In
1956,
Vidal was hired as a contract screenwriter for
Metro Goldwyn Mayer. In
1959, director
William Wyler needed script doctors to re-write the script for Ben-Hur, originally written by
Karl Tunberg. Vidal collaborated with
Christopher Fry, reworking the screenplay on condition that
MGM release him from the last two years of his contract.
Producer Sam Zimbalist's death complicated the screenwriting credit.
The Screen Writers Guild resolved the matter by listing Tunberg as sole screenwriter, denying credit to both Vidal and Fry. This decision was based on the
WGA screenwriting credit system, which favors original authors. Vidal later claimed in the documentary film
The Celluloid Closet that to explain the animosity between Ben-Hur and
Messala, he had inserted a gay subtext suggesting that the two had had a prior relationship, but that actor
Charlton Heston was oblivious.[35]
Heston denied that Vidal contributed significantly to the script.[36] Vidal accused Heston of being a compulsive liar and a bad actor.[14]
Two plays,
The Best Man (1960) and
Visit to a Small Planet (
1955), were both
Broadway and film successes.
Vidal occasionally returned to writing for film and television, including the television movie
Gore Vidal's
Billy the Kid with
Val Kilmer and the mini-series
Lincoln.
He also wrote the original draft for the controversial film
Caligula, but later had his name removed when director
Tinto Brass and actor
Malcolm McDowell rewrote the script, changing the tone and themes significantly.
The producers later made an attempt to salvage some of Vidal's vision in the film's post-production.
Vidal is — at least in the
United States — respected more for his essays than his novels.[38] Even an occasionally hostile critic like
Martin Amis admitted, "Essays are what he is good at
... [h]e is learned, funny and exceptionally clear-sighted. Even his blind spots are illuminating."
For six decades, Gore Vidal applied himself to a wide variety of sociopolitical, sexual, historical and literary themes. In
1987, Vidal wrote the essays titled
Armageddon?, exploring the intricacies of power in contemporary
America. He pilloried the incumbent president
Ronald Reagan as a "triumph of the embalmer's art." In
1993, he won the
National Book Award for Nonfiction for the collection United States: Essays 1952--1992.[39] According to the citation, "
Whatever his subject, he addresses it with an artist's resonant appreciation, a scholar's conscience and the persuasive powers of a great essayist."[citation needed]
A subsequent collection of essays, published in
2000, is
The Last Empire. He subsequently published such self-described "pamphlets" as Perpetual War for
Perpetual Peace,
Dreaming War:
Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush
Junta, and
Imperial America, critiques of
American expansionism, the military-industrial complex, the national security state and the
George W. Bush administration. Vidal also wrote a historical essay about the
U.S.'s founding fathers, Inventing a
Nation. In
1995, he published a memoir
Palimpsest, and in
2006 its follow-up volume,
Point to Point
Navigation. Earlier that year, Vidal also published
Clouds and Eclipses: The
Collected Short Stories.
Because of his matter-of-fact treatment of same-sex relations in such books as
The City and
The Pillar, Vidal is often seen as an early champion of sexual liberation.[40] In the September
1969 edition of
Esquire, for example, Vidal wrote:
We are all bisexual to begin with. That is a fact of our condition. And we are all responsive to sexual stimuli from our own as well as from the opposite sex. Certain societies at certain times, usually in the interest of maintaining the baby supply, have discouraged homosexuality. Other societies, particularly militaristic ones, have exalted it. But regardless of tribal taboos, homosexuality is a constant fact of the human condition and it is not a sickness, not a sin, not a crime ... despite the best efforts of our puritan tribe to make it all three.
Homosexuality is as natural as heterosexuality.
Notice I use the word 'natural,' not normal.[41]
In 1995,
Jay Parini was appointed as Vidal's literary executor.[42]
In 2009, he won the annual
Medal for
Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the
National Book Foundation, which called him a "prominent social critic on politics, history, literature and culture."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gore_vidal
Image By
David Shankbone (
Photographer's blog post about the photo and event) [
CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
3.0)], via
Wikimedia Commons
- published: 22 Nov 2013
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