 9\/11, because we seemed like a kind of Brigadoon, unstuck in time, where they could take stock of the world situation.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\">I have to admit that I have not done any writing in Maine, although the extraordinary beauty one encounters on the coast has certainly inspired a good deal of my abilities with description. I\u2019ve always seen Maine as the most beautiful state in the Northeast when it comes to terrain.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><strong>What\u2019s your next film project?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">There are several possibilities I am weighing at the moment, but at the ripe old age of 32, I\u2019ve learned not to talk about them until the deal is signed, because in the movie business, you never know if it\u2019s real until you\u2019re in the theater watching the final cut. But I will say that thanks to <em>Wall Street<\/em>, each of the possibilities is exciting, and <span class=\"s3\">I would be thankful to be a part of any of them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>Andrew Wyeth purposely chose never to teach Jamie Wyeth to paint. How did, or didn\u2019t, Norman Mailer teach you to write?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s4\">He completely taught me how to write. As much as anyone can teach another, that is. Part of it has to be born in your ear, particularly with dialogue. The same way you can teach someone how to play jazz but you can\u2019t teach them how to be Miles Davis. But from the time I was seventeen I was showing my father stories and he would take the time to edit them, tell me what I was doing right and what was like tin scraping on aluminum to his ears when I would make the stupid mistakes all writers need to do when they are first starting out. A great deal of what he taught me is in his book on writing, <em>The Spooky Art<\/em>, which I recommend to any serious writer, although I was mad as hell at the time he wrote it. \u201cYou\u2019re giving away the family secrets, Pop?!\u201d In truth, it is a little-known gem and perhaps one of his greatest gifts to writers for generations to come.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>In her memoir, your mother, Norris Church Mailer, has written, \u201cWell, I bought a ticket to the circus. I don\u2019t know why I was surprised to see elephants.\u201d How much does your mom figure in your creative career?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\">She is an equal inspiration. I think she has her own strengths as a writer that I have learned from, particularly her descriptive skills and sense of plot and structure. One reviewer called her writing \u2018painterly,\u2019 and I believe that\u2019s an accurate statement. As someone who has fought cancer for 12 years and beat the odds time and time again, having endured pain to levels that most of us don\u2019t even want to know exist, she has taught me that anything is possible, and I carry that with me every day. My mother is a superhero in my book.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>Tell us three things you have to do to reassure yourself you\u2019re in Maine when you\u2019re here.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\">First and foremost, Harbor Bars [ice-cream treats]. Gotta get a real Harbor Bar. Second, jump into that freezing cold water that makes you know you\u2019re alive in ways you just can\u2019t explain to anyone from a tropical climate who has not had the pleasure. Third, go hike Mount Katahdin.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>How good was your father getting at blogging by the time he died, and did you correspond with him about that?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s3\">He did a couple posts for the Huffington Post when it was just starting out, partially out of curiosity and mostly because he liked and respected Arianna [Huffington] and wanted to see her succeed. He had a little bit of fun with it, but left it at that. Dwayne Raymond, his last editorial assistant, wrote about it quite well in his book, <em>Mornings With Mailer<\/em>. However, one of the books I am working on for the Mailer Estate is a collection of his radical columns from the 1950s and 1960s, and it is fascinating to discover the similarities between those columns and some of the finer blogs around today. I think in some ways, he would have been excited by the possibilities inherent in blogging if he were a young man today, but at the time he discovered it, he knew that his attention had to be focused on his last novel, <em>The Castle in the Forest<\/em>, if he was going to be able to pull off what he set out to do with that book.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>Your dad is famous for his nose as a writer. What\u2019s your organ of privilege, creatively speaking?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s3\">Now that\u2019s a saucy question! I would have to say it\u2019s my ear. You can\u2019t teach someone how to write dialogue. They are either born with the ability to hear and write out how someone talks, or they are not. Of course there are tricks and rules one can and should learn, but at the end of the day, like Atticus Finch taking no pride in his ability to shoot a rifle well, a writer who is lucky enough to have an ear for good dialogue should equally take no pride in it and instead just be thankful they can take the time to work on their weak points as <\/span><span class=\"s5\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span class=\"s3\">a wordsmith. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>Tell us about your alter-ego of Beau Buffalo Mailer.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\">You have certainly done your homework.\u00a0 Wow. Well, when I was getting ready to enter the world, my parents still had not decided on my first name. They had it down to John and Beau but were having a hard time pulling the trigger on one or the other. When I told my college roommate, Neil Stewart (who was with me when we discovered <em>In The Heights<\/em>), that I easily could have been called \u2018Beau Buffalo Mailer,\u2019 he immediately concluded that if they had [named me that], I would have had no choice but to become a boxer. \u201cYou know, Beau Buff, the wild middle-weight who could have become a contender,\u201d was along the lines of what he imagined. But, aside from Neil and myself, I was not aware that anyone else knew about my frustrated middle-weight boxing alter ego. I\u2019m extremely impressed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>In<\/strong><\/span><span class=\"s1\"><strong> the first <em>Wall Street<\/em>, Josh Mostel, a summer Mainer, played one of Gekko\u2019s lieutenants. Were you aware of his performance, and his connection to Maine, while preparing for your role?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s1\">I have to admit I would be lying if I told you I was aware of his connection to Maine, but I have enjoyed his work in every single movie I have ever seen him in. I think he is an incredibly underrated character actor who I would love to see get the chance to do a dramatic lead.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s3\"><strong>Is <em>The Naked and the Dead<\/em> still in production as a feature film?<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s6\">We have a script my father loved and are in discussions, but are not in production yet. Our goal is for it to be in a theater near you sooner rather than later, as I feel it is incredibly timely now that so many of our men and women who have been stationed overseas will hopefully be coming home. From the conversations I have had with friends of mine who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, who have also read the screenplay, [no matter the battle,] war is war is war. It would be nice if the movie of <em>The Naked and the Dead<\/em> could serve as a mode for them to distill and understand what they just endured, through the perspective of World War II. That\u2019s the goal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>Please ask and answer a question of your own that will take you out of your comfort zone. Or just tell us when you\u2019re next coming to Maine.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s2\">There is no question that takes me out of my comfort zone. The ones that create an uncomfortable spark in you tend to produce the most interesting answers, and on occasion can even teach you a little something about yourself. But as for when I will next be in Maine, all I need is an invite and you will see me there, Harbor Bar in one hand, a list of strip clubs to investigate in the other, and the rest of me ready to tackle the Knife\u2019s Edge once again. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>Considering your work as a whole, you are the embodiment of an integrated media person. As a magazine writer [<\/strong><\/span><span class=\"s7\"><strong><em>New York<\/em><\/strong><\/span><span class=\"s2\"><strong>] and editor [<\/strong><\/span><span class=\"s7\"><strong><em>High Times<\/em><\/strong><\/span><span class=\"s2\"><strong>] yourself, tell us about the future of magazines. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p4\"><span class=\"s4\">\u2026The experience of holding a magazine you care about in your hands, seeing the surprises the editors have in store for you with each issue, not quite sure of what will interest you or what will not, cannot be duplicated with any other medium. I have been very fortunate to come along at a time when it was still possible to get in on putting out magazines that made a stir in the public mind. Of course we will adapt, and there are a great many benefits to what you can do with an interactive, online magazine, but the smell will never be there. The texture, or the ability to fold down a page, a page that might be discovered by someone else who happens to be reading it in your house and takes a second look because you have marked it, all that will be lost. Which is perhaps my biggest gripe with the extent the virtual world has permeated and altered our own; namely, there\u2019s nothing sensual about the Internet. The more time we spend with machines and virtual friends, the colder and more detached we seem to become. <\/span><span class=\"s8\">n<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p6\"><span class=\"s2\"><strong>Read an excerpt from Mailer\u2019s latest short fiction piece \u201cBleed\u201d on page 93 of\u00a0 the magazine.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.addthis.com\/bookmark.php?v=250&amp;pub=portmag\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 0;\" src=\"http:\/\/s7.addthis.com\/static\/btn\/lg-share-en.gif\" alt=\"Bookmark and Share\" width=\"125\" height=\"16\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/about\/contact-us\">send us your comments<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The &#8220;Wall Street 2&#8221; heartthrob  is daring to live on the knife\u2019s edge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18276,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,943],"tags":[967],"class_list":["post-3436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-personalities","tag-john-buffalo-mailer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3436"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18279,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3436\/revisions\/18279"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}