TANNA FREDERICK: The Hollywood Interview

(Tanna Frederick in Henry Jaglom's "Just 45 Minutes From Broadway," above, with David Garver.)

By Terry Keefe

The manner in which Iowa native Tanna Frederick received her break as an actress has sort of become a independent filmmaking legend, but it bears repeating, as a lesson in the type of chutzpah required to get anywhere in the film business. After a few years of struggling in the audition trenches of Hollywood, Frederick was told by a fellow actor that filmmaker Henry Jaglom often responded to fan letters. Frederick proceeded to write a copious letter to Jaglom, praising the merits of his 1997 film Deja Vu…which she had never actually seen. Nonetheless, a correspondence between Frederick and Jaglom began, and eventually, Jaglom gave the actress permission to do a stage production of his 1971 film debut, A Safe Place, the cinematic version of which starred Jack Nicholson, Orson Welles, and Tuesday Weld. Her acting in that theatrical production was the initial inspiration for Jaglom to create the starring role of Margie Chizek for Frederick in his feature Hollywood Dreams, which was released in 2006 and for which the actress would receive a great deal of justifed acclaim. The character of Margie could be the more neurotic twin of Anne Baxter in All About Eve, as she insinuates herself into an extended Hollywood family, of sorts. Margie is a mixture of personality disorders, as well as endearing, if childlike, qualities, but by the film’s end it is also revealed how consciously manipulative she is, particularly when it comes to her acting career. The character of Margie will be back in a sequel entitled Queen of the Lot, which has already been shot and is currently in post-production. Also starring Noah Wyle, Queen of the Lot picks up Margie’s relentless journey upwards three years down the road, when she has become a bonafide star. God help Hollywood.

Hollywood Dreams was quite a debut for Frederick, and while the mentoring of Henry Jaglom has certainly been a boon to the career of the young actress, the creative partnership seems to have gifted Jaglom with a new, muse-like energy that has generated three films in just about as many years - Hollywood Dreams, last year’s Irene in Time, and the upcoming Queen of the Lot, along with a new play. “Just 45 Minutes From Broadway,” has been running for a few months now at the Edgemar Center for the Arts in Santa Monica, and has just been extended through April due to its popularity. Written by Jaglom and directed by Gary Imhoff, the show centers around a theater family who are somewhat down on their luck, and was compared favorably by The Hollywood Reporter to the classic “You Can’t Take It With You.” In addition to Frederick, the cast features many faces familiar to Jaglom fans, including Jack Heller and David Proval.

Irene In Time, which opened back in September, is Frederick's cinematic excursion away from the conniving persona of Margie Chizek, into a much nicer, although almost as neurotic, character. Irene’s father died when she was relatively young, and she has had a unending string of bad relationships with men as an adult, none of whom can measure up to what she envisions a great man to be. The cast includes Proval, Karen Black, Victoria Tennant, and Andrea Marcovicci. Scenes of Irene during a recording session are used effectively as a framing device throughout, as Frederick sings the music of Harriet Schock.

Jaglom himself has had the career that most independent filmmakers can only dream of, for a few decades now. His Rainbow Films distributes his projects, along with those of others, including a few of the Monty Python film catalog. He writes, casts, and produces according to his own schedule, with no one looking over his shoulder. Able to pick the talent he wants to work with regardless of whether they are considered bankable at first, the manner in which he has developed the career of Frederick, who is under contract to Rainbow, has been similar to that of the old studio star system. He also has an unofficial company of actors who appear regularly in his films, so that watching a Jaglom film has the feel of visiting old friends. He's been dubbed the "West Coast Woody Allen," and most recently Scott Foundas of the LA Weekly referred to him as the “Mumblecore Father.” While that comparison has merit in terms of the amount of improvisation and loose feel found in the so-called Mumblecore projects (I am not a fan for the most part), the Mumblecore kids have had the advantages of shooting and cutting on relatively cheap digital video, whereas Jaglom was creating his independent features on the far more difficult and costly medium of film long before the Sundance Film Festival ever existed. To this day, Jaglom still shoots on film and has only recently begun to edit his films digitally.

I’m not sure that Frederick sleeps, because when I meet her for breakfast, she has just come from training for the Los Angeles Marathon, where she is running for two Iowa-based charities, The North Iowa Alliance on Mental Illness and the North Iowa Transition Center (more information on those organizations and donating to Frederick's marathon run this weekend can be found here.) She has also given back to her home state by founding the Iowa Independent Film Festival, which takes place in July in Frederick’s hometown of Mason City, Iowa, famous as the setting for “The Music Man.” (more information on the Film Festival can be found here). Frederick's passion for surfing led her to co-found, with surfer Shaun Tomson, Project Save Our Surf, which organizes an annual fundraiser on the beach with profits going towards the non-profit foundation Oceana. On April 11th of this year, she'll be putting together a 24-Hour Surfing Marathon as the fundraiser. (More info on Project Save Our Surf can be found here.)

(Frederick the Waverider, above.)

Did Henry write Irene in Time for you specifically, or was this a project he had initially started some time ago?
Tanna Frederick: He did write it for me. He wanted to do something along the lines of his women-themed films, and he decided to make this about women and their relationships with their fathers. Then, he and I watched Oh Lucky Man!, with Malcolm McDowell, which has this very random band playing throughout it, and Henry loves that structure. He likes Harriet Schock’s music, also. And, while Irene in Time was brewing in his mind, I had wanted to go and sing on stage. I had done choir as a kid, but my fear [as an adult] was singing in front of an audience. So, bucket list - let me check it off [laughs]. And I sang with Harriet’s band, and Henry came to watch me sing. I was so nervous. It’s just so not my thing. But Henry said, “Well, let’s use that in the film. It’s perfect!” And I was thinking, “This is my worst nightmare.” [laughs] I managed to get through it, but it was very painful.

I assume your fears of singing in public have been helped, somewhat at least, by the film?

No! [laughs] I have never been so self-conscious in my life [laughs]. I felt so sorry for the crew who had to sit there and listen to me sing.

But it is your voice in the film.

Yeah…

And you sound great.

I actually have gotten some compliments…and I never want to do it again [laughs]. God Bless Scarlett Johansson, I don’t know how she does it. So, anyway, Henry saw me sing and then wanted to incorporate that whole Oh Lucky Man! thing, and also do a Deja Vu-type feel to the magical realism. And, without giving away the ending, he had the ending of the movie in his head from the very start. Once Henry gets an image or that section down [for the ending], the rest of the movie can be whatever it’s going to be.

He always knows where it’s going to end up, so there is some freedom to go off in different directions on the journey there.
Right, if he has that last three minutes. The part was great. It was so different for me because it’s so restrained. I also don’t have any father issues, like she does.

Although your real father did make it into the film in that home movie footage.

We found that right before we released the film.

How did you find it?
My dad found it! I said, “Hey dad, we don’t have anything of us in the water, do we? Because that would be awesome!” And then he found that film of me when I was, 3, and we were able to slow [the footage] down. I was hoping we were going to be able to find something like this. It’s like at the end of Philadelphia, where they show his home movies. It breaks my heart every time.

There’s something about 8mm footage that’s otherworldly, and also immediately evokes nostalgia.
Yeah, there is. Tony Franciosa (Editor’s Note: Franciosa was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in 1957 for A Hatful of Rain) was slated to do the film with us, and we had written the script with him. He was going to play my father. Tony was an amazing man. He was my idol. I loved Tony. But then he died. Three weeks before filming. So, we had to do a lot of restructuring. There was a big emotional hole there. Everybody had known about Tony being in it and were prepared to work for him, so I think that really resonated with everybody…the loss of him.

Story-wise, were there going to be flashbacks with him, playing your father?
No, actually, he was going to still be alive [in the story]. So, we really had to change the script fast. But, of course, that’s Henry’s cup of tea.

In terms of Henry’s working style, do you have a regular shooting period, of say three weeks straight?

It’s three weeks solid. There’s never more than three takes.

You do the first take, with the dialogue in the script and get all the points out. Then you do the second take, you do the dialogue in the script but you kind of add on what you want to. Then, if you get a third take, you just go balls-out. He’s such a brilliant editor that he can take all the pieces and put together the different variations.

Does Henry use one camera, or have a few going at once?
[groans, laughs] This is my eternal argument with Henry - “Please get a second camera, because I can’t take it anymore!” Because every single time we go into editing, he says, “I should have had a second camera!”

It does seems like with his style of working with actors that a second camera would be very useful.

It’s like Groundhog Day. Before every single film, I say, “We have to have a second camera on all the takes, or you’re going to be pissed, and I’m going to have to listen to you whine about it!” [laughs]

Once editing gets underway, do you typically then go back and pick-up shots that you find that you need? I ask because Henry seems to work fairly loose, and with some comparable filmmakers there is a significant pick-up and re-shoot period as they start to hone the story in the editing.

Henry always says, “We’ll pick that up later.” It never happens [laughs].

So, once you’re done with the main block of shooting, you’re basically done with creating new footage on that film.

Yeah, even though he thinks, in his mind, we’re going to [pick up shots], I know it’s not true. He always finds some way to solve the problem. Once we’re done, we’re done.

He then usually does a fairly lengthy post-production.
Yeah, I hear about these films where they’re doing post-production, where they’re assembling the scenes right after they film them, and that idea is so futuristic to me [laughs].

Are his rough cuts of the film typically very different from each other?

Oh yeah, huge differences. It’s crazy.

Does he then usually gather you and friends to watch the various cuts and offer feedback?

Not so much anymore, not since he brought Ron [Vignone, a writer-director who has been working as a editor with Jaglom, as well] on. He and Ron have been working like crazy. They pretty much have a rough-cut assembly of Queen of the Lot right now, after six months, which for him, is the third of the time he usually gets it done in. Those two work really well together. Queen of the Lot, I love this movie. I think it’s Henry’s best movie.

So, we’re picking up her Hollywood story a few years down the road then?

I’ve become an action hero [laughs]. It starts out with me wearing an ankle bracelet, because she’s had a DUI.

She’s living the whole Hollywood lifestyle now.
Yeah, and the story is also really interesting because Henry has always loved these theater families, which is what "Just 45 Minutes From Broadway" revolves around, also. In Queen of the Lot, I’m engaged to the brother of Noah Wyle’s character, played by Chris Rydell. And we go back to their house, which is lived in by this famous film family. Jack Keller plays the patriarch, and Mary Crosby is in the family, and Peter Bogdanovich, and Dennis Christopher, from Breaking Away. I go up to visit this family, which is what my character has always wanted, and spend the weekend there, and all this stuff goes down. I fall in love with Noah, and he falls in love with me. And the family is faced with all the economical problems that are part of the studio system being run down.

The family is sort of an Old World mechanism functioning in a New World context, and we see how the changes to the studios affect them.

(Frederick and Justin Kirk in Hollywood Dreams, above.)

She’s an action hero now. Do you do any actual action scenes in the film?
[laughs] Oh, my god. I’ve become “the Red Wrecker.” Remember that Zach [Norman] actually said that in Hollywood Dreams, “I see it. A TV show. The Red Wrecker. Secretary by day, avenger by night.” So, that’s what I’ve become, but, of course, I seek “real” films. In it, Jack is trying to convince Peter Bogdanovich’s character to direct a remake of Trouble in Paradise, by Lubitsch, and I, of course, want the lead role.

I love that character. I love playing her. She’s even more conniving than before.

I’m glad she succeeded, at least, rather than ending up dead in a Hollywood hotel room somewhere.

Margie will never die. She’s like a cockroach [laughs].
Is David Proval back?

David’s in it. But now, I come in and take over their house, because they’re in trouble.

Margie was homeless in the first one when she moved in, and now she owns the house. This is Hollywood.

[laughs] Now I’m buying everyone out.

Is there an ETA for the release?

August-September. No later than September. And then we’re getting to film "Just 45 Minutes From Broadway," based on the play. We figured out that we did our 83rd show the other day, which is really cool for me, being in Los Angeles.

It’s a long run.

A really long run. Unless you’re in a huge theater with a lot of money, you usually don’t get a long run like that. We’ve extended it until April, and we had started previews back in September.

Was "Just 45 Minutes From Broadway" a new work of Henry’s?

It was. I’ve been able to do theater-film-theater-film-theater-film. Since we had shot Queen of the Lot, I wanted to do a play. I was looking at Tennessee Williams’ "The Eccentricities of a Nightingale," which is hugely entertaining, and I was looking at "A Couple of White Chicks Sitting Around Talking," which Mark Rydell was going to direct. But none of the pieces were really hitting home for me, and Henry was like, “You know what? I’m just going to write a piece.” [laughs]
So, I left for the Film Festival on Thursday night, and on Saturday I get a call from Henry saying, “I’ve written the first act.” [laughs] “What?!” So, I come home expecting some sort of ramshackle weird…and he reads me the first act and it’s the most brilliant first act I’ve ever heard. Of course, I’m biased, but it’s this combination of Chekhov and Tennessee Williams and Capra, somehow. It’s in this beautiful, weird voice. I think he can discipline himself to write amazing works that are structurally perfect, and this is. And people have just been going crazy for it. Some people are pissed about it because they’ve been like, “How come you’ve never written like this before? How come you didn’t write your movies like this?” So, everyone’s saying this has to be his next film.

The family in the play is this Yiddish theater family, who go back generation after generation in the theater. I think it’s really timely right now because it addresses the current economic climate, and [how that relates to] the arts. It gives the audience permission to keep creating, sort of. Because this family doesn’t apologize for what they do. They don’t apologize for their failures, or lack of successes. They wear it on their shirt sleeves.

Professionally, Henry has almost a theater company of his own in that many of the same actors appear in his films over the years, and he sometimes shoots in his own house. From the outside, I sort of have this fantasy image of the regular life of Henry Jaglom being like his films, with various artists of an extended family always coming and going. True or not?

[laughs] He’s a very private person actually. His family is nothing like this.

Let’s talk about the staging of the play and the overall atmosphere that you wish to convey in the theater.

The set is absolutely gorgeous, and it’s also such an intimate night of theater. Some of the reviews have said that you feel like you could just walk on stage and take the paper and go back into your seat and read it. Because that’s what it feels like. It feels like you are part of the family, and for us, it feels like the audience is part of the family. It’s also very interactive. You get almost 1940s responses…you get gasps of “Oh No!” and I love that.

Once the play was written, did you sort of push the producing side of it forward? I ask, because since you’ve started working with Henry, he seems to have become much more productive with a bunch of films and plays happening at once.

[laughs] Yeah, I’m a bit of a workaholic. It is a lot of stuff. And I did a film called Katie Q that Ron shot, while Henry was in Venice for three weeks, and that was with Zach, Karen, Proval, and Jill Gatsby. It’s a very funny "family sexual comedy” [laughs]. So, we have, like, three projects and we’re hiring on other editors to finish them all. I think it’s very healthy for Henry because he‘s such a control freak, and I demand productivity [laughs], so he’s forced to go outside his comfort zone.

(Frederick and Jack Maxwell , in Irene in Time, above.)

I recognized the inside of your house in Irene in Time. Did you live in the house while you were shooting?

No, we had bought the house, but we were living in a town house. So, we just used the house. We had bought the house before that knowing we were going to film there, so we didn’t move into the house for a year.

Having shot films at various houses I’ve lived in over the years, it is always kind of a nightmare.
Well, we filmed Katie Q (another feature starring Frederick, directed by Ron Vignone) in the house too and it was a nightmare. It was disgusting. It was like a frat party. A college kegger [laughs].

Gary Imhoff has been the director on the plays of Henry’s that you’ve done. Let’s talk about the process of working with a director interpreting Henry's work.

Gary is just brilliant. God bless anyone who can work alongside Henry, because Henry knows what he wants. To have the patience, and the audacity - to steal Obama’s word - to work alongside Henry, to try to get his vision but to also try to get their own vision out. And to deal with the idea of not compromising their vision, even though Henry’s writing is right there screaming at them. But Gary is great. Gary Imhoff is like the Terminator. He’s a brilliant stager, a brilliant director. He’s one of those facilitators who also knows how to stay out of your way. He knows just how to handle each chapter and who to give more to. He’s brilliant.

For further information and tickets to “Just 45 Minutes From Broadway."

Tanna Frederick has her own website at www.TannaFrederick.com

Rainbow Films has their website at http://www.rainbowfilms.com/