THIS WEEK we get a double dose of Barry Gifford’s many talents.
Tonight, Gifford reads from his new book, Writers, at Powell’s. His slim new book is a collection of short plays, starring famous writers acting up. Ernest Hemingway gets blitzed with baseball players in Cuba. Jane Bowles carouses at a hotel bar in New York. John Huston faces off with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre author B. Traven. It’s a cheeky collection of vignettes, but really it’s an amuse-bouche in Gifford’s vast body of work, which covers ground as varied as poetry, nonfiction, and my favorite, a funny, off-the-cuff collection of short essays on film noir, The Devil Thumbs a Ride.
Tomorrow, there’s a 35mm screening of Wild at Heart and a Q&A with the author at the Hollywood. Never miss an opportunity to see Laura Dern and Nicolas Cage vamp their way through tempestuous love, Willem Dafoe’s creepfest as yuck-mouthed Bobby Peru, and half the cast of Twin Peaks making the proceedings even weirder on top.