Silver Nitrate(118)

Nitrate film is highly flammable, and it’s also true that although in the United States there was a switch toward a safer alternative in the 1950s, other countries continued to use nitrate stock because it could be purchased cheaply. Francoist Spain bought large amounts of nitrate film at a discount.

In the United States foley art, the reproduction of sound effects, owed its name to Jack Foley, but in Mexico it was a different story. The efectos de sala were nicknamed after a different man: sound technician Gonzalo Gavira. Hence the terms “hacer un Gavira” or “montar un gavirazo.”

There are several lost films I thought about when writing this novel. One is London After Midnight: the last existing print of this movie was destroyed in a fire in an MGM vault in 1967. Another is Carlos Enrique Taboada’s Jirón de Niebla, which was supposedly stolen as part of a complex case of political intrigue. In life, like they say, truth is stranger than fiction.





    For Orrin Grey,

    monster maker





Acknowledgments


Thanks to Barton Hewett, Jeremy Lutter, Carlos Morales, and Gabriela Rodriguez for their information and assistance in matters of film and audio editing. Thanks also to my editor, Tricia Narwani, and my agent, Eddie Schneider.

If this book had a soundtrack, it would probably consist of John Carpenter’s film scores, the Italians Do It Better collective, the Canadian band July Talk, the obscure Mexican post-punk band La Sangre de Alicia, Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love album, Death Cab for Cutie’s “I Will Possess Your Heart,” and the soundtrack from Phantom of the Paradise, all of which I listened to on rotation while writing Silver Nitrate.