Maidstone and Other Films by Norman Mailer (2-DVD)

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, literary enfant terrible Norman Mailer shocked the film world when he decided to step behind the camera for three experimental motion pictures, with technical assistance from cinema vérité pioneers Richard Leacock and D.A. Pennebaker. Though long commercially unreleased on video, all three of the Mailer features appear back-to-back in this box set from The Criterion Collection's Eclipse series. WILD 90 (1967) stars Mailer himself, Mickey Knox and Buzz Farber as a cadre of gangsters holed up in a New York City apartment, where they spend the entire movie boozing, brawling, and arguing. BEYOND THE LAW (1968) is a far more conventional cop drama starring Mailer, Rip Torn and others as Irish cops and set in a New York police station and a nearby bar. Finally, MAIDSTONE (1970) stars the