John Cassavetes - C or D

I'm 49. Maybe when I'm 58, I'll be ready to appreciate A Woman Under the Influence.

i reacted to 'woman under the influence' more or less the same way clemenza did -- i liked a few of the scenes a lot but it was a grueling watch, and not really in a rewarding way (at least not for me). i do love 'shadows,' at least, and 'gloria' is entertainingly weird and offbeat.

Apologies to *tera for getting a little snippy, especially as you took the time to write a thoughtful comment. I do disagree, though: I think I would have been much more impressed by A Woman Under the Influence when I was much younger and more liable to think I was seeing something honest and raw and important.

I just feel that a photo, painting, book, song, film, a place, even memories to a point are always in a state of flux because we are. I just think people are constantly changing and so our pov won't always be exactly the same.

When I said that, "the more experience a person has in life, with relationships, people, the more they may take away from his films, appreciate them, get them." I was using may as in might or expressing the possibility. What a person takes away is completely personal. This is just what I think simply because it is how I have felt and how my small circle of Cassavetes watching friends have felt.

When I posted my comment I had no yet read yours, so I was not replying or implying anything intentionally.

I've watched four Cassavetes films; can't stand them, unfortunately.

I unreservedly have loved every Cassavetes film I have watched. A Woman Under the Influence was special for me since I work around many of the men he depicts. His working class are very honest from my perspective. The Killing Of A Chinese Bookie is flawless as well. But I am rarely critical of most films I watch. Film is the one medium I turn my brain off and just enjoy where the director wants to take me.

Faces tonight. I want to see as much as I can while I have the chance, but I know after two films this will not be easy.

I found the first half excruciating. John Marley's good, but his friend (Gena Rowlands' father in A Woman) is unbearable. When Seymour Cassel showed up, I thought it got better--there was some amusing banter between the women, Lynn Carlin's suicide attempt was convincing, and the ending was quite good. (Being quiet, it's good by default.) If you know Cassel as kindly old Mr. Fischer from Rushmore, it's almost impossible at first to get your head around the idea of him as a virile swinger. But Cassel makes it work.

I appreciate the defenses of Cassavetes above. I can see where his influence is all over some of my favourite films--watching Faces, I was thinking of Goin' Down the Road especially. I can where he was a mentor to Scorsese. I guess I need all the things that Cassavetes leaves out of his films, starting with the idea that there's always a good time to cut a scene and move onto the next one.

Rowlands was on hand again tonight, and she got a standing ovation before the film. I don't begrudge her that.

I agree, Jacob. I had a great RTF professor who said that was the way to watch a film.

Cassel once came to present Cassavetes films at UT. After the movie a few of us got to hang out with him, had some drinks. All he did was talk about being at some porno awards show in Vegas the week before. I had a similar experience when I hung out with Jerry Cole. Disappointing at the time but in retrospect, fun nights nonetheless.

I thought Shadows held up pretty well, its handling of race especially. Cassavetes' improvisations are more on point than his scripted material. I really liked Lelia Goldoni, and when I started reading up on her later, I was surprised to find out that was her in Phil Kaufman's Body Snatchers remake. (She was also in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore--no recollection.)

I'm going to skip A Child Is Waiting and Too Late Blues, and stick to the '70s stuff. So I've got Husbands, Minnie and Moskowitz (which I now think I've seen), Chinese Bookie, and Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky left. Haven't made up my mind on Opening Night or Gloria.

This is an argument for another thread, but before the film, I heard a guy say to the curator that he thought Faces was "brutal" and "brilliant," and that he "could never watch it again." I see this guy at screenings all the time, and have heard him hold court before--yes, I've arrived at some thoroughly groundless opinions about him already. Anyway, I agree with two out of the three things I've quoted. But "brilliant" and "I could never watch it again" are incompatible to me. If I think something's brilliant, I want to see it again. If I don't want to see something again, there's no way I think it's brilliant. To me, that's just somebody who's afraid to question a film's reputation.

Kael's review of Husbands is brutal and, I'd say, spot on--she wrote that she would have kept cutting till she got it down to 20 minutes, and I'm not sure I'd keep much more. I agree with Joe way, way upthread that Cassavetes' endings are great. Ditto how he renders opening credits. In between, another ordeal. There was a young British actress right near the end who caught my eye--not the two from the first group of three, but the mod-looking girl in the second group of three. And, again, some of the location shooting had a great look. But whenever the three principals start up, it's like an SCTV parody of the Rat Pack directed by Warhol. We all got a free ticket because the sound went down for 10 minutes, so that was good.

It sounds like you're getting diminishing results with the man. Shouldn't you do a cost-benefit analysis and blow off the remaining screenings?

It seems crazy, I know...As I mentioned before, it's an education to see the blueprint for stuff that will later turn up in movies I love. I made it through Out 1 once, so as heavy lifting goes, Cassavetes is comparatively easy.

SCTV huh?

That's right, you're Canadian?

thought Faces was "brutal" and "brilliant," and that he "could never watch it again."

I wanted to watch it again right away. To each his own I guess.

It's very sad that someone like me who would die to watch these Cassavettes movies on the big screen, instead has to read someone else take the directors seat with him.

I know....

Yes, Canadian. Wanting to watch Facesright away again if you think it's brilliant makes perfect sense to me--it was the contradiction I didn't understand.

I like posting on certain things as I wade through them, but I do feel a little bad dumping on these films so relentlessly. I've tried to point out what I've liked, which admittedly is not much. JacobSanders has me feeling extra guilty! If it balances things out a bit, Rosemary's Baby is also part of the series, and that's one of my three favourite films ever.

is 'mikey and nicky' part of this series? definitely see that one if you haven't (i think elaine may did JC better than JC himself did)

Never been fond of Kael. I really liked how SCTV depicted film critics: The Farm Film Report, “Blow up real good.”

Love Rosemary's Baby, everything about it.

11:24 11:25

i like kael's writing but sometimes i resent the way her opinions have come to dominate certain types of film discussions.

cassavetes' performance in 'rosemary's baby' is amazing. it'd probably be in my top 20 movies, too.

I don't see how you can avoid reading her on Cassavetes; it's like overlooking Nabokov on Tolstoy or Austen, or James Wood on Joseph Roth.

He IS terrific in RB, all shifty-eyed narcissism.

i've never really read kael, & didn't know her at all before reading carney's cassavetes on cassavetes; i just came out with the impression that she was single-handedly responsible for the films' poor reception & p much for killing cassavetes

Strangely enough, Kael wrote about running into Cassavetes somewhere once, having him mock-strangle her or something and pick her up off the ground, and that she knew they'd be friends after that. I may be conflating the details with a Renoir story of hers.

Mickey and Nicky, Rosemary's Baby, and The Dirty Dozen are the three actor-only inclusions in the series. I wish they'd added The Fury, too.

Vaasa eyes, I mean Cassavetes and company picked her up off the ground and said "Love ya, Pauline!" is the version I heard

That first was spell check correction of his name

The Fury's greatness doesn't exactly lie in JC's performance.

He's very good in Rosemary's Baby, but you could say the same thing about his performance in that; I'd hardly put it first on my list of things I love about the film. His role is key in The Fury, and his Farm Film Report score (xpost) is off the chart.

It's like reading a critic writing about Cassavetes.

I liked him in the little seen Mazursky movie Tempest (Molly Ringwald's debut).

I got a hold of Johnny Staccato and love him in that short lived series.

...and yes, GREAT in the Tempest!

i was just gonna say he was good in tempest

Maybe it is finally time for this thread to take off: TS Seymour Cassel vs Lou Castel

I like Husbands OK, esp that Falk monologue that ends w/ "Badminton, that's a helluva game."

I thought of The Tempest too. I haven't seen it, but those five films would seem to have the acting end of it covered, Incubus notwithstanding. (When the three of them start shooting hoops in the gym, I got the definite feeling that Cassavetes and Falk were pretty decent players.)

Peter Falk is great in Husbands.

Am I the only one who sings "Panic In Detroit" with the words "looks a lot like Ben Gazzara"?

^^^ yes

Ben Gazzara and Debussy to a disco beat.

Never can figure out what the next line should be.

Chinese Bookie and Faces are probably my faves.

Cassavetes' improvisations are more on point than his scripted material.

We have have discussed this upthread but it's not true that Shadows was improvised. The title card that says so is pure self-mythologizing. I can't remember who said it but one of the actors was like "No way could I come up with lines like that on my own."

Bookie (Short Version), Opening Night and Love Streams are the ones I go back to most

Mikey and Nicky was impressive. I mean, not the third best film of the decade, which I think is where Stanley Kauffmann once ranked it, but for me it's been the best thing in the series so far. Parts of it felt cribbed from Mean Streets, but May supposedly wrote a version of the script as far back as 1954, so maybe not. Joyce Van Patten was great in her one scene as Nicky's wife. M. Emmet Walsh as the bus driver was amusing. Kind of amazing to think that it was directed by a woman in 1976. I've got to see A New Leaf.

A couple of more posts, and I will leave Cassavetes and this thread in peace. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie tonight, and I thought it was good. Slow, but without the interminable scenes and the occasional hysteria of some of the others. Good character study. I got the feeling that, after being battered around by Kael and Simon and some others, Gazzara was there as a surrogate for Cassavetes: beseiged on all sides, but trying to keep everything together and do right by his unorthodox extended family. Tim Carey was typically weird; Azizi Johari, whose name I shouldn't know but do, was good too, but enough about my bilious private life. James Quandt, who programs a lot of what the Cinematheque shows, was in front of us, and I heard him say this before the film started (I'm an inveterate eavesdropper): "I have a problem with his so-called purchase on reality." That killed me.

It's very sad that someone like me who would die to watch these Cassavettes movies on the big screen, instead has to read someone else take the directors seat with him.

I read that line earlier from JacobSanders, but quickly and didn't get the full gist of it. Good putdown, but...aren't you essentially taking the director's seat anytime you criticize a film? Earlier in the thread you wrote this: "But I am rarely critical of most films I watch. Film is the one medium I turn my brain off and just enjoy where the director wants to take me." I don't have a problem with anyone who feels that way, but the idea of just accepting whatever a director wants to give me is completely foreign to me.

i think too much has been made of cassavetes' "realism" without realizing the lengths he goes to to present a completely subjective emotional presentation ... the repetitions and tedium, the small, murmured lines and confessions, outbursts and epiphanies ... these define the shape of emotional life.

"present presentation" ... now I'm caught in it