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Filmmaker Clay l i F ord made his major film-festival debut in January, when he took his short, “My Mom Smokes Weed”, to the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

l iford’s short is up against films by Spike Jonze and James Franco. a nd his feature film, “Earthling”, has been accepted to another major film festival, which wouldn’t allow him to announce the news before this story went to print. l iford, whose office/studio is in o ak Cliff, was director of photography on “St. Nick”, the d avid l owery-directed feature that was an official selection of the SXSW Film Festival last year, and it’s hard to find a film project in d allas that l iford hasn’t touched. He’s currently at work on his next film, a comedy about a high-school teacher whose students beat him up.

Tell me about “My Mom Smokes Weed”. What was your inspiration?

Well, my mom does smoke weed, like for my entire life, and she’s 77. And I really never have. I’m not against it on any moral grounds; it just doesn’t appeal to me. But it’s always been a source of embarrassment my whole life. So, I moved my mom to Florida in 2002, and so she lost her [marijuana] connection. She found some dodgy hookup somewhere in Miami, and I got tagged to go with her. So I decided to write a fictional script based on that.

Wow. So how does your mom feel about the movie?

It’s funny because I wanted to make sure my mom was OK with it, and I felt like a lawyer doing this, but I brought her the script and I had her initial every page. But she doesn’t have the best memory because she’s 77 and a longtime pot-smoker, so when she first saw the movie, she kind of wigged out. But then everyone told her they loved it, and then it was fine. So now, she helps me promote it. She went to CineVegas (Film Festival) with me, and people were trying to sell my mom weed. There were strippers in Vegas talking to my mom about weed. It was very off-putting.