Jean-Pierre Ferrand(I)

Scant details are known of the life of Jean-Pierre Ferrand. From his conversations, it seems he was brought up in New Jersey. He was probably born around 1949. As a teenager he raced motorcycles, and fast, lightweight bikes remained a passion. He might have been a film editor in New York in the 1970s, before he came to California. He certainly knew most of the old film editing tricks. His pseudonym was derived from the character François Truffaut played in Day for Night (1973). Ferrand was a passionate filmmaker and screenwriter whose misfortune was to have worked in a genre that did not allow his creativity and technique to flourish. His best screenwriting remains unproduced. "Urban Sniper" was a chilling tale told long before anyone had heard of Lee Malvo, inspired by Ferrand's outrage at random violence and the real-life murder of a pregnant woman at a Los Angeles ATM. "Skorpia" was in the tradition of Modesty Blaise (1966), and had a comic book style that Ferrand admired and which has since become a staple of major Hollywood releases. He was a man who could be both generous and demanding. It must be said that, in his last years, disappointment seemed to grow in him. The frustrations of his unrealized creative ambitions appeared to weigh him down - or so it seemed to this author, who knew him better than most and liked him well.