Henry Jaglom is an observer.
An independent filmmaker in the truest sense of the word, famed independent auteur Henry Jaglom has never bothered himself nor his cast with catering to the Hollywood machinery. Rather than creating pretty little pictures wrapped with pretty little cinematic ribbons, Jaglom creates intelligent, deeply felt and richly authentic films where characters are allowed to exist “as is” in a world that doesn’t always know what to do with them.
The follow-up to his 2006 film Hollywood Dreams, Queen of the Lot picks up three years later with central character Maggie Chizek (Tanna Frederick), now calling herself Maggie Chase, having achieved a modest degree of success in B-movies as a kick ass martial arts heroine making action/adventure flicks of a rather cheesy nature. Maggie finds herself on house arrest, courtesy of two recent DUI arrests, but is determined to not let her clunky ankle bracelet keep her from climbing out of B-movies and into the upper echelon of Hollywood actresses. With her team of handlers (Ron Vignone, Diane Salinger, David Proval and Zack Norman) spinning her DUI’s into tabloid gold and a bad boy movie star boyfriend (Christopher Rydell) by her side, Maggie is on her way up the Hollywood ladder. Life gets complicated for Maggie, however, when a trip back to her boyfriend’s home to meet his legendary family introduces her to an extraordinary world of Hollywood royalty (Peter Bogdanovich, Dennis Christopher, Mary Crosby, Kathryn Crosby and Jack Heller.
Reality and entertainment have always been inexorably entwined but in recent years the line that separates the two have blurred beyond recognition. The public’s intense infatuation with the personal lives of the rich and famous, the later term currently used in the broadest possible way, has become a billion dollar industry. There has always been a certain fascination held by the common throng to see the upper crust fall from their lofty perch. What once was propagated by means of gossip is now distributed through glossy magazines, television ‘entertainment news’ shows’ and more web sites that it’s possible to count. Henry Jaglom is a far from a relatively new auteur who is rapidly becoming one of the independent film community’s brightest filmmakers. He is building his well deserved reputation biting the hand that feeds his craft with frequently darkly hysterical results. I have to state that I greatly admire a filmmaker who decides to bypass the easy road to creating a film and selects a difficult genre as the canvas to express his artistic vision. In this case Me. Jaglom chose to try his hand at satire and after watching his first two works it is obvious that he found a niche where his talent can flourish.
Get your copy of
QUEEN OF THE LOT at these locations:
Netflix.com (put it in your queue)
Frys Electronics
Barnes and Noble stores
Available in Canada in July
more to come…
As a sequel to the 2006 Hollywood Dreams, writer-director Henry Jaglom‘s seriocomedy Queen of the Lot resumes the chronicle of Maggie Chase, née Margie Chizek (Tanna Frederick). At the outset, aspiring actress Maggie lies in bed with her aunt Bee (Melissa Leo) and watches George Cukor‘s The Women on television, reflecting candidly that she longs to attain the status once held by Norma Shearer — “Queen of the Lot.” The narrative then leaps forward in time three years, to a point when Maggie has fulfilled her dreams of A-list stature, with lead roles in glossy action pictures. But accompanying the fame are salacious developments ripe for tabloid fodder: a DUI charge, a court-ordered ankle bracelet, and temporary house arrest for Maggie. Over the trajectory of the story, Maggie obtains permission from the cops to relocate to the home of her agent and his partner (Zack Norman and David Proval), after which she follows actor boyfriend Dov Lambert (Christopher Rydell) to the estate owned by his legendary Hollywood parents (Jack Heller and Kathryn Grant). At that house, Maggie also crosses paths with Dov’s brother, novelist-turned-screenwriter Aaron Lambert (Noah Wyle of ER), little realizing that this stranger may soon change her life.
I recently saw Henry Jaglom’s A Safe Place for the first time and was completely floored by the experience, it’s one of those films that sticks with you and resonates long after you’ve seen it. A film that makes you realize just how much the medium can achieve when in the right hands. A Safe Place had been largely unavailable, having only a brief theatrical run and never being released on VHS or DVD, until Criterion’s recent dvd box set America Lost and Found: The BBS Story.
Henry Jaglom is an original and to me that is high praise. Because in the business known as The Hollywood Film Industry originality of any kind is hard to come by. Excellence yes, there have been many wonderful works that have been products of that much maligned factory of commercial cinema. But in general originality is not something that has been aspired to or encouraged. A repetition or variation on last season’s biggest hits seems to be the order of the day more often than not. Thus the large number of sequels and remakes. And even the description of a work by the filmmakers themselves and their publicists attest to this when they refer to an upcoming film as “A cross between Casablanca and The Guns of Navarone” or some such thing.
Henry Jaglom, Patrice Townsend, Joanna Frank, Jonathan Kaufer, André Gregory and Bob Rafelson. Introducing Alan Rachins and Melissa Leo.
1985 105 min. Color R
Victoria Foyt, Stephen Dillane, Vanessa Redgrave, Aviva Marks, Michael Brandon, Glynis Barber,
Vernon Dobtcheff, Graydon Gould, Noel Harrison, Rachel Kempson and Anna Massey.
1998 117 min. Color PG-13
Nelly Alard, Henry Jaglom, Suzanne Bertish, Melissa Leo, Daphna Kastner, David Duchovny,
Diane Salinger and John Landis.
1992 108 min. Color R
