August 29, 2007
Across Noir America: An Interview with Barry Gifford (Part 2) Posted by Allen Barra at 05:00 PM EST This is the conclusion of the interview that begins here. You’ve worked on two films with David Lynch, Wild At Heart and Lost Highway, which had critics arguing over who was the real auteur of the films. I take it that you didn’t see the collaboration as a problem, that your vision and Lynch’s were pretty much in sync. Actually, Lynch and I have worked together on a few projects, three of which, Wild at Heart, Lost Highway, and Hotel Room, were completed. I have a hard time with the auteur theory. There are very, very few filmmakers who qualify for this distinction. Lynch’s films are certainly identifiable as directed by him, but he still, at least in the past, has collaborated very well with writers, cinematographers, editors, sound technicians, composers, etc. The French went a little bit daffy with this auteur business. Isn’t it enough just to say that certain directors have a recognizable style? Let’s put Orson Welles, Buster Keaton, and a couple of others on that list. Each film fan can decide who is an auteur and who is not. Let’s just say David Lynch is a great filmmaker, and leave it at that. One of the people you dedicate The Cavalry Charges to is Matt Dillon, and one of the most interesting chapters in the book is how you two came to work together on the film Dillon directed, City of Ghosts. You finally got the film made, and Matt fulfilled his desire to shoot almost exclusively in Cambodia. The story has to do with a con artist on the lam in Cambodia, which has some plot similarities with your own novel Port Tropique. Would you summarize your travails in getting the project going? Matt first contacted me way back in the early 1980s about my novel Port Tropique, which he felt would be a great film that he could star in. He was too young at the time, and you are correct, after many years Matt and I finally did get together on a film project that contains echoes of my novel. City of Ghosts began after a trip Matt took to Southeast Asia. He wanted to set a film there that he could direct and act in. I had always loved Joseph Conrad’s novel An Outcast of the Islands and the film of it made by Carol Reed, and I suggested to Matt that that story could be an inspiration for our own. Matt and I wrote a screen story, obtained development money from a couple of French producers, and set about writing the screenplay. We worked on and off for several years, in many locations, until we finished it. At that time Matt was able to raise money for the production and was promised distribution by United Artists/MGM. He set off for Cambodia with a stellar cast that included James Caan, Stellan Skarsgard, Gerard Depardieu, and others, and with great difficulty produced it. To my mind he did a great job; it was certainly an ambitious undertaking seeing as how it was the first feature film shot in Cambodia since 1964. City of Ghosts got great reviews in most of the major newspapers and magazines, much to our delight. Of course, the film didn’t make any money, mostly because UA/MGM decided to sell it as an “art” film rather than an action-adventure film. It was certainly closer to Vera Cruz than to Lost Highway. At present Matt and I are dreaming up another film to collaborate on. You’ll probably see it in about 10 years, if we’re lucky. As a cultural critic, you’re best known for writing about books, film, and music that are—how should I say this?—under the radar. If there were a Barry Gifford Film Fest, and you could show an audience, say, three American films that they probably hadn’t seen, what would they be? And what three American novels would you have your students read in a lit course that generally aren’t taught in American schools? And what three albums would you choose as a deejay that don’t usually get played on radio? American films: Some Came Running, based on James Jones’s novel, Out of the Past, and two by John Huston, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Asphalt Jungle. There are films that are more obscure, but those are four great American movies I can watch over and over. In fact, I have a fifth that I must add, Lonely Are the Brave, starring Kirk Douglas, which most people haven’t seen, made in 1962. Three American novels: Two Serious Ladies, by Jane Bowles, The Optimist’s Daughter, by Eudora Welty, and The Town and the City, by Jack Kerouac. If the latter is not obscure enough for you, let’s throw in Masters of Atlantis, by Charles Portis. I don’t know about three albums, per se, but I would recommend music by the following three Americans: Don Covay, Earl King, and Erma Thomas. There are thousands of albums that deserve to be listened to that don’t get airplay. And I would add, along with Erma, Ann Peebles. Can’t keep it to three. Sorry.
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