My geeky friend Jon Reid tells me that the movie Fallen Angel just premiered in California. Randy Stonehill (who I almost interviewed once) and Larry Norman’s first wife were there. Jon has an extenstive blogpost on his experience. Anyone else?
Original Post: Frisbee Filmmaker David Di Sabatino responds to Pheonix Preacher regarding the controversy over his new documentary on musician Larry Norman called “Fallen Angel”. I really liked this statement from David:
“I think that if you or I met the prophet Ezekiel or Hosea brought his whore wife over for dinner or John the Baptist sat at your table and demanded to be fed locusts and honey, we’d call the cops never mind anathematize them. I always ask people when they start parsing the life of Elvis or Bono or some lesser mortals and whether they are heaven bound what their reaction would be if the Apostle Paul showed up a few years after his conversion to speak in your hometown church, and he had been responsible for killing your parents. Not likely you’d be dropping a bundle in the offering that night.”
Technorati Tags: david di sabatino, fallen angel, larry norman
Andrew Jones launched his first internet space in 1997 and has been teaching on related issues for the past 20 years. He travels all the time but lives between Wellington, San Francisco and a hobbit home in Prague.
Sorry Andrew but if people try to argue that he has been misunderstood it looks to me that they are deluding themselves. It has been known for a long time by people who worked with him that Larry Norman behaved in ways that were undeniable ungodly. Now a greater audience has become aware this due to this documentary.
Andrew, I got to see the premiere here in San Jose. Powerful. Randy Stonehill was there, and so was Larry Norman’s first wife. I wrote a review and posted pics.
http://jonreid.blogs.com/oneanother/2009/03/fallen-angel-the-outlaw-larry-norman-premiere-review.html
thanks jon.
would love it if it came to Austin! hey blessings dude.. praying for you guys today!
xok8
I Got the “Paradise Sky” CD / Fallen Angel Soundtrack Sat. the 20th, and have been ministered to it up to this very moment.(headphones on) I rarely buy music any more, but I was particularly led of the Spirit to purchase this. I did not know it was opening this weekend till I found this blog. I have all the originals on vinyl, I re-listened to most of the originals before along with the new CD; I must say really I’m enjoying both, re-discovering the old versions and being deeply fed by the new. I would love to see the movie.
The need for forgiveness, and to forgive, especially, is so essential. How can we be a shining light on a hill to the world outside, we the church if we are so quick to pass judgement on our own inside? We are all in a sense “Fallen Angels,” even the very best of us do not have clean hands without Grace. Randy sings “Even the Best of Friends” with such knowing conviction….wisdom born of living.
I really enjoyed hearing “Norman’s Kitchen” with a new perspective.It could be viewed as the start of Randy and Larry’s road together, (from Randy’s 1st album Born Twice) but also, when you hear reissue, the vocal overlays give you the feeling, at least it does me, of Larry singing along with Randy in Heaven today….it could be used as an opening or a closing to the movie or both….I hope I get to see the flick!!! Bring it to Texas, please!!!
“It has been known for a long time by people who worked with him that Larry Norman behaved in ways that were undeniably ungodly.”
Statements like this really worry me. I’m not attacking David Derbyshire by the way. He is my brother in Christ and I find some of his writing well thought out and illuminating. But I’m going to take the, perhaps odd, step of putting my own name where Larry Norman’s is. Now, I don’t like that. It gives me the creeps !! But I’ll make two observations. Firstly, I personally seriously doubt whether there is a believer alive today of whom that could not be said. Whether justifiably or not. Sometimes, if I’m short or angry with my wife or my kids or my boss or whoever or if I tell a story that shows me in a good light but on later reflection, tell it like it really was (!!), or if I criticise a politician that I don’t even know for actions that I haven’t (can’t) truly verified as being true then let’s be honest, I’m behaving in a way that is decidedly and undeniably ungodly. And these are things that many of us would regard as relatively minor. But they add up and build up…….Secondly, the sentence is strictly past tense. Ten years from now, people doing research on Larry Norman will be deflected from both the totality of the man’s life ( I would argue that you never can truly tell someone’s life story….I know, I know, contentious) but more importantly, from the way God looks at those he loves. We tend to say that “the bible doesn’t shy away from showing people’s sins” but that’s not strictly true. Firstly, we get a tiny selection of the sins of very few people and very importantly, any recorded sins are to be seen in the context of the story that God is inspiring to be told. Safer ground than where we tend to come from in this media driven age of ours. Not for nothing does God say he’ll remember our sins no more. Not for nothing does Jesus demand that we regularly forgive. We cannot be forgiven, however, unless we do likewise.
I kind of feel that if it was so well known that Larry Norman was a snake that was double dealing then those who apparently knew this should have dealt with it at the time, privately. We can actually put Jesus’ concepts into practice ! We have no way of knowing how Larry and God interacted with one another leading up to his final moments but God does and really, there we should leave it. We are all misunderstood……by somebody.
I’ll finish off with one of my favourite song lines by Bruce Cockburn on the song ‘Justice’
“Everybdy loves to see justice done…..
on someone else !”
“Fallen Angel” is complete rubbish!
PRODUCTION:
A far less than amateur production – the sound was so poorly mastered and “all over the map” level wise, I found myself riding the volume control just to get some hearing comfort. Almost impossibly – the video quality was even worse! The entire production was simply a poorly assembled and redundant photo slide show of a truly horrible standard and erroneously edited with pre-teen level camera work.
VERY amateurish and boring, the worst part for me was the seething hatred and accusatory tone apparent in the voice of the narrator, and that conversations were obviously clipped, diced, and manipulated to put the protagonist in the WORST possible light. Seemingly made on a production budget of $13.59 this video fails miserably!
DOCUMENTATION:
Even more derailed than the production: This “movie” confirms the grim reality of the much reported bias the filmmaker has against Larry Norman – having spent less than 2 minutes of the entire film on Larry’s REAL attributes seen by thousands over decades of integrity, character, generosity & humor, and the rest of the time impugning him for all sorts of horrible things that were easily and correctly dismissed as hearsay and rumor while Larry was alive…
Objectivity was a million miles away from this hack flick, and was only barely hinted at when truly objective statements were sparingly sprinkled in the last few moments of the film.
It is clearly a case of slander per se, which explains it’s posthumous release… and don’t tell me this “took years to complete” – the whole project could easily have been done in one week.
CONCLUSION:
If anyone can watch this slanderous tripe without feeling cheapened or deceived, I seriously question THEIR integrity! Almost anyone could have made a better film than this personal vendetta… wait for a real moviemaker to tell this story of the centric character in Jesus Music – it deserves to be told.
RIP Larry Norman.
Tony’s comments are complete rubbish ! !
He’s just a sad disgruntled fan … venting
I have seen it many times, I have no problem with the volume. The documenraty continues to be accepted in into film festivals around the country. It is described as “one to be seen” at fil festivals. Thanks Sabbi for your dedication and hard work on this story that had to be told.
Dont listen to Tony .. see for yourself
Andrew
Zoinks… kinda sounds a bit like David, eh?
On one hand – kills a man and steals his wife..
On the other – a “man after God’s own heart”
And then there’s me…I’m certainly not qualified to pick up any stones. Jesus was and He opted out, and instead said…”neither do I condemn you, no go and sin no more”.
And…the last poster said.. “Thanks Sabbi for your dedication and hard work on this story that had to be told.”
Now that the story has “been told” – what good does it bring?
Seems like another razor-blade in an apple.
What I know is this… Larry was broken. We are all broken. And all the movies that could be made about all of our desperate lives will never change that one, true fact.
We all need to be fixed.
Take a higher road. Forgive – don’t vent.
Too late for this one though.