(Whenever the server comes back up at their end, this will be my next column for the Examiner.)
For a few years during the ’70s, Christian rock pioneer Larry Norman was fond of having his name on record covers with a lightning bolt traversing the “o.” Given that throughout his career and life Norman was a lightning bolt of controversy, it was an accurate symbol. Norman passed away in February of 2008.
Earlier this year, Emmy nominated filmmaker David Di Sabatino completed and released Fallen Angel: The Outlaw Larry Norman, an unauthorized documentary about the man generally considered to be the father of Christian rock. To say the least, it’s an eyeful.
As depicted in the film via numerous interviews of those associated with Norman at different stages of his life, Norman was an inveterate teller of tall tales, prone to both exaggerating his place in history and claiming inventions of others as his own. He was also prone to stretches of paranoia and blaming others for his own shortcomings, often lashing out with extreme measures against those who previously had been trusted allies.
After a while, the question becomes whether the film is as much about Norman as the people around him ultimately forgiving him for whatever he did against them, this taking up much of the latter third of the film. Given that Norman and his family refused to cooperate with Di Sabatino during the process of making the film (the work started before Norman’s passing), at least some of this is due to the paucity of available material directly connected with Norman. Interview and performance clips of him are scant; the majority of his time on screen consists of stills which eventually grows tiresome. Yet even with this limitation the film takes shortcuts, with little if any background provided for the people interviewed. It also pays almost no attention to Norman’s life and work after 1980. The question also arises after a while if there was a single person out there whose interaction with Norman ended in a negative fashion; if so, they did not appear in the film.
So much as a cursory look around the Internet reveals Norman was loved and loathed with equal fervor by those who knew him, be it professionally, personally or both. Trying to completely capture such a person in an hour and a half is an extreme challenge. To his credit Di Sabatino gives it a go, but ultimately Fallen Angel falls victim to the impossibility of seeing lightning simultaneously from two sides.
For more info: The film’s website is larrynorman.net, not to be confused with Norman’s website which is larrynorman.com.
