Its a good year to be a Henry Jaglom fan. Jaglom recently released the film Going Shopping on DVD and has another film, Hollywood Dreams, hitting theatres this week. Jaglom is the very definition of independent filmmaker. He makes the kinds of films that would never be made in mainstream Hollywood because they actually tackle issues that real people, especially women, deal with on a daily basis. Going Shopping examines why women feel the need to shop in todays society while Hollywood Dreams takes us to Los Angeles to scrutinize women in todays films. But unlike many filmmakers who may include similar themes in their work, Jaglom couches his ideas in a witty, entertaining and fun story. I got a chance to talk with the clever raconteur from his home in California.
Buy the DVD of Going Shopping
Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up to today?
Henry Jaglom: I just got back from San Luis Obispo, where there was a film festival. I showed Hollywood Dreams and they put me on some panels. Tanna Frederick, who is the star of the movie, got a standing ovation from the great audience. It could not have been received more extraordinarily. Next week Im going to another film festival in San Jose. Im scheduling a lot of them this year. Theyre fascinating, you really get to talk to people and show them your stuff.
DRE: Is Victoria Foyt still your wife?
HJ: We are married.
DRE: You never know sometimes
HJ: No, you are right because we are in fact separated.
DRE: Well, there you go.
HJ: So your Hollywood expectation has been filled.
DRE: Well, I hope it wasnt because of the movie that anything went bad.
HJ: I think its because of your phone call. I think its because of your interviewers.
We have been very amicably separated for a few years. We live about two minutes apart so Im with my kids every night and we go to Paris on spring break together. Were a very close family and were trying not to let the complications of life in any way affect our kids.
DRE: So even though you two are separated, would you still work together again?
HJ: Sure, of course we will. Shes not in Hollywood Dreams, but were talked about other things. Shes a wonderful actress and I love using her. Ive used her four times. Using actors has very little to do with what your relationship, being married or otherwise. Usually it has to do with what you think is right for the part and whos really talented. Were very warm and close together. Some people just shouldnt be married to each other necessarily, but we make great children. You saw my daughter in Going Shopping. She is the one who insists on buying the purse. She was already a compulsive shopper at 12. Shes now 15 and is also in Hollywood Dreams.
DRE: But was it the strain of working together that started the separation rolling?
HJ: Well during the shooting of Going Shopping, we started separating a bit but it had nothing to do with working together. Its just that things happen in life. We are very lucky in that we both adore each other and we both have gone in other directions. I am very happy at this moment living with somebody else; shes with someone; everybodys all fine. Most importantly, the kids are fine. Were a very close family and thats not going to change.
DRE: What was the inspiration for Going Shopping?
HJ: Victoria and I worked on the story together but the inspiration was mine. I had made a series of films specifically focused on women. I had made a movie called Eating about women and food. I had made a movie called Babyfever about women at a certain age when their biological clocks tick. I thought it was time to explore the area that I felt was such a big part of my life and all the women around me, shopping. I wanted to try to examine it, not superficially, and really look at what that speaks to me about our culture. I think that women are largely neglected and actually kind of invisible in movies today. The Hollywood studios are largely run by men and frequently men with an adolescent male fantasy about what a woman is so they project those fantasies onto the movies that they make. They are making movies aimed at this mythical 12 year old boy somewhere out in the Midwest that they think is the demographic audience that will go see the movie three or four times. So in the shuffle, women get lost and they dont get accurately represented on film. Its been something Ive wanted to do since I began. To explore not just women but aspects of womens lives that are usually not shown on film. Shopping seems a superficial subject to most men. Somehow they cant understand how women can spend so much time doing it but it has an enormous, important center to it, which is a fact that is true in all our lives which women acknowledge. It is a need to show yourself, to adorn yourself, to present yourself in society a certain way to attract people, to impress people, to make yourself feel better about yourself, for all those reasons. I think that is a very big subject.
DRE: So was the idea of shopping and womens role in shopping more on your mind as your daughter has gotten older?
JH: I have always been fascinated by it. I had an unusual childhood in that I used to go shopping a lot with my mother. She never drew the line and say, Youre a boy. Go out and play sports. So I got to do a lot of things that are traditionally considered womens things. I spent a lot of time with my mother and her women friends. I saw how that was tied in to dreams of romance and yearnings and with body images and with satisfaction and all of that. Then when I started having girlfriends, I discovered the exact same thing applied. The difference was that because I had these experiences with my mother, they would say, Oh, youre like having a boyfriend and a girlfriend all wrapped into one. You can go shopping with me and enjoy it. Which I did. I got sensitized to women. I listened to them and Id know what they were talking about. There was a whole rich world there. At the same time that I was watching movies by Ingmar Bergman and [Federico] Fellini and [Franois] Truffaut, I was realizing that I could make films about women and really tell the truth about how women in Hollywood are seen as male fantasies for the most part. So it just seemed important to capture that almost completely hidden side of womens lives and put it on the screen.
DRE: Was it the idea of shopping being marketed toward people something you wanted to touch on?
HJ: No, its specifically about how people project themselves physically. Its not about shopping as a sociological thing or in terms of purchasing. Its about self-adornment. Its about how society expects you to, especially as a woman, present yourself and how that becomes an inherent part of every womans life, whether they admit it or not.
DRE: I read that you, through Rainbow Releasing, put out your films theatrically.
HJ: A lot of them. Festival in Cannes was released by Paramount Classics and Always but not Forever was released by Samuel Goldwyn Company. Either I make a deal with an independent company, who will handle it a certain way or we do it ourselves. We found that it was not that difficult to stay in control. I have a wonderful woman who runs my production company, Sharon Lester. Also Rainbow Releasing is not just for us. We distribute the Monty Python films The Meaning of Life and The Life of Brian. Bobby De Niro came to us to distribute a film called Mistress, which he produced and starred in.
DRE: I remember that, with Robert Wuhl, right?
HJ: Yes, good for you, not a lot of people know about that one. We distributed that. We are distributing a wonderful documentary that Maximilian Schell made about his sister called My Sister Maria. We were open to finding films by women filmmakers or by artist filmmakers that otherwise might not get seen.
DRE: Did Going Shopping get released theatrically?
HJ: Yes, it had a very nice theatrical run all over the country. It played in about 350 theaters and about 60 major theater markets. What we dont do very well yet is get out to the very smallest markets. But we play in every big city and sometimes we play for months and months. Ive had movies play for 12, 13, 14 months in San Francisco and Seattle. Our films stay in Los Angeles and in New York for at least four, five, six months. We go to a few art theaters and hold there for word of mouth to bring people in. Its a different kind of filmmaking and its one that Im much more comfortable with because its about the quality of the film rather than the hype.
DRE: How tough is it for you to get together a budget for a film?
HJ: There are two answers to that. One, I keep the budgets low. I do not do films that are expensive. Going Shopping cost under $2 million. I always make films in the range of $1 to $2 million. Very rarely do I go over. I dont think you have to. I keep the locations simple. For Going Shopping, we created our own boutique and the rest was shot along Montana Avenue and Ocean Avenue right here in Santa Monica. So by keeping that down, you keep the economics down. I dont pay actors a lot, though I do pay them union scale. With a few actors, like Lee Grant who are big names, I pay them a little more. But they mostly work for the pleasure of going back and working themselves like they used to when they started out, with the excitement of the work. It takes me though about a year to edit them but I shoot them in a matter of weeks. Im able to get financing because my films have done extremely well in Europe since the beginning, even while I struggle in America to break even. With the last three films we are now making money in America but it was a struggle for awhile. The Europeans will always give me financing because they know that in their territory, its worth something. For Germany, the distributor will give me $150,000, in Holland, that distributor will give me $50,000, France will give me $200,000 so we do that until I get my $2 million. Also that way I can do things that are outside the norm. My great lesson in this was a negative lesson in watching my close friend Orson Welles as he was unable to get a film made in the last ten years of his life. This great artist had depended on Hollywood for his financing all his career and they were denying him it because he wasnt making the type of films they wanted to make. None of his films made money in the conventional sense here. So they took his toy away and he advised me to never get financing in Hollywood. Now if you love my movies or if you hate my movies, frame for frame they are entirely mine. Nobody gets to tell me anything. I consider myself, by far, the luckiest man in Hollywood.
DRE: Do you write for a smaller budget or is it that your ideas are smaller scale ideas?
HJ: I dont believe ideas are big-scale or small-scale budget. I dont think ideas have price tags attached to them. I think execution has price tags. If you think you need an army to go over the Alps on elephants, youre going to have to spend the money. A very good example of elephants going over is Rome [on HBO]. They are shooting small-scale while telling you a big story so there are ways of doing that. You dont have to worry about budgets. Its locations and moving that is costing those enormous budgets. My movies dont have all those special effects and all of the incredible action things. Im not interested in wars or space creatures or explosions or car chases. Im interested in human relationships. So my films are about people and people arent that expensive. They usually sit around in a restaurant or an apartment or a house having their life. Thats what I try to show.
DRE: Have you already shot your next film?
HJ: Hollywood Dreams is the next one, then Irene in Time. Im working my way through the alphabet. Its H and then I; Going Shopping was G.
DRE: Are you serious?
HJ: Yes, I found it a little bizarre. Ive made a few extra but I decided somewhere along the road to do that. I started with Always, and I got Babyfever, Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?, Dj Vu, Eating, Festival in Cannes, and Going Shopping. So next is Hollywood Dreams and Irene in Time. Im looking for a J now.
DRE: When did you become friends with Orson Welles?
HJ: I shot my first movie in 1971 and he was in it. We became really close friends in 1977.
DRE: I interviewed Harry Kmel who directed Orson Welles in Malpertuis. He told me that Orson was a bastard.
HJ: I would take that as a comment on Harry Kmel, who made a film Ive never heard of. Orson Welles was the most happy, most pleasant man in the world. He wanted to work and he didnt suffer fools easily. If you want to see what Orson Welles was really like see my film, Someone to Love. In that Orson is more Orson than he ever has been in a film. Hes charming, lovely, supportive, happy, funny. Thats how Orson was. Its complete mythology that he was this difficult, horrible man to work with, except for difficult, horrible people who asked stupid things of him and who put him in bad positions. Thats part of the myth I want to counter with Orson. When people see Someone to Love youll get the real feeling that youre having lunch with him. I had lunch with him about twice or three times a week, every week, for about the last seven or eight years of his life. He was my closest male friend and my mentor and he could not have been sweeter or more helpful to me and many, many others. I directed him twice and he directed me in his last film The Other Side of the Wind. We never had a bad moment. So whatever Kmel is talking about is total bullshit. In Paris, Orson was asked why he and Henry Jaglom were such good friends. What Orson said made a big headline in Figaro, the French newspaper. He said, Henry and I are girlfriends. Now for a guy of that generation to make such a statement was astonishing. Now what he meant, of course, was that we were intimate like girlfriends could be, like telling the truth to each other emotionally and not being afraid to cry with each other and share our emotions with each other.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Buy the DVD of Going Shopping
Daniel Robert Epstein: What are you up to today?
Henry Jaglom: I just got back from San Luis Obispo, where there was a film festival. I showed Hollywood Dreams and they put me on some panels. Tanna Frederick, who is the star of the movie, got a standing ovation from the great audience. It could not have been received more extraordinarily. Next week Im going to another film festival in San Jose. Im scheduling a lot of them this year. Theyre fascinating, you really get to talk to people and show them your stuff.
DRE: Is Victoria Foyt still your wife?
HJ: We are married.
DRE: You never know sometimes
HJ: No, you are right because we are in fact separated.
DRE: Well, there you go.
HJ: So your Hollywood expectation has been filled.
DRE: Well, I hope it wasnt because of the movie that anything went bad.
HJ: I think its because of your phone call. I think its because of your interviewers.
We have been very amicably separated for a few years. We live about two minutes apart so Im with my kids every night and we go to Paris on spring break together. Were a very close family and were trying not to let the complications of life in any way affect our kids.
DRE: So even though you two are separated, would you still work together again?
HJ: Sure, of course we will. Shes not in Hollywood Dreams, but were talked about other things. Shes a wonderful actress and I love using her. Ive used her four times. Using actors has very little to do with what your relationship, being married or otherwise. Usually it has to do with what you think is right for the part and whos really talented. Were very warm and close together. Some people just shouldnt be married to each other necessarily, but we make great children. You saw my daughter in Going Shopping. She is the one who insists on buying the purse. She was already a compulsive shopper at 12. Shes now 15 and is also in Hollywood Dreams.
DRE: But was it the strain of working together that started the separation rolling?
HJ: Well during the shooting of Going Shopping, we started separating a bit but it had nothing to do with working together. Its just that things happen in life. We are very lucky in that we both adore each other and we both have gone in other directions. I am very happy at this moment living with somebody else; shes with someone; everybodys all fine. Most importantly, the kids are fine. Were a very close family and thats not going to change.
DRE: What was the inspiration for Going Shopping?
HJ: Victoria and I worked on the story together but the inspiration was mine. I had made a series of films specifically focused on women. I had made a movie called Eating about women and food. I had made a movie called Babyfever about women at a certain age when their biological clocks tick. I thought it was time to explore the area that I felt was such a big part of my life and all the women around me, shopping. I wanted to try to examine it, not superficially, and really look at what that speaks to me about our culture. I think that women are largely neglected and actually kind of invisible in movies today. The Hollywood studios are largely run by men and frequently men with an adolescent male fantasy about what a woman is so they project those fantasies onto the movies that they make. They are making movies aimed at this mythical 12 year old boy somewhere out in the Midwest that they think is the demographic audience that will go see the movie three or four times. So in the shuffle, women get lost and they dont get accurately represented on film. Its been something Ive wanted to do since I began. To explore not just women but aspects of womens lives that are usually not shown on film. Shopping seems a superficial subject to most men. Somehow they cant understand how women can spend so much time doing it but it has an enormous, important center to it, which is a fact that is true in all our lives which women acknowledge. It is a need to show yourself, to adorn yourself, to present yourself in society a certain way to attract people, to impress people, to make yourself feel better about yourself, for all those reasons. I think that is a very big subject.
DRE: So was the idea of shopping and womens role in shopping more on your mind as your daughter has gotten older?
JH: I have always been fascinated by it. I had an unusual childhood in that I used to go shopping a lot with my mother. She never drew the line and say, Youre a boy. Go out and play sports. So I got to do a lot of things that are traditionally considered womens things. I spent a lot of time with my mother and her women friends. I saw how that was tied in to dreams of romance and yearnings and with body images and with satisfaction and all of that. Then when I started having girlfriends, I discovered the exact same thing applied. The difference was that because I had these experiences with my mother, they would say, Oh, youre like having a boyfriend and a girlfriend all wrapped into one. You can go shopping with me and enjoy it. Which I did. I got sensitized to women. I listened to them and Id know what they were talking about. There was a whole rich world there. At the same time that I was watching movies by Ingmar Bergman and [Federico] Fellini and [Franois] Truffaut, I was realizing that I could make films about women and really tell the truth about how women in Hollywood are seen as male fantasies for the most part. So it just seemed important to capture that almost completely hidden side of womens lives and put it on the screen.
DRE: Was it the idea of shopping being marketed toward people something you wanted to touch on?
HJ: No, its specifically about how people project themselves physically. Its not about shopping as a sociological thing or in terms of purchasing. Its about self-adornment. Its about how society expects you to, especially as a woman, present yourself and how that becomes an inherent part of every womans life, whether they admit it or not.
DRE: I read that you, through Rainbow Releasing, put out your films theatrically.
HJ: A lot of them. Festival in Cannes was released by Paramount Classics and Always but not Forever was released by Samuel Goldwyn Company. Either I make a deal with an independent company, who will handle it a certain way or we do it ourselves. We found that it was not that difficult to stay in control. I have a wonderful woman who runs my production company, Sharon Lester. Also Rainbow Releasing is not just for us. We distribute the Monty Python films The Meaning of Life and The Life of Brian. Bobby De Niro came to us to distribute a film called Mistress, which he produced and starred in.
DRE: I remember that, with Robert Wuhl, right?
HJ: Yes, good for you, not a lot of people know about that one. We distributed that. We are distributing a wonderful documentary that Maximilian Schell made about his sister called My Sister Maria. We were open to finding films by women filmmakers or by artist filmmakers that otherwise might not get seen.
DRE: Did Going Shopping get released theatrically?
HJ: Yes, it had a very nice theatrical run all over the country. It played in about 350 theaters and about 60 major theater markets. What we dont do very well yet is get out to the very smallest markets. But we play in every big city and sometimes we play for months and months. Ive had movies play for 12, 13, 14 months in San Francisco and Seattle. Our films stay in Los Angeles and in New York for at least four, five, six months. We go to a few art theaters and hold there for word of mouth to bring people in. Its a different kind of filmmaking and its one that Im much more comfortable with because its about the quality of the film rather than the hype.
DRE: How tough is it for you to get together a budget for a film?
HJ: There are two answers to that. One, I keep the budgets low. I do not do films that are expensive. Going Shopping cost under $2 million. I always make films in the range of $1 to $2 million. Very rarely do I go over. I dont think you have to. I keep the locations simple. For Going Shopping, we created our own boutique and the rest was shot along Montana Avenue and Ocean Avenue right here in Santa Monica. So by keeping that down, you keep the economics down. I dont pay actors a lot, though I do pay them union scale. With a few actors, like Lee Grant who are big names, I pay them a little more. But they mostly work for the pleasure of going back and working themselves like they used to when they started out, with the excitement of the work. It takes me though about a year to edit them but I shoot them in a matter of weeks. Im able to get financing because my films have done extremely well in Europe since the beginning, even while I struggle in America to break even. With the last three films we are now making money in America but it was a struggle for awhile. The Europeans will always give me financing because they know that in their territory, its worth something. For Germany, the distributor will give me $150,000, in Holland, that distributor will give me $50,000, France will give me $200,000 so we do that until I get my $2 million. Also that way I can do things that are outside the norm. My great lesson in this was a negative lesson in watching my close friend Orson Welles as he was unable to get a film made in the last ten years of his life. This great artist had depended on Hollywood for his financing all his career and they were denying him it because he wasnt making the type of films they wanted to make. None of his films made money in the conventional sense here. So they took his toy away and he advised me to never get financing in Hollywood. Now if you love my movies or if you hate my movies, frame for frame they are entirely mine. Nobody gets to tell me anything. I consider myself, by far, the luckiest man in Hollywood.
DRE: Do you write for a smaller budget or is it that your ideas are smaller scale ideas?
HJ: I dont believe ideas are big-scale or small-scale budget. I dont think ideas have price tags attached to them. I think execution has price tags. If you think you need an army to go over the Alps on elephants, youre going to have to spend the money. A very good example of elephants going over is Rome [on HBO]. They are shooting small-scale while telling you a big story so there are ways of doing that. You dont have to worry about budgets. Its locations and moving that is costing those enormous budgets. My movies dont have all those special effects and all of the incredible action things. Im not interested in wars or space creatures or explosions or car chases. Im interested in human relationships. So my films are about people and people arent that expensive. They usually sit around in a restaurant or an apartment or a house having their life. Thats what I try to show.
DRE: Have you already shot your next film?
HJ: Hollywood Dreams is the next one, then Irene in Time. Im working my way through the alphabet. Its H and then I; Going Shopping was G.
DRE: Are you serious?
HJ: Yes, I found it a little bizarre. Ive made a few extra but I decided somewhere along the road to do that. I started with Always, and I got Babyfever, Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?, Dj Vu, Eating, Festival in Cannes, and Going Shopping. So next is Hollywood Dreams and Irene in Time. Im looking for a J now.
DRE: When did you become friends with Orson Welles?
HJ: I shot my first movie in 1971 and he was in it. We became really close friends in 1977.
DRE: I interviewed Harry Kmel who directed Orson Welles in Malpertuis. He told me that Orson was a bastard.
HJ: I would take that as a comment on Harry Kmel, who made a film Ive never heard of. Orson Welles was the most happy, most pleasant man in the world. He wanted to work and he didnt suffer fools easily. If you want to see what Orson Welles was really like see my film, Someone to Love. In that Orson is more Orson than he ever has been in a film. Hes charming, lovely, supportive, happy, funny. Thats how Orson was. Its complete mythology that he was this difficult, horrible man to work with, except for difficult, horrible people who asked stupid things of him and who put him in bad positions. Thats part of the myth I want to counter with Orson. When people see Someone to Love youll get the real feeling that youre having lunch with him. I had lunch with him about twice or three times a week, every week, for about the last seven or eight years of his life. He was my closest male friend and my mentor and he could not have been sweeter or more helpful to me and many, many others. I directed him twice and he directed me in his last film The Other Side of the Wind. We never had a bad moment. So whatever Kmel is talking about is total bullshit. In Paris, Orson was asked why he and Henry Jaglom were such good friends. What Orson said made a big headline in Figaro, the French newspaper. He said, Henry and I are girlfriends. Now for a guy of that generation to make such a statement was astonishing. Now what he meant, of course, was that we were intimate like girlfriends could be, like telling the truth to each other emotionally and not being afraid to cry with each other and share our emotions with each other.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
zoetica:
Its a good year to be a Henry Jaglom fan. Jaglom recently released the film Going Shopping on DVD and has another film, Hollywood Dreams, hitting theatres this week. Jaglom is the very definition of independent filmmaker. He makes the kinds of films that would never be made in mainstream Hollywood...