Thomas "Thom" Fitzgerald (born July 8, 1968) is an American-Canadian film and theatre director, screenwriter, playwright and producer.[1]
Life
Fitzgerald was born and raised in New Rochelle, New York.[2] His parents divorced when he was five years old. He moved with his mother and brother, Timothy Jr., to Bergenfield, New Jersey, where he was raised and graduated from
Bergenfield High School. While pursuing his university degree in Manhattan at the
Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art,[3] he spent a semester as an exchange student at the
Nova Scotia College of Art and Design,[4] and permanently moved to
Halifax after completing his studies.
Fitzgerald continues to reside in Nova Scotia. He has described himself as a "struggling Catholic".[5]
Career
In Canada, Fitzgerald worked extensively as a trio with performance artists Renee Penney and Michael Weir for several years as the Charlatan Theatre Collective.[6]
He launched his career in film, releasing his debut feature The Hanging Garden in 1997. It starred Troy Veinotte,
Chris Leavins and
Kerry Fox. That film won several
Genie Awards, including acting awards for
Peter MacNeill and
Seana McKenna, and a screenplay award for Fitzgerald. It also garnered Fitzgerald the
Claude Jutra Award for best feature film by a first-time director, the FIPRESCI European Critics Prize, Best Canadian Film Prize at the Atlantic Film Festival, Best Canadian Film at the Vancouver Film Festival, Best Screenplay at the Mar del Plata Festival, and a number of other awards.[7] The film made its U.S. debut at the Sundance Film Festival.[8]
His second project, which was in progress before The Hanging Garden, was the muscle magazine docu-comedy Beefcake (1999). The story of fitness photographer Bob Mizer (played by
Daniel MacIvor) and the wave of fitness magazines in the 1950s, it was commissioned for television by
Channel 4 in the UK and
Arte in France and Germany. However, the movie was too racy for North American television in 1999,[citation needed] and instead was released theatrically by
Strand Releasing. The film debuted at
Sundance[9] and garnered four Genie Award nominations.
Jonathan Torrens won the Best Supporting Actor Award from
ACTRA, the Canadian equivalent of SAG.
The Wild Dogs (2002) is a digitally shot ensemble drama set in contemporary Bucharest. The stories involve a reluctant dogcatcher (
Mihai Calota), a diplomat with prostate cancer (
David Hayman), and a touring pornographer (played by Thom Fitzgerald).
Rachel Blanchard and
Alberta Watson co-star. The Wild Dogs debuted at the Toronto Film Festival. Along with three Genie nominations, including Best Supporting Actor for Hayman, The Wild Dogs won the Best Canadian Film Award at the
Atlantic Film Festival and the Emerging Master Award at the
Seattle International Film Festival.
The Event (2003), tells the story of Matt, a New Yorker with
AIDS (
Don McKellar) who has died mysteriously.
Parker Posey plays an attorney who takes her investigation personally, pushing his family (
Olympia Dukakis,
Sarah Polley,
Dick Latessa) and friends (
Brent Carver,
Rejean Cournoyer,
Jane Leeves) into stark confessions about the reality of Matt's demise. Thom appeared in the film as Vagimar Director. The low-budget film debuted at
Sundance Film Festival,[10] opening to praise. It received numerous awards, including the
Siegessäule Reader's Award, the
Teddy Award at the
Berlin International Film Festival, an ACTRA Supporting Actor Award for Rejean Cournoyer, the Outfest Jury Prize for Best Actress for Dukakis, a Best Supporting Actress Genie nomination for Dukakis, and Atlantic Film Festival Awards for Fitzgerald, writers Tim Marback and Steven Hillyer, and actress
Joan Orenstein.[11]
3 Needles (2005) tells three short stories about the global
HIV pandemic. In the first,
Lucy Liu stars as a blood smuggler who unleashes havoc on a farmer's family. In the second story, a second rate porn actor in Montreal (
Shawn Ashmore), hides his HIV status from his mother (
Stockard Channing). In the third story, three Christian missionaries (
Chloë Sevigny,
Olympia Dukakis and
Sandra Oh) barter with a South African plantation owner (
Ian Roberts) to help a family of orphans. The film has won awards for cinematographer
Tom Harting as well as Fitzgerald's direction at the Atlantic Film Festival, and it garnered Fitzgerald a Director's Guild nomination for Best Direction of a Feature Film. The director received promotional support from the United Nations' Global Media AIDS initiative, and the film was released on December 1 (
World AIDS Day), 2006, in selected theaters and on Showtime Network.
In 2010, Fitzgerald's first full-length play Cloudburst debuted in Halifax at Plutonium Playhouse. Critics called the play "a knock-out" and "the best thing to happen to the Halifax theatre scene in a decade"[12]Cloudburst won the 2011 Merritt Award for Best New Play.[13] Fitzgerald shot a film version of Cloudburst in 2011 starring
Olympia Dukakis,
Brenda Fricker and
Ryan Doucette. The film debuted at the 2011
Atlantic Film Festival and won an Atlantic Canada Award for Best Screenplay and the People's Choice Audience Award for Best Film of the Festival.[14] It also won the Audience Award for Best Film at
Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival,[15] the Audience Award for Best Canadian Indie Film at
Edmonton International Film Festival,[16] Top Ten Canadian Film at
Vancouver International Film Festival, and Best Film at Image+Nation Montreal Film Festival.[17] It won a Best Canadian Film Award at
Victoria Film Festival.[18] It won a Grand Jury Prize at the
Atlanta Film Festival.[19]Cloudburst won film festival prizes worldwide, including audience awards in Copenhagen, Barcelona, Hannover, Waterloo[20] and other cities.
"Writing and directing is simply about recreating 2,000 little moments from life that you observed."[21]
"I'm not at a fork in the road. I'm at an eggbeater in the road."[22]
"I see comedy everywhere. That's how I live day to day. I try to laugh and see the ironies and hopefulness in life, even in the saddest things. They're one and the same in their extremes. If you've ever seen someone truly happy, ecstatically happy, it is indistinguishable from grief."[23]
^"Thom Fitzgerald Bio". Tribute. Tribute Entertainment Media Group. Retrieved 12 November 2012.
^Lucas, Ralph.
"Thom Fitzgerald". Canadian Movie Database. Northern Stars. Archived from
the original on 2012-11-15. Retrieved 13 November 2012.
^"Thom Fitzgerald". Canadian Film Encyclopedia. Toronto International Film Festival. Archived from
the original on 22 February 2013. Retrieved 13 November 2012.
^Wearring, Myles (2006-11-30).
"The Other Side of AIDS". Sydney Star Observer. Archived from
the original on September 3, 2007. Retrieved 2006-11-30.
^"Behind the Scenes: Victoria". Victoria Film Festival Official Website. Victoria Film Festival. Retrieved 15 April 2012.
^
ab"ATLFF Grand Jury Winners". Atlanta Film Festival Official Website. Atlanta Film Festival. Archived from
the original on 2012-04-26. Retrieved 15 April 2012.
^"Peoples' Choice Awards". Rainbow Reels Festival Official Website. Rainbow Reels Festival. Archived from
the original on 2013-02-17. Retrieved 15 April 2012.
^Wise, Wyndham.
"The Hanging Garden". The Canadian Encyclopedia. The Historica Dominion. Archived from
the original on June 4, 2013. Retrieved 6 October 2012.
^"Official Website". Festival Internacional de Cinema Gai i Lesbic de Barcelona. Archived from
the original on 2 November 2012. Retrieved 3 November 2012.
Padva, Gilad. Nostalgic Physique: Displaying Foucauldian Muscles and Celebrating the Male Body in Beefcake. In Padva, Gilad, Queer Nostalgia in Cinema and Pop Culture, pp. 35–57 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014,
ISBN978-1-137-26633-0).