George Angelo, Jr. is not fickle, which is to say, he’s a filmmaker and has been for longer than  many of his peers in the Native  film community have been alive. 

Thirty years ago, Angelo was an anomaly. You could count the number of Indian filmmakers on one hand and still have fingers left.  When employed in the industry at all, Natives were relegated to riding horses and wearing war paint and playing second banana to white guys riding horses and wearing war paint. Still, this didn’t stop this Chumash kid who grew up in the same town as Richard Nixon from doing something other Indian kids didn’t do. After earning a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology, he went to University of Southern California film school to learn how to make movies.

“There certainly wasn’t a big demand for what we were doing, that’s for sure,” he says. “When I made my first movie, there were very few of us out there—George Burdeau, Phil Lucas, maybe a couple of others.  There were just a couple of festivals around showing our films. Our main audience was bohemian artists.”

Completed in 1978, Angelo’s first film was Indian alright—but not the kind you might assume.  His short, Bambu Island,  was shot in the West Indies about Rastafarian woodcarvers, complete with reggae soundtrack.  But the opportunities were sparse, so during the 80s he tended bar, took acting classes and became a cameraman at a southern California television station.  Along the way he’s snared a few acting roles in shows like Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, ER, and more recently, The Shield  and the Eddie Murphy film, Norbit.  Angelo’s prowess behind the camera didn’t go unnoticed, however, as he earned a coveted Rockefeller Fellowship to study film and video.

Through it all, he’s continued to do what he started lo those many years ago. Make films. With more than a dozen to his credit, he has produced award winning documentaries including the three-part series, Whispers,  about southern California Native tribes and other projects profiling age discrimination in Hollywood, a Death Valley marathon, and the legendary country music venue, the Palomino Club.

His newest production is a departure from his documentarian roots. Early next year Angelo will start filming Fallen Angels,  a dramatic feature about a reincarnated Chumash spiritual leader and a Vietnam Vet rock musician starring himself, Nick Ramos and several of Indian Country’s top actors. It’s a go as he anxiously waits for the final funding to roll in.

“Yeah, it takes a lot of balls to knock on doors and shake people down for money. But you have to be persistent; you have to be good with people.  And most of all, you have to believe in your project,” he adds, “Fortunately, I like the whole concept of being the auteur. The writing, the script, the producing—making the film and finding the money.  All of it.”

Persistent?  No doubt about it.  And optimistic as he seeks to tell the Native experience in an authentically Native voice.

“It’s such a fascinating genre. The stories we provide in this genre are so incredible, but even now there’s really not a big audience for Native films. We still have to find our audience, which, once people understand our history and traditions, they will.”

Which is why Fallen Angels, an edgy drama infused with his own rebel spirit, is Angelo’s magnum opus to contemporary Indian life.  Sure, maybe the mass audience isn’t there. Yet. 

But 30 years after he first ventured into the minefield of moviemaking it’s heartening to know that Indians today are not simply relegated to riding horses and wearing war paint and playing second banana to white guys riding horses and wearing war paint. They are the producers and directors—writing the screenplays, working the cameras, starring in feature films, comedies and television.

They are doing all this and more. And for that you can thank the few trailblazers who stubbornly ignored the conventional wisdom.  Like George Angelo, who lucky for us, is not a fickle man.