It’s Henry being Henry

Henry Jaglom makes semi-improvised films with a casual visual style that serve as a dramatic mirror to the foibles of his particular social milieu. While this may make him sound like one of the young festival darlings recently grouped under the loose rubric “Mumblecore,” Jaglom is 68 years old and has been making films like these for nearly four decades.

His latest effort, which opened Friday in Southern California, is “Irene in Time,” a tale of a father and a daughter and released to coincide with Father’s Day. The title character (played by Tanna Frederick, the latest of Jaglom’s leading-lady discoveries) is still struggling with the loss of her father many years after his death. When she discovers a series of notes seemingly left by him, it sends her on a disastrous downward spiral.

“My movies talk about the emotional side of life,” Jaglom said during a recent interview at his longtime offices on the Sunset Strip, littered with posters, DVDs and memorabilia from past films, including “Always” (1985), “Eating” (1990), “Deja Vu” (1998) and “Hollywood Dreams” (2007).

“I just try to have people do what we do, which is sit around, talk, deal with the emotions of life. It can be touching, sad, happy, but it allows people to go through some of what they go through in life and not feel isolated and lonely.”

The business of being Henry Jaglom has long been as curiously idiosyncratic as his films. Jaglom has for some time been self-distributing films through his Rainbow Releasing banner, making enough money to keep going. He raises production funds from a variety of sources -- “It’s not hard,” he said dryly -- adding that he has never made a film for more than $3 million.

The trick, perhaps, is that Jaglom doesn’t actually need to support himself off his films. “I am a person of independent means,” he said, explaining that he has family money (Jaglom, originally from New York, comes from a line of prominent businessmen).

“What that means is not the means to make the movies but the means to not depend on other people,” he said. “Louis Malle had the same kind of background, and he always said he was afraid people would call him a dilettante, and I think I have the same problem. I think the way you compensate is, look at the way I’m making movies -- obviously money has nothing to do with it.”

The films lumped together as “Mumblecore” capture the emotional ups-and-downs and comings-and-goings of twentysomethings in low-paying jobs and living in cramped apartments, and Jaglom’s recent films explore his own world with the same poignant inquisitiveness. It just so happens that his friends live in sprawling Westside mansions with tasteful art collections, pools and manicured lawns.

Love his work or hate it -- and Jaglom understands completely if you don’t like his films -- Jaglom’s career certainly presents one kind of model for the sustainably self-sufficient independent filmmaker.

“I enjoy, even if I’m being attacked, knowing I’ve had an impact,” Jaglom said. “People are looking at it, talking about it, thinking about it. And that some people are moved, feel better. It’s reaching out and trying to touch people. It’s what film can do. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

--

Her life gets ‘Hot’

A graduate of the upscale Spence School and George Washington University, a cosmetics spokesperson and frequently photographed at glamorous events around the globe, actress Kerry Washington exudes pure class. This makes it a little jarring to see her portraying a pre-operative male-to-female transsexual prostitute in the new film “Life Is Hot in Cracktown,” opening Friday in limited release.

Directed by Buddy Giovinazzo, adapting his own novel, “Cracktown” tells a set of intersecting stories of urban struggle. The film’s relentlessly overripe style makes it slightly over the top, like “Crank: High Voltage” played as a straight-faced social problem film. Amid the film’s frenzied atmosphere, Washington brings a calm sense of dignity and emotional nuance to her role, striking a naturalistic note even as she performs an offhandedly discrete tuck.

“When I’m starting to portray a character, I always start with ‘What do I know about this?’ ” Washington, 32, said recently by phone. “Building characters is always about how they walk and how they talk and how they sit, but the emotional truth of the character often comes from where I connect to this experience and how do I extract that and build more from there. Because there has to be this really organic connection.”

Describing herself as a “research junkie,” Washington is no stranger to roles outside her own experience, from a 1950s Southern lady in “Ray” to a 1970s African tribal woman in “The Last King of Scotland.” Each time she works hard to be as real as possible, even going so far as to insist her consultant on “Last King” be on set during a torrid love scene to spot any cultural inaccuracies.

“I definitely understand the desire for authenticity,” Washington said. “I am trained to be other people. That’s my job. And so I just try to do it with as much respect and professionalism as I possibly can.”

--

calendar@latimes.com