JOHN CASSAVETES PERSONAL FILMAKER 1929-1989

article © by Ambrose Roche

I went to Columbia College in 1979 - 1980. At this time, John Cassavetes, a good friend of Columbia College's film chairman, Tony Loeb, had gave a seminar at the school. On the horizon, also hosted by Columbia, was a workshop with Werner Herzog. The calm, Bavarian intensity and madness of Herzog and the anxious American intensity and madness of Cassavetes had much in common. They both set their audiences of wide-eyed film students and enthusiasts on fire with their very similar philosophies. We all looked up to them to find the key to getting started in film. Both of them gave their simple advice and served it up with much humor. "The only thing a person needs to make a film is desire. Just that." Said Herzog. He sat back and thought for a second. "Of course you may have to expropriate a camera and a couple thousand feet of film..." We laughed at the twist in reasoning while still holding on to his original point. Cassavetes words were much sparer. "The easiest way to make a film, is to make a film." In a flash, he was talking about something else. Again we held onto this fragment of inspiration. Cassavetes, and to a lesser degree Herzog, seemed to accept the film industry, "the system", as it is. Equally, they gave the impression of being content with their place in, or outside of, it. All they want is their say, and they both have, or in the case of Cassavetes, had, the "desire" and means to do it. Despite his reputation, Cassavetes said very few harsh words about the mainstream. "I don't care whether you're a painter or an architect you can't fight the system. In my mind, if you want to fight the system it only means you want to join it." Cassavetes stayed comfortably outside of the system and consequently has had left a mark on film that the bulk of those inside of it only dream of. His main forays into commercial cinema were as an actor. (The Killers, The Dirty Dozen, Rosemary's Baby, The Fury, Whose Life is it Anyways? The Tempest) For the most part, the sole reason was to get the money to put into his own projects. This is not to denigrate his acting, he's always good, or at least worth watching. His death scene in Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky is one of the most mortal and heartfelt I've ever seen.

The Filmaker:

Shadows (1958-59). Equipment becomes more portable and economical, filmakers hit the streets. New Waves broke all over the world. France had filmakers Resnais, Truffaut and Godard, to name a few, making their first feature films. Japan sees the debut's of Nagisa Oshima (Cruel Story of Youth), Shohei Imamura (Stolen Desire) and Susumi Hani (Bad Boys). Italy's Pier Paolo Pasolini and Ermanno Olmi gain momentum outside of the mainstream. But, experimental filmakers aside, Cassavetes stands alone in the U. S. There was no major filmaking movement behind him.

The French New Wave was a very concrete group of individuals with Claude Chabrol acting as a kind of fairy Godfather aiding in the production and finance of a fair chunk of these early films. The Japanese New Wave were all apprentices to older directors who found a loophole in the Major Studios that enabled them to finance their films through the studios they were rebelling against. Olmi and Pasolini had fair reputations in the documentary field.

Cassavetes was a man, an actor by profession, who had a small acting class, mainly black, and an improvisation they were working on about a black woman, who could pass for white and her two brothers. The improv felt good to him. He wanted to put it on film. As far as pre-production went, He threw what he had into the pot, then got some help from Jazz D.J.(now popular writer) Jean Shepherd. Jean spent a good chunk of airtime talking about Cassavetes and his project, then asked the listeners to send in what they could. The money was raised. A group of technicians, low on professionalism and experience, high on desire, pitched in. Seymour Cassel, then a struggling actor, somehow became producer. The film was three years in the making. Charlie Mingus donted an improvised soundtrack, it won The Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival and became, on it's own terms, a success.

Cassevetes was invited out to Hollywood. He tried his hand at two pre-selected projects, discovered that The director - for- hire role was not for him, and simply left. He'd come back and act and, with his earned money, get back to making films the way he taught himself.

It should be noted that the two films he did make Too Late Blues (1961) and A Child is Waiting (1963) Produced by Stanley Kramer, are by no means write offs. Especially the latter which stars Judy Garland and Burt Lancaster. He never talks too bitterly about this period. He's a man who prefers to talk in favor of what he's For rather than bemoan what he doesn't like. "It is very important that you do something you like, that you're involved in enough to hold your interest no matter how long it takes." He didn't like it so he got out with a minimum of hard feelings and spent the next five years planning, writing and shooting, what could probably be considered the first John Cassavetes Film, Faces (1968).

It's here that we get into all the glory, and, to some, abrasiveness of the Cassavetes style of Filmaking and Characterization. It's here that we get into the love\hate of fans and detractors. It's here he truly found and mastered his unique style.

This style and the unique rhythyms of his films, and filmaking , I will try to relay in non-filmic terms. This is just the way I see and feel them. I grew up in a fairly middle-class American home. My parents, and their siblings, most of them depression babies, were, more-or-less, the age of the people in the works of Cassavetes. (It's interesting to note that in the Youth Oriented Sixties, Cassavetes gave voice to the frustrations of the Middle-aged, Middle Class Suburbanities. The "Well Respected Men" that the Kinks sang about. The very people the roaring youth of America were rebelling against. In a way, the underdogs.) Cocktail parties and card games were the norm. There was no ceiling on drinks, no designated drivers etc. Drunk driving was merely something husband and wife bickered about as they dragged themselves away from parties and staggered to the car. When I was about seven or eight I drifted through many of these parties. For awhile, I was a novelty, and tolerated. Eventually I would be found out and sent to bed. Children, like Cassavetes characters, like to push things to their limits. I would lie in bed and close my eyes. Not to sleep, but so that I could hear better. The things I heard on these evenings are what come back to me when I see/hear Cassavetes' films. The sound and cadence more than specific words. Waves of drunken laughter. The gradual growing in intensity of an uncle's voice as it wells up bitterly, exposing someone else for some trivial thing that, under the circumstances, has been given some unnecessary importance. The barking back of the injured. The voice of a less drunk woman with machine-gun rapidity, smashing the pointless argument to the ground with some logic that she's somehow managed to find in the mess of emotions. A few hopeless retorts from the original arguer. A chorus of female voices hopping to the rescue. A silence as some apology is waited for. None comes. A heretofore quiet partygoer who suddenly realizes that the hi-fi has been inactive for a long time. The argumentative Uncle says he'll throw up if he hears Herb Alpert Blow another note. A woman comes to the aide of Herb. "I wouldn't mind having his shoes under my bed." Laughter and applause. Her husband wants to know what that was supposed to mean. More laughter and applause. The argumentative Uncle prods the irate husband, hoping for a public squabble. A second argument bubbles. Words become indiscriminate. Voices become ugly and taunting, or nervously defensive. A voice rises. Singing, "I'll be Seeing You ... in all the old familiar places ..." The anger dies. The singer sarcastically criticized. Another voice takes up the tune. All the garbled singers sound alike, yet, all find fault with each other. Eventually everyone just listens and calm reigns. I hear footsteps in the living room. An Al Hirt record is diplomatically put on. "How About This?" Bellows the D.J. A few roam in and dance. One couple leaves.

Goodbyes pop around the main floor. I go to my back window. A man scowls at his wife, bemoaning "his" embarrassment over something she did or said. She has developed a shell that all his words bounce off of. She sharply reminds him of something that he had done reminding him that he was the master of his own humiliation. He has no recourse but to call her some name, something vile that has absolutely no bearing on anything they're arguing about. A thoughtless barb done out of sheer weakness. All she can do is cry at the numbness of her mate. She's too smart to get caught in a name-calling session. She's not even crying because he's wounded her in any way. She's tired and drunk and fed up. She rests up on the car and coolly says something about wanting to have fun, just a little bit of fun. The truth of this humbles the man. He drags himself up to her. The man murmurs in low ugly coos. He has to keep asking her to look at him. She has to look down because now she's finding him funny in his attempt at sincerity and doesn't want to hurt his feelings by laughing in his face. Awkward kisses, the man mumbles something about love, spits out a few incoherent apologies. The woman seems to pity him enough to get in the car. Maybe it's love. The man stands outside the car and admires the woman he's pained. He tries to slide into the driver's seat. The car keys hit the pavement. His cool is lost. The woman positively squeals with delight. The man laughs at himself as he crawls around on the darkened pavement feeling around for his keys. Laughter, unrelated to the couple outside, wells up in the living room below me. I crawl back to bed. Another argument starts to gain momentum. A voice of drunken reason shouts out his views on this and that and I fall asleep, knowing that I'll catch up with all of this at the next party. This is what Cassavetes' films feel like, to me.

He sends his films out in a highly charged, personal way, and personal is the only way you can take them. There's no way, despite their maddening intensity, to defend them as good drama, or drama period. It's pure confrontation. No resolution. There are no survivors in The Cassavetes World. We only see his people as they struggle through something. Then the film ends. For all we know the people who have just done the struggling through will go stark raving mad just outside the final frame. In Faces (1968) Richard Forst and his wife struggle through an evening of parallel swinging that turns into potential hell and humiliation. Then the film ends. In Husbands (1970) Grown men become reckless kids and skip out on their families for a weekend in London. For no real reason. One stays in London, two come home. The character played by Cassavetes is greeted by his son who merely tells him, "You're gonna get it." As though he just broke a window with a baseball. The film ends. Mabel, in A Woman Under the Influence (1975) desperately tries to make it through a family party on the day of her release from a six-month stint in a mental institution. She gets through it, but the film ends before were totally convinced of her recovery. It was, in part, her family that drove her to be considered crazy, and from what we see of them at the climatic party, they haven't changed. Myrtle, the actress in Opening Night (1978) pushes herself to make it through a performance of a play within the film. She's half drunk, depressed and haunted by the recent death of a young fan of hers. In all these cases it's the getting-through that Cassavetes targets. Despite their very human frailties and flaws the Cassavetes characters, female as well as male, are tough.Two films of his that come close to offering us a life for his characters beyond the end of the films are, Minnie and Moskowitz (1971) and Gloria (1980). The first is a near classical screwball comedy served up in inimitable Cassevetes rhythyms. Gena Rowlands, as Minnie Moore, an art curator, is courted by Seymour Cassel, as Seymour Moscowitz, eternal parking-lot attendant. Cassel's Moscowitz is right up there with Michel Simon's Boudu as one of the most dishevelled, annoying yet lovable screen characters of all times. He seeks out Minnie's love with all the grace of a man on fire, and tries to cement their relationship with lines like, "I know a truck driver who lives in New Jersey, a grandmother, who has more on the ball than you have ... or ever will have." His persistence eventually pays off.

Gloria is tougher to pin down. Cassavetes had been sticking to his own rules and vision for some twenty years now. The studios met him half way. He had a screenplay, that was, in part, old Hollywood fare, an ex-gang mistress, protects a little boy who's being sought after by the mob. Barbara Streisand showed interest in the project and the studios were ready to go to bat for Cassavetes. Streisand chickens out, and the infinitely superior, but less bankable actress (and wife of Cassavetes) Gena Rowlands gets the lead. The studio is sceptical, but committed. I'm not sure what happened in the interim, I suspect, that like the main characters in Robert Altman's California Split who are sick and tired of being mugged after their big wins, lash out and tell the mugger, "Here's what weÕre going to do. You take half, and I'm keeping my half." Stunned, the mugger takes his half and runs. There's enough fun to be had in the film, Rowlands looks beautiful and devastating clutching that .45, Buck Henry has a brief role as a bookie who gets killed in reel one, Val Avery, a Cassavetes regular, shows up in the film, there are some nice scenes with Gloria and the Kid and lots of brilliantly gritty locales. I guess that the most offsetting thing in the whole film, and I blame the studio for this one, was the Bill "Rocky" Conti soundtrack. Conti is perhaps the most bombastic composer in films. If you've ever felt beaten, abused and run-down after a film and you're not sure why, it's probably because you've just sat through a film with a Bill Conti score. (ie - Rocky, The Stuntman, The Right Stuff, and others that I've successfully forgotten) The scored music was totally unsuitable to the intimate world of Cassavetes. It's like the producers thought the film was too small for commercial audiences and wanted to pump it up ... with hot air.

A NEAR CASTING CALL

Just before shooting Gloria,in New York, Cassavetes was traveling through Chicago doing some pre- production. I have a friend who was a Chicago cabbie, an ex- middle weight boxer and a big "liker" of Cassavetes films. He was especially fond of Minnie and Moscowitz. In fact, all I'd have to do to get a rise out of him was to mention Seymour Cassel as Moscowitz. He'd breathlessly crack up and say, "Man, he's the goofiest looking motherfucker ... that moustache ..." he'd laugh some more and shake his head. One night, into his cab steps John Cassavetes and "the goofiest looking motherfucker " himself. During the drive to the hotel, my friend, naturally, scanned his rearview. At their destination Cassel stepped out. Cassavetes, knowing he'd been peeked at in the rearview, leaned forward to pay. "Do you know me?" he asked. "Yeah, you're John Cassavetes." my friend said flatly. "You a fan of mine?" Casavetes kidded. ÒNaw, actually I'm a fan of your WIFE'S." He deadpans. Cassavetes broke up. Coming down from his laugh, he said, "You know, I'm glad you said that. No one ever asks me about Gena. Really. Every time someone sees me do you know who they ask about? Peter Falk!" My friend and Cassavetes had a good laugh over this one. "No shit. They always want to know how he's doing, does he really have a glass eye?" More laughter. Cassavetes looked over the tell-tale scars around my friend's eyes. "Done a some boxing?" he asked. "Yeah." My friend said. They talked boxing for some time. My friend assured me that Cassavetes "knew his shit." The conversation wound down. They sat in silence for a minute. Cassavetes studied my friend's face one last time. "I'm looking for people for this new thing we're doing. Filming in New York ... If you want, I'll be staying here for another day. Stop up." They parted. My friend, having no interest in New York, or in being photographed, left it at that.

Between Cassavetes oscar nominated A Woman Under the Influence (he was nominated for Best Director, and Gena Rowlands was nominated for Best Actress.) and his too rarely screened (this could be said for all of his films I guess) Opening Night, sits The Killing of A Chinese Bookie (1976, re-edited in 1978). This film, for my money, is Cassavetes masterpiece. Pared down to a "story", it's nearly classical in structure.(it's good to bear in mind that two of Cassavetes' favorite films are, Capra's It's a Wonderful Life and Michael Curtiz' Angels with Dirty Faces.) Ben Gazzara plays Cosmo Vitale, good-time Charlie and owner of The Crazy Horse West,(a strip joint in L.A.). He takes a group of female employees out on the town, runs up an astronomical debt in a gambling house, run by Seymour Cassel, and is forced to be the trigger for a hit on a rival Chinese bookie to pay for his debt. The final third of the film is the execution of the hit, Cosmo's being wounded, and his slow death as he re-asses his present life and who his friends are. The visits he makes to friends in his hour of need, and the lack of assistance he gets, is very reminiscent of Damon Runyon's great short-story, The Brain Goes Home. Naturally the film unfolds wrapped in all of the rhythms and cadences of all his other works, so the straightforwardness of the plot becomes somewhat obscured.

Though Peter Falk (featured in Husbands and A Woman Under the Influence is the actor most associated with Cassavetes, as he would be the first to admit, Gazzara (with lead roles in Husbands, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and Opening Night) is clearly the definitive Cassavetes actor. Falk is a warmer presence and great at conveying the gentler and humorous side of Cassavetes. But Gazzara runs the whole gamut of what is wonderful, and unsettling about the Cassavetes' world. He too has the impeccable comedic timing of Falk, but add to this Gazzara's disturbing intensity (he's capable of being much more menacing than Falk, or Cassavetes the actor for that matter.) He juggles these extremes so well and Chinese Bookie is his, and the director's, tour-de-force.

I said before that, basically, Cassavetes only shows us his characters struggling through something. Oddly, the "killing" of the bookie is not Cosmo's real struggle. In a strange way Cosmo's struggle is his trying to run his Club (the real love of his life) while he's out on "the hit." The endless phone-calls to keep tabs on everything while he's at a diner trying to buy fifty hamburgers, with no buns, to feed the bookie's guard dogs. Phoning from the side of the road with a flat tire and a bullet in his stomach trying to find out what "number" is up on stage. The film is full of these moments. There's one beautiful bit when Gazzara sits in the dressing room discussing taking his dancers out of the context of the club to fully appreciate them as human- beings. He talks on and on, not sure of what he's getting at, stumbling on nonsense and wisdom in equal doses. This is a prime example to witness the mastery with which Cassavetes, the writer, could capture human "talk". Not to be confused with dialogue. Yes, despite the rough, or casual look of his films, they were all meticulously scripted before shot.

Another aside. Not too long ago, Ben Gazzara starred as Charles Bukowski (more or less) in Marco Ferreri's Tales of Ordinary Madness. This title would be a great one to hang on any of Cassavetes' films.

Cassavetes was called out of the bullpen, as a Director For Hire, one more time. This was for the film Big Trouble (1985), or, as Cassavetes dubbed it,"the aptly titled". The film was an unofficial sequel to Arthur Hiller's The In-Laws starring Peter Falk and Alan Arkin. The original director, Andrew Bergman, quit half-way through shooting. Cassavetes, for mysterious, but probably very personal reasons agreed to complete it. Afterwards, he requested that his name be taken off the credits. Out of respect for his wishes I will not discuss it here. I will just add that it's not that bad a film and it seems to be on the video shelf of every 7-11 store I've ever been in if you care to see it for yourself. It could very well be Cassavetes' most "seen" film because of this.

A more worthy valedictorian film would be his 1984 masterwork Love Streams. Cassavetes (actor) is teamed up with Gena Rowlands. Cassavetes plays a cynical playboy. Rowlands plays his sister, a woman who leaves her husband and daughter because she loves too much and her family can't quite absorb it. She crash lands in the home of her brother, a somewhat emotionally numb, cynical writer. She eventually breaks his shell and re-introduces him to love. Love, Cassavetes style, full of intensity, argument, humor and sheer craziness. Yes, Love Streams is a fitting Swan Song for one of cinema's greatest Personal Filmakers.

Ultimately, influence is a very difficult thing to gage, but I feel it's fairly safe to say that the eye and ear of Cassavetes more than paved the way for many filmmakers. Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets, New York, New York and Raging Bull and Francis Coppola's One From The Heart would not feel the way they do without the path cut by Cassavetes. Peter Bogdanovitch's Saint Jack, has a scent of larceny about it. It's essentially, a commercial re-make of Chinese Bookie. Ben Gazarra, surprise, plays Jack, an ultra-charming pimp forced into a political blackmail scheme. It's a good film mind you, I'm just a little suspicious. Cassavetes also helped audiences prepare for the likes of Paul Cox,(Lonelyhearts, Man of Flowers and My First Wife) James Toback, (Fingers, Exposed and The Pick-Up Artist) Maurice Pialat, (Loulou and A Nos Amours) and Elaine May, (The Heartbreak Kid and Mikey and Nicky). Mikey and Nicky, starring Cassavetes and Falk, could almost be considered a Cassavetes film.

Martin Scorsese is quoted as saying that Citizen Kane and Shadows are the two most influential films in his life. It shows. Early in his career, he shot the film Boxcar Bertha for Roger Corman. He screened the finished product for Cassavetes who flatly told him, with some humor I'm sure, "Congatulations, you just spent a year of your life making shit." This statement, Scorsese claims, gave him the fuel, and desire, to write and shoot, Mean Streets (1974) his first masterpiece, and, like Shadows before it, a landmark in personal filmmaking.

Peter Bogdanovitch was a wreck after the murder of his girlfriend Dorothy Stratton. In an effort to get him back on his feet, Cassavetes, claiming feebleness, begged him to come down and help him direct Love Streams (1984). Bogdanovitch actually worked on a few scenes, and Cassavetes' gesture seems to have put him back on his feet. Bogdanovitch made Mask shortly after this.

Jean-Luc Godard's Detective was "dedicated to Edgar G. Ulmer, Clint Eastwood and John Cassavetes".

A FINAL NON-EVENT

A memory block obscures the reasons, but, before leaving Chicago I tried to call John Cassavetes. I got the phone number of Faces International Pictures from the chairman of Columbia College's Film Department. I think I just wanted to talk to the man, a fan phone-call or something. I got his secretary, "Mr. Cassavetes is in the mixing room with his new film.(Gloria) Who's calling?" "Tell him it's Ambrose Roche and I leave for Vienna in a week." Which was half true. This seemed thrill enough. I hung up and soon after started wondering why the fuck I did call. A couple of days later, I was in the lobby of The Art Institute of Chicago's Screening Room ready to pop in and see Mizoguchi's Sisters of Gion". I had to phone my apartment for something. My roommate was in a frenzy. "Guess who just called." he shouted, "Who?" I asked. " John Cassavetes!" "What did he say?" "He wanted to know what you wanted." (the eternal question) "What did you say?" I asked. He gave the eternal answer,"I don't know." That was definitely the correct response. I left it at that. I told my friend the cab-driver. Initially, he got a kick out of the story, but some years later he told me, "You know what the dumbest fucking thing you ever did was? NOT calling Cassavetes back that time." This rang especially true after I heard the notice of his death. But I'm doing my best to renew my desire and passion for film that's been fueled over the years by Cassavetes and people like him.

© Ambrose B. Roche