Thom Fitzgerald

• Name — Thom Fitzgerald • Birth Name — Thomas Fitzgerald • Born — 8 July 1968 • Birthplace — New Rochelle, New York, U.S. • Occupation — Film director, film producer, screenwriter, playwright • Years Active — 1997–present

Fitzgerald was born and raised in New Rochelle, New York. 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, he spent a semester as an exchange student at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and permanently moved to Halifax after completing his studies. Fitzgerald continues to reside in Nova Scotia. He has described himself as a "struggling Catholic".

In Canada, Fitzgerald worked extensively as a trio with performance artists Renee Penney and Michael Weir for several years as the Charlatan Theatre Collective.

He launched his career in film, releasing his debut feature The Hanging Garden in 1997. The film, which Fitzgerald described as having some loosely autobiographical elements as it centred on a teenager who, like Fitzgerald, was gay and driven to consider suicide, 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. The film made its U.S. debut at the Sundance Film Festival.

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, and instead was released theatrically by Strand Releasing. The film debuted at Sundance and garnered four Genie Award nominations. Jonathan Torrens won the Best Supporting Actor Award from ACTRA, the Canadian equivalent of SAG.

Wolf Girl (2001) was a Halloween special for the USA Network starring Tim Curry, Victoria Sanchez, Lesley Ann Warren, Darlene Cates, Grace Jones, Shelby Fenner and Shawn Ashmore. Penned by novelist Lori Lansens, the story spins the werewolf genre in reverse, as cosmetic treatments render a furry side-show performer (Sanchez) progressively more psychotic.

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, 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.

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" Cloudburst won the 2011 Merritt Award for Best New Play. 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. It also won the Audience Award for Best Film at Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival, the Audience Award for Best Canadian Indie Film at Edmonton International Film Festival, Top Ten Canadian Film at Vancouver International Film Festival, and Best Film at Image+Nation Montreal Film Festival. It won a Best Canadian Film Award at Victoria Film Festival. It won a Grand Jury Prize at the Atlanta Film Festival. Cloudburst won film festival prizes worldwide, including audience awards in Copenhagen, Barcelona, Hannover, Waterloo and other cities.

The 2018 film Splinters, an adaptation of the play by Lee-Anne Poole, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.

• Year — Film (Director) • 1997 — The Hanging Garden • 1999 — Beefcake • 2001 — Wolf Girl • 2002 — The Wild Dogs • 2003 — The Event • 2005 — 3 Needles • 2011 — Cloudburst • 2018 — Splinters • 2020 — Stage Mother • Year — Television • 2010 — The Gospel According to the Blues • 2013 — Forgive Me • 2013 — Sex & Violence • 2021 — Cam Boy • 2022 — Sugar Highs • Year — Film (Producer/Executive Producer) • 2008 — Growing Op • 2012 — Blackbird • 2015 — North Mountain • 2021 — Shush • 2024 — To the Moon

• "Writing and directing is simply about recreating 2,000 little moments from life that you observed." • "I'm not at a fork in the road. I'm at an eggbeater in the road." • "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."