Fizzle
THE UNSPECTACULAR DEMISE OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENT FILMS & THE DECADE OF THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION
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“Do you carry a weapon?” asked the detective hours after the heist. “I’d start ‘packing’ if I were you.” Her sidekick agreed. “Be especially careful getting in and out of your car. These guys have your number." I visited shooting galleries. This is my gun. There are many like it. But this is my gun. What I learned from one of the regulars was that there were “always two.” “Two what?” I asked. “The weapon you see, and the weapon in the pocket or purse that you don’t see!” He opened his hand and showed me the pearl-handled two-shot Beretta in his palm. Sweet! He offered to sell it to me. “Is that a pistol in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?”
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About the Book
Fizzle is a compilation, a journal if you will, of events and snippets from my experience in the film industry for over forty years. There was no place to log the bumpy ride that led to the demise of the American Independent film movement, an industry that once sizzled. You might say this book is about the Fizzle of the Sizzle. It is wishful thinking on my behalf to believe this book will explain how the sharks got away with fleecing filmmakers, and why they will continue to do so.
Indie filmmakers, unlike the dinosaurs, will reinvent themselves. The hope is that this journal might save a few schmucks who are as naive as I was when I made my first two films. The nightmare is that it might attract a new generation of scumbags who can learn how to screw filmmakers. Both scenarios will undoubtedly play out.
To paraphrase Shaw in my sole disclaimer: “I often quote myself, in order to spice things up a bit.”
Norman Gerard’s tome is full of sound and fury. He’s got an impassioned viewpoint about why it all went wrong. The time has come for someone to offer a bruising critique, to speak truths about the indie world that the media has largely either chosen to ignore, or missed while they fell in love with the colorful young characters and the so-called “spirit” of American indie cinema.
Gerard would argue that “spirit” is more like a disease, that the so-called “honesty” of the American indie film movement masked essential business deceptions that would inevitably lead to the current disastrous landscape...
Prepare for a rollicking ride through good times and bad, high art and low-lifes, auteurs and con artists. Gerard has them all in the pages of this book. If there were any money left for indie film productions, it might make a great film and it clearly won't be a studio-backed picture. It’s got corrosive honesty, hard-hitting political implications, sleazy characters no major star would want to play, all topped off by a downbeat ending.
There’s one word for the spirit of this tome: It’s truly “INDEPENDENT.” -- Steven Gaydos – Variety, Executive Editor
About the Author
Norman Gerard worked through college by directing theater. At 28 he was a first-call Director of Photography. He lectured at Art Center College and directed the Energy film for Exxon’s Pavilion at EPCOT. Among his other books are the historical and political non-fiction thrillers: THE WRECK OF THE ALAMO, THE ASSASSIN FROM STAVANGER, and THE DUNSMORE DOSIER. - how and why America went to war in Iraq. From 1998 to 2001 he wrote, produced and directed the Indie films: SNAKE SKIN JACKET and THE MURDER IN CHINA BASIN.