John Cassavetes: Interviews

189 Pages·2016·1.87 MB·English

by  Gabriella Oldham

John Cassavetes: Interviews
Conversations with Filmmakers Series
Gerald Peary, General Editor

John Cassavetes
I n t e r vIe w s
Edited by Gabriella Oldham

University Press of Mississippi / Jackson
www.upress.state.ms.us
The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American
University Presses.
Copyright © 2016 by University Press of Mississippi
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2016
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cassavetes, John, 1929–1989 author. | Oldham, Gabriella, editor.
Title: John Cassavetes : interviews / edited by Gabriella Oldham.
Description: Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, 2016. | Series:
Conversations with filmmakers series | Includes bibliographical references
and index. | Description based on print version record and CIP data
provided by publisher; resource not viewed.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016019885 (print) | LCCN 2016010732 (ebook) | ISBN
9781496806703 (epub single) | ISBN 9781496806710 (epub institutional) |
ISBN 9781496806727 (pdf single) | ISBN 9781496806734 (pdf institutional)
| ISBN 9781496806697 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Cassavetes, John, 1929–1989—Interviews. | Motion picture
actors and actresses—United States—Interviews. | Motion picture
producers and directors—United States—Interviews. | Independent
filmmakers—United States—Interviews.
Classification: LCC PN1998.3.C384 (print) | LCC PN1998.3.C384 A3 2016 (ebook)
| DDC 791.4302/33092—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016019885
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
Contents
Introduction viii
Chronology xiii
Filmography xvi
His’n and Her’n 3
Jesse Zunser / 1958
What’s Wrong with Hollywood 7
John Cassavetes / 1959
The Chip’s Off His Shoulder 9
TV Guide / 1959
Mr. John Cassavetes on the Actor and Improvisation 11
Our Special Correspondent / 1960
Cassavetes and Pogostin in “Artistic” Clash with Universal 13
Dave Kaufman / 1966
Masks and Faces: John Cassavetes in an Interview with David Austen 15
Dave Austen / 1968
Man of Many Shattered Faces 21
Deac Rossell / 1968
The Director/Actor: A Talk with John Cassavetes 24
Russell AuWerter / 1970
Dialogue on Film, No. 4: John Cassavetes, Peter Falk 30
American Film Institute / 1971
v
vi contents
Movie Journal 48
Jonas Mekas / 1971
John Cassavetes, Gena Rowlands, Peter Falk on Movies, Madness,
and Myths 53
Dick Adler / 1974
A Woman Under the Influence: An Interview with John Cassavetes 63
Judith McNally / 1975
John Cassavetes, A Woman Under the Influence 74
Larry Gross / 1975
A Conversation with John Cassavetes 82
Columbia College Chicago / 1975
A Director of Influence, John Cassavetes 95
Gautam Dasgupta / 1975
Interview with John Cassavetes 101
Michel Ciment and Michael Henry / 1976
John Cassavetes in Los Angeles 111
Laurence Gavron / 1978
Cassavetes on Cassavetes 123
Monthly Film Bulletin / 1978
Talk Show 127
Colin Dangaard / 1978
John Cassavetes Gets His Reward 128
Dolores Barclay / 1980
Cassavetes: Making of a Movie Maker 131
Charles Schreger / 1980
Cassavetes: “Show Me the Magic” 134
Michael Ventura / 1982
contents vii
Retracing the Stream of Love 144
Richard Combs / 1984
The Lost Interview: John Cassavetes 148
Joe Leydon / 1985
Resources 156
Index 161
Introduction
Maverick. Non-conformist. Angry young man. Accidental genius. Gray eminence
of American independent moviemakers. Everyman. These and other labels have
been bestowed on filmmaker John Cassavetes. His body of work as an inde-
pendent director totaled only nine personal films made over a little more than
twenty-five years, but they impacted the cinema culture of the 1960s to the 1980s
in unprecedented ways. His filmmaking style and content both mesmerized and
rankled critics and audiences in the US while finding a warmer critical embrace in
Europe. Yet in both parts of the world, cineastes elevated him to near-cult status
for his cinematic vision and perspective.
This across-the-spectrum reception led Cassavetes during his lifetime to exude
an aura of feisty contradiction about him. His unapologetic disdain of Hollywood
as anti-creative and anti-artist was his source of pride and badge of courage at a
time when he felt directors meekly followed studio command. Yet Cassavetes the
actor made good use of Hollywood films to pay the bills for his personal projects.
Fascinated by the complexity of human relationships, Cassavetes sought to cap-
ture these nuances in his multifaceted portraits of “average” men and women.
Yet he also displayed occasional sexist, at times exaggerated characterizations.
As a director devoted to the actor, Cassavetes intently believed in the actors’ un-
restricted potential to explore raw emotional depth, creating a perception of im-
provisational freedom. Yet most of his lengthy scripts were in fact personally dic-
tated, fully detailed, and tightly structured. Finally, Cassavetes now dwells in the
pantheon of iconoclastic filmmakers from an era of cinematic soul-searching and
creative turbulence. Yet he was overlooked and underacknowledged for his cin-
ematic contributions for many years. In an overdue portrait of a man of extremes
in his own words, this collection of interviews and articles featuring John Cas-
savetes during his life, from 1958 to 1984 (plus a “lost” interview that appeared
online in 2009), offers new insight into his growth as an actor, his evolution as a
filmmaker, and his staunch advocacy of artistic freedom.
To trace this portrait, one can pinpoint four prominent themes that filter
throughout and unify these publications. The first theme is Cassavetes’s identity
as an independent filmmaker—what he considered his raison d’être. In assert-
ing his independence, Cassavetes demonstrated another core contradiction: he
viii
introduction ix
lambasted and dropped people and structures that seemed bent on curtailing his
expressive freedom, yet remained fiercely loyal to and supported those who fu-
eled his independence. His individualistic and cynical streak pushed him to speak
his mind, often bluntly, even crassly, about what was wrong with Hollywood and,
of course, the world itself. Yet his statements included almost child-like admis-
sions of a belief in humanity’s better self—a self that could possibly save the
world through artistic creativity.
This segues into the second prominent theme of Cassavetes’s beliefs and
views, and the personal relationships that molded his films. His own frustration
at running into brick walls as an artist was tempered by a surprising naïveté that
he transferred to his characters, both male and female. Because his family and
co-workers were his refuge in an angry world, Cassavetes could channel his high
energy through storytelling and through the people he trusted to enact those sto-
ries. With long-time associates on his productions and his core acting ensemble,
including his wife Gena Rowlands, in-laws, parents, and young children, Cassa-
vetes found an intuitive acceptance of his vision. At the same time, in another
inevitable contradiction, Cassavetes’s vision was sometimes so intense and bewil-
dering, he mentioned in an interview with Michael Ventura that Rowlands once
exclaimed to him, “Who the hell can understand you?! You’re nuts!”
The third theme then can be lifted out of Cassavetes’s position in the physical
world among his family and colleagues and into the emotional world of his films.
His main exploration was human nature, which in the majority of his films was
distilled specifically to men-women relationships. Cassavetes’s unrelenting cam-
era lens documented the characters’ emotional dysfunctions bordering on abuse;
he watched as they reacted with primal instincts to ordinary circumstances, sur-
viving their brutality and accepting each other’s flaws and limitations. While fas-
cinated by men’s behaviors which he examined repeatedly with cronies Peter Falk,
Ben Gazzara, and Seymour Cassel, Cassavetes was especially smitten with depict-
ing the soul of women, many of whom were personified by Gena Rowlands. He
built his stories around her ability to express degrees of living and feeling—pas-
sion, resignation, insanity, innocence, fury—without recoiling from the vulner-
ability her roles exposed. As an ensemble director, Cassavetes explored success,
failure, resilience, and existence in a middle-class world, drawing both from what
he observed and what he knew his actors could bring to the set.
Because he recognized the unlimited resources that actors could offer him,
and because of his own intense work as a television and film actor, Cassavetes the
director felt compelled to let his actors unleash their potentials, shape their own
cinematic realities, and play them out naturally on the screen—thus his reputa-
tion as an “actor’s director.” This fourth theme not only zeroes in on his working
method with actors, but also on his overall technical film style that he considered