John Cassavetes
Godfather of Independent Film
John Cassavetes: Early Life and Education
•Born December 9, 1929 in NYC
•As a young child moved with his immigrant parents back to Greece and moved back to NY at age 7
•Graduated high school; spent one year at Colgate University
•Transferred to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts
Cassavetes: Acting Career
•1950: Began acting career in theatre and television
•Embraced Improvisational Acting Techniques
•It was at one of these workshops that Cassavetes created characters and conflicts that would be at the core of Shadows
Shadows (1959)
•Cassavetes’ Directorial Debut
•A film about interracial relations during the Beat Generation years in New York City.
•Synopsis: At a party, Leila, a young African-American girl with a light complexion, meets Tony, a somewhat young and inexperienced musician at a party. They begin a romance. Leila thinks she’s in love, but Tony is surprised when he meets Leila’s older brother and realizes she’s black…
Shadows:
A True Independent Film
ENTREPRENEURIAL STYLE:
1.Cassavetes financed Shadows with his paychecks from Hollywood
2.Cassavetes made the film with a cast and crew of novice actors from his drama workshop
Shadows:
A True Independent Film
INDIE STYLE OF FILMMAKING
1.Compelling, quirkily complex characters; use of non-professional actors, shoestring budgets; non-formulaic stories
2.Unlike anything audiences had seen before: raw, kinetic, jazz-scored dispatch from Bohemian New York that was frank about sex, progressive on race, and intoxicated with youth.
Shadows:
A True Independent Film
3. Shot with a cast and crew of volunteers on the streets of New York in 16mm.
4. The film did not get commercial distribution but for Cassavetes commercial success wasn’t a yardstick
Shadows:
A True Independent Film
“We were working for the fun of doing something we wanted to do. It was more important to work creatively than to make money. We would never have been able to finish if all the people who participated in the film hadn’t discovered one fundamental thing: that being an artist is nothing other than the desire, the insane wish to express yourself completely, creatively.
-John Cassavetes
After Shadows
•After Shadows, Cassavetes moved to California and continued acting and writing.
1.Devil’s Angels (1967)
2.Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
3.The Dirty Dozen (1967)
•Cassavetes worked in television but found the work depressing. He wanted to go back to his DIY roots to make another film like Shadows.
Faces: Cassavetes 2nd Film
1.Funded out of Cassavetes’ own pocket
2.Shot over a six month period largely in his home, it would take another three years of sporadic editing before Faces would finally be released in 1968.
3.Faces shared many similarities with Shadows but the film landscape had changed: 1960s filmgoers were more sophisticated through exposure to European “Art” films, thus Faces was better received by audiences.
Faces: Cassavetes 2nd Film
Faces was a more accomplished than Shadows
It garnered Oscar Nominations for:
1.Best Original Screenplay
2.Best Supporting Actress
3.Best Supporting Actor
Faces (1968)
•Synopsis: Chronicles one night in the failing marriage of an upper middle class, middle-aged couple as they go their separate ways for a night on the town. Desperately searching for pleasure and escape, they are instead forced – at every turn – to confront what their lives have become
Impact of Faces
Faces relaunched Cassavetes Career
Instead of cashing in, Cassavetes continued to work, mostly outside the mainstream Hollywood system. His films include:
Husbands (1971)
A Woman Under the Influence (1974)
Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976)
John Cassavetes 1929-1989
John Cassavetes continued to write and direct in the 1980s but his dependence on alcohol diluted his output.
After years of illness, Cassavetes died on Feb 3, 1989 of liver disease. He was 59.
John Cassavetes’ Legacy
Shadows and Faces not only anticipated such films as Mean Streets, Stranger than Paradise, She’s Gotta Have It, Slacker and countless others, but it helped them into being.
As Martin Scorsese noted,
“After Shadows there were no more excuses for aspiring filmmakers. If he [John Cassavetes] could do it, so could we!”
John Cassavetes: Godfather of Independent Film
Both Cassavetes’ son Nick and daugher Zoe have become Indpendent Filmmakers in their own right…
But then all American directors who have maxed out credit cards, ‘stolen’ location shots, begged favors from friends and family members, and otherwise bucked the system to bring their vision to the screen can rightly be said to be the sons and daughters of John Cassavetes
A Woman Under the Influence
Written and Directed by John Cassavetes
Starring Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk
A Woman Under the Influence was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” It was one of the first fifty films to be so honored
A Woman Under the Influence
Synopsis: Focuses on a woman (Gena Rowlands) whose unusual behavior leads her husband (Peter Falk) to commit her for psychiatric treatment and the affect this has on their family.
“The characters are larger than life and their loves and rages, their fights and moments of tenderness, exist at exhausting levels of emotion… Cassavetes is strongest as a writer/filmmaker creating specific characters and then sticking with them through long, painful scenes…”