WHOLE LIFE TIMES

"ONE OF THE GIRLS"

TALKING WITH HENRY JAGLOM

BY LYN SCHARRET (JULY 1996)

Judging by the majority of current box office hits, it isn't necessary for a film's director to have either an acting background or a vision for the future in order for a film to be successful. Amidst the glut of special effects and elaborate stunts, independent filmmaker Henry Jalgom's movies are notable for a lack of both. What he brings to his films instead is a sense of real life and truth in each moment.

Jaglom's goal is not to make big budget extravaganzas, although he's had plenty of opportunity to do so. What he tries to do through his films ­ and his life - is to communicate and share his emotional truth.

Even as a child, Jaglom found that the world of feelings inhabited by his mother and her friends made more sense to him than the "men's world" of things and external events. His interest in the emotional side of life has made him uniquely tuned in to the domain of women, its gifts and its challenges. In fact, he has the singular distinction of having been voted an "honorary woman" by an audience of 1,200 women at the Toronto film festival. He describes it as "the single most exciting thing that has happened to me in years."

Jaglom's films are characterized by intimate emotional encounters. Whereas other directors may insist on a quiet set, Jaglom has filmed, for example, street conversations with so much traffic noise that we have to strain to hear the conversations, much as someone at the next table would.

Lisa Richards, who was one of the stars of Jaglom's "EATING," loved working with him and speaks highly of his style of direction. "Henry loves it when you're real," she says. She describes Jaglom as a man who is extremely spontaneous on the set, enjoys a lot of input, and loves portraying all aspects of women ... even their foibles. He doesn't use a script, rather a story outline that will allow each actor's story to emerge. And true to life, he never does more than one take.

Like the rest of us mortals, men and women both, Jaglom has his shortcomings. He can be demanding and impatient, and does not hesitate to acknowledge "my vulnerability, my needfulness, my patheticness, my out-of-touchness." Still there is no denying the value of this actor/director's work and the connection people feel to his films.

Good films can change lives! -Abigail Lewis.

Your films have consistently strived to bring in the female energy or point of view, not only in the roles your characters play, but in the actual making of the films as well. Why is that?

In making films, I feel that what's important is to expand the human horizon. And the better, fuller, emotionally richer half of our population ­ which is women ­ is not represented on screen because movies are still made largely for and by men. Women are represented as a variety of male fantasy figures.

Life imitates art. If women aren't given a voice in films, that's a voice that's not heard by society. What are the repercussions of that?

Film and television and our whole popular culture, dominated and created by men, have told both men and women what their roles are supposed to be. That's why it's so important to use the forum of that same popular culture, as much as we can, to tell the truth about how we really behave and not allow ourselves to be governed any longer by male societal rules.

There is a notable shortage of good roles for intelligent women in front of the camera. What about behind the scenes? Is it still a male-dominated field or is that changing?

I'm not sure it is changing. I'd like to believe it is, but I've noticed something very disturbing: a lot of the women who are finding places of power in the movie business are doing so by adjusting their human, feminine values to a male idea of what "the public" wants. They are frequently not being true to themselves ­ they are trying to become "one of the boys." My job, I've always felt, is to become one of the girls.

You are notorious for zealously preserving your independence, and not "selling-out" to a large studio. What people and films most influenced you?

The first American film that recreated a true sense of life for me was John Cassavetes first film, "SHADOWS," probably the first truly independent film. When I saw it, I thought, "My God, you can tell the truth in film, it doesn't have to be all that dangerous, fake Hollywood fantasy." Then a couple of years later, I saw Fellini's "8 1/2," I saw "PERSONA" and the other movies of Ingmar Bergman, I saw the films that John Schlesinger and others were doing in London in the '60s and I realized that what I wanted to do was to try to bring that honesty to American cinema.

Tell us about how you got your start in filmmaking.

I was an actor, and I helped edit the film "EASY RIDER," which was such a popular movie that everyone who had been involved with it got a chance to direct. I had a script I wanted to do, a play I had written called "A SAFE PLACE," about the interior of the mind of a young woman going through a crisis. It's a difficult movie to describe, a very female film. Tuesday Weld played a female version of me, and instead of it being a hard, male, exterior film, all about events and action, it was an interior exploration of feelings and dreams and yearnings and fears. It's a poem. Predictably, men hated it and it was a commercial disaster.

It took me five years to make my second film, "TRACKS." The good thing that happened, though, was that "A SAFE PLACE" was discovered by Anais Nin who came into my office after a screening, threw her arms around me and was crying and said "Now there are two Henrys [Henry Miller was her lover] in my life." She took that film under her arm to college campuses and women's study groups and showed it as an example of what she called "the female expression in art." She wrote about it in a book of essays called In Favor of the Sensitive Man, and all that gave me my first audience ­ which was a very conscious, literate, female audience ­ and that spoiled me. I've been making films for that audience ever since.

What was it that gave you your heightened sensitivity to women and their real place in society as opposed to the present mindset?

I was lucky to have a great mother who let me in on the world of women, who didn't hide it from me or say "you can't have that because you're a male," which is what I think has caused men to be so terrified of the best part of themselves. My mother allowed me to incorporate as much of the female world as felt right to me, and so I grew up unafraid of my emotional truth, with a desperate desire to share it, a need to communicate it.

What strikes me about what you just said is not that men are bad or deficient, they just need to balance or incorporate both sides of themselves.

Of course men are not bad, they're just afraid of the feminine, the feeling part, both inside of themselves and in women. As long as they are battling that, they can never be wholly integrated. And they'll kill you, sometimes, rather than let you touch their feelings. They're so scared that as they grow up they even lose their ability to play. They take themselves so seriously on such a superficial level that communication with them becomes incredibly difficult.

Unless they are talking about cars or business.

That's right, something safe and external. Business, money, sports, things that have nothing to do with any scary truth about what's going on inside of them.

It's so refreshing that you portray women in an intelligent manner. In fact, when I mentioned that you make it possible for women to have an equal voice with men, you interjected that you feel women have something more important to say.

Women have so much more access than men to the interior landscape of their lives and therefore to a value system that is truly about the important things ­ feelings and humanity, expression and caring ­ that their voice is much more important than men's, much more relevant. The truth is that if I were made ruler of the universe for a week , or even a day, the only thing I know I would do is immediately take the vote away from men! Then committees of women would be formed, whose job it would be to decide which men were safe to reempower. They could give them some kind of humanity test. Only then would I feel sure that we could save the earth, and one another, from all that male anger and destruction.

Your ability to see into the emotional landscape of women, especially, for example, in the film "EATING," is uncanny.

It's not uncanny, it's easy. Men are the ones who don't let you see inside of themselves. Women are open and they share what's going on and they are dealing with the real issues of their lives, with each other and with the few men who will listen. So it's no special credit to me that I can get this on film, it's a credit to the women because they are very brave in their willingness to allow me ­ and therefore the world ­ to see who they are. Men are in hiding and women are in constant search of real communication.

So my films try to encourage that desire, to share that process with others. The most satisfaction I get is the thousands of letters that come in from all over the country each year which essentially say the same thing which is that, "These movies make me feel less alone, less isolated, less like I'm the only one going through all this ..." whether it's food ("EATING"), loneliness and the search for love, ("SOMEONE TO LOVE," "NEW YEAR'S DAY," "ALWAYS") the complex issue of having babies in today's world ("BABYFEVER"), the way that movies and our whole culture affect our dreams of romance ("VENICE/VENICE," "DEJA VU") or the process of aging and the way in which families destroy themselves ("LAST SUMMER IN THE HAMPTONS").

One concern that sometimes makes us feel very isolated and impotent is the masculine/feminine imbalance in our culture. People are focusing on the goddess energy because we've been male dominated for so long that now the earth is in danger.

I feel nothing is truer. I'm just not sure that this whole goddess thing is actually happening. Men still have all the destructive powers. I just feel that women have to be very strong and insistent on their power if we are going to save ourselves and the planet

Susan Faludi's book, Backlash, addressed the fears and reprisals brought up by the feminist movement. Do you think that the women's movement seems to be regressing? Should it be called a movement at all?

I don't think its regressing, I think its regrouping. Different times call for different actions. The most important fact in the past 50 years, as far as I'm concerned, is that the women's movement took place and gave us all a chance to be human. It seems that now what has to happen is that women take responsibility for their power and activate it politically, socially, culturally in every way.