Barry Gifford does not take drugs and neither should you

"What kind of drugs are you on?"

That was the first question asked at the Barry Gifford master class this afternoon, which was moderated by New Orleans filmmaker and teacher Mari Kornhauser. The subtitle for the panel was "Translating Life to the Screen," so naturally there was a lot of talk about movies; Gifford was interesting, funny, and articulate, but I would've rather heard about his books (22 of them! in 28 languages!). Gifford was also the founder of Black Lizard Books in the 1980s, which brought back into print a number of wayside-fallen noir authors (his reprint of After Dark, My Sweet was what introduced me to Jim Thompson).

He has two more books coming this spring: Memories from a Sinking Ship (a novel) and The Cavalry Charges: Writings on Books, Films, and Music (essays). But most of the discussion centered on the movie version of his most well-known novel, Wild at Heart, which seems to have a bigger cult following than I knew...and by that, I mean a bigger cult than usually gathers around David Lynch movies. (For the record, he loves Laura Dern and liked Nicolas Cage's interpretation of his character.)

Gifford had so many interesting things to say that I gave up trying to transcribe, but this quote stuck with me all afternoon:

My father was involved in organized crime. I grew up in a world of men, and my role was to sit and observe; that was my university as a writer, and I was fascinated by this. I had very little discipline – I didn’t go to school in the early years – so I would stay up all night and watch the Million Dollar Movie. That's how I developed this sense of narrative. Separating truth from lies...and realizing that there wasn’t much difference.

(Oh, and for the record: Mr. Gifford says he stopped taking drugs in 1970, when they began to interfere with his imagination. Why do you think they call it dope, kids?)