Our conversation with filmmaker Cindy Kleine on her new documentary about the life and marriage of her parents.
By Terry Keefe
In all honesty, Phyllis and Harold is one of the best examinations, fiction or non, of the subject of marriage that I have ever seen. Filmmaker Cindy Kleine started interviewing her elderly parents, Phyllis and Harold Kleine, about their marriage and lives for a project that became first a short film entitled ‘Til Death Do Us Part, which was structured as a series of talking head spots with both parents, and then broadened that project into this larger, more visually expansive feature over a 12-year period. Driving the film is a question Cindy Kleine poses at the beginning about her parents: “Who are these people?”
For starters, Phyllis and Harold are an upper middle class Jewish couple, living in suburban Long Island. They came of age during World War II and they married young, perhaps too young, because it was what everyone else around them did. Then, they stayed together, which may have been the real problem.
If you’ve lived long enough, regardless of where you are from, Phyllis and Harold are a couple that you will know and recognize. Their marriage has remained stable, for 59 years, but it feels lifeless. They don’t appear really unhappy together, but they certainly don’t appear particularly happy either. Resigned might be the best word, although Harold certainly seems more at peace and pragmatic about what life gave him than Phyllis, not that she doesn’t have her reasons for being unsatisfied. She did do something about it, however. In the biggest revelation of the film, Phyllis recounts a lengthy love affair with someone who was once a co-worker, and with whom the relationship continued in one form or another over many years. Kleine’s younger sister had a facilitating role in the affair by allowing her mother and her lover to meet in her apartment sometimes. Phyllis and Harold was not shown publicly until after Harold passed away.
Relationships that are filled with fighting, violence, substance abuse, and other high drama make for easier storytelling than what Kleine manages to create here without such big plot twists. Using the materials of her own life and that of her family, she finds the deep passions, longings, loneliness, and struggles within what on the surface appears to be a fairly average existence. For better or worse, you will recognize yourself in their story, and all the right and wrong decisions they have made along their life journey.
The story of Phyllis and Harold is brought to life by not just their interviews, but also a dense series of photos which Harold seemed to always be taking, showing the couple both at home and on vacations to some of the most exotic parts of the world. Also included is home movie footage taken, in part, by Kleine’s grandfather. The home movies and photos add great depth and intimacy, and make the film a true journey with this couple from youth to old age.
Phyllis and Harold is being released by Henry Jaglom and his Rainbow Releasing. The film was executive produced by Kleine’s husband Andre Gregory, the famed theatre director, playwright, and actor.
We spoke to Cindy Kleine by phone as she was on her way to a screening of the film at the American Cinematheque’s Aero Theater in Santa Monica.
How much agonizing did you have to go through when you made the decision to actually cut all of this footage of your parents together and make the feature film of Phyllis and Harold?
Cindy Kleine: A lot [laughs].
I ask, because you seem like a very thoughtful person from the film, and I can’t imagine it was an easy decision to put some of this information about your family out there.
It was agonizing, sort of, every step of the way. I knew I was making the film, it was done over 12 years, but I was constantly agonizing. Why I was doing it, and how I was doing it.
(Filmmaker Cindy Kleine, above.)
Did you show your mom any of the footage cut together at any point along the way?
No, but the film was first a short film called 'Til Death Do Us Part, which was a series of interviews [with Phyllis and Harold], of talking heads. She saw that whole film, that was very early on, and she loved it. She loved being a movie star [laughs]. From then, I kept wanting her to see it, but I didn’t want to show her a rough cut, because it’s sometimes hard to explain a rough cut, and she died before it was finished.
Did you show your dad any of the film?
He saw what she [my mother] did, early on. My dad saw the early short film, but not when it was completed, before I put in her really kind of blatantly talking about the lover. She was saying the things like “I didn’t want to marry him,” and I was nervous about his even [ seeing] that, but he thought it was hysterically funny.
(Phyllis and Harold, above.)
How typical do you think your parents were of their generation, in terms of their relationship? I’m from Long Island myself and elements of their story remind me very much of the stories of other older couples that I’ve known from that generation, particularly in regards to certain people eventually reuniting with the old loves that they didn’t marry.
I think their story is very typical of that generation. I always thought that, but even more so when I started talking to my mother’s friends, while I was making the film and showing them the short film, at least. Much to my surprise, many of the women, for example, who were my mother‘s friends, said, “Oh yeah, I also had a lover. I had a terrible marriage too.” A lot of them had the same situation. It was very wide-spread in that generation, because they got married very young. They didn’t know why they were getting married always. So, yeah, I think it was very, very common, and a lot of them, especially in my mother and father’s milieu, who were Jewish and of that generation…divorce was very, very uncommon to begin with, but especially in their set. It was sort of non-existent, and looked down upon, and not seen as an option.
You got married and you stayed with it.
And now the statistic is that 54 percent of marriages end in divorce. That’s certainly a big difference from those days.
How did your other family members react to the film?
I don’t have that many family members; we’re a small family. My sister loves the film, but she gets self-conscious because she still feels guilty about her complicity in [letting their mother and her lover] use her apartment and everything. But she really loves it and she loves being a movie star and everything, and she’s just mad at me for not making the whole film about her [laughs]. The only other surviving family members that have seen it are my dad’s brother and his wife. I was terrified to show them. I kind of coached them first, and told them a little bit of the story? But, they loved it too.
The film doesn’t feel manipulative, and it also feels very true. I’m going to guess that was a real challenge. You make it look effortless but -
No, it was very difficult. I had to really work on that. It was very important to me to really strike a balance, and not weigh it towards one side or the other. What’s interesting to me about the film is that a lot of audience members project their own feelings onto it. People say to me, “Oh, I loved your mother and I hated your father,” or “Your father was so great. He seemed like such a nice man. Your mother was so horrible.” People see their own thing in it, but it was definitely not something I did. I found that quite interesting, but it was a lot of work to make it very balanced. Especially, as you see, because she’s much more forthcoming and she talked a lot more. He doesn’t get lost in it, but he’s not, like, the star of it, as she is. That bothered me, so I worked really hard to make sure I kept putting more parts of his story in, to strike a balance. He just didn’t talk as much.
All of the home movie footage, and the extensive photos that your dad took…what an incredible resource for this film.
Those were invaluable. I absolutely say that I couldn’t have made the film without those as a resource, because, visually, there wouldn’t be enough material. The whole sense of time passing…of them just beginning their lives, to middle-age, to their wrinkled old faces. That to me, was the whole idea of the film.
(Phyllis in a sand dune, sometime mid-century, above.)
The last lines of the film, which I won’t reveal here, which speak about the dream you have about your parents and the metaphor about “luggage”…are very striking and sum up the entire story extremely well. As a writer, I wanted to ask how long did it take you to come up with them?
Actually, it came pretty quickly. Once I cut the dream in, I don’t remember really struggling with those lines very long. They just came out. It’s what happens occasionally, not very often [laughs].
You want it to happen all the time, but it doesn’t.
Right [laughs]. There were other lines that I really struggled with, but not those.
How did you become involved with Henry Jaglom and Rainbow Films, who are distributing Phyllis and Harold?
I’ve been an admirer of Henry’s films for years and years, and very early on, like 25 years ago, I sent him a very early cut of a film I was working on, because I knew he had this film company and he sometimes funded, or helped, young filmmakers. So, I sent him a rough cut of this [previous] thing, and then I never heard from him.
And when I finished this film…it was actually [my husband] Andre Gregory…the reason he’s credited as Executive Producer on the film because when I finished, he really gave me ideas and pushed me, and he actually said, “You really should send this to Henry Jaglom.” He actually grew up with Henry. They were children together.
I said, “Well, I once sent him something and didn’t hear from him.” Andre said, “When was that?” I said, “Oh, you know, 25 years ago.” He said, “That’s ridiculous. This is a great film. Just send it.” I did, and Henry called me flipping out over it. He really loved, loved the film, and he offered to distribute it, before anyone else had even seen it. He was an early champion of the film.
Do you know what you’re working on next?
Yes, I’m already working on it, in fact. It’s a memoir film about my husband, Andre, about his life and work, and also about our life together. It’s about a good marriage.
Phyllis and Harold opens today, April 9th, in Los Angeles, and is currently playing at the Laemmle Theatres in the Music Hall 3 and the Fallbrook in West Hills.
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