Henry Jaglom: Director, Filmmaker, Author

Interview and his friendship with Orson Welles

Text below, slightly updated.

Henry Jaglom: Filmmaker, Director, Author on his films and his friendship with Orson Welles

This is Mary Tabor, author most recently of the novel Who by Fire.¹ My guest today is the innovative director and screen writer Henry Jaglom. Henry Jaglom has not succumbed to the requisites of popular culture, meaning, he writes from a risky place and invention is the name of his game. But, in fact, he, exposes, satirizes game-playing while he seeks emotional truth. No easy task in popular culture. Jaglom has remained independent of the so-called Hollywood studio system by ensuring that all his films, on the advice of Orson Welles, “never need Hollywood”. And I am an unabashed fan.

By my count Henry has made 21 films. At least six star his discovery Tanna Frederick, whom he married. Discovery is what Henry is about. And that makes him a director to seek out, to watch and re-watch. No doubt that is what I suspect many mainstream directors have, in fact, done.

On the outside chance that you’ve not heard of Henry Jaglom, here’s the scoop. You may have seen him in re-runs of Gidget or The Flying Nun, and, boy, is he cute. But do not be misled.

Can She Bake a Cherry Pie starring his brother Michael Emil and the unforgettable Karen Black moves like a lyric poem to the beautiful ending with photos from Henry’s own family album. This 1983 film made me a fan. The film comes together with the turn at the end, the way a poem or short story told through modules turns. It’s simply beautiful. Venice/Venice, another beauty that dares to ask serious intellectual questions. One of my favorite rom-com’s is Déjà Vu A Love Story. 

Though Henry always understands the comic touch, romantic comedy is actually a misnomer for this film even though love is the answer in this charmer. We’ll ask him if he agrees. Think about this: How many love stories have you seen where Kierkegaard is quite effectively quoted while the lovers lie in each other’s arms?

We'll talk about Jaglom's creative process. And, I want to plug his book, My Lunches with Orson that documents Jaglom's recordings of their conversations at Welles’ request. With admiration, I say, welcome to Henry Jaglom.

Henry Jaglom: My goodness, what a wonderful introduction. Thank you very much.

Mary: You've surely earned it with this extraordinary body of work that continues to be made. Henry, I'd like to begin with your film, Someone to Love, Orson Welles’ last film appearance made with you. In this film, you invent the interview technique in film and I mean invent. The first time a director’s ever done anything like this. Tell our listeners what this technique is and how you came upon it.

Henry Jaglom: It's actually an outgrowth of a film I did some years earlier called Eatingabout women and their relationship to food. I made several films in that format where, though I had a fictional outline of a story, the women within the story were talking about their own lives. So in the case of Eating, it was only women dealing with anorexia or bulimia or eating issues or body issues, and I gave them a setting, a story of a triple birthday party of someone who was turning 30, someone 40, someone 50. But that was the excuse to explore this whole issue in women's lives. I did a similar thing with Going Shopping and in other films where I explored various aspects of women's lives, largely ignored by the Hollywood studios because they are mostly men who do not take these things very seriously or are irritated by them at best. And when it came to applying that to the most recent work, the one I'm working on right now, for instance, which is about— It's called The M Word and it's about menopause.

Mary:  Tell me more.

Henry Jaglom: 37 terrific women are in it. And there's narrative story beyond that episode with Tanna and with Michael Imperioli and some wonderful actors. It circles around and ultimately becomes an exploration of and a look at the complated issue of of menopause in women's lives. I did it with Eating. I did it with Going Shopping. I did it with Baby Fever. It's of particular interest to me. Now, the one you mentioned I think was with Orson, Someone to Love. Someone to Love was before Eating, I think.

Henry Jaglom:  All my films from the beginning: A Safe Place, with Tuesday Weld, Jack Nicholson and Orson Welles—what I try to look at is more of the internal lives of people than external stories and to try to examine those issues that people are dealing with in their lives often with substantial pain or difficulty. And it's the issues that Hollywood largely overlooks because Hollywood is still a male town with male producers, mostly male directors, male writers, and they are aiming their movies at these teenage boys in the Midwest who want to see space aliens or vampires or things that are going to satisfy them at that level. So I aim my films at a 10 or 15 percent, hopefully, level of the audience that wants to see grownup films about human relationships.

Mary:  And I think that is true of all your movies, particularly true in Eating, deeply true in Someone to Love—I've now watched four times. I love this movie so, so much. One of the questions I have-

Henry Jaglom:  This is something. Isn't it wonderful to see Orson saying goodbye like that?

Mary:  It’s so beautiful in the end, especially when he says, "Cut." So he's the one who actually—

Henry Jaglom: Yeah, what happened was that I was filming it and he was beginning to get uncomfortable because so much of the real him was getting revealed and his sweetness and his vulnerability and not all the gruff stuff that he used to protect himself with. So he finally said, "Okay, that's enough." Now he turned to the cameraman and said, "Cut."

Mary: I think he also says, "It's getting too sweet."

Henry Jaglom: It's getting too sweet, that’s right. And the cameraman got intimidated because it was Orson Welles. I ran over to him and said, "Are you crazy? You can't cut. I'm the director." And I flipped it back on, but Orson didn't know it was on, so he reached behind him for his cigar that he’d hidden and started laughing enormously.

Mary: Oh, it's terrific.

Henry Jaglom: Wonderful, all embracing laugh. And I thought if he’d lived, he would never have allowed me to use that because he had this stupid image that a fat man, as he called himself, shouldn't laugh. It's unattractive. But in fact, it was nothing of the sort. it was most embracing and it was his last laugh on all his problems and on sixty years of making films. It's a wonderful thing, I feel, to share with audiences.

Mary: It is beautiful. And I'll tell you to anyone who's listening, you need to pay attention during the credits. Don't leave a Henry Jaglom film while the credits are rolling.

Henry Jaglom: That's true.

Mary: But while I'm still on that, I want to ask you one more question about the interview technique and talk about Eating some more. I wonder how you feel at times when, in Eating, this interview technique is deeply, affectingly done, really moving. What do you think of when someone like Rob Reiner takes your technique and puts it in the movie When Harry Met Sally?

Henry Jaglom: I don't mind. I think it's fine if people adapt things or use things or find something to use from what I do. I have no problem with that. If they're using it for a different, they're usually using it for comedy or for an effect, but Warren Beatty used it extremely well in Reds. He used these old communists, many in their 80's and 90's even, but who were actually there as commentary throughout the film and it's a wonderful technique. It's just that I was the first one, I think, to use it. And I feel it's a way to get inside of people in a more direct way if you do it correctly. If you create a circumstance where it's logical that, for instance, somebody at a baby shower is filming the baby shower, then you've got permission to intercut. And in the next film I'm doing, The M Word about menopause, there is Tanna Frederick, my wonderful leading lady is the daughter of a woman who’s going through menopause and realizes in her office how many women are and decides to make a documentary about it. And that allows me, in fact, to make a film about the making of this documentary.

Mary: Will Tanna's mother be in the film again? Because she was in one of the other films.

Henry Jaglom: Oh, you're very sweet. No, her father is in this film, interestingly enough.

Mary: The one thing I can say about Eating and about all of your movies is that this is a terrific film about women, about the relationship to food in their bodies. In this movie you don't appear. But in this movie, as I see in every movie that you've made, the director has love for women. And I have two questions about this.

Henry Jaglom: I felt Hollywood always has avoided the subjects really of women's lives. There are men making films for male audiences mostly, and they're just expecting women to tag along. Or if they do do what they call women's films, it's from a very false and sentimental view usually, whether women play some sort of victims. It just doesn't really tell the story of women's lives. So when I started out making movies, I thought this was a great opening, a great opportunity. And Orson Welles actually was one of the people I spoke to about this who encouraged me. He said to me, "Nobody is doing it because it's not commercially the main audience. People are aiming at young adult males. So do what interests you." And he knew from my conversations that my whole life has been about my relationships with the women in my lives.

Mary: What are we going to do with all the baby boomers? Who want to go to movies and not just sit in front of the computer and want movies you’re making.

Henry Jaglom: I’m trying to provide them. Well, I hope you'll all go see The M Word.

Mary: You’ve definitely got me. What about women do you think makes them, as a group, such a draw for you as subject matter? In addition to what you've already said?

Henry Jaglom: It’s very clear, they are open about themselves. They are in touch with their own lives. They are not in denial the way men are about all the truest but most deeply felt aspects of themselves. They spend their lives dealing with themselves, dealing from themselves and their feelings and with one another and trying to figure it all out, trying to be okay, trying to explore their lives and make them as comfortable and happy as possible with the people that they are taking care of, the men and the children and so on. And so when you put women in front of the camera, they're not hiding. They're not lying like men are. They're not showing off or trying to give an image. They are really happy to have an opportunity to explore who they are, to really look at who they are and share that with an audience.

Mary: I have a question that came when I promo'd this: a woman wrote me to say, "I adore Henry Jaglom." I told her I adore you too. And she writes, "I’ve loved his deep understanding of women in all his films, and I'd like to ask him if he feels that what he thought he knew about women in his earlier films is still applicable today." Has anything changed? 

Henry Jaglom: No, I've always known. I had a terrific mother, I think, is the base of all this, who shared life with me, who didn't say you're a boy and therefore you can't cross this line. So I got to see women's lives from a woman's point of view very early on, and I got to share the emotional rollercoaster of it and the power of it and the vulnerability and the fragility of it in a man's world and the pitfalls, as well as the strengths and the humor and the bravery, and it was my natural habitat. That's what Orson Welles used to say to me, women are your natural habitat. All my friends are women. Really, mostly I spend my time having lunch with women. I mean, I don't really have a lot to say to most men.

Those men who come and see my movies who are open to it, and there are a certain percentage, 10 to 20 percent are wonderful men because they're allowing themselves to explore areas of themselves that society doesn’t encourage them to explore. But the majority of women don't have to go through that process of overcoming a resistant childhood. They're allowed, from childhood, to feel their feelings. For all the difficulties that they're given, at least that they have been given the freedom to feel who they are and really look at the issues of their lives.

Mary: If you're really correct, that men represent only 10 percent of your audience, men need to go see your movies if they want to understand the women they love.

Henry Jaglom: Yes. I've gotten quite a few letters and emails from men who said, "My God, I had no idea." I would love to broaden the base, but I don't want to do that at the expense of the women because still, I'm trying to share because in addition to the difficulties of women's lives, they are made to feel that there's something wrong with them for feeling the things they feel. And my films are mainly concerned with making them realize that there's nothing wrong with them. It's the world that's wrong. It's the male world that's wrong for imposing on them these ideas of how they're supposed to be and that they themselves are right, because they're in touch with their feelings and they are allowing themselves to express who they are in their lives. They're much freer.

Mary: I'm feeling better already.

Henry Jaglom: So I don't think they need to learn from the films anything. I think that it's very good though, to see themselves represented on the screen. One of the most consistent themes in the letters and emails I get is, "I feel less alone. I feel less like I'm the only one going through this."

Mary: I’ve learned a lot from watching your films, so I do think there’s a learning experience in watching them and rewatching them. Henry, one of the things you say in Someone to Love and refer to this idea of reality versus art, a quote from Danny, the character you're playing, "I always have a camera in my head watching what I'm living." In this movie, among the many questions you address about happiness and aloneness, you also, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, are dealing with the question of reality versus art.

Henry Jaglom: Oh, always.

Mary: I think this question emerges again in Venice/Venice. We see it again in Just 45 Minutes from Broadway. Talk to me about your thoughts on art and reality.

Henry Jaglom: Just 45 Minutes from Broadway is entirely about that because it's about a family of actors. And in it, Tanna Frederick's character at one point says, "I don't know if life is real or art is real, and I'm not sure I really want to know the difference." Whether we’re acting in our lives or acting on a stage. On a stage, we know we're acting and frequently in life we have the sense that we’re acting, but we’re supposed to be in something defined as reality. It's a very complicated issue, that fine line between what is really being felt and expressed and what is being felt and expressed for superficial surface reasons to communicate to certain other people, what you allow yourself to show of yourself.

And I think actors, actors in a weird way represent that more clearly than anyone else because they get up on a stage and they portray somebody else, but they're using themselves to portray someone else. And many actors feel at their real-ist in some way when they're acting another character because acting because-

Mary: You mean more real when they're in that moment, they feel more real? Is that what they tell you?

Henry Jaglom: Yes. Yes, because they know who they are, whereas in their own characters, we are much more complex beings and we feel like, I just did that. I just said that to my husband or my child or my partner. And did I really feel that? Was that true? I said it not to hurt somebody, I said it because I thought it would make somebody feel good. I said it for a hundred reasons because it was easier to say that than really say the truth of what's going on. So I was acting. That means I was acting. So in Just 45 Minutes from Broadway, I think that is examined very, very closely.

Mary: It is. And in Venice/Venice too.

Henry Jaglom: Very much in Venice/Venice.

Mary: In that film, the gorgeous actress, Nelly Alard, who plays the French journalist interviewing Dean, the character you play as the movie director in that film, actually talks about Schrödinger's cat, an experiment in quantum physics that raises the question of perception and suggests, to be a bit simplistic, that once we observe anything, it gets changed. Henry, what do you think your camera does to life while you're working with actors?

Henry Jaglom: Great, great, great question. Because of Schrödinger's cat, because of everything I'm saying about reality versus the playing at reality, who knows what the existence of the camera does. They're not pretending that they’re living in a space where there is no character. And sometimes the most authentic of them are played by actors playing actors because actors are always aware that they are on stage or on camera or being watched and so on.

And I think we all are, in that sense though, as civilians, as we call non-actors, civilians do not have the comfortable understanding that it's okay that they are occasionally finding themselves acting. They think that that’s lying or that’s misleading or that is not being authentically themselves. We’re all acting in this world since we're little children and find out what we need to do to get the approval of the adults to get to the candy we want, whatever it is. And then that's mixed in with a very great need to be authentically who we are, which we struggle with all our lives. 

Mary: Essentially, I think what you're saying is there’s a search for identity that you’re exploring as well. The nature of identity.

Henry Jaglom: Of course. Never more so than in Venice/Venice by the way. I think in Venice/Venice, I faced that head on in a more direct way when I sit around people.

Mary: About yourself, do you think?

Henry Jaglom: About myself and about life. When I sit around that table at the Venice Festival and say to all the people, "What if we're all just acting? What if this isn't really us, but there's a camera out there?" And I point toward the imaginary camera where in fact there is a camera and all the others look in that direction and say, "What if we're just all characters in a movie being made somewhere?" And that is a poetic way of looking at the complexity of the reality, unreality of our lives.

Mary: I adore that film and I think we can agree that all your films draw, in some way, on your own life as it has unfolded lovers and wives.

Henry Jaglom: Of course.

Mary: And of course, the journey of the artist. Henry, I have a take on what your body of work is. I'm going to ask you what you think. I believe you take the and then of life and search for order through your art. Not sure that you find order, but I think you're in search of it. How would you describe your body of work, considerable as it is, at this point in time?

Henry Jaglom: I can't think of a better description than what you just said. I'm actually rather open mouthed and stunned if you saw me at this moment because yes, I think exactly the and then. I think you've captured it. I think you've captured what it is that I'm trying. You have described really, it makes me feel very good because when you make films, you always hope that the audience will receive them with the intention that you put them out there. And what you just described is exactly, exactly what I think.

Mary: Well, I wish you could see me right now because there's this big blush that just came up out of my chest.

Henry Jaglom: It's an earned blush, really earned blush because it's not often that I've had the film so really clearly and profoundly described and simply described because it's not more complicated than that.

Mary: Wow. I'm trying to go on here... I want to ask you a question about the director's cut of Deja Vu A Love Story. I watched this movie twice before I listened to the director's cut because in the director's cut, Henry does keep saying, "Now, you better have watched this movie before you're listening to this." You assert in that movie something about how key rational thought is. And I think you say that you're not a romantic, but I think you are.

Henry Jaglom: I think all romantics think they're not real romantics. I am, of course, a profound romantic. My entire life, my entire filmmaking career, even the choice to make films outside of the system that pushes you and tries to seduce you constantly into making artificial films about artificial things and your insistence on trying to make real films about real people and real emotions, that what could be more romantic? I mean, it is the plight, if you will, and I think the joy of the romantic to be able to tell the truth, to search for and tell the truth, and I've been given the great privilege of being able to do that.

Mary: And not only that, you've had what appeared to me to be the early discovery of incredible actors, including Melissa Leo, Francis Fisher, Martha Plimpton, David Duchovny, perhaps Andrea Marcovicci, whom I adore. I know she’d done other work before, but her work in Someone to Love—she’s luminous.

Henry Jaglom: Yes. And she's now gone on to be the foremost nightclub singer in America, and she tells the truth. If you're ever in a city where she is singing in a club, you'll go there and see the musical equivalent of my films. She gets up and talks to the audience about the music, what it means to her. And she sings the songs not only beautifully, but with an understanding of all the complexity of life that goes into them. Mostly songs from the '30's and '40's, and she's a joy.

Mary: And you’re clearly still friends. And Melissa Leo has appeared in your later movies.

Henry Jaglom: I also discovered her in Always, the movie I made with my ex-wife at the end of our first marriage.

Mary:  That's a wonderful film.

Henry Jaglom: She played the character who played my ex-wife and was really my ex-wife. As you know, that film is about the end of our relationship.

Mary: It's quite remarkable in itself.

Henry Jaglom: In itself, but one of the craziest things I've ever done. Again, it was Orson Welles who said to me, I was crying and on the floor and I was desolate. And he said to me, "Look, if you were a songwriter, you'd be writing songs about this. If you were a poet, you'd be writing poems. You're a filmmaker, make a film about it." I said, "How can I make a film about it? She left me." He said, "Tell us the truth on film. Have her and you play her and you, use other names, create an excuse for a gathering at a weekend," like the 4th of July party, which is what I came up with, "And then tell the truth." And that's what we do in that film. I mean, she is leaving me. I don't want her to leave me. And she's telling the truth about why she feels the need to leave, and I'm telling the truth about why I feel we love each other and should not be breaking up.

Mary: She gives a beautiful performance. There are extraordinary performances, Henry, that you get from older women actors. I want to mention these and have you talk about this because as women age in the movie industry, they often don’t get roles.

Henry Jaglom:  They have the most to give. That's when they have the most to give. Vivica Linfors—

Mary: For our listeners, let me name some of these incredible performances: Vivica Linfors in Last Summer in the Hamptons, totally luminous performance. In Deja Vu, A Love Story, Aviva Marks, this beautiful Israeli actress, and in that same film we have Rachel Kempson who is Vanessa Redgrave’s mother. And the only time I believe the two ever appeared together.

Henry Jaglom: Yeah, it's the only time that Vanessa and her mother ever appeared together.

Mary: I'm so glad to verify that. And in Eating, Francis Bergen, Edgar Bergen's wife and mother of Candace Bergen. I think you answered it, but elaborate. What drew you to these women at that late time in their lives and why is it do you think their performances were so open and so full of light?

Henry Jaglom: Again, because I had a great mother who never said to me, "You can’t cross this line. You're a boy. You have to do this and that." And she allowed me to spend time with her friends, with her world and see what women were. And they were already, to me, older women, obviously. They were then actually just middle aged women, and I was a kid. But I saw them go through the various aspects of life and I fell in love with them. I just felt that what women go through is heroic and incredibly difficult and frequently painful, but ultimately, really heroic. And so when I started making films, I always wanted to try to include an older woman, especially some famous older woman. From Festival in Cannes, Anouk Aimée. I don't think you mentioned her. Anouk Aimée who was a glorious—

Mary: No, I didn't, but it's a beautiful, beautiful performance again, and I should have mentioned that.

Henry Jaglom: And again, it’s 40 years after she stunned the world with A Man and a Woman, and she is no less beautiful and no less powerful. And it was very important for me in that film to look at her and let us look at her and let her tell us her story. And I think women, especially older women, just don't get to tell their stories. And I see my job, if anything, as being a conduit between them and an audience that I know, especially an audience of women that I know wants to hear and see what is happening in the lives of these great women. And they've given me most of the greatest performances I have.

Mary: And I must tell you something a little bit personal before I close the show. When you mentioned that Anouk Aimée, A Man and a Woman and her beauty—I saw that film with my father. I’m Jewish, and today is my father’s Yahrzeit. And the candle celebrating his life, it went out. So you light it for 24 hours. I want to tell you that you just touched my heart.

Henry Jaglom: I'm very glad. I'm very, very glad. You know she was Jewish too, Anouk Aimée?

Mary: I did not know that. 

Henry Jaglom: During the occupation of France by the Nazis, she and her mother had Aryan papers, Christian papers that they had to show on trains and everything. And she lived in fear of being discovered. She had that experience herself.

Mary: Can I ask you one more question before—

Henry Jaglom: You could ask me as any questions as you would like.

Mary: Okay. What role has your Jewish heritage played in the body of work? I know you were born in England and that you have Jewish parents and there is a wonderful Passover scene in Just 45 Minutes from Broadway that you most generously sent me. You are an incredibly generous man. So I got to see that movie before it came out.

Henry Jaglom: Being Jewish is very central to my identity. I have no religion as such. I come from a family that is not religious in any way. And my father was a Jew from Russia. My mother a Jew from Germany. After the Russian Revolution, my father left, went to Central Europe where he met my mother and they married, and then he moved to a place called Danzig, which was a free state in the Polish corridor that was created by the League of Nations. And he ended up running the economy, all the trade between Germany and Poland and all the economy with that small state of Danzig. And when the Nazis came in, there was a very complicated situation because he was Jewish. And he said, "Okay, I'm giving you six months notice and then I'm going to England. This is not a good place to be." And they sent to Berlin and came back with an offer, if you can believe this, of honorary Aryanship.

Mary: You’re kidding.

Henry Jaglom: They wanted to make him an honorary Aryan. And he said to my mother, "Okay, we're not waiting the six months. We're getting in the car now, driving across to Poland and flying to England, and they'll just keep sending us all the stuff." Because he realized that they want make you an honorary of what you're not, it's time to leave. So he was very conscious of his Jewishness. He was a major contributor. And the inspiration for the building of the Tel Aviv Museum.

Mary: Really?

Henry Jaglom: The great museum in Tel Aviv, where by the way, the paintings that he and my mother collected all their lives are in permanent exhibition in the Marie and Simon Jaglom pavilion there.

Mary: Oh my god.

Henry Jaglom:  But we were not religious Jews. We were very identified. And we are connected. We feel very strongly about the state of Israel. We are very connected to the fact of our Jewishness. But it has played, I think, tactically, no role in my movies, until Just 45 Minutes from Broadway.

Mary: And it's a great Passover scene. It really is.

Henry Jaglom: That was the one event, the one Jewish event. We didn't go to the synagogue much at all, actually. My father went on Yom Kippur, but that was it. But we did have a Passover Seder every year to traditionally maintain our Jewish awareness. And so I had my brother playing my father and my son Simon, who was named after my father, playing me, stealing the Matzah, the Afikoman, and it was fun. My daughter is in that scene too, the girl who decides she wants to be an actress, and her mother and father get into a fight over it.

Mary: Oh she's marvelous, Sabrina.

Henry Jaglom: Sabrina Jaglom.

Mary: A great talent there. Henry, as I bring the show to a close, I'd like to quote, first Orson’s imperative in Someone to Love. "Tell me your story." You do that, Henry Jaglom in this heartfelt manner and here I quote Bernard Malamud, who, in the intro to his collected short stories said, "Some are born whole, others must seek the blessed state in a struggle to achieve order. That is no loss to speak of. Ultimately, such seeking becomes the subject matter of fiction. Observing, reading, thinking, one invents himself." Henry Jaglom, thank you for connecting here with me and sharing your process of invention.

Henry Jaglom: Wow, that couldn't be nicer. And I do think we invent ourselves. I think that’s very, very true. And I wish everyone would just go and watch everyone else's invention because we learn so much from seeing what everybody else does. That's the key. Being open and seeing what everyone else is doing.

Mary: And I hope I get to see your next film as soon as it comes out. And I hope I get to talk to you again someday. Maybe not on the radio, maybe just us.

Henry Jaglom:  I’ll be happy to anytime you wish. And if you send me your email, your address, I will send you the next film as soon as it comes out.

Mary: I will do that! 

Henry Jaglom:  Okay. What a pleasure this has been. Thank you very, very much.

Mary:  Oh, my pleasure.

Henry Jaglom: One doesn't expect this kind of communication and it’s a real joy.

Mary: You honored me. Thank you. It has been my pleasure, indeed.

Love,

1. This interview first appeared, in slightly different form, on the site: Inner Life without the mention of my novel Who by Fire that I’m serializing in a new section. Henry, like many of those I interviewed, had not read the novel and we don’t discuss it—as I explain here.