One Year After Losing Norman Mailer, Coffee with John Buffalo

Appearing this week in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle is my meeting with John Buffalo Mailer.


John Buffalo Mailer: A Brooklyn Jew with Cowboys in Arkansas
by Brad Lockwood (edit@brooklyneagle.net), published online 11-14-2008
www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=27&id=24556



By Brad Lockwood
It’s always an unnerving moment: Waiting to meet someone for the first time, wondering if you’ll recognize each other, or annoy a complete stranger. But John Buffalo Mailer is unmistakable, crossing Court Street and offering a handshake outside Le Petit Cafe in Carroll Gardens. He needs a coffee; his girlfriend, Peri Lyons, performed her cabaret-style show “Famous in France” last night and it was a late one. So we take a seat inside and are soon talking like old friends.

Intentionally, my first question is about his one-year stint as editor of High Times magazine. “What I remember of it…” he replies with a laugh. And then the prodigious Mailer mind emerges, with that serious stare. “It’s an important brand name. When it started in ‘74, it was time for another revolutionary paper.”

Offering the unique history of High Times, John says how one of its founders, Richard Stratton, was arrested and federal officials made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: “Give us [Hunter S.] Thompson and [Norman] Mailer and you can walk...” Stratton did refuse, was sentenced to 25 years, and won parole after eight. In 2004, Stratton asked John Buffalo Mailer to serve as executive editor of High Times. The impact was immediate—the old stoner magazine took on a fresh new look and was attracting excellent writers. “When we took the helm it had become mostly a grower’s magazine, which is okay. But we wanted to bring it back to being a place where Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists could write the stories they wanted to with no corporate media restrictions.”

A Mailer leading the required reading for marijuana aficionados was both a publicity coup and controversial, and John is reflective of his experience. “My theory on why marijuana is still illegal is that it would make production of industrial hemp in the U.S. a certainty, and hemp is a direct competitor to timber, cotton and oil. You can run a diesel car on hemp oil.

It has always been those particular industries that have been the biggest advocates for keeping it down.” With a wry grin, he adds, “There was a perverse pleasure in knowing the Feds had a subscription, and that somewhere, each month, one or two agents were most likely earning their pay while reading our rag, keeping a loose eye out for un-American material.”

Of his father’s infamous early drug use, John gives rare insight into Norman Mailer, and why he later quit: “When your brain is so finely tuned, drugs effect you differently. One puff wasn’t worth losing three days of work to him.”

It has been a year since Norman Mailer died, and John Buffalo is his youngest child. His mother, Norris Church Mailer, generously opened her Brooklyn Heights home to us recently, and the extraordinary literary history of this one family continues despite the loss of the patriarch. Norris is an acclaimed novelist, now completing a memoir, and most of the Mailer children are involved in the arts. John Buffalo’s résumé includes acting, directing, editing, producing and, of course, writing.

“I got published when I was a senior in college in a humble but classy publication called The Reading Room. But it was huge to me,” he remembers, while also addressing how his famous surname has affected his career.

“I try to focus on the work and not think about that any more than is psychologically necessary for my balance of mind. I’m incredibly proud of the legacy I come from—he’s half of me and there is no one in the world I would trade fathers with. No one. But being Norman Mailer’s son also forces you to step it up if you want to try to make a career in the arts. Aside from raised expectations, some justified, others not, one is left with the feeling that to publish or perform a piece that is not at a certain level of artistic integrity would be doing a disservice to the legacy. My hope is that I am never placed in a position of having to put work out there that I do not believe is up to that level. So, in that way, it keeps you honest.”

Perhaps the greatest praise John received was from his father. “The first time he said I was good enough, I believed him. This was of course after he had ripped me a new one on several stories I had shown him leading up to this first one he liked.”

Over a half-century between father and son, John describes their time together as “almost a grandfather relationship, where I could talk to him about anything. There was no ego battle between us, as there often is between fathers and sons of closer generations. The only drawback was I didn’t have him around long enough. I was aware of his mortality from a young age. But truly, no matter how long he lived, none of us could ever have gotten enough of him.”

Norman and John Buffalo Mailer co-authored the novel The Big Empty, released in 2005, and the response from critics was predictable. Anything written by Norman Mailer receives either critical praise or scorn, but some critics seemed to hope for a falling out between the father and son—speculation that John found rather surreal. “With The Big Empty people were looking for a fight that just wasn’t there. That book was my attempt to make his thoughts accessible to our generation. I like to think that, at least in some places, we managed to pull that off.”

Noting the strange mix of characters his father surrounded himself with, growing up around literary elites and convicted criminals, John is equally at ease with his father’s New York and his mother’s rural roots. John Buffalo Mailer exudes a wise modesty well beyond his thirty years. “I know people in all places. I’m a Brooklyn Jew with cowboy roots in Arkansas. I take a decent amount of pride in the feeling that there is not a bar in this country that I couldn’t feel comfortable in.”

Him mentioning Arkansas is to honor the influence of his mother, especially when speaking of growing up as a Mailer. “It was pretty groovy. I had a utopian childhood. My dad was 55 when I was born and ready to settle down—settling down for Norman Mailer, at least. I had eight older brothers and sisters, and I’d say we’re probably the closest family I know. And the credit goes entirely to my mom.”

On the subject of Brooklyn now being touted as the Mecca for writers, he nods approvingly and says, “Brooklyn, there’s an extraordinary tradition for writers here. A certain ‘Fuggetaboutit!’ attitude that allows us to write tough, ballsy stuff while maintaining a certain level of sweetness and understanding. A lot of the writers who come from Brooklyn are sensitive tough guys.”

Former editor of High Times, and presently a contributing editor for Stop Smiling magazine, as well as the newly launched Tar magazine—in addition to being a playwright, actor, producer and screenwriter—John Buffalo Mailer’s range may be his hallmark. “I love screenwriting. It’s the easiest form of writing. I love the mode, but to get a movie made with something to say isn’t automatic these days… I feel like movies are the last venue where you can still hold an audience’s attention for two hours.”

He’s well grounded yet experimental, and recalls his father’s foundation in literature yet fickle interest in Hollywood and other arts. “He hit it at 25 and was looking for ways to be anything but a writer. He would say he had a guardian angel watching over him, to make sure whatever else he did failed, to remind him, ‘Look, dummy, you’re here to write novels!’”

In addition to his screenplay, and wanting to “write a play that my buddies from Coney Island and top theatre critics can enjoy together,” John also has an article in the latest edition of Playboy. “New Orleans through the eyes of strippers” is how he describes it, and an attempt to take a different look at the city.

“It’s a favorable portrait; the city is 80 percent back—the media has given a very negative view, as if you step off the plane and are greeted with gun shots. It’s just not like that.” When asked why he’s focusing on strippers for his article, John explains, “Well, it is Playboy for one. And, when I was down there, I found the girls and other people in the service industry were the ones who understood the hurting and trying to rebuild they’re the real residents. It’s a fascinating lens: How are the locals doing? I use the term ‘strippers’ loosely; it’s the bartenders and service workers. New Orleans, if we let that city die, I’m really concerned for the soul of our country.”

Of his many titles, there’s one that he doesn’t mention—and why our waitress has been so attentive. In 2002 People Magazine named John Buffalo Mailer one of the “Sexiest Men Alive.” He blushed a bit when I brought it up, then described his reaction: “When it was coming out I was 24 and drove across the country to cash in on it.” He was heading to Hollywood, suddenly one of the “Sexiest Men Alive” with several acting auditions scheduled.

And then tragedy almost struck. A truck driver fell asleep, a car swerved to avoid him, a frantic moment behind the wheel, and John was spinning around the road narrowly dodging each of the oncoming cars as his vehicle skidded to the other side of the highway. As he describes it, “miraculously, a 15-car pile up didn’t happen that morning, and I don’t use that word lightly.” Shaken, he nearly turned back, but decided to continue. “I was in the middle of the country and friends were calling me on the east and west coasts telling me their reactions to seeing my picture in People—But I hadn’t seen it yet! I finally got to Needles, Calif., and bought three copies. As the cashier was ringing me up, she asked me, ‘Who do you know in here?’ Then her son, who was bagging my groceries, opened the magazine, looked at me, then read out loud, ‘John Buffalo Mailer.’ And I thought to myself, ‘Sh*t, man! I made it!’”

With a light laugh, he then admits those initial Hollywood auditions didn’t work out. When his mother was diagnosed with her second round of cancer, he took the job at High Times, and moved back to Brooklyn.

Somewhere, a guardian angel is watching as John Buffalo Mailer and I leave each other, as he heads home, back to work, to write.