17/18: John Cassavetes

Alex and Nick offer up their biggest episode yet, a deep dive into the career of the Godfather of independent cinema, John Cassavetes. The guys discuss Cassavetes’ early acting work, filmmaking style, working collaborations, and each of Cassavetes’ magnificent films.
Tell us your favorite Cassavetes film on Twitter @WAYW_Podcast.
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Hey, everyone, welcome to a very special edition of What Are You Watching? I'm Alex withrow and I'm joined, as always, by my best friend, Nick Dostal. How you doing there, Cosmo? Hi. Oh yeah, it begins.. It was good. That was good. It was good. Thank you. I do not have anything witty other than I am beyond excited to be here. Damn right. Oh yeah. Here we go. Nick and I are two people who are obsessed with film. So much so that as soon as we were able to begin creating, we did. Whether that meant monopolizing the home video camera from the age of ten on performing in plays, writing scripts and eventually producing and directing our own work. I bring all this up because this context is important for our topic today, because today we are talking about one of the most important and influential filmmakers who ever lived the masterful John Cassavetes. Cassavetes is a famed American director who influenced an entire generation of filmmakers with his pioneering style both in front of and behind the camera . His style resulted in countless American independent classics, including faces, husbands, a woman under the influence, the killing of a Chinese bookie. Much, much more. Cassavetes means a lot to Nick and myself, which fairwarning I'm. I'm going to be dishing out a few hyperbolic of all time comments during this episode, but I genuinely cannot think of a more important filmmaker to my own personal filmmaking career. And it ain't just the movies which are great, but it's the way he directed them with true independent sensibilities. And we're going to talk about all this the man, the work, the style, influence, legacy. But first, I want to hear from you. I've stated my position clearly. So have at it. Probably the biggest influence that I can think of and in a very weird, serendipitous type of way. So when we first met and I started my very first short film, that was the first time that I had ever done anything in terms of directing, making a movie I had. I didn't. I don't. I still, to this day, don't know what I'm doing. Who does? Yeah, who does? He sure as shit did. That's exactly right. That's my point. And and I did not know who John Cassavetes was at that time. I thought I heard of the name. I knew what he meant in the lure of independent filmmaking that he was this he started. He was the godfather. All of these types of motifs that he sort of carried to his name. But I didn't know any examples of his work. And yet what I was trying to do with my short film is exactly what he does with his art. And then come to find once I start exploring him as a filmmaker, I am realizing this guy is speaking directly to me. He's right to my fuckin heart, and it's very powerful because, you know, as well as I do when you're on your path to doing what you want to do and you get people and I mean, obviously, you never met the man, but you get these filmmakers and these people, that means something to us that inspire us, but they're basically speaking our language. They are completely talking to us. This is a guy who is an actor like I'm an actor. God disgruntled with the system, like I'm disgruntled with the system, had a view on what humans are and wanted to put that truth into his work. And there's probably no one that that I feel to me personally speaks more to what I want to do than he does. So that's what he means to me. Amen. It's a big deal, folks. This is a big deal for us, a very important filmmaker. I'm going to tell people a little bit about him. John Cassavetes was born in 1929 in New York, New York, the son of a Greek American actress, Catherine, who proved to be an amazing actress and some of his films. She's great. And a Greek immigrant, Nicholas John Cassavetes loved his parents to no end. He respected them. He challenged them. He really, truly loved them. And this is important because this love instilled in Cassavetes a deep appreciation for family, which is evident in all of his work and in how he made his work. Cassavetes grows up on Long Island. He's a bit of a rambunctious, aimless kid, but he finds his feet in the theater and he quickly becomes a respected actor. I'm going through this fast. I know I apologize, but he meets the great love of his life. Gena Rowlands in 1953. He pastors her constantly for four months, and they end up getting married in 1954. And that sounds like how some of his characters met in some of his films, which we will talk about as an actor in New York in the mid fifties. Cassavetes, he doesn't really like what he's seeing by his account. Every young actor is following the Clift Brando dean type of method based acting, and while he loved those performers, particularly Monty Clift, Amen, he felt that the younger pupils were utilizing that technique correctly. So in 1956, Cassavetes and his pal Burt Lane, that's father of actress Diane Lane, started their own acting company, which emphasized performance through love, through creative joy, through freedom, through tireless improvizations. The people in his company would create full characters, and Cassavetes would place those characters in different situations. And this is what they would do. They would meet. They would practice. They rehearse. They drink. They smoke. They laugh. They'd fight. And while all this is going on, Cassavetes is also maturing his acting career. He delivers solid performances in the night Holt's terror, crime in the streets, saddle in the wind and particularly the on the waterfront adjacent film Edge of the City with Sidney Poitier and Jack Warden. And you like that one, right? Yeah, I really like that one. He has this monologue where he's talking about his brother. There are him and Sidney Poitier in a bar, and they've just started to kind of get their friendship going. And there's not much talk about Cassavetes brother in this, but it's a crazy story. The way they Cassavetes delivers this monologue, the love that he has for his brother and the joy that he speaks about him is so palpable. It's a beautiful scene. Really? Enjoy that movie. It's great. It's great. And you get to see Jack Warden. I mean, one of the all time great character actors and a truly villainous performance edge of the city. Go check it out. But as a result of those countless hours of improvization with his students, Cassavetes decides to make his first feature film based on characters that have been developed in those classes. He uses the money he's made from his acting gigs to help fund the production of the movie. But the moment Cassavetes gets shadows in his head, it's game time and we're going to talk about shadows at length and the rest of the film shortly. But before we dove in, we kind of have to describe the Cassavetes style of filmmaking a bit. We have to give context to this stuff because Cassavetes was a genius, a workaholic, a proud maniac, a lover of love and a true liver of life. If you were involved in a Cassavetes film, then you were involved. Cassavetes largely made movies outside of the studio system outside of union regulations. He made the movies he wanted to make. The way he wanted to make them most everyone involved in Cassavetes film chipped in their own money, and no one got paid unless the movie made money. And if they did, they got that directly. They didn't have to give it to anyone else. Actors who acted in the movies also loved equipment. If you were Cassavetes friend, he would likely ask you to pick up a camera or to crowd control or even talk to the mob about delaying a construction project that is ruining one of your shots, which happened. Cassavetes did whatever he had to do to fund his films, whatever he had to do to make them. He obviously acted in films he didn't direct, but he also put film equipment on credit. He called in favors that he wasn't even owed. He proudly lied and cheated to get his films made. It was creative chaos, frenzied sets. It was all in an effort to get the thing made. Thoughts on his technique. He did everything he could for at a time where it was not easy to make movies. I think we think of, you know, for us in independent cinema today, there are so many advantages that we have that he did not, but that that moxie, that passion, that gusto to just do it. I'm going to read a couple of excerpts from a book called Cassavetes on Cassavetes, written by Ray Carney, and these are from John Cassavetes, his own words. But I thought these were appropriate to talk to. What drove him as an artist? We are using this book as a guide and as a Bible. I'm glad you mentioned this early on. We've read this. We and we haven't just seen John Cassavetes films. We've read everything we can get our hands on. We've watched every special feature, listen to every commentary, everything. So we are not. You're going to hear a lot of law in this podcast and this is not Wikipedia or IMDb trivia law. We've done our research. We love this guy. There's a lot to unpack, but please quote from that book. It's a great book. So this is speaking to the time where he was forming his his acting technique class in New York City and about to start to do shadows. And he's talking to younger people. He was after you graduate, you go outside and get the hell beat out of you, but not because you don't get the job, but the. As you begin to lose your mind's eye view of what you think you are right now, and if you can keep that always, there's no way that anyone can stop you from doing what you want. I think that's just fucking awesome. Yeah, absolutely. The way that he attacked his work and his what he wanted his goals is just super inspirational. Absolutely. For Cassavetes, a film was all about character plot be damned. Very few of his films had a plot. He was more interested in why his characters were the way they were. What a motive driving force was behind their decision in preparation for all of his films, Cassavetes and his actors would, well, they would meet up for a few weeks. They would read the script, read the script, read the script, develop their characters, talk, talk. And when it came time to shoot, Cassavetes would talk with actors about who their characters were, where they came from, what they liked, who they loved. But he would never talk to an actor about what their character would do or what decision they would make. When you were a character in a John Cassavetes movie. That character was yours. You owned it. This led to a lot of confrontation, including with his wife, and we got to touch on this because the Cassavetes style is largely believed to be heavily improvised. You do some cursory digging on John Cassavetes career, and you're going to walk away thinking, this is a guy who made every movie in New York and they were all fully improvised. This is boldly and flatly false. Full stop. Because while he was indeed developing improvizations through those rehearsals, the scripts to his movies were very tightly written. The movements of the actors were rehearsed very heavily in advance. This was not something that was made up on us on the spot. The actor spoke and moved exactly how they would had rehearsed. Cassavetes was the director who shot a lot, but he shot controlled chaos. This was not improvization, and that is a really, really important distinction to make. Absolutely. And I didn't really think to talk about this. But while we're on it, this also goes for Martin Scorsese too, because a lot of people think that I'm funny how from Goodfellas was made up by Joe Pesci on the spot? This is not the case. That line came out through improvizations that may have been filmed, but it came out then and then Marty goes, What was that? Yes, yes, OK, we're going to do that on the next take. That's not the same as coming up with something necessarily on the spot. And the person who made the clearest distinction of this was Gena Rowlands in every interview, she said. She's always taking credit away from herself. She's the best. She's like, John wrote. These characters, these were these words were written, so definitely wanted to touch on that before we jumped into the work and what I thought was so cool about him. And I don't even know how I feel about this and must be very, very difficult. But he would have an idea of what his story was. He would know who his characters are as he wrote them, but he would let the actor make the choice for whatever their choice was, even if it wasn't what he thought it was. And if the moment didn't happen the way he thought it in his head, he didn't search for it. He didn't try to go after it. If that actor didn't do that but did their own thing, well, then that's the truth. That's the truth from that actor. And he would always say to his actors, If you don't know what to do, then who the hell does this is your character? I'm not going to help you. You mean he would he? You know, you weren't allowed to talk to other actors about your character at all. He may talk a little bit, maybe gently guide you in like a character thing, but actor other actors were not allowed to talk to actors about their character. You could talk about family, what kind of scotch you're drinking, what brand of cigarets you've changed, too. But you could not talk about your characters. Your characters were only allowed to talk to each other on film, and that was how you get such improvizational feel from his performances because the actors had to truly find out and not be afraid to fail and not be afraid to look like asses to try to find what the truth was. And that's the music. That's that's the language before we jump into shadows. I have a very important disclaimer about spoilers. Nick and I do not appreciate spoilers, but there's simply no way to talk about the work of John Cassavetes without discussing the endings to his films. All of his movies and perfectly, and in many cases, honestly, it's the final scene of the movie that unexpectedly and gloriously ties everything together. So Nick and I went back and forth on this a lot, because how do you talk about the endings to these movies without spoiling? So here's what we're going to do right now. Listeners are enjoying a lovely piece of jazz score that is gently playing in the background, under my words. And before we talk about the ending to every movie, I will clearly announce, OK? Let's get into the end, and I will start playing this music that way, if you don't want the movie spoiled for you. Just keep skipping ahead until you don't hear music anymore. And when there isn't music, we aren't talking about a spoiler and to package it up nicely, the music you're hearing is from a short film called There I Go. Directed by Nicholas Dostal. Oh, yeah, so I think that'll be the easiest way to do this. We're going to save it. We will not sprinkle in spoilers throughout like we're about to talk about shadows, and I'm going to make it very clear when we talk about the end. So disclaimer Don? Let's do it. Shadows 1959. It's Cassavetes first movie again. There aren't really plots and Cassavetes films, but Shadows follows three black siblings for a few weeks in New York. The two brothers are struggling to find work as jazz musicians and their sister is struggling to find love. That's an incredibly crude description, but again, we're we're not really going to get anywhere if we talk about what these movies are about. More importantly, films like Shadows didn't exist in America. No plot. Loose structure, loose form. People talking how people actually talked. The movie was independently financed and independently distributed, and it was a sensation. It was not an easy film to make. Cassavetes used actors from his studio. The actors in the movie all have their first names, are all their characters names as well, and it was a tough production. When you're reinventing the wheel of an art form, I can't imagine it's easy, but holy shit, the power of this movie, it's 88 minutes long. And. There's a scene midway through in which the lead character has just lost her virginity, which you don't see Cassavetes wasn't interested in sex and she's laying there after. And she says to the guy, I didn't know it could be so awful. Like, Wow, I mean, film characters did not talk like this in 1959, especially women. No way. But this is the John Cassavetes movie. And if his character spoke something and he thought it was truthful, as you said, then that was deemed worthy of inclusion . And I don't want to get too in the weeds about this. We're just starting. Everything is going nice and positive. I don't want to get pissed off, but lines like that make it very clear to me that this is a man who knew how to write women. And yeah, he he did. He really, really did. I mean, so many of his female leads were talking about things that were not spoken about at that time. I mean, this is a man of his times, the times of the fifties, sixties, seventies. He was very on the pulse of what society was, and he was always a little ahead of it. And sometimes maybe his movies come across as very macho in certain ways. But he's just speaking to the Times and but the the way that he writes women, there is nothing macho about that. It is sensitive. It is flawed. It is poignant. It was. It's beautiful. Gena Rowlands speaks so much as to how she was floored at how well he wrote women. She even said, I get how something like husbands. He writes for men. But his women. I know female writers who don't write women as well as he does. And she really, really championed any type of criticism that he received from that. And you know, in my opinion, John Cassavetes was not feminist. He was not misogynistic. He was humanist. And you said it right that he did have his pulse on this stuff. And we're not just talking about gender equality. He was very concerned about race relations, and he never really spoke about. It was all action with him. It was all action. So he's going to use whatever clout he has or anything to make a movie with Sidney Poitier when it's really important to have a movie about a black guy and a white guy being friends. Yes, I had to stop myself earlier because in researching him, that was probably the most common criticism of his work. And that's something that I, with respect flatly and full heartedly disagree with. This man is responsible for some of the finest performances by women that we've ever seen, and I don't mean responsible at the work is there . Let's be clear. I mean, he put them in the position. He set them up. He wrote the characters. He distributed, the movies. He edited the movies. I like all of his characters women included, but we're getting a little off track. I want to hear you think about shadows. You actually recommended shadows as one of your what are you watching recommendations in an earlier episode? Yeah, and that was the first time that I'd seen it. Really? Yeah. I'll be honest with you. Like this. This is the craziest thing about this podcast that we're doing. This episode is that I had to play catch up to a lot of his work. And in that work, I found him as an artist speaking to my artist, and that's what I really want to share to anyone that's looking for that type of inspiration , because that's what really resonated with me, with him, but with shadows, I just really couldn't believe what I was watching. Mm-Hmm. I couldn't believe that this was happening in front of me. Even even today. I wonder if I saw a movie that was dealing with what Shadows deals with. It would still feel powerful and feel fresh, it would feel important, and but he doesn't preach that at all. It's just what's going on. That is true because this movie is dealing with a lot of sensitive race issues that I can't imagine a lot of white directors even wanted to take on, but. None of that is really spoken about, it's all in looks, it's all in, I was comfortable and now I'm not, and that's all by just people entering a room. So he had to be somewhat subtle, but it's still hitting you in the face. Oh, in it. Well, that's what he does. There's a documentary which I highly, highly recommend called The Constant Forge, where I believe is. Sean Penn says that every few minutes in a John Cassavetes movie, there's a lightning bolt of reality that strikes you. And this movie is no exception. When the movie was over, I had thought back to what I had just seen because so many moments hit me so hard, but I couldn't think of the movie as a whole. I was like, Huh, OK? And then I went about my day and my next day. And this is a similar thread that happens every time as I can't stop thinking about it. It stays. It really does in the best possible way. John Cassavetes has said that Shadows is and was his favorite movie because it was the first one. It was how it started. It was a group of people that were like minded, that were passionate, that wanted to do something. They wanted to see some that trusted him, that worked hard for little to no money at all to try to just create it is just art in its purest form and to also think too like there were two cuts of this movie. Yeah. Oh yeah. And we'll get into this too as we go on. Cassavetes re cuts a lot of his movies because they don't quote unquote work the first time around. For him, this was a cut where everyone hated it. It was banned. There was one critic that liked it, and he said it was the best thing he's ever seen. But he was by far the minority. So Cassavetes recut the movie to what we see. But there actually is a story about how a lot of the footage was burned in a bonfire that he made because he was so pissed and got drunk, and he burned a lot of the stuff and they had to reshoot. It's just like George Melies did. I mean, yeah, it's that I cannot say I'm surprised at all. That's all I say. And so he recut the movie and what we have now that is, I believe the only cut that's available is the cut that is that that's out there today. And it was a vast, vast difference. He said that the first was him just going crazy with the camera going after the shots, going after what looked good and what seemed cool. But what was missing was the human element. So that's what the reshoot was, and that's what the recut was, was putting in everything that they had worked towards getting that first cut out of the way. So Cassavetes was a guy who just basically lived in the moment all the time and made his decisions after the fact. They only added like a few scenes of human context for her, like the scene where she's talking to her brothers on the bed. They didn't go and add in a big set piece. How many times do we hear nowadays that movies are being reshot to bigger action sequence? Bigger this, bigger that bigger, bigger he reshot and recut to make it more human? This is very rare. Do you have thoughts on the end spoiler thoughts on the ending at all? I think the thing about John Cassavetes endings and we'll get into this. This will be another recurring thread is that they don't end. Yes, they always leave you with a feeling of life goes on. The endings always hit me very hard and very different. And I remember and usually I have a very similar reaction to where I'm like, What the hell? And then I'm like, Oh, that's right, that's what helps with the lasting power two of its sticking in your in your head. And he his movies didn't have endings. And with the exception of two, they didn't really have beginnings to two of his movies. Husbands and Gloria start with kind of an inciting incident. one in husbands is off screen that kind of kicks things in, but like killing of a Chinese bookie just starts where, like, right in the middle of it of a night, it just goes, boom, and you're right there. I love it. I love his openings. I love his angst because especially his openings, because they're always just happening in the moment where we're just jumping right in to this character's life. After shadows, everyone wants a piece of Cassavetes, every studio wanted to capitalize on his success, so Cassavetes did what any reasonable young director would do. He took the studio's money to make a John Cassavetes movie. He tried this twice in a row and it didn't really work out either time. first up is too late blues. It's about a struggling jazz musician trying to find his way through music and through love. Cassavetes wrote the script. He produced the movie, and from the beginning, Paramount Pictures said Cassavetes could do whatever he wanted, as long as he just followed a few simple rules. Rule one Cassavetes had to cast Bobby Darin and Stella Stevens as the leads, which is fine, but Cassavetes originally wanted Monty Clift and Gena Rowlands, and picturing those two in a movie together is something my brain can't take. So it's Darren, and it's Stephen's role to Cassavetes had five weeks to shoot the movie. He wanted six months. Rule three Cassavetes had to film on studio sets in Los Angeles. He wanted to shoot on the streets of New York. So follow all these small rules and the movie is yours. Yeah, fine. But when you take away Cassavetes ability to cast the movie the way he wants to cast it, shoot for how long he requires and shoot where he requires. Then you do not get a John Cassavetes movie. The resulting film is not awful, but it has some Cassavetes potential that is wasted. You can just see it there. You could see it in these conversations in bars, and it just it doesn't go where the studio would allow it to go, I suppose. Cassavetes was allowed to cast a lot of his friends in supporting parts, so you'll see a lot of the shadows cast here and future players who would appear a lot and Cassavetes future films. The most notable being Seymour Cassel, who has a small part as one of Bobby Darren's bandmates and just watching Cosell in this movie, he's acting circles around Bobby Darin, and he's not even in it much. But Bobby Darin iconic performer. Yes, but the man is so wooden in this it was his first movie without, you know, singing without big performance, and he never looks confident in anything he's doing. He moves kind of like a robot. I suppose if left to his own devices too late, blues could have been a really interesting follow up to shadows. But as it's remember now, it's Cassavetes first studio feature and one that he isn't terribly proud of. two years later, Cassavetes tries the studio system again. He's courted by famed director producer Stanley Kramer, who directed the defiant ones and was fresh off judgment at Nuremberg, which was a big deal in 1961. Kramer wants Cassavetes to make a movie about a doctor and a teacher, helping intellectually and developmentally disabled children in a school. The doctors, played by Burt Lancaster, the teacher by Judy Garland, Gena Rowlands, is the third lead as a mother who abandons her child. This is a big movie. It's a big studio movie and it is a disaster. Kramer let Cassavetes have zero freedom or control. Garland and Lancaster, who were initially excited to work with Cassavetes, quickly formed a coup with Kramer against him. Cassavetes had the movie taking away from him and editing. None of this went well, and there's a story in Cassavetes on Cassavetes in which after the first studio screening of the movie, you know a bunch of people are walking out. Stanley Kramer, John Cassavetes and John Cassavetes is leaving the theater, and he has a quote in the book that says, If I hit Stanley Kramer, I'll never work again. But if I don't hit him, I'll never breathe again. So he hit him and they had it out right there in the screening room, and the movie was a box office failure, and Cassavetes wouldn't direct another studio movie for 17 years. So that is, a child is waiting. So two studio movies in a row, he's going to take a little break before he directs again in this break. It gives us the time to have a little acting pause because before we dove into the real core chunk of Cassavetes films, there is some cool acting work to kind of catch us up on before Cassavetes makes faces in 1968. There's a very concerted effort on his part to deliver good performances in good movies after faces. He seemed to take acting work kind of as a way to just fund his movies. But in the fifties early sixties, Cassavetes leads a TV show, Johnny Staccato, about a jazz playing private detective. It's great. Cassavetes directed five episodes, and they're far better than the other episodes, and Gena Rowlands appears in episode nine, which is a lot of fun. Do you like Johnny Staccato? Yeah, I like Johnny Cicutto, but you're 100%, right? The episodes he directs. Vastly superior. Like a world of difference. And they're all on YouTube. I you can look up kind of on IMDb, which ones he directed. I believe he directed the second episode. He does not direct the one with Gena Rowlands, but it's still a good episode. But that's the first time you get to see them acting together. So that's cool. The Killers comes out in 1964. It's directed by Don Siegel. I like that movie. I really want to mention it because. Cassavetes had a lot of respect for Don Siegel, Segal gave him important roles in movies and they got along really great, and you didn't hear Cassavetes talking about his peers a lot. Really, he didn't mention many contemporary filmmakers. He sold damn near everything, but he wasn't really a fan of a lot of modern movies of his time. So it's nice to hear that he like Siegel's films. The Dirty Dozen is three years later. This earns Cassavetes his first and only Oscar nomination for acting, which is insane for a number of reasons, but props to him sticking out among a flashy ensemble that's really hard to do. And unfortunately, he lost to his Dirty Dozen costar, George Kennedy for his work and cool hand Luke. It's kind of fair, yeah. And finally, on this acting Paul as we arrive at arguably his most well-known acting work and that is as Mia Farrow's soulless husband in Rosemary's Baby, I think Rosemary's Baby contains his finest acting work outside of the movies he directed himself. I had honestly never watched that movie and just focused on him, and when I did that to prepare for this podcast, the weight of the decisions that that guy has made, you can really see that affecting Cassavetes. But it's in the background. I mean, he's got this guilt in this shame on his face and in his shoulders. Really solid work from Cassavetes all around during this time. There's a great story about his, his technique and how he felt about acting because he strongly, strongly disagreed with the Stanislavski method technique of acting, which was the big thing at that time. And a lot of it had to do to because he was at first when he auditioned for the acting school. He was not let in, and so he was kind of bitter about it. Then he went off and did his own thing and developed a name for himself in in the business, and he was already, I think, shadows might have already come out. Or it was like during that three year period of the making. So you went back to the actor's studio to audition for Lee Strasberg, and he knew full well what he was doing. He went in in him and his scene partner improvised an entire scene and said it was from a play and then come to find out that they have accepted John Cassavetes into the actor's studio. And he then denied to go and said to prove a point, we made up that whole entire scene on the spot in spite of you. And he took it one step further and after they said, Hey, we want to welcome you to the actor's studio, he made up this whole thing about, Oh, I can't afford it, I'm broke. I don't have any money. And they're like, We'll give you a full scholarship or whatever it is. You come here for free. And he's like, Actually, I made that up, and I know I don't want your charity. Fuck off. And he did that. And the reason why we're still telling that story is probably because he did that. And then he cashed in on that story and probably courted people to his acting studio based on that, like, Hey, I have something I'm not trying to get into the deep psychology of who you are as a person like. The method is I'm trying to talk about character and love and feeling and look at based on the tone that I'm kind of leading into. I'm not disparaging the method at all without you. I know. No, not at all. Yeah, it's it's really fucking arrogant to disparage any method of acting. In my opinion. They're all different. Yeah, you can't you all. You have to be accepting of every type, especially if you're going to try to direct actors and they don't all come from the same place. But yeah, that's a great little Anatole about how he gave zero f's the whole time. Yeah, he did what he wanted to do. Bottom line he is. He is a teacher. He is a teacher, and the best way he taught us was through his films. So let's get into faces because this is an important one. What the hell is this movie about life, love, marriage, fleeting masculinity? John Marley as Richard and Lynn Carlin as Maria play a married couple who are on the outs after a brutal argument one of the best, most realistic movie arguments ever captured on film. So good. It's next level. It's great. And they each set off for a night of independence. Richard joins the company of a young prostitute, Gena Rowlands, and Maria meets up with a young drifter played by Seymour Cassel. Side note Actually real quick John Marley that lead actor played the movie producer who found the horse's head in his bed in The Godfather a few years later. I love that he has such a distinct voice. Again, that's a very crude plot description. All of these are going to be crude plot descriptions because that isn't really what the movies are about. But tell me about faces. You love this one? Yeah, this is my favorite. This is my favorite Cassavetes. This is the one. This is the one that I completely got everything that he is trying to do, and it's frustrating. one thing about Cassavetes movies that they're not easy. No, they're they're rough with you. Like, they demand your involvement. They demand your attention in. If you are willing, you are going to be rewarded. Mm-Hmm. And this is the best example that I can think of because I remember I was I was watching it. It's so human. It speaks to so many different things about. Men, women, you're going through all of these different emotions in these very, very human moments, but then there's these lulls where things aren't quite as interesting and sometimes they meander, sometimes they go on for a little bit too long and I'm just sometimes as I was watching it, I was like, Man, this is kind of going on for a little bit too much here. I'm kind of losing interest. I'm feeling something. I'm feeling an urgency to move. I'm feeling maybe I'm uncomfortable. Maybe I. I just wanted to go,'cause I'm sort of conditioned in that way as an audience. But I also love too much of the humanity. But anyways, the point that I'm trying to make is that when the movie is over again, all I can do is think about it. And what it's really I'm thinking about are those lulls or those moments in between what was really happening, because that's where the life lives in . This movie is just so great with that. Any time there's men with Gena Rowlands character in that house. It is a great example of men competing with another man for the affection of a woman and how they try, how they make fools of themselves, how they succeed, how do they find common ground? It's an overload of masculine inferiority. Yeah, and it's captivating. And that argument in the beginning, again, like Lyn Carlin, I love her. I thought she was so great in this movie. She is just she's beautiful and she speaks her mind. She's nervous. She doesn't know if that's done. Is that proper? Is it right to talk about these things? Is it the same thing? I want to talk really quick about the Seymour Cosell scene with the ladies. Please, please. That scene blew my mind. It's a handful of women, and all of them are coming in with very, very specific ideals. All of them don't know what they're doing with this guy that they just picked up at a bar. And he is this ladies man he represents and even says out loud to them his intentions, his ideals, his values, and these women are all trying to wrap their head around it. We do not get to see that in movies. We do not get to see someone communicate who they are and then let the other people deal with it. But to trust that those actors have a point of view and I found the moment in, there's one particular older woman who her intentions are very clear she wants to have sex with this guy. She doesn't have her youth. She feels that that spark that it's not done. Like, What is that? And she's honest, and she goes, It does something to me, and she goes after him and he kisses her. And I remember this is a personal story. I was in an acting class where you were. You were free to engage in in your pursuits of your behavior. And I was working with this older woman. We were doing a repetition exercise, and she had made it very clear that she thought I was attractive and I don't know what happened. I felt what I could only see in this movie. It was the only time I ever saw this represented was I felt sad. I was like, Oh my God, this person is wanting something that she can ask for, but she's asking freely on the stage with me. And man, I kissed her. I kissed that old woman right in the mouth. And your first kiss, you blew my mind. And she called me attractive. She made her intentions clear, but she felt so ashamed about it. Like, I'm this old woman. I'm embarrassed to say that to this young man. And I felt that for her and I wanted to give her something I wanted in this moment to make her happy. And so I kissed her, and I saw immediately the same thing that happens in this movie. There's just this. It's strange. It's weird, but there's an appreciation. There's I thought it was very tender, very human, very real. And to put that on screen is amazing. Definitely. This movie was an absolute sensation. I I love it from start to finish. Cassavetes cut and recut the movie for years, and after he finally secured distribution for it in a few theaters, there were lines around the block for like weeks. People had never seen anything like this on such a mass scale at this level of distribution. It was a guy who made a movie on his own and distribute it. It on his own, people noticed it made a ton of money and critics noticed as well, this was Roger Ebert's favorite film of 1968. It's another great case of Roger supporting young, independent filmmakers from the start, and the movie gets three Oscar nominations the most for any Cassavetes movie. Seymour Cosell loses supporting actor to Jack Albertson for the subject was Roses, which actually is fair. Albertson is fantastic in that movie, and it's Grandpa Joe from Willy Wonka. Lynn Carlin Loses Supporting Actress. This is a tough one to Cassavetes. Is Rosemary's Baby costar Ruth Gordon? That's tough. That's a tough one. Cassavetes loses original screenplay to Mel Brooks for the producers. But what was also nominated Kubrick and Clarke for 2001 A Space Odyssey? It's a tough category. Battle of Algiers was nominated as well. Strong year. I'm really happy Oliver won Best Picture, Oliver. Yay! We talk about Oliver all the time. Sorry. No. In all seriousness, the importance of this movie can't be overstated. It's a legacy American film that really influenced an entire generation of filmmakers. You said earlier that you made There I go without knowing you were influenced by Cassavetes because you hadn't even seen a Cassavetes film, but you had seen movies that people who have studied him had made, and that influence trickles down, and a lot of that starts. Shadows is great love shadows, but a lot of that starts here with faces. This is when it's like, I'm here, I'm not messing around. Here we go. And yeah, let's let's get to the ending because two people go off and they make mistakes. Husband and wife and they come back to each other, he comes back and it's chaos. As soon as he arrives and then it just ends on this shot at the stairs and it's him walking past each other, smoking, climbing over one another. And you're watching this. They can't sit on the stairs at the same time. Then they can, and they're just passing by each other in and out of life. Are they going to stay married? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. But here it is. They're just coming and going. We just witnessed what like less than 24 hours of their life. Yeah. And now we're gone and who knows how they'll be. And that because that ending is a little that's what you're talking about. There's no words. There's music, it's grainy. It's the house. John Cassavetes in general, it's lived in. It's their actual house. I love this ending. It's one of my favorite endings to a movie. Because you're stuck. Yeah, you're stuck with. She does not love him. He doesn't have a clue on how he feels after all of this. And I love the line that she says when she comes back down because they cross each other a few times, going up and down. He's not moving his legs for her to cross it, said everything. She just plainly says, Excuse me. So with the goodwill he earns from faces, what does Cassavetes go and do but make the most challenging movie of his career? The as old classify it as the misunderstood classic from 1970 husbands husbands is long, challenging, intentionally meandering. It's a film about three friends Ben Mazara, Peter Falk and John Cassavetes, who have just lost one of their best friends played in still photographs in the beginning of the film by Gena Rowlands, his brother David, who was in a lot of Cassavetes movies. The husbands don't know how to handle this loss, and instead of hearing them say, Guys, I have no idea how to handle this loss, they go on a multi-day bender with no real intention. Their motivation is never really clear because because this is my read on it anyway, when we're lost in life, the entire point is that we don't have motivation. We're struggling to find meeting an intention and sentiment. And this movie captures all of that in a really realistic way, which is not for everyone. The entire film is Go, go, go. It's 138 minutes long. You feel all of them. There's no pauses. Everyone is constantly talking, laughing, drinking, smoking, berating, running, drinking, drinking, drinking. It's a maddening movie to me. It's perfectly imperfect, but what an honest portrayal of not knowing how to be a man and when society has dictated that the only real thing you must do to be a man is to be a capital m man. And these aren't capital m men. The term midlife crisis had not been coined yet when they were filming this movie. So Cassavetes was trying to capture something that many people have gone through and were going through, but it didn't have a name for yet. Men don't act like this. They can't be free spirits. They can't be sensitive and afraid and sad. That's all here. This is a difficult movie to love. Cassavetes is very well aware of that. We're going to get into some of that in a bit. But what do you think about husbands? I loved husbands. I loved it the first time I saw it, and then I loved it even more. The second time I saw it. And again, I couldn't have had complete different experiences with the movie. Both first and second time and husbands is probably one of the tougher ones to get through. You sit with a lot of stuff and it again, it hits you. It makes you uncomfortable. But stay with it, man. It's important. So in true Cassavetes fashion, the first cut of this movie was three hours long, and test audiences loved it. It was long, but it was well told. Made sense. It was clear and focused. Everyone loved it, especially Ben Gazzara. But Cassavetes hated it and he hated it because everyone loved it. He, he said. I'm not here to make entertaining movies. I'm not here to show you and to sell you the stuff that every other movie shows and sells you. I'm here to tap into something different, a different sort of truth. So he spent a long time cutting it and he cut it into what it is now, which is, I mean, you talk about lulls. This movie goes on really long lulls and it's you're following these three guys who don't have their shit figured out. And it doesn't always make for the most entertaining viewing. And that's just not what he's going for. So this is one every time I watch it, I come around to it more. There is a great commentary for it that helps really fill in a lot of the intention. The Cassavetes was going for a lot of the motivation, but you don't leave a Cassavetes movie feeling good. Not by and large. You leave asking what was it about? For better or worse and in trying to sell this movie, this is important because he had to distribute these movies himself. He would go to the theater and deliver like the reels of film. This is what he did. He would travel around the country. So when you're selling a movie like this, it's know social media could take out an ad in the paper, but that's expensive. However, the three of them Gazzara Falcon Cassavetes, get invited on the Dick Cavett Show, and this is an interview that's out there. It's all over YouTube. It's even on Criterion and what unveils and what happens. This is before the movie's come out is they are basically maintaining their shtick in the movie where they're literally jumping around the stage, falling over, acting drunk. They apparently were a little drunk. They're kind, they're wholesale, ignoring Cavett or not answering his questions. And Cavett doesn't know what's going on, and no one knows what's going on. And then after about 20 minutes of this, Cassavetes completely turns into a director. He's no longer the actor, and he gets really straight and really clear and really focused, and he looks at Cavett and goes, You've been a great sport. We've been fooling around. He never says, like, we're doing this on purpose, but that's what's going on. They're selling the movie. And I think in his grand scheme, he's going, I'm going to give people a little taste of what this is about. Maybe they think. We're crazy enough to come watch a whole movie of this, and it's a really, really sensational late night show performance, because how often do we see this now when Sacha Baron Cohen goes on David Letterman as Borat and is taking shots of vodka with Martha Stewart? Like, that's the shtick that everyone. Not everyone. A lot of people do this now, and I don't know who did it before him. And even though it's not very obvious or very pronounced and they're not dressed any differently than their characters. That is what they're doing. They're selling the movie, and I really love that and appreciate it, and it makes for a wild 45 minutes of television. It's insane. It's really good. I highly recommend that if you get a chance to see it, and it also speaks to the way those three guys form their relationships because this was also a little bit different than the way the Cassavetes usually wrote his scripts is that he brought on Gazzara and Foxx and just kind of had an idea. It is sort of they are. These are three guys lose their other best friends. They there are no longer the foursome. They're just now a trio. And what do we do now? And through all of these rehearsals, they would keep coming up and rewriting things and eventually land on what they wanted to do. So this was a little bit more of a improvizational based movie, but it certainly wasn't improvised because whatever the final script that they landed on was was what we get, right? But they all kind of formed that together, and I feel like that's what you get the most from this movie is you really feel that relationship between three guys and Falcon guys are very outspoken with that. They did not like the way this was going. John Cassavetes shot all of his films in the order in which they are presented. That is incredibly rare to shoot your script in order, incredibly. But when you do that, your character, you can see them, their characters getting stronger. They get more confidence. And as the filming is going, Gazzara and Foxx kind of give in and it all pays off well. So my thoughts, my feeling of the movie here we go into spoiler territory. It's a lot like faces and that I didn't know what the hell this movie was doing. Roger Ebert to know what this movie was doing. He hated it. He wrote, Pauline Kael hated it. A lot of people do not like this movie. I didn't know what it was doing until the end when they're fumbling him and fork over the shitty souvenirs they bought for the kids in the airport. Is this yours? Is this yours? None of it matters. And what does Fox say to them? You know, what's he going to do without us? Because Gazzara Harry has stayed back in London? It's like, what? I don't know. What the hell will he do? And then Cassavetes turns the corner. He's walking up his driveway and his John Cassavetes real kids. Nick Cassavetes is one of them. Meet him in the driveway. And the kids had been arguing earlier like right off camera. And that's why he starts to cry. Cassavetes just embraces him, and then they go home. It's all about this guy who's just kind of come to understand, in my opinion, that you've got to go home, you've got a family. They need you, they want you, and you had your little, your rift, your little fun, but you got to go home. And that's what it's about. To me, that's the feeling I'm left with is that just living through life is tough. We've both lost people. You're a little lost after it. This is one exploration into guys again, trying to be capital men, because that's what they're told, and they're just not. They have no idea what to do with their life, and that level of masculine vulnerability wasn't really present on the screen in this way. Really strong ending. The next year, Cassavetes waste no time, and he makes many Moskowitz, I love this movie, it's so damn odd. Earlier, I mentioned how Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands met. They could not have been more different. Cassavetes is an admitted madman. He's loud, brash, argumentative. He loves to argue. He's constantly working. Never sleeping. And Rollins is angelic. Regal, respectful, debonair. She's a treasure, a legend. But she enters Cassavetes life and he goes after for four months. And then they get married. And they stay married for 35 years until John dies in 1989. And and Minnie and Moskowitz is Cassavetes. His vision of how they met. Seymour Cassel plays Moskowitz. He's a drifter who makes his way to L.A. and works as a valet. Minnie, played by Gena Rowlands, is an L.A. woman stuck in an abusive relationship with a married man played by Cassavetes himself, which is really it's a tough performance because we're going to talk a little more about this later. John Cassavetes The man hated violence. He did not like violence at all in the first time we see him in this movie is committing a violent act, and he didn't want anyone else to do it. Basically, he didn't want anyone else to be the kind of the person who inflicted this violence. This is a crazy movie. It's loud, it's fast. It's free, and it focuses on characters who typically. I mean this with a great deal of respect. Cassavetes liked to focus on people who are, quote unquote off. These are people who don't say the right thing at the right time. They certainly don't follow social conventions. People don't make movies about people like this. They just don't. And they certainly weren't 1971 and not really much now and off. I want to be clear about my use that word that doesn't mean like criminal or angry or crazy weird. Go watch waves. Lucas Hedges has a has a role in waves that goes off, but in a charming way. And I love characters like this, so that's what this film means to me. It's a really good representation of people who aren't represented in film a lot, and I dig it. How to get that waves reference? Yeah, right. I did. one of my favorite things about, I think, my favorite thing about this movie. The conversations. The gist of conversations that happen between Seymour Cassel, Timothy Carrey in one of the opening scenes. I love that actor. That is, to me, one of the most interesting, unpredictable actors to watch. Like, you've no idea what he's going to say or do. And then the scene with Gena Rowlands in that older woman as they talk about sex and age again talking about two women's characters. This scene is such an interesting conversation. Honest, open, and it's revelatory in so many ways, at least to me as a man watching being like, Oh my God, that's something I've never even thought about. And that is what women feel. And it totally opened my eyes to to a new perspective of things that I had never seen before. And then that one scene Gena Rowlands has with that other actor in the diner. He's just pushing her and pushing her and pushing her, and he makes a complete fool of himself. He just riles himself up. It's just such an interesting scene, and it's just character. It's all character or character. And Timothy Carey. Yeah, that scene they have in the diner, you know? Let me get a bloody hot dog. It's that guy. He was the man for John Cassavetes because he did not care what the script called for. He didn't care. He's just going in whatever direction he wanted to in many. And Moskowitz and I encourage people to go back if you want to rewatch this because him and Seymour Cosell did not get along. You could tell that they're antagonistic relationship in real life was bleeding over into the screen, and I love that you can feel it. There is an enemy city. There is a strong male like friction there. And when Cyborg excuses himself, or I guess I should call Moskowitz excuses himself, I kind of just see that as Seymour Cosell being like, I'm fucking done with this scene, John. Like, I need to get away from this guy. You can keep the camera out of it. They do for a little bit. Yeah. And what other movie is this, a stand out scene? Yeah, probably is my favorite moment from this movie and real quick and typical Cassavetes fashion. I love the title characters don't even beat for, like an hour into the movie. He did that a lot. He was really good about reserving those big reunions for his movies. And as always, this film was a family affair. Cassavetes mother, Catherine plays Moskowitz, his mom, Gena Rowlands, his mom, Lady Rowland's great name, plays Minnie's mother and so on. It's just great. And let's do the end. Do you have anything to say about the end? I remember feeling personally very sensitive in the fight where Moskowitz is cutting off of his mustache and threatened to cut off his hair just because I have been in fights. Where do you do whatever you need to do to prove your love to somebody and you're crazy? You are not of sound mind. You are in a different place. You good or bad weather. Whatever you're fighting for, you are not you. And you do things to try to prove to the other person whatever you're trying to prove. And you're insane. And it's so human. And I don't think I was ever more enthralled than when he had his ponytail up, and he just screams, Oh, this is about to cut it. And then she immediately was like, No, don't like, because that was the moment where she realized where they had gotten. That's again, a point to just the truth that Cassavetes is trying to get to. I love that scene. Absolutely. My thoughts on the ending it, it does arrive quickly, but it's on purpose. I mean, many in Moscow, it seemed to be complete opposites. And they get married in four days, and Cassavetes and Rollins were opposites who got married in four months. It seems like he thought it would be fun to shorten the timeline for a movie. And what the hell? I agree. three years later, John Cassavetes makes a movie about a woman named Mabel. Mabel is a wife, a mother and a woman who is lost along to help her and at times hinder her is her husband. Nick Cassavetes spends two hours and 35 minutes with these people, and the final result is a film called A Woman Under the Influence. Into my movie obsessed psychology, this film features the finest performance by a woman ever captured on screen, as Mabel Gena Rowlands does not act. She becomes this full character immersion in a way I genuinely have never seen replicated by a man or woman. I mean, what the hell? This could be my favorite performance in all of television or film acting genuinely, and this is a tough film. Cassavetes himself described it as a terribly tough film, but it's real and it's brutal and preparing for this episode. We've both been living in John Cassavetes world for a few months, and I rewatched all of his movies many times, including this 13 times, actually. And in doing so, a woman under the influence became one of my top ten films of all time. And John Cassavetes became my favorite filmmaker ever. Oh, right, so, so so I could see Dick's face. He's reacting heavily because look, statements like this may seem, you know, grandiose and even a bit silly to some of our listeners. But this shit is my life and this shit is your life and me calling Cassavetes my favorite filmmaker a spot that Ingmar Bergman has occupied for ever 14 years. Yeah, 14 years is not something I say lightly. This means this is a person who is in my life. His work is in very heavily involved in my life, in whatever way I can receive him or his work. It was really profound researching this. It's probably the most fun I've had just watching movies in years and if not like decades. And what do you think about a woman under the influence? Oh, well, it's going to be hard to follow that you're 100% right, and I feel the exact same way because this experience of watching all of his movies Cassavetes is a place that's that's probably the best way I could say it. And it's a place that I have been artistically fed and fulfilled so much. And I really can't stress this enough. If you are an all a young filmmaker that has not experienced Cassavetes or if you're experienced and you know of John Cassavetes, rewatch everything but do it this way. Watch them all in a certain time line because watching one, you will be affected for sure and you'll be rewarded. But when you really go into everything, you really understand what he was after what he was trying to do. And we are trying to just explain and not only explain but express how important and meaningful that is to us with this podcast. And there's like no words because there's no words for his movies, right? But speaking to a woman under the influence, this was my first Cassavetes movie. I watch this because of you. It was really hard. I had to turn it off at one point midway because I was like, OK, all right, that's a common reaction. Yeah. And I agree. I think this is, you know, if fuck the whole actor, actress, you know, conversation acting is acting. It's not fuckin specified to any gender. Not one does it better than the other. So it Quentin was right. It's nonsensical that I absolutely agree, and that's why I hate qualifying it with like my favorite performance by a woman. Or it's just it's just stupid. It's this is you can stack this performance up with any male performance in the history of film, and I will be able to express my point about why I think romance is better. That's all, say, 100%. This isn't my top three performances of all time. It does not. I feel like we could just spend an entire time talking about it. But if you see it and you should see it, you'll be witness to it. You know, I do want to talk about the spaghetti scene. The way that he writes this scene in particular to me, is just absolutely fascinating. It will open your mind up to how it is possible to do things outside the box. All this scene is, is Peter Falk and his worker guys coming home from a long night and Gena Rowlands. Mabel makes spaghetti for everybody, but Mabel is Mabel and Peter Falk. Nick is Nick. We should say they've been working all night and they get home. They get back to the house like in the morning. So they've knocked off and you know, they're there, ready to drink, they're ready to eat. Yeah, and Mabel wants nothing more just to be a good host. She wants to be a good, you know, she wants to feed these guys. She wants to be. Good partner for Nick and showcase that. But this movie is all about how people cannot communicate properly. They can't communicate the way that they want to, the way that they feel like they should. Should the world's worst fucking word. Watching her be heard so fully and alive and what it does, it ruins everything but in the most unique way that it's like, How do you think? How does someone like Cassavetes think like this? It's brilliant. It's fucking amazing just as anyone out there who's trying to think of a way to express character. This scene, to me taught me as a filmmaker, Oh wow, there's a whole other way to do this that I had not thought about, and it really educated me, and it really clued me in to the infinite possibilities of creativity and how to get to the truth, the human way and and put it on film. Damn right. Absolutely. And use. You know, you ask a great question like, how does he think to write this stuff? I think it's a good opportunity to describe where this movie came from. This came from General Allen's going to her husband and saying, Can you write me a meaty role like something deep that I can dove into ? And he wrote, a woman under the influence as like three plays like three kind of hour long plays, and that's how they were going to do it. And she read it and she goes, John. Any performer would. They're going to die doing this on stage every night, like, no one can do this. I can't do it. So then they decided to turn it into a movie, and he wrote the script very quickly. Like in a matter of weeks, Cassavetes loved to write. He wrote all the time. He had so many unproduced screenplays, a lot to unpack with a woman under the influence. I could talk about it for hours. This movie also contains a never better Peter Falk or Peter focus greatness. It's really important to mention the scene where Mabel breaks down the five point scene is miraculous. You you can watch interviews with Falck and Rollins that were recorded decades later, and Peter Falk still openly admits that he thought she was just gone. The actress, Gena Rowlands, was gone. Cassavetes increases the shutter speed on the camera, so it looks sped up in like choppy. It's so intense and raw, and the poor guy playing the doctor had no fucking clue what was going to happen. That was their friend and John goes, Hey, just yeah, come in on this scene. This will be, you know, your introduction. And he walks in, and all of his reactions are real. His reactions of being stunned, floored, aghast. I mean, it's it's just so horrifying. And when I watch scenes like that, I weep because it's so strong. The acting strong. I weep at her work. I weep at the joy that the focus puller could keep it in focus. I mean, it's it's really a thing of wonder that I am always floored by and in terms of the distribution of the movie, this one has a particularly fun story because again, Cassavetes had to do this all himself. Although Cassavetes didn't make movies within the studio system, his movies meant a lot to big Hollywood people, so much so that when Warner Brothers needed a director for Alice doesn't live here anymore. Cassavetes Lowery lobbied hard for Martin Scorsese to win the gig. Scorsese, you loved Cassavetes. And after Cassavetes saw Boxcar Bertha, he told Scorsese is something like, Congratulations, you just wasted months making the biggest piece of shit of your career. Go make something personal. And Scorsese, he went and made main streets right away, which helped define him as Martin Scorsese. So woman is done and no one will show it. So Cassavetes calls in a favor and he tells Marty, Hey, would you mind threatening to pull? Alice doesn't live here anymore from this big festival unless they play my film? Scorsese, he goes. Sure, the festival plays both films. A woman under the influence is a huge hit. It lands two Oscar nominations, which for a self-financed, self distributed film that was unheard of in 1974, did not happen. So Gena Rowlands loses Best Actress to Ellen Burstyn, and Alice doesn't live here anymore. Cassavetes loses Best Director to Francis Ford Coppola for Godfather Part two. I would obviously have those wins a different way, but those nominations really were the gift. The fact that they were, I mean, to go outside of the union system is still a huge deal in Hollywood, and the fact that he did it brazenly and still got nominated for it is I just love all that, and I wanted to get that out of the way because it is important we're still going to talk about the end of the movie. But I don't know if you had any thoughts about Woman other than the end. I love the fact that he feeds Beard to his kids real beer. It's one of the lighthearted moments of the movie, and it's very earned and you really feel one that he doesn't have any clue what he's doing, and his priorities are so skewed because he basically hijacks his kids to go to the beach to have a good time. We're going to have a good time. But he's so obsessed with this idea of of something good, but can't actually follow through with it, but then ends up finding that moment. That's sweet. Connecting moment with his kids in the back of a truck drinking beer. That's a really important scene because Mabel is always listed as the quote crazy one, the one who's off, the one who doesn't have it together. But does she do anything in the movie that's worse to the kids and giving them beer? It's a portrayal of two flawed people. There is one woman mentioned in the title, but this is a movie about two people, and we're going to get in the end here. one of my favorite endings to Cassavetes film, they're ignoring the phone, which is undoubtedly Nick's overbearing mother, played perfectly by Cassavetes mom, by the way. And real quick word of praise for her. She's so great in this movie. She plays Peter Fulks, mom, and in typical Cassavetes family bluntness, she always told her son that she hated his films and that they were too hard to brush. And he loved that. So he kept casting her. And it's a simple act of just getting that room ready for bed. Why are they sleeping in there? Why are they sleeping in a bedroom? They have. There has to be bedrooms upstairs. Who knows why? Why, why? That's another great point that the house actually every house, every location in the John Cassavetes movie, I feel like I could walk you through. Oh, it's so lived in like especially in the woman on the influence. I know where that bathroom goes and where that break in the hallways of the kitchen. And the fact that they that they had their bedroom is the dining room with those shuttered doors. Yeah, it's it's so specific in and it feels it feels real. I love it. So a lot of praise for a woman under the influence really strongly encourage everyone to check that out. Tough movie, but worth it. two years later, Cassavetes releases a movie with an equally fun title, The Killing of a Chinese bookie. I love this movie. It was one of the more contentious productions of Cassavetes, his career and certainly one of the more contentious distributions. But this film actually kind of has a plot, so I'll dove into it a little bit. Cosmo Vitelli played by a never better Ben Gazzara, his greatness owns a burlesque joint and is hyper focused in making this club a success. He's an absolute perfectionist to the dance numbers he creates, the routines he's he seems completely unmoved by the fact that the people coming to watch these shows only care about one thing. And it's not your dance numbers, buddy. But Cosmo is also troubled after clearing a debt with a loan shark played by Cassavetes longtime right hand man out Rubin, who you mentioned earlier. We love out Rubin. Cosmo goes out to celebrate and he racks up$23,000 in gambling debt to the L.A. mob. The mom knows damn well that Cosmo can't pay, so they offer a solution. Do what the title of the movie dictates, and you'll be free. That's a very clear summary of an intentionally unclear movie at times. Like all of Cassavetes films, Chinese book is a tough ride. As soon as it gained suspense, momentum thrills, Cassavetes halts the action. He does this all the time in this movie, and that deprives us of that conventional movie for a word that there's a clearly defined action that a character must complete. So go do it. But it ain't that simple and Cassavetes world. I completely agree. I think this is the hardest one, to be honest, in my opinion. Like if in kind of thinking about all of his movies, I think killing of a Chinese bookie is the hardest one for an audience member. And I want to hear more about that in a bit after what you have to say about it, because I think this is his easiest. Really, I do. I think this is his most accessible film. one of the reasons why this movie is so different is because these mob guys are not typical mob guys. I love the gangster so much. Seymour Cosell is back, and he's really quietly imposing Timothy Carrey's back, and he's out there, as always. And then there's the boss, Morgan Woodward, who's the sunglasses guard from Cool Hand Luke, and he's so quietly menacing. I just love this film, and we can't. We actually can't really talk about Boogie without talking about the two versions of it, and I'll go through this quickly. Boogie was initially released in 1976 at 135 minutes long. It was a tough sell for the audience, and the audience rejected it. Similarly, Gazzara hated it, and as a result, the movie failed and very few people saw it. And we really have to keep in mind that when Cassavetes was making these movies, there was not any thought or consideration for home video distribution. It did not exist. So if you saw John Cassavetes movie, you had to go to the theater to see it. And if theaters didn't show it, then you were shit out of luck. Roger Ebert talks about this a lot in his reviews of the movie. So after the success of Cassavetes next film opening night, Cassavetes decides to recut Bogie in 1978, releasing a shorter version at 108 minutes long. And it's much better for my money and this being a Cassavetes recut, he. Certainly did not simply cut out certain scenes or make scenes shorter. He rearranges the entire order of scenes that is critical to the narrative. He uses different takes within the scenes, which for my money in the shorter cut are all better. This is one of the best examples of a director's cut I've ever seen, and you can watch both if you have the criterion of this. What's really interesting is that the way the two versions are different is in the beginning, the last like hour or so, they're more or less the same. So it's really the big setup. But your thoughts on booky, both versions, either version, whichever may education into Cassavetes, really is very recent. So I had never seen killing of a Chinese bookie, and I watched both cuts and I started with the shorter version, the 1970 81. And what I thought was so interesting was that in the 1976 cut, he lays it out for you a little bit more. He really kind of gives you a lot of that forward exposition. There's a narrative, almost almost. There is an idea that is in place and we're following it. We get it. But in the 1978 cut, he takes all of that out. And in my opinion, it's a much more powerful way to experience a movie is because by the absence of so much stuff, we are left to infer from our own who this guy is in and for my money. I will always take a character more personally to me when I have to decide for myself who he is, as opposed to being told that was what this cut did to me. And so I definitely think the 1978 the shorter cut is, the better cut. Both have advantages, though, because the 1970 61 does give you a lot more of Seymour Cosell. You get to know him a little bit better. And what's great about the gangsters is like, they're just a bunch of idiots. These aren't like Tony Soprano level gangsters. These are like street street dudes who own a place where you can go and gamble. You can wear a tux and do that. But what is seriously missing from the long version is you get to see more insight into the debts you get to see people we never see again like going in there and you know, the woman kind of takes over at one point she's like, Just stop talking. Just, you're not doing this right? And what's so cool about these mobsters is that the threat of them killing you is always there. Oh, they're just not saying, I'm going to fucking kill you. They never talk like that. It's always like, you've got to go downtown and you got to go to Chinatown. You got to see this guy. And that's like all it is. You got to go take care of this thing. And the reason why I harped on Cosmo's perfectionism is because Cassavetes and typical Cassavetes fashion did not tell Gazzara how Cosmo should act. And as a result, Gazzara played Cosmo with this sort of initial indifference because he was so pissed off at Cassavetes. He just that's why Cosmo so like, laid back chill. He didn't know like what he was really doing as the character. And because Cassavetes shoots in order, Gazzara slowly started to catch on as to what was happening. And in his mind, Cosmo was a proxy for John Cassavetes, the director. How you can't get anything done. You try to get a step ahead and you can't. There's people always in your way, like movie studio chiefs or heads who the gangsters are a proxy for this with their paperwork, you don't often see gangsters with a lot of paperwork. These guys are obsessed with paperwork. They're breathing down his neck, the rules, the regulation. You have to be on their timeline. It's brilliant. But all Cassavetes wants to do is to make sure his film is perfect. All Cosmo wants to do is make sure his routine is perfect. There's a lot of parallels here, as there aren't all of Cassavetes work, but it dawned on Al Rubin and Ben Gazzara and every member of the crew that because they didn't know what the movie was either. And then they realized these gangsters represent the robbers of your soul. Anyone who is trying to kill your dreams, the struggle to create and keep your vision. Everyone started to just understand that this is what John wanted to make. This was what was going on for John. But John wasn't going to communicate that because that just wasn't what he did. And it's very risky. But that organic discovery that comes up with Ben Gazzara and the crew, I really think transfers somehow. I don't know how I can't explain that you can't. It's magic, right? But that's what it comes through with this movie because by the time you get well, we'll get to the spoiler at the end. But by the time you get to the end, it's all clear. It's all understood. But I want to get back to why. I think that killing of the book is the hardest of Cassavetes is because this is the one where he leaves you the least. Even with some of the other movies you can, he leaves a little bit more breadcrumbs for you. You want to digest in this one? It's very hard to tell what's going on with Ben Gazzara because the gangsters are kind of dumb. You're kind of like weak because they don't fit into the mold that gangsters are supposed to fit in. And the camerawork is really messy, and I don't mean that in a bad way at all. I just mean that because I love this movie, but it's the hardest to follow. The cuts are so strange. Things are so dark. It's hard to actually know what's going on. But ultimately, that's the point. The point is that we're in the dark just with Gazzara. It's just funny that you mention how dark it is, because when he's on the run from these gangsters in that final guy at the end or they like in a warehouse, or where the hell are they? Yeah. And he has him boxed in and he's like, All right, I got you. And the camera just boom like rushes into the room and that light is at the top left of the corner. You just see Karzai's face. It's so shaky. It's so dark. That's my favorite shot. And then John Cassavetes movie, that single shot of seeing guys are sitting there like, I'm fucking boxed in here, like, what am I going to do? But I do think that if you are not willing to sit in that, then this is probably the most difficult one to sit through. But I'm curious to see what you think is the most accessible. OK, that'll take us right into spoiler territory. I think this is his most accessible face's production faces was the name of his studio when he self distributed a movie. That's so to be clear on that, that is Shadows faces husbands many Moskowitz woman bookie opening night love streams of those movies. I think Boogie is the most accessible because I think it has a plot somewhat conventional. It's not conventionally told. And I think it leaves you with a somewhat clear ending of where this guy is going to go, and that, I think, will leave people somewhat satisfied. Again, this is not an accessible movie, but of the ones I just read. I think it's accessible, but to me, everything is clear and everything is understood. I mean, we see this all the time. The reason why I assume directors don't show when their main character is about potentially about to die. We just talked about this with the wrestler is because they want you to infer on yourself. But really, that's not the thing in the wrestler, whether he lives or dies. Wrestling is this guy's life. Yeah. And this whether he lives or dies, this dude is always going to be fucked. He's always going to owe money. He's always going to owe something to someone because he doesn't know how to, like, just manage the club. He's such a perfectionist, he doesn't have any money. So whether he dies in the next ten minutes or in the next two years, Cosmo Vitelli is not a good businessman, and it doesn't know how to keep a revenue stream up. So I think he's toast and that's my read on it. This is my favorite Cassavetes ending because I did not see it coming. I had a very primal reaction of like, the fuck is this, if then immediately like a lightning bolt. Like, it was that instantaneous where I was to go, Oh, that's perfect. More of the Cassavetes method here. There's another aspect of the ending I want to talk about. Gazzara tells a story that when they were getting ready to shoot the title scene, which is like an hour into the movie, it's not at the very end. It's, you know, it's kind of kicks off the last bit of the movie. Cassavetes became very hesitant as they were getting ready to shoot the scene because again, Cassavetes did not like violence at all. He didn't like in real life, so he told Gazzara to really have to kill the Chinese bookie because our look sounds like just the name of the picture is the killing of the Chinese bookie. We have to kill the bookie was Al Rubin that said that? Don't fucking interrupt me. But Cassavetes shut down production for like 90 minutes trying to decide and Al Rubin comes up and it's like, What the fuck's going on here and GOES-R is like. John is no doesn't know if he wants to kill the bookie, and Al gives a much more furious answer than that. Big anxieties like we got people here, we got a whole set. We got What the fuck are you doing this? The name of the movie? You got to kill the book, you get in there and kill the bookie. So they go and they shoot it. Now go back and watch the scene. Watch the way Ben Gazzara plays this and fucking tell me that that shit that his director put into his head for the 90 minutes before is not playing out on his face. The hesitation, the shame, the guilt. This is not an easy kill for Cosmo. It focuses on him, focused on the gun. We never see the bookie die. We never see him get shot. But all that hesitation? I absolutely believe the Cassavetes had every intention of killing the Chinese bookie from the beginning. I think he put that hesitation into Cazares head right before they said action. Just so you can see him wrestling with that. As the actor, as Cosmo, it's genius. Cassavetes did that shit all the time. He manipulated stuff and he never told the truth about it. We're we're dealing with a grade, a miraculous bullshitter. Raul bullshitter, and he would never, ever admit that he pretended that he didn't want to kill the bookie just to get Ben Gazzara and everyone else on set rattled, but it is my belief that in this example and in other countless examples like this, that that was all very intentional. Yeah, 100% there. He would absolutely delay in production and cause everyone a bunch of shitstorm of problems just so he could have that moment. So let's take another quick acting pause here, because when you are as influential a filmmaker as John Cassavetes, you are bound to see countless rip offs of your work. Most of these are bad, but some are good, and one of them, for my money is exceptional. And that is Elaine May's 1976 wonder Mikey and Nicky. We love this movie. Yeah, because this I think we should make a deep dove on this movie like a whole separate podcast for Absolutely. Peter Falk as Mikey Cassavetes as Nicky. They're lifelong friends, and Nicky is a perpetual screw up that Mikey has to always rescue on this particular evening. Nicky is held up in a hotel after stealing money from his mob boss, who's played later by the great acting teacher Sanford Meisner and a really rare screen role. A lot of fun. Mikey and Nicky is the best John Cassavetes movie that John Cassavetes didn't direct that isn't meant to take anything away from Elaine May. Her stamp is all over this movie, but this is a great, frenzied, wild ride of a film, and I love that. one of the best movies I have ever seen about adult male friendship was written and directed by a woman. May famously shot over 1.4 million feet of film for this movie. For context, a two hour film on celluloid was about 11,000 feet long, so she shot 1.4 million. That's wild. They shoot it in 1973, has a lot of post-production problems. It's eventually released in 1976. The Criterion Collection has a beautiful Blu ray for this movie. Tell me about Mikey Nicky. This movie changed everything. This is my first foray into John Cassavetes. I couldn't believe what I was watching. I had never seen anything quite like it, because it is a very Cassavetes. A great way to say this is the most John Cassavetes movie without it being directed by John Cassavetes. It's sloppy filmmaking in the best way possible. It's what gives the movie its feeling. Its energy comes from this complete mess, but it's not a mess in a in a bad way. It's a mess in a controlled mess. So true. Mikey and Nicky, check it out. We will be talking more about that later on another podcast episode. We're going to get back to a John Cassavetes film. It was always a struggle for him to finance his own movies. But even as Chinese bookie did not do that well at the box office, Cassavetes wasted no time in getting opening night off the ground. Opening night 1977 Another great film in this time, the focus is back on Gena Rowlands, who plays Myrtle, the hopelessly alcoholic actress preparing for the opening night of her new play. Ben Gazzara plays the director. Cassavetes is Myrtle's costar in the play. You know, in a lot of ways this myrtle has always felt like an extension of Mabel from a woman under the influence. For me, I think there's a lot there. This is another flawless Rollins performance. You know, Cassavetes was Cassavetes lived hard, fast and full. This included ceaselessly smoking cigarets and drinking alcohol. If Cassavetes wasn't smoking or drinking or both, he was probably sleeping. And even his wife, Gena Rowlands, said she never knew when he slept. So, you know, we don't have to harp on this too much. But Cassavetes was a lifelong drinker, and that ultimately did lead to his death. And his characters were constantly drinking and smoking, and this is really one of the probably the best of his movies that openly acknowledges that abuse of alcohol because alcohol, too. John Cassavetes character is like breathing. You just you have a beer, you have a scotch. It's there, always there. A cigaret is basically like another finger to these people, but it's never given that much attention to where it's going to potentially ruin someone's life. Except in this. And those are my initial thoughts on it. I don't hear a lot of people talking about opening night, which is weird because it's an hour and 44 minutes. It's long, but this is a great movie and Rollins is great. Everyone's great. This is a ride. I love this movie because it was very much felt like a giant emotional roller coaster train wreck for Gena Rowlands because we were really, really feeling her character go through this. But in turn, the havoc that she is wreaking affects everybody. I was so angry. I'm like, Oh my God, you are fucking everything up. And it's so interesting because. Her craft is what is everything to her. She is not a woman who cares about a relationship, she's not a woman who cares about a family. Acting is what she does, and she has lost the reality of this character she's playing and in turn, her own reality. I think there's even a line in it that she says and watching everyone have to deal with her because whatever she does is the trickle effect, everything else. So Ben Gazzara is hilarious to watch. My favorite scene in the whole entire movie is his scene with his wife, and he's just on the phone at 4:00 in the morning trying to talk her down, and his wife is just trying to playfully, like, get his attention. But this is one of the most realistic portrayals I've seen of actors. Yeah, some of the backstage stuff that's going on is exactly what it's like, just the way that certain actors are with certain actors. Like, there's always that one actor that you just love. You're like, Oh, you're doing so great. You're just doing so great. And she's like that with John Tool's character, and I'm like, That's how it is and dealing with the writer dealing with the director. I just I thought it was a very accurate portrayal of what it's like to be an actor in theater. Absolutely. And we're going to venture into spoiler territory here because you have some cool insight into the final scene of this movie when they're performing the opening night that I was not aware of. Yes. So this was they got a bunch of extras and told everyone to come to the theater black tie and no one got paid and no one was sure how many were going to show up. But sure enough, because it was a John Cassavetes project. Everyone kind of came in droves and they had a schedule of performers because they're like, Well, what are we going to do? We can't just have a bunch of extras, sit down and wait for the for us to set up between shots and everything. So they had Fred Draper. He's basically in every single one of John Cassavetes movies. Some of his roles are a little more pronounced than others. He had him go up with a bunch of other actors and entertain the crowd in the final scene of the movie. The big one between Gena Rowlands and John Cassavetes on stage was largely improvised, so it is one of the few times that when you can say a John Cassavetes performance was improvised, it really was. Gena Rowlands had no idea when Cassavetes, like, broke your leg and she or like that whole entire shtick of like the punches and the blocking that was all just the two of them. Ben Gazzara was like, You rehearse that and she was like, No, we did not. Do you think the girl who died was real or not? Yes, I do. I think that is a literal interpretation there. John Cassavetes was a very literal director with the exception of one movie that we're going to come up to. But yeah, I think it was it was real. And you don't. I kind of like the idea that it kind of stemmed in her mind because it was never dealt with. But then again, it makes it more interesting, too, because when she was like, We have to stop and everyone's like, Stop for what? Right? But that also could show that we're not going to bother ourselves. Yeah, it's a very callous world. Yes, it's a few years later, and Cassavetes needs some cash for his next movie. He's gotten, he's gotten go with the studios again. And the studio chief asked Cassavetes to turn around a quick crime thriller script. Cassavetes writes, Gloria in two weeks, delivers it. Columbia loves it and they want to buy it. The catch is they want general and star and her husband to direct. So it's been a while since Cassavetes has done a studio film and he decides what the hell let's go. He jumps in, he takes the big studio money and he gets to make the big studio movie. And the result is a big John Cassavetes studio movie done right. Gloria is fun. It's amazing. It's big, silly. It's a Cassavetes genre movie. This is easily of the films that say, directed by John Cassavetes, his most accessible film, which is why I wanted to make the distinction. This is a Columbia movie. It's not a faces production. Yeah, Gloria rocks this movie. Just fucking did it for me on all levels from the opening Bill Conti music with that weird collage of credits. And then we're introduced to this really awful opening scene of fucking family. It's fucking mowed down and Gena Rowlands is left with this kid. Mm-Hmm. She's caught in the middle all of a sudden as a result because she just wanted coffee in such a specific character that she's playing is this woman of a certain age. But ultimately, she is a no nonsense bad ass in heels. That is kind of the way that I looked at her. She's always dressed, ready to go somewhere nice. But having to do now, the most unsavory things and the dynamic between this kid and her is just one of the most entertaining things to watch. This kid who has no idea. That he's a little boy, he thinks he is a man and what the man says goes. And she does not take that from any man, let alone a kid. And one of my favorite Cassidy's moments in the whole entire thing was when she's trying to tell him to go on the street . And it's just this yes and no, that's all it is. It's like, No, you go. And the kid's like, No, I stay. And but they're stuck. They they actually can't do either. I love when conflict is at its most simple like that. Mm hmm. Yeah. This opens with a pretty for Cassavetes, a pretty violent scene. And again, he wrote that scene just with the intention of selling the script. He never thought he was going to direct this movie. So he asked Columbia, Can I like not shoot that? And they go, No, that sets up the whole plot of the movie. Like, you have to love that he got Buck Henry to play that dad. He could have gotten anyone, but he got Buck Henry. That's great. Jen is a badass and this. I love seeing her with a gun tearing down gangsters. This movie is set in New York, but not in locations most audiences would be familiar with. Its much grittier Cassavetes got real gangsters to consult on the gangster scene, even had a real mob hitman play a real mob hitman movie. And let's be clear about the influence of this movie. You jump ahead 14 years later, and Leon, the professional changes the genders, but it's kind of the same movie. And then Sidney Lumet wholesale remakes this movie in 1999 with Sharon Stone. So this is a genre movie, but an influential one. So we're going to get into the end here. How many movies do we see where the guy always shoots the bad guys and he can't miss and he can't get hit all the time? But here we have a middle aged bad ass woman doing it, and it's awesome. It's not realistic that she's just going into every gangster scenario and coming out alive. And yeah, the ending is so cheesy and big and happy, but it's on purpose. He wanted to give everyone a happy ending. He said, Who cares? Screw it. Let's just do it. Let them win. It's like James Bond, but it's Gloria. I love it. And John Cassavetes, he talks about this a lot. He believes that life is full of joy. You know, love is the primary motivation for all of his stories and what he's kind of after. And in that pursuit is a lot of pain and a lot of trauma and a lot of frustration. And he believes that we need to see people laugh and people have fun and people enjoy themselves because he enjoyed life so much. So when you think of a lot of his endings, there can be assumed that they're very hopeful. Mm-Hmm. This one is very plainly hopeful, but also there is there's a feeling behind it that you're right. Like, it's like, you know, this is just the right way for it to be. I would imagine Cassavetes loved it. Yeah. So finally, we arrive at love streams the great, mostly undiscussed, mostly unseen John Cassavetes film. I had never seen this movie before researching this podcast, and now it's one of my favorite movies of all time. I love everything about love streams real quick in the years between faces and love streams. Cassavetes acting work was mostly focused on making enough money to finance the movies he directed, and with the exception of making, Nick Cassavetes wasn't always in good movies, but I always like seeing him and he was getting paychecks. So performances in Machine Gun McCain Capone, which has been bizarre doing the weird old Capone thing decades before Tom Hardy did. two minute warning. Whose life is it anyway? Which Richard Dreyfuss said he was so messed up on drugs during the making of that movie that he doesn't even remember acting in it? Tempest the Incubus, OK, but it leads to love streams, which is about two people. Robert Harmon, played by Cassavetes and Sarah Lawson, played by Gena Rowlands, living their lives. Their stories and narratives are completely separate in the film until they are gloriously combined and an on screen reunion that is just one of my favorite of all time when they see each other for the first time in this movie. This is a really powerful dream of a movie. Not everything in it is meant to be taken literally, which is rare for Cassavetes. And it's second to me, right behind a woman under the influence as my favorite Cassavetes film. Yeah, it's contained and controlled. In a way, this movie is not handheld. It's all stable. His other movies were handheld, and it was shot in the home that Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands lived in, which is also where faces were shot. I have a lot to say about this movie. I love this movie, so I want your initial thoughts on it before I jump into more of it. I felt like this movie was a big, giant collage of everything he had done beforehand. I think Love Streams is such a great title for the movie for itself, but also when I think about what his legacy of everything was before this. There are little pieces of everything he's done. Earlier in this, but in no way is it replicated, and it is very dreamlike and I liked it, I liked seeing a skit really far from being able to hold on to any type of literal type of narrative like it is like, let us go here. I just thought it was a very, very great story about a strange people estranged from themselves. Mm-Hmm. It's when they come together, they find the closest they can to a sense of self. Well said the main issue with love streams is that it's very hard to find it is never streaming anywhere. It's not in Criterion. Criterion did release a gorgeous Blu ray that contains I would just urge people to blind by this immediately. It has a documentary about the making of love streams where you get to see Cassavetes in action. It has a top ten all time commentary by someone who is on the set every day. It's incredible. But here's why I want you to watch it, and here's what I want you to pay attention to two weeks into filming this movie. John Cassavetes was given five months to live. His drinking had progressed, and he was having liver complications and liver failure. His stomach would balloon up because it would hold so much liquid. The costume designer of love streams did a really good job of hiding that, and I assume Jenna knew, but no one else knew. Not a soul, not Al Rubin, not anyone. And he doesn't tell a soul. Instead, he films and he acts in love streams as if it were the literal final performance of his life. The entire time you're watching this movie? This is a man who thinks he's going to die in a matter of months. This is real life. This is not a movie character. But John Cassavetes does not pause. He does not deter because, goddammit, the show must go on and he doesn't look well in this movie. He's skinny. He's gone. I didn't know that the first time I watched this movie, I figured that out in my research after and I went back and immediately rewatched it. It would be hard for me to hear an argument. I mean this with respect for anyone that says this isn't John Cassavetes best acting performance. This is one of the best acting performances I've ever seen. Knowing especially that he was putting his life on the line to just make this movie and know, Yeah, you're right and I agree with you, I think this is my favorite John Cassavetes acting performance of anything he's ever done. Yeah. All this leads me to say as a way to get into the ending. And this brings me to my overall point about where Cassavetes was in his life. Jenny's character leaves. We observe Cassavetes watching her go. He's watching her car drive off through the window. It's raining outside, he's drinking, he's listening to a record and the camera's outside and slowly pushing in on this window. And we see Cassavetes take off this clown like massive hat he's been wearing, and he just waves at Gena as she leaves, but he's waving at us. And then he walks away. And that is the last time the world sees John Cassavetes on screen and this guy thought he was going to die. And that's as fitting a departure as I could ever imagine. For a monumental screen legend, this is this is my favorite John Cassavetes ending. It's right up there with one of my favorite movie endings of all time, just because everything that was going it into it. So that's an important thing to keep in the context of this. He didn't die five months later. He lived for another five years. But yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? Yeah, it's such a beautiful ending in that way. It's troubling. It's sad. It's in context of the story. But then in in that blurred line between reality, it's very fitting and it definitely makes you look at the legacy that he has. Cassavetes did not pass away after five months. He gave up drinking and smoking, and he lived for another five years. Cassavetes always had at least ten scripts ready to be filmed, and even though he was sick, he still had a ton of energy and he wanted to make John Cassavetes movies. And then there's this movie at Columbia. Starting Peter Falk and Alan Arkin called Big Trouble, and it is indeed in big trouble. It wasn't working out with the original writer director Andrew Bergman. So Foxx calls his old pal John, and asks him if he would take over, and Cassavetes jumped at the chance. He he takes the call on a Friday, and he's on set on Monday, and he's game and he does all of this. He knows what he's doing. He knows what kind of movie this is. It's a big, dumb, broad studio comedy, but he's getting paid half a million dollars and that is more than enough to fund another John Cassavetes faces production movie at this point in his life. John Cassavetes probably wasn't able to act because of his health. You know, he wasn't able to be on screen, but he still could direct. And I, you know, I was a little bummed at first. That Love Streams wasn't his final film, but he's making money to fund another production. He doesn't care that he has, you know, probably a short amount of time to live. He's just working. He's doing the next thing. He's making money to do the next thing. And of course, he didn't get to make the next. He had a tough go of it the final few years in his life, and he died on February third, 1989. The rest of his acting troupe went on. And while we love them all, I'm not sure any of them ever found the same artistic fire as they did with Cassavetes. They all talk about it, and they all say that it was never, ever the same again. Like if you were working with John, like John, Cassavetes has left a legacy of being the actor's director, which he says if there's one thing that he feels like he can do more than anything else, like his gift is that he can get the truth from actors. He knows how to work with them, and everyone who know knew him really well talks about it the last few years of his life, and he never lost that fire. He enjoyed the human behavior, and he lived his life fully even in his last years. And that's a very admirable quality. Yeah, absolutely. That's the filmography, folks. The films by John Cassavetes, the studio films, the faces, production films. There's a lot to dove into and to check out. They clearly mean a lot to us, but before we end here, I want to talk about that troop a little bit specifically, call them out and hear your favorite performance from each. Just real quick, Gena Rowlands. For me, it's Mabel. It's woman under the influence. Yeah, has to be. Even though she's an American treasure, every performance that she's in is astounding, but it's got to go to a woman on the influence. Similarly for Falck, I do a woman under the influence as Nick. Yeah, yeah. Ben Gazzara. I have to go for Chinese bookie. I think he's really great in that. I love Venegas. Ah, and I love his face. I love him. I think favorite band the killing of the Chinese bookie, for sure. Seymour Cosell. I want to dedicate a little extra time to him. Fuckin bizarre. We're definitely collaborators of Cassavetes, but Seymour Cosell was in there from the beginning. He was this loner drifter. He was on set every day for shadows. He helped you had a brief role in two late blues and then he was involved in one way or another, whether he was acting or behind the scenes. And he you watch interviews with him. You know, I'm glad he got to have a good career later in his life. Wes Anderson adopted him and stuff. But if you just know this guy as Max's dad from Rushmore, you got to go back and watch faces many in Moskowitz love streams. This is a really, really great actor who really, really loved John Cassavetes. I mean, he it's when we watch these decades later interviews, it's hard for Seymour to talk about him without crying. I mean, he really, really loved him and really revered him. And I I guess my favorite. I love how menacing he is with the little he does in Chinese bookie, but it must be faces for me. Yeah, I love that character, Chet so much. I yeah, by far faces real quick. We're going to touch on a few more, few more things I want to talk about. We have definitely talked about Cassavetes legacy and influence, and that influence extended over into his own family. Nick Cassavetes, John's son, he's a well-known director. He directed She's So Lovely, which is based on a finished script by his dad, John Q with Denzel Washington, Alpha Dog with Justin Timberlake. But most notably, Nick Cassavetes directed The Notebook costarring his mother, Gena Rowlands, as the old woman telling the story. So maybe there aren't a lot of people who know that, so I just thought that was kind of a fun thing to share. It's a really popular movie, and that's John Cassavetes son also helped write my favorite movie, Blue. He did, indeed, intense guy. Cassavetes also has two daughters who are filmmakers and one of them. Zoe made a really good movie I like with Parker Posey in 2007 called Broken English. I really like that movie great use of M83 in that movie. Also costarring Gena Rowlands wrapping up here. It's not every day that someone has an award named after them, but the independent spirit. John Cassavetes award is given out every year by Film Independent. It's given to a feature film made for less than half a million dollars, and there have been some really notable winners The Blair Witch Project and 99 , the station agent in 2003. That was Tom McCarthy's first movie. He'd later go on to win an Oscar for writing Spotlight Mean Creek in 2004. It's a nasty, little vicious movie. I love it. Krisha in 2015 by the great Trey Edward Schultz, the director of Waves, and a lot of people have been associated with winning this award . Scoot McNairy, Lynn Shelton May she rest in peace. The Safdie Brothers Dee Rees, Ava DuVernay. It's great stuff. It's a who's who of people that have the John Cassavetes point of view. Final thing for John Cassavetes. I want your top three in order. I'll go first. Woman under the influence one love streams two husbands third faces one woman in the influence to killing of a Chinese bookie. three bookie almost was three for me. Honestly, it's really close. I really, really love that movie. But please, people just go check them out. I really urge you to watch them in order. Feel free to skip to late. Lose a child is waiting in big trouble. They don't have that signature Cassavetes stamp. There were two studio controlled, but you watched those other movies and you're in for. You're going to learn something. They may not be easy to watch. In fact, they aren't really easy to watch, but you're going to learn. And if you are willing to dove in and pick up a book about Cassavetes or watch some of the special features, you're going to learn about how to make an indie film, you just are so. That is what I leave everyone with in regards to John Cassavetes. I love the man. He's my favorite director, and I urge everyone to check out some of his work is going to. You are going to learn something about yourself with each movie, and it might not be comfortable. It's certainly not going to be fun, but you are going to learn something about you, about film, about its different mode for experiencing life, I think is a really great way to put it. I'll just end with a quote. And this was a quote that starts the documentary cast and forged, and it does not say who it is. So I do not know it might be from John Cassavetes himself, but I feel like this sums it up. But first, you will see the wilderness and give it your own meaning, he said. It will proceed your heart and will continue afterward. No, this above all, what you save in the lightning will last pure forever. Amen. Rest in peace, John Cassavetes. I already told you next time I visit L.A., we're going to go pay our respects. Yeah. You know, here we are. What are you watching? Give the folks something to watch. I'm staying on brands, and I've already mentioned it a few times, but I really can't mentioned enough constant forge documentary. If you are going to dove into John Cassavetes work the box set by Criterion five films its shadows faces woman in the influence killing of a Chinese bookie and opening night. So it's not all of them. But those are the ones that gives you the special features alone are worth the price. So much of what we have taken in this podcast has been from those. It is a part of the Shadows. Special feature section is three and a half hour documentary. It's excellent. It has everything you could ever possibly want to know about the joy and the magic of John Cassavetes. Great recommendation. I am going to end on something a bit of a risk. We've done a few episodes of this now. If we have dedicated listeners, I hope they will extend me a little leeway. If you're new to the podcast, I promise we don't do this every time. I am recommending a short film called I'm Alive, which was released in 2019 and directed by myself and starring you. I'm specifically recommending this because I cut my film into five distinct chapters. In each chapter, I gave myself rules that I wasn't allowed to break. And those rules, for instance, in chapter one, the rule was the camera cannot move. It is stationary. I'm allowed to cut once into a close up. That's it. And with these rules, I had filmmakers that I was using as an influence. The final chapter of I'm Life, which involves you and the great Mickey Andre in a crazy, long argument, was inspired verbatim from Cassavetes. He was in my head the whole time I did it, and we shot it like Cassavetes because here's how he shot he they didn't rehearse blocking or anything. I don't like to do that either, so we shot it and it's a long argument. We shot it all the way through and we made mistakes. You guys made mistakes. I made mistakes in movement. There were camera bumps, but then we kind of learned this like dance together to where I can move because I was operating the camera and I moved around you. It was still shaky. I wanted it to look shaky on purpose. But by Take four, which is a take I used in the movie, I knew where you guys were mostly going to go and where I was mostly going to go. There's still room for the dance, the unexpected. You know, you move your foot this way. And that all came through in a way that I never could have imagined. And you and I've talked about this personally. But when you when I was editing that, I knew I was going to have to cut into the argument. I cut to a flashback of you, but I could only use stuff from that one take. And when I'm editing it, I'm focusing on your performance. You're the star of the movie, so I have to focus on how good you're selling this. This is the end of the movie. And then when I found out when I was doing it, when I was editing, is that fucking Mickey Andre is killing it and doing shit that I could have never written, never directed and flatly embarrassingly didn't even notice while we were filming on the day. And I put on take four of her and I started sobbing and I just went, This is I like Cassavetes movies. People don't make a lot of money on my movies, you know? She certainly didn't. And to know that I'm paying like the very least amount for exceptional work, it's just it's so inspiring to me, and I've talked with Mickey a little bit about this and she said all that stuff, that extra stuff she was doing, brushing her hands through her head, swiping away at your hand, you know, resting, sighing. She she told me this that that was born from the kind of freedom of the way that I was directing it, that I wasn't saying, you know, take a breath there, pause there, move there. And I learned that from Cassavetes. The character is yours. Do with it what you want. So I'm, you know, again, I'm not going to recommend our movies a lot. I haven't done it yet. It's not going to be a common thing. But if you do want to see a John Cassavetes influence on the two people you're listening to, you can go check out I'm alive and Alex with her dot com. It's only 30 minutes and it's a tough set like a lot of John Cassavetes movies are. I didn't make an entertaining movie I made. I wanted to make one, too, where I could express myself and a lot of muck and pain and rust and bone of life that I was going through. And you're really good at it. So go check it out, everyone. And that's awesome. And I'm so glad you said all that and that it speaks to exactly what John Cassavetes says. Know who you are. Own it. Yeah. And do it and go for it and fuck everything else. Amen. We leave you with that. This has been a long one. It's been a great one. I haven't been this excited to watch movies or talk about movies in a really long time, and this was just a fucking blast. I hope everyone stuck with us and had fun listening to us. Please go check out John Cassavetes movies and let us know what you think. What are you watching? Podcast at gmail.com? Thanks for listening and happy watching. Hey, everyone, thanks again for listening. You can check out my flicks and my movie blog at Alex Withrow dot com. Nicholas Dostal dot com is where you find all of Nick's film work. Nicholas Ali does the music for our show. I've made a few music videos with Nick. He's a great guy and we love his tunes. Big. Thank you to him. Do you have any questions or comments? Please email us at What are you watching? Podcast at gmail.com. Next time, we're going to dove into the little seen masterwork Mikey and Nicky, starring Cassavetes and folk. Written and directed by Elaine May. It's a wild ride. Stay tuned.