Hollywood Flashback: “Butcher Song” Entered True Crime History in 1982

Hollywood Flashback: “Butcher Song” Entered True Crime History in 1982

the butcher’s song – Pulitzer Prize-winner Norman Mailer for a 1979 novel and NBC adaptation of Tommy Lee Jones Emmy in 1983 – now considered a true classic of the crime genre. But that wasn’t always the case.

Ს sing It depicts the last tortured months of Gary Gilmore’s life, which dominated headlines in 1976 with a court order to serve his death sentence after he confessed to killing two robbery victims: a gas station attendant and the manager of a motel parking lot. (The death sentence on Gilmore in January 1977 was the first in a decade since the Supreme Court overturned a decision that declared the death penalty unconstitutional.) Documentary director Lawrence Schiller accompanied Miller to the Gilmore trial, where they shot 120 interviews about the case. . It became the raw material from which Mailer created his masterpiece.

But German Greer dismissed this attempt as futile and clumsy, calling Schiller a “super oven”. THR Check out the book and discover that Mailer’s story “breaks down into chaotic pathos”. Schiller and Mailer collaborated again on the 1982 four-hour, two-part TV movie, directed by Schiller and written by Mailer, which received slightly higher reviews. THR.

“[It] “It has almost the same entertainment value as a visit to the dentist,” criticized critic Gail Williams, who acknowledged that Jones’ performance “was worth the quality of the performance”.

The story first appeared in a separate June issue of The Hollywood Reporter. Click here to subscribe to the magazine.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

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