Gifford wrote five scripts, of which HBO produced two. He retained the rights to all five of them, and has turned them into plays that have been performed in several states of the U.S. The teleplays for "Tricks" and "Blackout", along with the unproduced "Mrs. Kashfi", which was deemed too controversial by the network, have been published in a book by the University Press of Mississippi. "Blackout" was written in just two days, to replace a script by David Mamet that Montgomery wasn't satisfied with. Gifford's script was only 17 pages long, but Lynch's cut of it came in at 47 minutes, by far the longest of the three episodes. HBO aired a truncated version of it, but the VHS release contains the longer, and director's preferred, version.