I learned of Gerry Fialka through my good friend (and fellow Museum of Hidden History board member) Joe Green from his first InnerView on 2 February 2024. Along with the engaging conversation between them, I learned a whole lot more about Joe’s multi-faceted life and explorations.
It is a great honor and pleasure to join Gerry Fialka for this initial innerview where we traversed through avenues of existence together.
From I’m Probably Wrong About Everything, About:
We believe that a healthy dose of humility goes a long way. Asking questions is always better than guessing answers; there is a lot about life that we don’t know. By listening to others, we just might learn something new. We are not afraid to admit we’re probably wrong about everything. Robert Grant has excelled as a public educator and as a family mental health counsellor for over ten years. Gerry Fialka has been to interviewing for over 30 years. We seek to understand the views and perspectives of the world around us, often uncovering our own philosophies while exploring others.
David James writing in the Foreword of Gerry’s Strange Questions: Experimental Film as Conversation (Los Angeles: Laughtears Press, 2020):
If Jonas Mekas used to be New York’s “raving maniac of cinema,” for the past few decades Gerry Fialka has been Los Angeles’s raving maniac of cinema, James Joyce, and pretty much everything in between, especially Frank Zappa. Filmmaker [an Archive], curator, educator, and all-round inspiration-hound, he does more to counter the evil eye that Hollywood beams over the city than any other dozen culture-samurai combined. In this book, he reveals himself as an interviewer-extraordinaire, as bewildering as he is inspiring. Armed with a quiver of quotes from Joseph Beuys, Lewis Carroll, a host of poets and filmmakers, and—of course—Joyce and McLuhan, he quizzes a phylum of folks involved in making, screening, and thinking about non-commodity cinema. Many of them begin with the same question, “What’s the best thing for a human being?” Then, they get serious. The result is a multi-dimensional conversation (a word which, he will tell you, comes from the same root as “living together”), across time, across space, and across the synapses. This book will amuse, delight, inflame, and educate you. Read it at your own peril!The Preface contains an array of Gerry’s questing curiosity, exercising his birth-right intelligence with clarity and coherence.
I don’t know what I think until I ask somebody. Why do I want to interview people? To connect, to learn, to think. I am curious about the human condition. Personal stories and philosophies can unify people sharing time together. Empathy and understanding can lead to new questions. Pattern recognition leads to comprehensive awareness. Probing “the big picture” with surprising questions uncovers the hidden psychic effects of words, both spoken and printed. Developing new critical thinking skills is a miracle, but not impossible. There are so many questions to be asked and to be answered.I was influenced by Mad Magazine, especially Al Jaffee’s “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions.”This smart-ass attitude of spouting putdowns to clueless inquiries ran through the Bowery Boys, the Three Stooges, Frank Zappa, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, George Carlin[†] and many more. As my dear friend and mentor Phil Chamberlin said, “Question authority! Says who?” (p.xi) I collect these questions from many sources. One of my first questions was, “What’s more important, conviction or compromise?” One of my favorite answers came from a welfare lawyer—actually he is a lawyer on welfare—who said, “Depends on what you mean by important.” Another was from the author Walter Bowart (Operation Mind Control [Research Edition]), who said, “The conviction to compromise.” By pursuing the hidden and strange, one sees anew. The question comes from Kristine McKenna. I have studied her interviews and books for years. I was able to interview her twice, and I did include a lot of her own questions. I stand on the shoulders of giants. (pp.xv-xvi) Experimental film has been a major part of my life. I have studied mainstream cinema, but I usually find the challenges of the avant-garde more fertile. Revolting from the norm inspires me. It takes courage. Deep delving into the process, rather than the content, can free the watchdog of the mind. We can strive to pull back the curtain like Toto in The Wizard of Oz. The word “experiment” comes from the Old French esperment, meaning “practical knowledge, cunning, enchantment, magic spell.” (p.xix)
For more on Gerry, start with:
- Dream Awake in McFinn’s Play Ground, Venice Living Magazine, May 2019,
- Can Art Stop War?, Vol. 4 No. 2 (2024) New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication,
- and then dive into: Laughtears, especially, Extras & Links).