Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [361]
"No way," said Schiller, but decided he had to throw Moyers a bone. "I have photographs of Gilmore in Maximum," he said. "You can't mention who took the pictures, but if you want to run a montage of stills, well, I won't give you the prints, but I will shoot a movie film of the stills, provided you pay the lab costs. However, I must design it."
Moyers's producer hit the fucking ceiling. "This is news," he declared, "not entertainment." Moyers, however, went along with Schiller. After all, the man was giving up his own pictures.
Schiller figured he could design the montage to make Gilmore human, rather than a cold-blooded killer. There was a vulnerability he might be able to communicate. He wanted to get Gilmore before the public looking half-ass acceptable, anyway.
The problem was not that Gilmore was a killer. The problem was not even that he was challenging all the straight people out there.
The real difficulty was that he was making fools of them. They could live with a killer who was crazy, mixed-up, insane. But for a murderer to start controlling the issue-that was developing a lot of active hatred for Gilmore. People felt as if the world was being tipped on edge.
If Schiller was going to have a successful book and a successful film, he had to defuse the public animosity, and get across that there was a whole human quality about his man Gilmore. Every time he saw the reporters at the Hilton going monkey see, monkey do, and thought of the interviews he would have gone out to get if he had been on the job, he couldn't believe it. They just didn't do their work.
Didn't try to get an insight into Gary by interviewing the people who might be accessible. Instead, they sat around, drank, swapped stories, worked up a consensus, and thereby put a common evaluation on the story the way an open market arrived at a price. They all used the same few stories in common. Yet if he, Larry Schiller, were to offer examples of interesting human qualities in Gilmore, no one would accept them. They would say he was painting that nice picture for his own financial benefit. Therefore, he had to have the portrait painted by somebody else. Right now, that was going to be Bill Moyers.
4
Jan. 8 Sat.
Hello my Love
My Mother in Law Marie Barrett brought Sunny up to see me yesterday.
She's gettin so damn pretty an sassy. An happy as a lark. Peabody too. Got himself some little levis an boots. Looks like a tuff little shit kicker, but hes sweet as pie . . .
Guess i Kinda lost touch with my Love for them a little while before all this came about . . .
Would you believe-i get strip shook after visiting with them.
i got a bit of infection, an the doc ordered me a supository. But they insist on watchin me insert it so i said to hell with it-ill rot first, forgive my vulgarity Love . . .
its a crazy life these days. i wonder what destiny we are waiting for. Entering.
if you are shot Jan 17. . .
What will be in me? will i be nothing if you go away . . .
Will i be more? Will i be lost or be found? i don't want to be without you. i dont think i would continue to exist if i should be ever a day without Your Love in my soul.
Jesus, Gary. Be with me.
Larry asked Tamera if they could use a desk at the Deseret News for the interview, and what with the shooting being done on a Saturday night, she didn't have too hard a time getting permission. Hardly any of the staff was there.
This setup was just what Schiller wanted. He had a big city newsroom behind him all the while he spoke. There he was sitting at a desk, then a shot of him listening to a tape of Gary, then going to work on the typewriter. Moyers's crew filmed away full blast.
Schiller was sitting in front of the news desk when Tamera came up during a break, and said, "You got to look at something." Took him to a corner of the room and handed a tear of paper just come off the wire. ABC had pulled out. Fucking pulled out!
There it was, right on a wire service teletype. The