Permanent Midnight : A Memoir

Jerry Stahl's seminal memoir of drug addiction and a career in Hollywood, __Permanent Midnight__ is a classic along the lines of Hubert Selby, Jr.'s __Last Exit to Brooklyn__. Illuminating the self-loathing and self-destruction of an addict's inner life, __Permanent Midnight__ follows Stahl through the dregs of addiction and into sobriety. In 1998, Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, and Maria Bello starred in a film version of __Permanent Midnight__ to much acclaim. Nic Sheff, author of __Tweak__, wrote the introduction to this edition. Permanent Midnight is not just the story of how success destroyed Jerry Stahl, but how Stahl destroyed his own success. Starting life as the prototypical "middle-class kid," he endured his father's early death, his mother's descent into major depression, and life on his own from the age of sixteen. In spite of his own bad habits, he penetrated the far-flung, sometimes exotic worlds of magazines, movies, pornography, and television. His byline appeared everywhere from Esquire and Playboy to L.A. Style, Hustler, and The Village Voice, while he penned scripts for twisted cult film classics like Cafe Flesh and Dr. Caligari. Eventually, he ended up in the big-buck world of network television, banging out shows for mega-hits like Moonlighting, ALF, and thirtysomething. But even when he was making five grand a week, he was shooting six. . Beneath the successful front ran a toxic undercurrent of betrayal and madness, hard narcotics and hardcore sex. Permanent Midnight captures the crazed reality of this double and triple life. Careening daily from his luxury home to L.A.'s most hellacious neighborhoods, from the rankest methadone clinic to the backlot at Twentieth Century-Fox, he financed a heroin habit that brought on the soothing hiss of oblivion, even as it stole his health and trashed his career. Until, in a private apocalypse straight out of Day of the Locusts, Jerry Stahl kicked smack and emerged clean.