QUIET AT THE BACK: BARRY GIFFORD IS WILD AT HEART

by Andrew Jamieson

Barry Gifford is to fiction what David Lynch is to film. This is by no means a loose association. They have collaborated three times to date, first in 1990, when Lynch adapted and directed Gifford’s novel Wild At Heart, starring Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern. Then, in 1993, Lynch directed two parts of Gifford’s stageplay collection Hotel Room Trilogy (Tricks and Blackout) for HBO, the American cable channel. Their latest team-up was in 1997 for Lost Highway, starring Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette. Lost Highway differs from the other two productions purely in the fact that the script for the film was co-written by Lynch and Gifford, whereas previously Lynch had solely adapted Gifford’s work. From what I gather, this collaboration came about through mutual respect and fortuitous timing (Lynch had not had a feature film released since 1992, with Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and had been having trouble getting his projects financed).

The collaboration between the two seems so fitting that it strikes me as quite a blessing that they got anything made together at all. These kind of situations don’t seem to appear that often: ‘so and so should work with him/her’, ‘wouldn’t it be good if **** worked with ****’, and so on. The resulting film, released to mixed reviews in early 1997, is spectacular, of note in particular the way it divides audiences. I have heard it dismissed as making no sense, or being ‘too Lynch-ian’, too indulgent or deliberately confusing. And in some sense all of these accusations would perhaps be true were it not for the fact that it was created by Gifford and Lynch. The above criticisms might hold some weight if the film had been directed by a young MTV director. Or perhaps if it had been directed by such a person, the film might have been heralded as the ‘dawn of a bright new film-making talent.’ The fact of the matter is that the film was always bound to cause controversy, filled as it was with creations spewed forth from the increasingly scopic minds of Gifford and Lynch.

Gifford’s only measure in his field of the obscure, in my eyes, is with Lynch. Lynch and Gifford seem to be on such a similar wavelength that their collaborations highlight one another’s uniqueness. Here’s to the next one.

I first heard of Gifford through the film Wild At Heart. I was scouring a film magazine, some time in ’97 or ’98 and came upon a book review for The Wild Life Of Sailor And Lula, a collected volume of six novels set in and around the lives of Gifford’s southern fried Romeo and Juliet, Sailor Ripley and Lula Pace Fortune. I went out and bought it and I’m still coming back to it all these years later. I was looking for something new, something to spend some time with in between studies and socialising. Wild At Heart was good, consumed within a week. But the next book of the volume, Perdita Durango, is perhaps my favourite, following as it does the misadventures and deeds of the titular Ms Durango as she flees from the law (a spin-off from her involvement in the climactic bank heist towards the end of Wild At Heart), teaming up with Romeo Dolorosa. She is a fireball of a character and he is a perplexing, voodoo-flavoured ex-marine piece of charming snakebite. This second novel differs from the first in the sense that the two characters we follow in this book are plain rotten and know it, live off it and enjoy it. Sailor and Lula on the other hand, despite their moments of callous roughness, are comparably angels in disguise. The two sets contrast nicely, and it says something about the central pair in Perdita Durango, their twin darkness making it a murky, surrealistic trawl through the borderlands. Characters come and go (sometimes at the hands of Perdita and Romeo) and they all build upon the last, giving the book a mischievous flavour missing from Wild At Heart.

Here’s a quote from Wild At Heart which paints quite clearly for the reader the relationship between Sailor and Lula:

"Know what I like best, honey?" said Lula, as Sailor guided the Bonneville out of Lafayette towards Lake Charles.
"What’s that, peanut?"
"When you talk pretty to me."
Sailor laughed. "That’s easy enough. I mean, it don’t come hard. Back at Pee Dee all I had to do to cheer myself up was think about you. Your big eyes, of course, but mostly your skinny legs."
"You think my legs is too skinny?"
"For some, maybe, but not for me they ain’t."
"A girl ain’t perfect, you know, except in them magazines."
"I been makin’ do."

On the back cover of the collected edition is a perfect quote from David Lynch: "Gifford’s Sailor and Lula have the perfect take on sex. It’s like looking into the Garden of Eden before things went bad." He sums up the two characters better than I ever could. They are an amazing pair and the dialogue between them is rat-a-tat-tat, flowing naturally and with colour, as if you were eavesdropping on a real life conversation. They are great to follow, they have a dazzling lack of inhibition and an incredibly forthright way of measuring the world around them. I like the way Gifford isn’t too precious about them. The six novels in the collection chart the aging of the couple, and I like the way that it makes them credible, Sailor losing his hair, Lula going grey, their son growing up and repeating their adventures. There is so much to the six books to take in and appreciate.

The follow-up to Wild At Heart is a cracker for sure and adds a bit of danger to the cocktail. This is my favourite quote from Perdita Durango:

"Perdita looked directly into Manny Flynn’s eyes and said, "You want me to come to Phoenix with you? You pay my way, buy my meals, bring me back. I’ll keep your dick hard for four days. While you’re at the convention, I’ll do some business, too. Plenty of guys at the hotel, right? Fifty bucks a pop for showin’ tit and milkin’ the cow. Quick and clean. You take half off each trick. How about it?"

The above seems to sum her up perfectly. Attitude, sarcasm and sexual bite. She’s a very likable character and certainly brings some spice to the proceedings. Perdita Durango achieves that rarest of things, a (pseudo) sequel that improves upon its original source. Read Wild At Heart and look forward to the further adventures of Perdita.

It wouldn’t be proper to write about Gifford’s characters without mentioning the supporting cast that each book contains. It is in this regard that I think Wild At Heart aces its successor, with its colourful range of characters that Sailor and Lula encounter on their way across the border. Characters such as the Private Detective-cum-crime writer Johnnie Farragut, the "wild eyes" mob boss Marcello Santos, Sailor’s ultimate nemesis Bobby Peru, his girlfriend Perdita Durango, the pigeon hating George Kovich…There are too many to list in full. This is possibly Wild At Heart’s most mentionable positive, its background of characters. With Perdita Durango that is not quite the case. It’s the central pair who dominate the proceedings, the supporting characters little more than fodder for Perdita and Romeo to feed off.

The other novels in the collection concentrate, in the main, on Sailor and Lula, following their lives as they grow together into old age and their adventures being taken up by their son, Pace Roscoe Ripley. The novels are, in order: Sailor’s Holiday (Sailor comes back to Lula), Sultans Of Africa (Pace Roscoe gets into dangerous trouble), Consuelo’s Kiss (Sailor and Lula head to Graceland for Sailor’s 50th) and Bad Day For The Leopard Man (not read yet..). Gifford clearly loves Sailor and Lula, loves writing about them and this passion for his characters gives the books a momentum that makes them a really absorbingly fast read (a good thing).

I recently bough Barry Gifford’s latest novel Wyoming. One thing that intrigues me about it is the fact that it is written entirely in dialogue between a mother and her son as they go on a road journey. Quite a departure from the adventures of Sailor and Lula. But whatever Barry Gifford writes, I will read.

Copyright© 2003 Andrew Jamieson

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ANDREW JAMIESON was born in Derby in December 1977, just in time for breakfast. He discovered a love for storytelling and writing from a young age and read and read and still reads. He is educated to degree level. His favourite colour is midnight-blue. His favourite fruit is the Fuji apple. His favourite author is Barry Gifford. He has written two feature-length screenplays. The first, terrible. The second, slightly less terrible. He is now concentrating on his first novel. It might be terrible.
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Read an extract from Andrew's screenplay The Carillon Man