Hollywood Dreams with Jaglom and Frederick, Part II
April 23, 2008

Here’s the second part of my phone chat with filmmaker Henry Jaglom and actress Tanna Frederick, who spoke with me about their collaboration on the film Hollywood Dreams (Rainbow Films/TLA, Street: May 6).

VB: The creative thrust that you and Tanna have developed between one another began from what can almost be considered a little con job by Tanna.

HENRY: It was a big con job!

VB: Well, maybe more like a poker bluff. She wrote you a letter, got in touch with you and went into the whole, ‘Hey, Henry Jaglom, sure I love your stuff, and so on…”

TANNA: Yeah, that’s a nice way to put it.

HENRY: Yes, very good. Actually, I used to play a lot of poker and I remember the felling even when I was bluffed that way, I felt a really good sense of the opponent’s win. I had to respect them.

VB: Even better, after Tanna won that first hand, then she quickly went and watched your films!

HENRY: But remember, it took more than three years before she finally confessed that she hasn’t seen my films. And by that time, we had shot two films, one of which had just come out, and we had produced two plays starring her, with a third on its way. And then she finally decided that ‘Henry, it’s time I told you something.’

VB: Tanna, how many of Henry’s films did you see when you realized it was time?

TANNA: I actually hadn’t seen Déjà Vu, when he called me and invited me to a rough cut screening of Festival at Cannes. When I saw it, I was floored—completely blown away. My impression was ‘This is home, here I am. This is where I was meant to be and these are the kind of films I was meant to make.’ After that, I ran down the whole Jaglom library and watched everything very quickly. It was like one delight after another—like a great box chocolates, because each one was so delicious with a slightly different taste.

VB: So you were familiar with the kind of naked emotional territory that Henry plumbed from his leading players?

TANNA: Yes, I learned that quickly. Plus I was doing Henry’s play A Safe Place out here, which really helped to prep me for Hollywood Dreams.

VB: I loved the seamier, All About Eve-esque qualities and subtleties of it—a charming, red-tressed beauty from Iowa coming to Hollywood and turning quite ambitiously nasty ambitious by the end. Character-wise, was it an interesting place for you to go to, Tanna?

TANNA: That’s a good question. I think that one of the reasons we act—so we can go to the places that we secretly have hidden someplace within ourselves or the places that we’re inspired by when we see other performances. I was definitely inspired by a lot of the films of the Forties and All About Eve and A Star is Born and Gena Rowlands. It was a scary place to go, but it was scarier place not to go. Actors have that deep-seeded “I will do anything for my art” drive. The ones who make it, the ones who become famous—they do have that drive. So, it was fun to explore my inner Psycho. When we getting ready to shoot, I felt like a racehorse just ready to get out of the gate. I was ready to run!

HENRY: What I couldn’t believe was that this racehorse could run that way. She was a thoroughbred from the get-go.

VB: Alright, enough of the horse racing metaphors.

HENRY: For twenty years, I’d been wanting to make a film about the obsessiveness of the drive for fame in Hollywood. I’ve watched kids come to Hollywood—including myself—and I’ve seen so many people go through this process and the insane odds against it. I’ve watched those people who’ve stayed in it and I’ve seen the madness that frequently associates with success in this business.

Posted by Laurence Lerman on April 23, 2008 | Comments (0)