Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [204]
Once, after the book’s publication, Mailer asked me why I had refused to be involved with The Executioner’s Song, and I said, “Because of Larry Schiller.” Mailer thought for a moment and replied: “I know what you mean. You know, Larry and I have had our disagreements over the years. But I have to say, I think there was something about this experience that deepened Larry.”
Now, Schiller had made a film of this story, and I knew that I would once more have to witness the re-creation of painful parts of my family’s past. In addition, I knew that filmic accounts often seem to have an authority which written accounts do not; because films have real faces and real voices, people often believe that they are telling real stories. But I knew too well that the truth of what had happened in Gary’s life could not easily be conveyed in a television drama, and I wanted to say so. This time, I decided, I should not hide. The editors at Rolling Stone agreed, and gave me an assignment to cover the film of Gary’s life.
Soon enough, Schiller learned about this assignment and called to invite me to see the film, and to offer his cooperation. It seemed a surprisingly gracious (not to mention shrewd) offer, considering that I had turned down his numerous requests for me to participate in Mailer’s efforts.
A few days later I saw the film and found it in many ways unsparingly true to its subject. It presented, with little embroidery and no sentimentality, a fast-moving narrative account of Gary’s life in Provo, Utah, and it showed the mounting of his rage and the venting of it in two senseless murders. And it showed his subsequent, relentless pursuit of his own negation, culminating in execution. But I felt the film also missed plenty: It missed Gary, and in doing so, it missed its one opportunity at recreating or salvaging a soul. There simply wasn’t much in the manner of actor Tommy Lee Jones that suggested Gary as he really was, nor was there much that showed the real reach of Gary’s deadliness or the range of his intelligence. Perhaps most problematically, there was also little attempt to animate the promptings behind Gary’s pursuit of his own death, and without an understanding of that, I felt, the other details and actions of his story fell flat.
On a summer evening a week or so after seeing the film, I sat in Schiller’s backyard with him and shared my reactions to his movie. “Well,” he replied, “you’re right. This Gary is certainly not the Gary I met or the Gary that you knew as a blood relative … But I also think this Gary takes you to the same end result as the real one.”
Schiller regarded me quietly for a moment and then said: “Now I want to ask you a question. Why have you waited until now to have anything to do with this story? Why didn’t you give me an interview for Norman’s book when I asked you for one?”
Because, I told him, more than anything else I simply wanted to retain my own voice about matters concerning Gary. I didn’t want to give somebody an interview and then later feel I had forfeited control over my own words.
Schiller nodded. “Retaining your own voice. I think I might have understood had you explained it to me the way you did just now. You see, I looked upon you as a crucial spoke in the wheel of this story that I could never get.”
Also, I went on, it seemed clear to me in Utah that the most important part of Gary’s worth as news item or literary property was the event—in effect, the staging—of his death. That it seemed clear that Gary was probably worth more to Schiller …
Schiller finished the thought for me, “…dead than alive. Which, in fact, he wasn’t.”
“You don’t think so?”
“Nah. Gary Gilmore wasn’t worth anything dead. His story would have had more social