How to Come Alive with Norman Mailer

Norman Mailer's daughter Maggie will join us for a post-screening Q&A on Monday, August 19, at 7:00pm, moderated by journalist Tony Kahn. Opens regularly Friday, August 16. 

How to Come Alive with Norman Mailer explores the rollercoaster life of America’s most controversial and bestselling author of the twentieth century, Norman Mailer.

Propelled by his tremendous ego and contrarian spirit, Mailer’s ceaseless visibility in the public eye lasted 6 decades, during which he had 6 tumultuous marriages, 9 beloved children, 11 bestsellers, 3 arrests, and 2 Pulitzer Prizes. Prophet, hedonist, violent criminal, literary outlaw, and social provocateur, Mailer’s ideas about love, anger, fear, and courage cut to the core of human nature, are more relevant than ever today, and point to a prescription for waking ourselves up, shaking free of society’s expectations, and coming alive as a people.

The first project with full access to Mailer’s family and their archive, the film unearths a treasure trove of intimate and never-before-seen footage, outtakes, audio recordings, and interviews from throughout his life. Mailer lays himself bare, foibles and all. As a lover, fighter, rabble-rouser, and perhaps the last true American public intellectual, he seeks most of all to become a bolder, better human being and encourages us to do the same — to think adventurously, speak fearlessly, and care less about the response... or risk a doomed future.

About Maggie Mailer

Maggie Mailer is an artist whose work explores overlaps between landscape and inner states of being. Her work engages painting as a terrain in which the creative process, and the impact of human activity on the actual landscape, walk and talk together. Recent works include This is Not a Picnic, a roving installation under the umbrella of Picnic Pavilion at The 58th International Venice Biennale, in which Mailer challenged the standard context for viewing artwork by traveling throughout the city of Venice with a painting that doubled was a picnic cloth. Previous projects include founding The Storefront Artist Project, an ephemeral Artist Residency program in Pittsfield Massachusetts which ran from 2002 - 2012 and presented artists at work in real time as a continual public performance. The project is credited with jumpstarting the revival of the city of Pittsfield, and has been used as a model for the regeneration of other cities across the country. 

Mailer has created illustrations for the books, Lara’s First Christmas, by Alice O’Howell, and, In a Pickle, by Martinko, whose animated version won the Silver Award for both Best Animated Short, and Best Children’s Short, at the Independent Shorts Awards in November 2020. Mailer’s work is represented by Ober Gallery in Kent, CT, and Gut Gallery in Dallas, Texas. Her work has been featured in Art New England, with cover stories in The Boston Globe, and The Los Angeles Times. Born in 1971 in New York, Mailer studied Architecture and Fine Arts and received a BA in English Literature from Columbia University in 1993.

ABOUT TONY KAHN

Tony Kahn is a highly respected figure in the world of public broadcasting, with a career spanning over four decades as a producer, host, author, commentator, and storyteller for NPR, PRI, WBUR, WGBH Radio and TV, and PBS.

Kahn’s credits include appearing as a cast member of longest running public radio quiz show "Says You!,” being the original host of PRI and the BBC’s internal news program, “The World," producing the award winning NPR docudrama and podcast “Blacklisted,” which chronicled his family’s fifteen years of FBI surveillance and flight under the red scare, and pioneering  NPR's—and one of world’s—very first weekly podcasts, "WGBH’s Morning Stories," in 2004. He is also the author of the recently published graphic memoir, called Fugitive, now available as an ebook and in print.

Kahn has earned numerous broadcasting awards, including twelve New England Emmys; six Gold Medals of the New York International Festival; the Ace Cable Award; three Gabriel Awards; a national Emmy nomination; and the Edward R. Murrow Award; which have solidified his reputation as a journalist, storyteller and “deep listener,” able to delve beneath the surface of places, people, and events and to find fresh perspectives, emotional meaning, and unusual connections from people from every walk of life.