Henry Jaglom, an idiosyncratic independent filmmaker who happily flouted box-office expectations to make offbeat, intimate films about relationships, often mapping the interior lives of women and their struggles, died on Monday at his home in Santa Monica, Calif. He was 87.
His death was confirmed by his daughter, Sabrina Jaglom.
Mr. Jaglom directed more than 20 films without the backing of major studios and defied studio conventions in his approach. While he wrote or co-wrote all his films, he also employed an improvisational style that allowed his actors to continue to develop their characters and contribute dialogue as the cameras rolled.
The approach resulted in talky, freewheeling films like his 1983 romantic comedy, “Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?,” starring Karen Black. That film “sometimes seems in danger of chattering away its welcome,” Janet Maslin noted in her review in The New York Times, but added that “there is a loose, funny abandon to much of the conversation here, and certainly plenty of spontaneity.”
Mr. Jaglom made his films on a shoestring budget, often using locations that cost nothing; he shot his 1995 family drama, “Last Summer in the Hamptons,” at his parents’ gray-shingled house in East Hampton, N.Y. He also saved his pennies by using actors from his circle of friends as well as casting himself, his wife and his ex-wife.
The post Henry Jaglom, Indie Director Who Mined the Personal, Dies at 87 appeared first on New York Times.
