The Executioner's Song (film) The Executioner's Song (film) The Executioner's Song is a 1982 made-for-television film adaptation of Norman Mailer's 1979 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. The film is directed by Lawrence Schiller from a screenplay by Mailer. The movie is about the final nine months of the life of Gary Gilmore, beginning with his release from prison at the age of 35 after serving 12 years for robbery in Indiana. He is allowed to fly to Utah to live with Brenda Nicol, a distant cousin who was close to him and agrees to sponsor him. She tries to help him get
Death-Song of Conan the Cimmerian consists of nine seven-line stanzas in a modified ballad measure, rhyming A-B-A-B-A-A-B. It's told from the point of view of Conan, reflecting on his life and setting forth his personal philosophy as his death approaches. Conan relishes his memories of the life he has led and the friends he has made even as he feels the bite of mortality. Power and material gain, for which he has striven all his life, are acknowledged as ephemeral: "They crumble into clods." He faces his death unflinchingly, pairing life's hard-won pleasures with the ravages of age and extinction in an almost off-hand fashion,