"The enemy of art is the absence of limitations": Henry Jaglom feels "Deja Vu"

There was no Miramax, there was no New Line, there was no Sony Classics, or any of the other incarnations, there was just no choice. By the time I made my third picture, which took another four years, "Sitting Ducks" suddenly there was independent distributors springing up, and United Artists Theater Circuit decided they could distribute a film themselves and they bought it from me and they distributed it quite well and it did quite well, and suddenly I was off. But for the whole decade of the 70's, I managed to make only those three films. Suddenly, the 80's, everything changed. But now I was very weary of even those independents here since the film was a big hit in Europe, (also since I was getting friendly with Orson Welles and I watched the way it was impossible for him to get money to make a movie) I figured the thing to do is never depend on Hollywood for your source of financing, so I went to Europe where "Tracks" and "A Safe Place", which had failed here, both had been very successful. By putting 4 or 5 territories together. . . (I was at the Cannes festival and watched Francis Coppola do this who was there with "The Conversation" put together the financing for "Apocalypse Now".) So I thought I could do that on a much smaller level, instead of getting $500,000 per territory, I'll get $50,000 per territory and I did put together my films financing and the ones after that that way. But then when I came home, I found that distribution got much easier. And the biggest plus is the media changed. Suddenly, there was all this technology that could support the film on the back end, regardless of what the film did on the front end, theatrically. So suddenly, there was cable, video, satellites springing up, and that meant that each territory would out up more money in advance. And it became a great time to be an independent filmmaker. That might be more than you want, you're supposed to stop me. Orson used to say -- he talked in paragraphs, I talk in chapters.

iW: What was that relationship like?

Jaglom: We were very close friends.

iW: Do you think it effected you artistically?

Jaglom: What it effected it was, is that it supported my belief that make a movie for yourself, not for anybody else. In 10 to 15 years, you're going to have to live with it. And nobody knows what's commercial anyway and don't worry about that and just make the best movie you know how for yourself. He was so intent on that. I think that was the greatest lesson I learned. And every other way, we were very close friends. I was spending a lot of my energy, the energy that I had left over from trying to put my films together was spent trying to get him financing which I failed to do.

iW: And as far as getting that financing together, international has been. . .

Jaglom: Until recently, well, not even until recently, this film "Deja Vu" is entirely financed -- and it's a much bigger budget than I've ever had, it's 4 million dollars, which for me is like 40 -- it was financed by John Goldstone, who produced all the Monty Python pictures in London, and I just made a three picture deal with him as a result. Over there, it's much easier to get that money and the big key, is they don't look over shoulder and you've got total freedom creatively. Orson, you know, never had final cut except for "Citizen Kane". And I determine never to not have Final Cut. And he said to me that was the luckiest thing I could do, the greatest lesson I could learn up-front was to never give away Final Cut.

iW: And this new relationship with Goldstone seems like a dream come true.

Jaglom: Kind of perfection. He protects me. He gives me three or four times the budget that I'm used to. Which means I can get a lot of actors, I can get a lot of locations, I can do a different kind of filmmaking than having to put it in one set.

iW: So tell me then about the changes in this kind of expansive location shooting?

Jaglom: It's not expansive and it's hardly a change -- it's still basically a lunch on a picture. What it is. . . is it frees you from a certain kind of pressure and you could have some luxuries, it doesn't effect the kind of filmmaking very much. It just gives you time to choose locations, to travel, to do a film with more exteriors. The final thing about acting is the same, the final thing about getting emotions on the screen. . . The thing that Orson said to me that's over my editing machine here where I'm sitting is, "The enemy of art is the absence of limitations"which he told me over lunch. And that's the key. If you have no limitations, economically, or time-wise or money-wise, you're not going to make art, you're going to throw money at a problem, you're going to throw technology, you're going to find some solution that you can just buy. If you don't have the money, if you don't have the time, you're going to be forced to make a creative solution to the problem, and I love that. That forces me to make films. 4 million still is in that category, it still forces you to make films, creatively, rather than in some kind of technological or committee oriented way.

iW: So with that budget, what limitations did you come up against?

Jaglom: There are always the limitations of time and money. I need another day on the White Cliffs of Dover, because I have only one day scheduled and it's overcast. How does it change the story if it's overcast? The mood has to be different. I'm forced to find a way to creatively do that. It doesn't change anything really. In terms of that truth of what Orson said holds -- the enemy of art is the absence of limitations -- therefore it's good to have limitations. You're supposed to embrace the limitations. And use them to create solutions that are artistic rather than economic.