‘Deliverance’ Director, 83, Delivers Debut Novel

John Boorman (photo by Lionel Allorge GFDL via Wikimedia Commons)

After a lifetime directing some of cinema’s most iconic movies, including Point Blank, Deliverance, Excalibur, and The Emerald Forest, at age 83 John Boorman has written a debut novel. Crime of Passion is set at the Cannes Film Festival, a place Boorman knows well, having won Best Director there twice, and having served on the jury in 1992. The novel was launched in front of a packed house in Dublin’s Lighthouse Cinema on Thursday evening by actor Brendan Gleeson, who has starred in five of Boorman’s films, including most famously The General. Praising Boorman for his daring fearlessness as an artist and a truth-seeker in art, Gleeson declared “I love this book. It’s wise and erudite and elegant and insightful and mischievous as hell! It’s terribly funny. It’s incredibly honest, and it’s also almost alarmingly romantic.”

Seemingly overwhelmed by the warm and rapturous reception, a visibly moved Boorman thanked Gleeson and the audience before nervously asking his publisher “What happens now?” While Crime of Passion is Boorman’s first foray into fiction, he has penned two essential works on the film industry: Money into Light and Adventures of a Suburban Boy.