Зохиолч Клифф Дорфман өөрийн амьдралд тохиолдсон эмзэг түүх болон гэр бүлийн нууцаа шингээсэн «Crime Family» нэртэй анхны романаа уншигчдын хүртээл болголоо.
«Beverly Hills 90210» цувралын жүжигчин, «Entourage» болон «Warrior» зэрэг алдартай төслүүдийн зохиолч Клифф Дорфман бага насандаа гэр бүлийнхээ талаарх цочирдом үнэнийг олж мэдсэн нь түүнийг бичихэд түлхэц болжээ. Тэрээр өөрийг нь төрөх үед нь гэр бүлээс нь тусгаарлан өөр өөр айлд өсгөсөн сэтгэцийн эмчийн туршилттай холбоотой ноцтой баримтыг хожим олж мэдсэн байна. Дорфман өөрийн туулсан сэтгэл зүйн гэмтэл, гэр бүлийнх нь зохион байгуулалттай гэмт хэргийн бүлэглэлтэй холбоотой байсан зэрэг хувийн эмзэг түүхээ уран зохиолын хэлбэрт оруулан бичих нь илүү үр дүнтэй гэж үзжээ.
Зохиолч уг бүтээлээ бичих явцдаа өөрийгөө олж, өнгөрсөнтэйгөө эвлэрэх тайвшралыг мэдэрсэн гэдгээ онцолсон байна. Тэрээр өнгөрсөн амьдралаасаа бүрмөсөн холдож, өөрийнхөө төлөө амьдрах нь хамгийн зөв шийдвэр байсан гэдгийг дурджээ.
Одоогийн байдлаар тэрээр энэхүү романаа таван бүлэг бүхий цуврал кино болгохоор томоохон энтертайнмент компани болон нэр хүндтэй продюсеруудтай хамтран ажиллаж байна. «Crime Family» ном нь салбарынхных нь зүгээс өндөр үнэлгээ авч байгаа бөгөөд Сет Грин, Стивен Амелл, Фрэнк Грилло зэрэг алдартнууд түүний бүтээлийг онцлон магтжээ.
Дэлгэрэнгүй эх сурвалжийг харах
Эх сурвалжийг нээх ↓
Cliff Dorfman is a man of many hats. He began his career as an actor with arcs on shows like Beverly Hills 90210 back in the ‘90s, before penning 14 episodes of Entourage, co-writing the Tom Hardy-Joel Edgerton MMA film Warrior, and writing for both DC Comics and Sega.
But, despite past attempts, he couldn’t find it in him to write a book. That is, until he was shocked to discover something personal—and painful—to write about.
Fiction In Family Secrets
Dorfman released his debut novel, Crime Family, in July. The book follows Chase, a man living and working in Hollywood, who is pulled back into his family’s organized-crime empire and uncovers distressing secrets that make him question everything.
It’s a story inspired by Dorfman having to come to grips with his own family secrets. The writer learned later in life that he was adopted through Louise Wise Services, which worked with child psychiatrist Dr. Peter Neubauer for a controversial experiment that separated adoptive Jewish twins and triplets, placing them in different homes as part of a nature vs. nurture study. Neither the parents nor children were told about the experiment.
“As a baby, I had white blonde hair, big blue eyes, and it was less than fortuitous to stick me into this Modern Orthodox Jewish community,” Dorfman shared in a conversation with Men’s Journal. “And in the way I grew up, I was always, always, feeling like the perennial outsider. “
Per Dorfman, he was placed into a community with roots in organized crime. A survivor of childhood abuse, the author also found text messages just two years ago that confirmed some of his long-held suspicions about his family.
“Going through that and having that generational trauma and institutional rot, you don’t know what it is at the time, but you know something is informing how you’re behaving,” he continued, saying that the big discovery finally inspired him to put pen to paper, weaving his personal tale into a work of fiction.
He added that once he learned the truth about his past, he found himself at a bar and quickly spit out 30 pages of writing. “I got home, my head was spinning, ‘Oh, I guess I’m writing a novel,’” he recalled. “That was it. There was no looking back after that. When I finished, I went, ‘Okay, this was the one. This was the reason I had to write something.’”
Finding Catharsis In Creativity
While Dorfman’s background is rife for a memoir about his life, he felt it would be “more interesting” to write a piece of fiction inspired by what he’d been through.
“If I lay out all of my specific trauma, if I trauma dump in a memoir, that isolates a large portion of readers,” he explained of that choice. “This, to me, was a way that I could get what I was trying to do to land.”
Even though the book is, ultimately, a piece of fiction, writing it had a profound effect on Dorfman. The author explained why the process wound up being “incredibly” cathartic for him.
“I think I wrote a description that what Chase was going through had ‘left his soul shredded.’ And that’s how I was after discovering these text messages; my soul was shredded,” Dorfman recalled. “It was a paradigm shift of my worldview. When you see it, it was a bat across the head.”
“The only way I was able to start to get out from it was to start writing,” he shared, adding that he could only find closure for Chase by finding himself as well. That closure, he realized, couldn’t come from getting revenge on those who’d wronged him, but finding a place of self-acceptance instead.
“The only catharsis will come from acceptance that you will never change that person. You can get even, you can get revenge, but they will sit in their grave, their room, a cell, and they will never think they did it any other way but right and that everyone else is crazy and wrong,” he explained. “As the book was getting finished, [I] was coming to terms with the acceptance that non-contact is the only way. I will never change any of these people, and I have to live my life for me and accept that, and in that came the most luxurious catharsis you could have.”
As he’s gone non-contact with certain people from his past in real life, Dorfman said he doesn’t care whether they’ve read the book. Or, at least, he doesn’t care as much as he would have before the process of writing it.
“Two things can be true. I don’t care and, yes, the thought still comes across. It leaves from being a daily thought and goes to being a weekly thought to a monthly thought,” he said. “I’m down to every 6-8 weeks now and it hits me, ‘I wonder if this person’s gonna see it, what’s their reaction?’ They had to have read it. They definitely saw the thing in Page Six. And then you go, okay, you forget about it for another 8 weeks.”
Dorfman will continue to have the last word, too, as he told Men’s Journal that he’s already working with a “big entertainment company” and “A-list producer” to turn the book into a 5-season TV series.
Glowing Reviews from Celeb Friends
A ton of Dorfman’s famous friends have been raving about the book, something he said makes him close to crying “tears of joy,” especially in an industry where “schadenfreude is the latte of the day.”
In quotes provided to Men’s Journal by a few of his confidants, Seth Green said: “There’s no doubt Cliff is a great storyteller; no doubt he’s an excellent writer who understands character.” Green added, “He spends real time within each character to make them distinct, so he can do the thing everybody loves to read — watching a character organically respond as only they would.”
Arrow star Stephen Amell, who will also appear in Dorfman’s upcoming film 86, said, “In order to write something that everyone can enjoy, my buddy Cliff has written something deeply personal. I love this book!”
Warrior alum Frank Grillo, meanwhile, added, “Cliff is a great artist, a great screenwriter, and he pivoted and wrote a book — and I think it’s great. Crime Family is a huge accomplishment, and maybe the beginning of Cliff’s second act.”
“This will be your favorite book of the year,” promised Calum Worthy. “It’s so good — it feels like every sentence, every paragraph, every page written, it feels like its own meal. Everyone has to go buy this. You gotta check it out, and again, I don’t say this lightly.”
For Dorfman, their words carry weight because he doesn’t believe they would support the book if they truly “didn’t like the work.”
“They really believe in what I’m doing and what I’ve done and what I put out there,” he added. “I, personally, haven’t seen it that often. It gives me a lot of faith in where we’re at in our business.”
Crime Family is available now.
