The_Film_That_Changed_My_Life

80 Henry Jaglom
Over the years, I’m guessing you’ve showed it to other friends and directors.
Jaglom: It’s blown people away. I just showed it to this young girl, Tanna
Frederick, who is starring in a play I had written. She’s going to be a huge
star. She said looking at the film was like entering another kind of universe.
It wasn’t like any other film she’s ever seen. And I realized that’s what happened
to me when I saw it; I stepped into another universe. It was the universe
I wanted to live in, to inhabit somehow.
Its original title was The Beautiful Confusion.
But did you know that 8½ was a reference to Fellini’s previously completed
eight and a half films?
Jaglom: Yeah, it was sort of publicized. It didn’t mean much to me then.
I thought of calling Venice/Venice “11.” That would have been the ultimate
homage in filmmaking. I was just going to give it a number. Actually, it
would have been called 11½, because I did a half a movie I never talk about
because I was so embarrassed by the results.
Which one was that, out of curiosity?
Jaglom: National Lampoon Goes to the Movies. I did half of it; then somebody
took it and recut it. It’s the one thing I never talk about.
But that’s right, I was going to call it 11½. On the set, thank God somebody
prevailed, I think it was my producer, convinced me that calling it 11½
wasn’t a very good idea, because then people would say, “Well, it’s no 8½.”
What I’ve been amazed by is the number of things influenced by it—
there’s the Broadway production and movie adaptation of that production
called Nine, Peter Greenaway directed 8½ Women, and then there’s 8
Femmes. There’s not a filmmaker alive who wasn’t influenced by that film. I
used to argue with Orson about it a lot. He had a different idea about filmmaking.
He recognized Fellini’s great genius, he said, but he didn’t like the
films. He just didn’t like them.
He told Peter Bogdanovich in This is Orson Welles that Fellini was just
a boy who had not come to Rome yet—
Jaglom: —which Fellini would be the first person to say. It’s how he shows
himself. Of course Orson gave a good answer to that.