Financing Jaglom style versus The Canadian/Hollywood way

Thursday, September 29, 2005. Just making the cut: Canadian film enjoys a prolific year. Too bad most of the work is mediocre.
Vancouver Sun,Katherine Monk on the kick-off of the Vancouver Film Festival.
http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=3b237df5-2549-4f70-9272-3414ca211fe2

This is a comprehensive piece about Canadian Film that supports and undermines: On the one hand she gives us that Canadian film is having a record year with over 700 submissions to the Festival and that Atom Egoyan (Where the Truth Lies) and David Cronenberg (A History of Violence) will get U.S. distribution and that smaller, lesser-known film also had sales at festivals this year.

Then she laments the lack of Canadian actors on the red carpet as how can we compete with the American stars and that most of the films were average “though by no means worse, or more mediocre, than films from anywhere else with similar budgets and production restraints”.

She tells us both the Aussie and New Zealand industries are suffering with their success and the small-town mentality that prevails in the industry: "In New Zealand, no one ever tells you if you're good ... There's a [colonial] mentality that says if I support you, I won't get my own” –

Now doesn’t that sound too familiar.

She concludes that: “We're supporting too much mediocrity in the name of the national interest, and as prolific as we've been -- as outgoing and brave as we have been -- this year's bumper crop of mediocre reels proves we've got to do better”.

It’s an extra ordinary thing for a movie to even get made. Bumper crops? Okay, if we're farming films, the amount of indigenous activity in Canada is growing by leaps and bounds, and not imitating Hollywood and finding our own voice is all moving forward.

To make a really fine film is not easy, if we looked at any countries output and measured the stats, the odds are that you have to make so many to get one good one. The rest are canon fooder for the voracious airwaves and video store consumption.

There is something to learn from The Independent U.S. scene of the seventies, when BBS productions took the earnings from Easy Rider and funded 10 movies, that included Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie, Jack Nicolson’s Drive He said etc, only one made it at the box office: The Last Picture Show, and that one paid for all the others.

Most movies are mediocre, only the great ones rise to the top and they are few and far – and sometimes they don't make it on their release but survive to be revived. Making the movies and doing the work is what ensures that great ones will get made..lets stop this colonialism and celebrate our successes.

The Americans would know how to spin this - record production in Canada, indiginous, unapologetically Canadian - a country of film makers...blady.. bla

Exerpted from a piece on Henry Jaglom's new movie, an inventive way of financing by an American Director, who lives in Hollywood, making Movies and defying the System.

Sep. 21, 2005
Hollywood Reporter
Jaglom's 'Shopping' feels women's pleasure, pain
Filmmaker's latest is terrific exception to Hollywood embrace of teenage boy audiences….

Financing independent films is never easy, but Jaglom pointed out, "I'm lucky about that because of Europe. I learned from Orson Welles very early a wonderful positive lesson which he told me, which was make movies for yourself. Ultimately, you don't know what's going to work anyway so you want to live with them for the rest of your life and not be embarrassed. So make them as good as you can for your own taste. But the negative example (Welles gave) was don't ever depend on Hollywood for your source of financing. Of course, as you know, they took away his financing (and) for the last 20 years (of his life) he couldn't get financing.

"What happened was my first two films, which were financial failures in America -- 'A Safe Place' (1971, with Welles, Jack Nicholson and Tuesday Weld) and 'Tracks' (1976, with Dennis Hopper) -- did very well in Europe and got me a kind of audience there (that was) very different from the audience here and got me the distributors in Europe, who wanted my next films. With 'Sitting Ducks' (1980, with Jaglom, Michael Emil and Zack Norman) and 'Can She Bake A Cherry Pie?' (1985, with Jaglom, Karen Black and Michael Emil) and 'Always' (1985, with Jaglom and Patricia Townsend) and so on I started finding was all I had to was go over to the Cannes Film Festival or go up to Toronto and I could get for a film so and so much money from Germany and so and so much from France and Italy and Scandinavia and England and I could put together the small budgets that I need for the films.

"By keeping the budget under control I could stay in creative control. And now I've got contracts which read, 'Jaglom Number 15, 16 and 17.' They're paying me in advance because they know that in their territory -- and the territories are increasing all the time, which is wonderful -- they're going to at least break even or they'll make a profit. The films do nicely. They don't do 'great' business, but they certainly are profitable. And that gives me the freedom to creatively not have anybody looking over my shoulder and tell me what all my friends in this business have always had to deal with. Even my most successful Hollywood friends have always had to deal with (studio directives like) 'don't use that actor' and 'change that ending.' I don't have to do any of that."

As a result, Jaglom's movies are definitely what he wants them to be: "You love my movies or hate them, (but) they're my movies frame for frame. And it's because of the freedom (through financing them in Europe) because Orson really cautioned me when I started out. There were times when I was offered quite a bit of attractive lure here and he really was cautioning me. After I made my third film 'Sitting Ducks' they started really trying to be very seductive. He said, if you get into that there's going to be a time very soon when they'll pull it away and then you're dependent on that for the rest of your life. So I heeded that advice and that's been probably the most important thing anybody's ever told me."