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The Executioner's Song

149 statements
28 feature instances
6 referencing feature instances

The Executioner's Song	type	TVTItem
The Executioner's Song	label	The Executioner's Song
The Executioner's Song	page	TheExecutionersSong
The Executioner's Song	comment	The Executioner's Song is a 1979 novel by Norman Mailer.The story takes place in 1976 and 1977. Although classified as a novel and written in a literary style, it is actually a true crime story, about the life and death of Gary Gilmore. As the book begins, 35-year-old Gilmore has just been released from prison, where he has spent most of his adult life. He has been given parole thanks to the sponsorship of Brenda Nicol, a distant cousin who remembers Gary fondly. Gary gets some work, first in his uncle's shoe repair shop and then for a friend's insulation business, but he struggles to adjust to life on the outside. He starts performing poorly at work, while acting aggressive, getting into fights, and committing minor crimes.Enter Nicole Baker, a 19-year-old woman who has already been married twice and had two children. Despite their difference in age they start a torrid love affair. But Gary continues to act violent, and soon, he has committed two murders. He's convicted of murder and sent to death row—where he asks to be executed immediately.In 1981 the book was adopted into a TV movie that provided Star Making Roles for both Tommy Lee Jones (Gilmore) and Rosanna Arquette (Nicole).
The Executioner's Song	fetched	2023-07-05T06:43:19Z
The Executioner's Song	parsed	2023-07-05T06:43:19Z
The Executioner's Song	processingComment	Dropped link to CallBack: Not a Feature - ITEM
The Executioner's Song	isPartOf	DBTropes
The Executioner's Song / int_2dc0d2bf	type	Hidden Depths
The Executioner's Song / int_2dc0d2bf	comment	Hidden Depths: Gary Gilmore is a criminal who has spent most of his life in jail and eventually goes to Death Row. He is also a talented artist and well-read, and can quote poetry by Shelley.
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The Executioner's Song / int_364b9be6	type	Flipping the Bird
The Executioner's Song / int_364b9be6	comment	Flipping the Bird: Gary flips off the paparazzi that are snapping photos of him as he's taken out of the hospital following a suicide attempt.
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The Executioner's Song / int_48d9e12d	type	Funetik Aksent
The Executioner's Song / int_48d9e12d	comment	Funetik Aksent: A chapter titled "Geelmore and Geebs" is about how Gilmore and his cellmate, a guy named Gibbs, mock the jailer, a Hispanic fellow named Luis. Luis says stuff like "You zon of a beetch, Geelmore."
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The Executioner's Song / int_4de1544	type	Had to Come to Prison to Be a Crook
The Executioner's Song / int_4de1544	comment	Had to Come to Prison to Be a Crook: Gary's first stint in reform school for stealing cars as a teenager did the exact opposite of reforming him, instead making him much harder and more violent.
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The Executioner's Song / int_52196c03	type	Age-Gap Romance
The Executioner's Song / int_52196c03	comment	Age-Gap Romance: Gary and Nicole fall in love despite a 16-year-gap in their ages. Brenda observes that, due to Gary's long time in prison, he and Nicole are basically the same emotional age.
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The Executioner's Song / int_53c9fc92	type	Flashback
The Executioner's Song / int_53c9fc92	comment	Flashback: After the story starts with Gary getting out of jail and moving in with his cousin, Gary eventually meets Nicole. The next part is a long flashback that recounts Nicole's grim, sad life (sexually abused as a child, no education, two marriages and two babies before she's 19). A shorter flashback, after Gary is arrested for murder, focuses on his mother Bessie and her life and how she met Gary's father, who was an itinerant con artist. A woman named Grace finds out about her friend Bessie's son Gary being convicted of murder and sentenced to death. This starts a flashback chapter about Gary's childhood and how going to reform school made him much worse.
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The Executioner's Song / int_55940b68	type	Doorstopper
The Executioner's Song / int_55940b68	comment	Doorstopper: A thousand-page book, with many passages that don't actually deal directly with Gary Gilmore. The prison psychiatrist who interviews Gary gets a few pages recounting his youth as a rambunctious college student. Later, long passages follow Lawrence Schiller, the writer/producer who is trying to get the rights to Gary Gilmore's story so he can make a TV movie.
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The Executioner's Song / int_6563aeb6	type	Shameless Fanservice Girl
The Executioner's Song / int_6563aeb6	comment	Shameless Fanservice Girl: Gary, who was in jail for a long time, can't get enough of seeing Nicole naked and she is happy to oblige. One scene has the two of them driving through town, her naked below the waist and with her heels propped up on the dashboard, not caring a bit when a trucker in his cab looks right at her.
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The Executioner's Song / int_6b2b3b59	type	The Reveal
The Executioner's Song / int_6b2b3b59	comment	The Reveal: Gibbs, the cell mate Gary had for a time when he was on trial for murder, is revealed to be a police informer when he starts making calls offering to sell his story. Gary is very upset when he finds this out, as he thought Gibbs was his friend and had already sent him a $2000 check. (It turns out that Gibbs was placed in the cell next to Gary in order to keep him away from other inmates in gen pop.)
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The Executioner's Song / int_7a667c8d	type	A Threesome Is Hot
The Executioner's Song / int_7a667c8d	comment	A Threesome Is Hot: For a while, Gary and Nicole are having threesomes with a girl named Rosebeth. Nicole loves it and finds it very hot, but the reader probably won't, since Rosebeth is under age.
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The Executioner's Song / int_8387bb18	type	Good Girls Avoid Abortion
The Executioner's Song / int_8387bb18	comment	Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Nicole is a teen mother who doesn't particularly like it, who feels like she's been robbed of a life of her own. She still decides she can't abort her second baby.
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The Executioner's Song / int_8591611a	type	Shameful Strip
The Executioner's Song / int_8591611a	comment	Shameful Strip: Jerry Scott the prison guard makes Gary strip after Gary arrives at Utah State Prison following his murder convction. Gary is angry.
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The Executioner's Song / int_92264449	type	Jabba Table Manners
The Executioner's Song / int_92264449	comment	Jabba Table Manners: Brenda is irritated by how poor Gary's table manners are. Gary explains that in jail you had to wolf your food down in fifteen minutes, and he can't get used to sitting down and having a nice leisurely meal.
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The Executioner's Song / int_963c6133	type	Promiscuity After Rape
The Executioner's Song / int_963c6133	comment	Promiscuity After Rape: When Nicole was a child of 11 she was sexually abused by "Uncle" Lee, a friend of her father's who stayed with the family. Since then she has been extremely promiscuous, and she wonders if that's the reason why.
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The Executioner's Song / int_9f46ebc4	type	Just Got Out of Jail
The Executioner's Song / int_9f46ebc4	comment	Just Got Out of Jail: Gary faces all the usual problems of people getting out of prison, like a lack of education (even though he's actually quite bright) or job skills. He's got some family and friends willing to provide him with a place to stay and work, but his own tendency to violence and lack of impulse control leads to tragedy.
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The Executioner's Song / int_a21f81a	type	Monster Fangirl
The Executioner's Song / int_a21f81a	comment	Monster Fangirl: Shortly after his arrest for murder, Gary writes Nicole and tells her about a sex letter he got from a strange woman. He continues to get fan letters from women as his case becomes a huge news story.
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The Executioner's Song / int_a2492aff	type	Dogged Nice Guy
The Executioner's Song / int_a2492aff	comment	Dogged Nice Guy: For a given variety of "nice", since Barrett was a drug user and drug dealer who once tried to pimp Nicole out. But he has decided to wait for her as she cycles through bad boyfriends, like the violent ex-con Gary Gilmore. This isn't true later, though, when Barrett comes over and beats Nicole up because he hears that she's been writing letters to Gary in prison.
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The Executioner's Song / int_ad3e13c5	type	The Loins Sleep Tonight
The Executioner's Song / int_ad3e13c5	comment	The Loins Sleep Tonight: Gary can't perform the first time he gets a chance at sex with Nicole, probably because he's too nervous. Later they have a passionate affair. But later than that, Gary's continued beer drinking starts to inhibit his ability to get it up, stressing their relationship.
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The Executioner's Song / int_b476386f	type	Sweetie Graffiti
The Executioner's Song / int_b476386f	comment	Sweetie Graffiti: Gary carves "GARY LOVES NICOLE" into a tree. Later she goes back and carves "NICOLE LOVES GARY" into the same tree and he's impressed that she did it better than he did.
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The Executioner's Song / int_c3fbac64	type	Bestiality Is Depraved
The Executioner's Song / int_c3fbac64	comment	Bestiality Is Depraved: Nicole thinks she's found a boyfriend, a nice man named John who is willing to marry her despite the fact that she's already been married twice and has two children. John takes her to see his parents in Mississippi—and one night, on the family farm, she sees John receiving fellatio from a calf. She can't look at him the same way again, he turns into an abusive brute, and soon enough she's back in Utah.
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The Executioner's Song / int_c75df49a	type	Shout-Out
The Executioner's Song / int_c75df49a	comment	Shout-Out: A friend of Gary's mother taught In Cold Blood in a creative writing class. In Cold Blood, of course, is the Ur-Example of the literary True Crime narrative, with The Executioner's Song being the second most famous example.
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The Executioner's Song / int_d57f4a99	type	The Nothing After Death
The Executioner's Song / int_d57f4a99	comment	The Nothing After Death: Discussed Trope, as Gary writes in a letter to Nicole that he's considered the possibility of "nothing" after death but just can't believe it.
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The Executioner's Song / int_db8b1727	type	Window Love
The Executioner's Song / int_db8b1727	comment	Window Love: Gary tells his friend Vern that a prison handshake is putting your hands up against the glass. He starts doing it with all his visitors, after he has been placed in maximum security after a suicide attempt.
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The Executioner's Song / int_f237981e	type	The Alleged Car
The Executioner's Song / int_f237981e	comment	The Alleged Car: Gary gets an old broken-down Mustang that keeps failing to start. After the car stalls one time too many he smashes the windshield, trades it in for a truck—and commits two robbery-murders to be able to afford the truck.
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The Executioner's Song / int_f42f96fa	type	Would Hit a Girl
The Executioner's Song / int_f42f96fa	comment	Would Hit a Girl: The long section about Nicole's backstory recounts how the men in her life have hit her and abused her. Gary starts to hit her too, as part of his natural tendency towards violence.
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The Executioner's Song / int_fb48d8d7	type	Brig Ball Bouncing
The Executioner's Song / int_fb48d8d7	comment	Brig Ball Bouncing: Nicole's ex-husband Barrett was once confined to "the nuthouse" for a week. He balled up his socks and bounced them against the wall of the cell and caught them.
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The Executioner's Song / int_fff371b4	type	Death Seeker
The Executioner's Song / int_fff371b4	comment	Death Seeker: Gary could have lived on Death Row for many years while his appeals played out, but he insists on having his execution take place as soon as possible. As a consequence he becomes the first person in the United States executed in nearly ten years, following an all-too-brief death penalty ban.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

The Executioner's Song	hasFeature	Brig Ball Bouncing / int_4743e8e7
The Executioner's Song	hasFeature	Death Row / int_4743e8e7
The Executioner's Song	hasFeature	Jabba Table Manners / int_4743e8e7
The Executioner's Song	hasFeature	Monster Fangirl / int_4743e8e7
The Executioner's Song	hasFeature	Sweetie Graffiti / int_4743e8e7
The Executioner's Song	hasFeature	True Crime / int_4743e8e7

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