Author Name: Jaglom, Henry Variant
Name: Henry David Jaglom, Henry Jaglom
Nationality: English
Year of Birth: 1941
Place of Birth: London, England
Genre(s): Screenplays, Film

Personal Information:
Family: Born January 26, 1941, in London, England; son of Simon M. and Marie (Stadthagen) Jaglom; married Patrice Townsend, May, 1977 (divorced, 1982); married Victoria Foyt, October, 1991; children: (second marriage) Sabrina Marie, Simon Orson. Education: University of Pennsylvania, B.A., 1961; studied acting, writing, and directing at the Actors Studio. Addresses: Office: Rainbow Film Company, 9165 Sunset Blvd., Suite 300, Los Angeles, CA 90069.

Career: Actor, screenwriter, and director of motion pictures. Has appeared in films, such as Psych- Out, 1968, The One Thousand Plane Raid, 1969, Drive, He Said, 1971, The Last Movie, 1971, Sitting Ducks, 1977, Always, 1985, Someone to Love, 1987; New Year's Day, 1989, Venice/Venice, 1992, and Last Summer in the Hamtons, 1995. Director of films, including A Safe Place, 1971, Tracks, 1976, Sitting Ducks, 1980, Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?, 1983, Always, 1985, Someone to Love, 1987, New Year's Day, 1989, Eating, 1991, Venice/Venice, 1992, Babyfever, 1994, and Last Summer in the Hamptons, 1995. Presenter of documentary Hearts and Minds, 1974. Founder and chair, Orson Welles Awards for directorial achievement. Jaglow's films have been screened in retrospectives at the Art Institute of Chicago Film Center, British Film Institute, and Avignon Film Festival.

Award(s): Academy Award for best documentary from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 1974, for Hearts and Minds; HOF International Film Festival tribute, 1989; American Film Institute/Los Angeles Filmfest tribute, 1993; New York/Avignon Film Festival tribute, 1996.

WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR:SCREENPLAYS; AND DIRECTOR
A Safe Place, BBS Productions/Columbia, 1971. Tracks, International Rainbow, 1976. Sitting Ducks, International Rainbow/United Film, 1979. Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?, International Rainbow/Castle Hill, 1983. Always, Jagtown/Goldwyn, 1985. Someone to Love, International Rainbow/Jagfilms/Castle Hill, 1987. New Year's Day, Rainbow Film Company, 1989. Eating, Rainbow Film Company, 1991. Venice/Venice, Rainbow Film Company, 1992. Babyfever, Rainbow Film Company, 1994. Last Summer in the Hamptons, Rainbow Film Company, 1995.

Works in Progress: A film entitled Deja Vu. "Sidelights"Writer, director, and actor Henry Jaglom is considered by many to be one of the most unconventional and independent filmmakers in the motion picture industry. A member of a generation of young directors, including Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson, and Peter Fonda, who came to prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Jaglom remained an underground figure in the movie industry for more than a decade until the release of his films Sitting Ducks in 1980 and Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? in 1983. Even in the late 1980s, however, Jaglom's penchant for maintaining complete artistic control over his projects and insistence on keeping his film budgets near the one-million- dollar mark set him apart from Hollywood's cinematic mainstream. Best known for his highly personal, often autobiographical feature films, Jaglom explores the neuroses and obsessions of modern American society through the medium of film.

The filmmaker began his career as an actor guest- starring in situation comedies for television, such as Gidget and The Flying Nun. In 1968 Jaglom landed his first movie role as the drugged-out character Warren in Psych-Out, a film he terms "the ultimate '60s B movie" in an article for the Los Angeles Times by Roderick Mann. Psych-Out also featured Jack Nicholson as a small- time rock band leader named Stoney.

Jaglom's initial filmmaking venture came the following year when producer Bert Schneider hired him to help edit the 1968 cult classic Easy Rider, which also featured Nicholson. Co-written and directed by Hopper, Easy Rider is a watershed 1960s movie concerning drug-dealing motorcyclists en route to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. As a result of his editorial work on the film, Jaglom was given the chance to direct a movie. He acted in three others-- Nicholson's Drive, He Said, Hopper's The Last Movie, and Orson Welles' unreleased The Other Side of the Wind--prior to the release of his first directorial effort, A Safe Place, in 1971. Featuring Tuesday Weld, Orson Welles, and Nicholson, A Safe Place depicts a young woman's escape into a world of childhood memories in an effort to free herself from painful reality. Jaglom admits to Kathryn Bernheimer in the Daily Camera that the film was autobiographical: "Since I've always felt so much closer to women [than] men," he explains, "it never occurred to me to make a movie about a man, so I used Tuesday Weld to play me [as the character Noah]." Welles is cast as a magician who can perform amazing feats but cannot make things disappear. Realizing that the magician cannot remove her pain, Noah longs for the ultimate disappearance through death.

A Safe Place was a success abroad but did not fare well in the United States. Writer and critic Anais Nin, however, was so impressed by Jaglom that she included the essay "Henry Jaglom: The Magician of Film" in her collection In Favor of the Sensitive Man and Other Essays. In the essay she lauds A Safe Place as "the perfect superimposition of memory, dream, illusion, and the grappling with reality" and defends the film against critics who deem it incoherent and confusing. She writes: "Those who may be irritated are those who have always feared the depths and who, in spite of so many proofs to the contrary, think we live in a rational world. Better to face the minotaur of our dreams and know their fragility and gain a deeper understanding of the human dilemma." The success of A Safe Place in Europe earned Jaglom enough money to finance Tracks, a 1976 film featuring Hopper as a Vietnam veteran who escorts a coffin containing his friend's body across the United States by train for burial. Two years prior to making Tracks Jaglom was instrumental in bringing Hearts and Minds, a controversial documentary about the United States' involvement in Vietnam, to the screen. The film, which portrays the devastating effects of the war on individual Vietnamese citizens, was considered too graphic and powerful a depiction for release by many distributors. Jaglom won an Oscar in 1974 for his role in presenting Hearts and Minds under the Howard Zucker/Henry Jaglom-Rainbow Pictures name. Jaglom tells Bernheimer that "no one wanted to hear about Vietnam" in the American movie industry during the mid- 1970s; consequently, his fictional Tracks--a blatant reminder of the nation's fresh wound--failed to attract a large audience. The film views the war from the perspective of a veteran who has trouble distinguishing his paranoid fantasies from reality. Some reviewers found the story difficult to follow, as the fantasies experienced by Hopper's character were not clearly delineated from reality in the movie. Jaglom responds to the criticism in the Daily Camera, stating, "I guess anybody who tries to do something new has to expect some resistance."

In 1979 Jaglom wrote, directed, and played a minor role in Sitting Ducks, a comedy about two would-be criminals who steal money from the mob and head to Costa Rica for a life of ease. Critics were generally impressed by the believable rapport between actors Michael Emil and Zack Norman as the amateur crooks. Patrice Townsend, Jaglom's wife at the time, also appeared in the film. Vincent Canby, writing for the New York Times, finds Sitting Ducks to be oddly appealing and notes that much of the movie "looks and sounds improvised. . . . In some subversive way, this works. [Jaglom's comedy] is . . . almost always engaging."

The filmmaker followed Sitting Ducks with Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?--a bittersweet romantic comedy filmed on Manhattan's Upper West Side--in 1983. The film features Karen Black as Zee, a dejected and slightly hysterical woman who has just been jilted by her husband. Emil, again cast as the male comic lead, plays an obsessive neurotic bachelor who meets a teary-eyed Zee in a cafe. Through the pair's ensuing romance, comments Jay Scott in the Toronto Globe and Mail, Jaglom "arrives at truths seldom found in films trumpeting their truthfulness with far more ado." Scott, who compares the writer-director's dialogue to that of acclaimed British playwright Harold Pinter, went on to call the film "endearing" and "quirkily likeable." Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times was impressed by "Jaglom's breezy approach" to contemporary romance and the movie's "appealing off-the-cuff dash." Can She Bake a Cherry Pie? premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and brought lavish praise to Black for her portrayal of Zee, a role some critics regard as her finest comic performance.

Jaglom's 1985 film Always, considered by many to be the most personal of all his cinematic projects, deals with the final days of his marriage to Townsend. A documentary- style home movie, Always was filmed in the couple's old house. Townsend meets with Jaglom--both play variations of themselves under different names--to sign their divorce papers and ends up spending an entire weekend with him discussing love, their fears, and their unusual relationship. Although some critics felt that the filmmaker's premise was too subjective to engage a general audience, Canby considers Always Jaglom's "most amiable film to date." In a review for the Los Angeles Times, Michael Wilmington calls it "a sweet film, and a human one" that is "also intelligent, funny, sparkling, poignant and a deft exploration of human character."

In Someone to Love Jaglom again plays what he terms a version of himself, a lonely movie director who invites his friends to a Valentine's Day party at an abandoned theater. Jaglom poses the question "Why are you alone?" to more than sixty guests and films their responses. Most notable among the guests is Orson Welles--acting in his final role--offering insights into love, alienation, and aloneness. The film closes with Welles calling "Cut" and laughing. Jaglom recalls in the Daily Camera Welles's enthusiastic response to the idea for the movie. Prior to his death, Welles told Jaglom: "If you pull this off you'll push film further than it's gone before." Someone to Love was an official selection at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival. Commenting on his films Jaglom states in the Los Angeles Times, "I see myself as representing Off Hollywood . . . [as] someone making movies for the same people who would go to see an Off-Broadway play." Bernheimer dubs Jaglom "the most naked of all filmmakers" and asserts, "His films aren't just personal, they are intimate, revealing close-ups of a man stripping himself bare for the camera."

Although Jaglom has been courted by several Hollywood studio heads to make a mainstream film since the release of Sitting Ducks and Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?, he steadfastly refuses to allow for unsolicited opinions or creative interference on his projects. Jaglom's methods have earned him increasing success and considerable acclaim in recent years. He intends to continue making comparatively low-budget, offbeat movies his own way. "It's just not your vision," he explains to Mann, "unless you have total control."