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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us April 10, 2006 Henry Jaglom talks about his film Hollywood Dreams at the Old Ashland Armory photo by Orville Hector | Ashland Daily Tidings By Vickie Aldous Ashland Daily Tidings Everyone has had the experience of sitting in a dark theater and muttering, “Now, that’s just not very plausible.” This time, the director was listening. Acclaimed independent filmmaker Henry Jaglom opened up the rough cut version of his new film, “Hollywood Dreams,” to an audience of 200 at the Ashland Historic Armory during the Ashland Independent Film Festival. During the Saturday night event, Jaglom explained that a rough cut is like a rough draft for a novel. “A rough cut is an early assemblage. It is not the film as it will finally be seen in the theaters — although it’s close. ... I’m trying different things in this film and I can’t be sure if they work. You’re absolutely the first audience to see this film,” he said. The film follows Margie Chizek, played by Tanna Freder-ick, who has moved to Holly-wood from Iowa to pursue her dream of becoming a movie star. From the opening scene, when Margie dissolves into tears during an audition, Frederick captures her fragility and intensity. She manages to create a character who is annoying yet endearing, beautiful but insecure, filled with contagious enthusiasm and yet plagued by narcissism. The film itself successfully walks two paths — mixing intense sorrow with humor, although that humor frequently has a dark side. Sitting with her friends, Margie plows through a box of cookies, chewing up each one but then spitting it out into a bowl. Her friends, fellow aspiring actresses, are disgusted until she tells them she lost 15 pounds using the technique. “You lost 15 pounds?” one friend says with interest. The next scene shows the young women sitting in bed, passing along a bowl as each chews and spits out cookies. As intended, the scene drew laughter from the audience. But another, more subtle scene left some viewers in the dark. After being kicked out by her roommates, Margie pretends to faint and is taken in by a gay movie insider and his partner, who allow her to live in their guest house. Her aunt from Iowa comes to visit. In a tender moment, Margie nestles on her aunt’s chest. After giggling about their respective love lives, Margie reveals that she has been writing to her gay brother Frankie, who she says lives abroad. When her aunt keeps asking her why she thinks Frankie, after all these years, has never responded, Margie is pushed to near hysterics. The aunt backs down. Later in the film, the aunt tells Margie’s new boyfriend that her brother killed himself but the family has allowed Margie to continue in her delusional world. In a show of hands after the film, most audience members said they understood that Frankie was dead during the scene between Margie and her aunt. “I don’t need the aunt telling us that the brother died,” one audience member said, referring to the scene between the aunt and Margie’s boyfriend. But others said they had not made that leap. Jaglom said he hoped that most people would understand in the earlier scene that Frankie had died, but he felt that some people might need the second scene to make that clear. “I don’t want a third of the audience to not understand for the rest of the movie that the brother is dead,” he said. Whether or not Jaglom agreed with the points and criticisms made by audience members, he responded graciously to most comments while providing insights into the directing and editing process. But when one woman said she found Frederick’s voice to be annoyingly high-pitched during the film, Jaglom jumped to the defense of his star and became curt. Frederick eventually intervened in the tense exchange and noted, “It was screechy for me, too.” In researching the character, Frederick said she watched movies from the 1930s, when female characters were frequently melodramatic. Some audience members questioned the plausibility of a movie insider taking in a stranger off the streets, but Jaglom said he knows of managers with big homes who do just that. As far as the last scene, some audience members wanted a happy ending where Margie and her new boyfriend could be together and both be stars. But the ending was far more ambiguous than that. Margie’s boyfriend has long pretended to be gay in order to entice gay directors and appeal to gay audience members. Now in love with Margie, he is ready to risk his budding career by “coming out as a heterosexual.” One of his managers, who wants him to maintain his profitable gay persona, offers a plum role to Margie in exchange for her rejecting him. She accepts the offer. Margie spurns her boyfriend and drives him away, telling him not to take away her dream — an obvious reference to her wish to become a star but also a hint at her compulsion to maintain her belief that her brother is alive. Then, sitting alone in a dress that reveals her painfully thin condition, she continues talking to an invisible presence at her side, marking the end of the film. Some audience members said they would like Margie to explicitly say Frankie’s name while she is talking aloud, while others said they did not need that. Jaglom said he had shot additional footage that would show Margie and her boyfriend after they had just watched a film where she was the star and he was the director. That film would be everything that had just been seen. While some thought the alternate ending was a clever twist and satisfied their desire for a clear, happy finale, many audience members rejected it outright, saying it would be too easy and went against the spirit of the film. Jaglom said he most likely would not use the alternate ending because it would take away from the emotional intensity of the film — transforming what happened into little more than a television sitcom ending where everything turns out to have been a dream. As audience members began to disperse after the thought-provoking discussion, one woman told Jaglom, “This helps me appreciate the dilemmas you have as a filmmaker.” Staff writer Vickie Aldous can be reached at 479-8199 or [email protected]. 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