Fizzle

Book excerpt: 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 Gerards tome is full of sound and fury. Hes 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. Its got corrosive honesty, hard-hitting political implications, sleazy characters no major star would want to play, all topped off by a downbeat ending. Theres one word for the spirit of this tome: Its truly INDEPENDENT. -- Steven Gaydos Variety, Executive Editor