John Cassavetes - C or D

i love that cassavetes' favorite director was frank capra.

Big Trouble playing this weekend in NYC. I'll finally cover the Falk-Arkin diptych.

Just read the Ray Carney BFI monograph on Shadows, after watching the movie for the first time. Carney confirms what Tracer Hand said way upthread and a lifetime ago, that the second, longer version (the one that's in circulation today) was almost entirely scripted, although the film did initially have its roots in an improvisation.

I like the fact that Cassavetes would constantly rework his movies, so that a number of them - Shadows, Chinese Bookie, Husbands - exist (or existed) in markedly different versions, because the films themselves often give off the sense that they're as much about process and play as they are about arriving at any kind of fixed, permanent statement or narrative. Flux cinema.

Big Trouble might be the worst movie I've ever seen by a director I otherwise love.

well even ppl who like it agree it's only partly "his"

http://www.avclub.com/article/my-year-of-flops-case-file-37-ibig-troublei-14928

Yale-pajamas!

last half hour of Big Trouble in partic is an unholy mess, but early peaks of Arkin's "sardine liqueur" take and Falk "heart attack" in drug store are LOL.

"Shadows" June 15th at Nat. gallery of Art in DC

Finally saw Love Streams.

I've undoubtedly had my expectations inflated by the years of the film's inaccessibility and its status as the last real Cassavetes film, going into this unable to accept anything less than an flat-out masterpiece. The shift towards surrealism in the final act were startling, to say the least, but I'm not sure how successful they are--Rowlands's joke-shop pranks on her family are every bit as hilarious/sad/unhinged as her on-stage breakdown from Opening Night, but the ballet sequence feels like a bit of an overreach, and the dog/man bit towards the very end (an in-joke stemming from the director's staging of the source play, the Criterion essay informs) is a bit of Bunelian whimsy that doesn't quite work. Other attempts at symbolism are outright ham fisted--Rowlands literally travelling around with too much baggage feels like a rookie's touch, not a veteran's. I also thought Cassavetes offering his eight-year-old son a beer put too fine a point on the scuzziness of the character; his later abandonment of the child in a Vegas hotel room felt more like something the character would do (negligence, rather than willful corruption).

There's still a lot that's great here, though: I think Rowlands was supported by stronger scripts in both A Woman Under the Influence and Opening Night, but no one ever offered her better roles than her husband (Minnie and Moskowitz needs to become available next), and any moment she's on screen here is captivating. The minor character of the lounge singer's mother was a nice touch; I don't know that Cassavetes's work was intended as a diagnosis own generation as broken and rudderless, but the occasional inability of his characters to comprehend the ambitions and responsibilities of of the younger generation emerges as a subtle thread (see also, Faces). The presence of children in the film--one unwanted by his parent, another rejecting the emotional neediness of hers--probably alludes to enough of a backstory for the two main characters that we don't need the script to fill in the details of how they got to where they are.

OK, I'm liking the film better already...

Minnie and Moskowitz is available as a Region 2 DVD:

http://www.mrbongo.com/products/minnie-moskowitz-1971

nice review, crypto. I watched the Criterion edition. The continuity in places is still baffling, and in eight places out of ten Cassavetes will put the camera in the wrong spot.

Thanks!

The film has been lingering in my mind quite a bit since I watched it last week, my initial objections feeling less and less relevant.

I'm still thinking about it

Those kids in Love Streams are pretty terrible actors.

Late JC just makes me think of that story of Bette Davis stomping out of a Broadway rehearsal of Night of the Iguana, screaming "I'm sick of this Method SHIT!"

what is the point of that ballet/opera dream sequence, when the camera is miles away from anything interesting?

I was unsurprised to learn that JC threw out the last third of the play script... a shame he didn't replace it with anything, perhaps.

(Diahnne Abbott looking lovely in the CC supplementary interview btw)

Lots of LS is pretty terrible.

love streams is really hard to get through, but im glad he made it. godbless cannon films.

the kid slamming his head against the door til it bleeds!

i think minnie and moskowitz is a really special, magical film. wish it was held in better regard. also his son stole a lot of it for the notebook!

Trying to to reconcile the first and last halves of that post.

he stole it from a notebook -- presto!

ok i was being hyperbolic when i said he "stole" a lot of it, but in a way the notebook can be looked at as the story of john and gena and so can m & m.

Saw Gloria for the first time, beautiful 35mm print (intro'd by the guy who wrote that City on Fire novel). Great Rowlands, and goofy genre wears better than the late-era endless improv stuff of Love Streams et al.

Lots of NYC street scene madeleines from the summer of '79, oh man.

Garth Risk Hallberg suggested after the screening that Gena's squalling 6-year-old co-star could've been an inspiration for the dancing dwarf of Twin Peaks.

http://www.filmlinc.org/page/-/uploads/comment/archives2010/marapr/gloria.png

i do not enjoy gloria.

Haven't seen this one either. Figure its gotta be better than Big Trouble, though.

just saw The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and when I was walking out of the theater I heard some guy say "it was great...I gave up on following the plot, though."

...

entirely fair assessment

sorry, he said "i gave up on trying to follow the plot." dude it's the title of the movie

it was the 108 minute cut... i'd like to see the longer one, what are the differences besides the strip club routines?

i don't know bcz i think i've only seen the extended (original) one.

Andrew Bujalski seems surrealism in Opening Night

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5876-john-cassavetes-underrated-surrealist

i watched "minnie & moskowitz" having never seen another cassevetes(-directed) movie before. i think i enjoyed it but also had one of those "the past is a foreign country" things that i sometimes have with '70s independent movies where not only are the decor and fashion and street scenes so different from how things are now, the people don't behave or talk like any person i've ever met. from what i know about cassavetes movies, the constant yelling and anger and fucked-up relationships seem to be more about him than about actual human behavior, i'm guessing? anyways, the acting was all good, i loved the bit with timothy carey accosting cassel in the diner near the beginning and the monologue by the loser who takes gena on the lunch date, and the scene near the end with the two moms was funny.

I think two things are simultaneously true: 1. people talked differently in the '70s and 2. the way people confront each other and the general rhythm of human interactions in Cassavetes films is very much a product of JC's imagination.

That Dick Cavett Show segment when he goes on to promote Husbands with Gazzara and Falk seems to me like JC attempting to bring a little of his movie reality into actual reality (or whatever you call a TV talk show). And the results are kind of awkward.

I just noticed Mazursky's Tempest in on Criterion.. I might check it out tonite, it's been years since I've seen it

Haven't seen M&M yet (soon), but I did just watch Martin Ritt's Edge of the City, with JC and Sidney Poitier in a mildly homoerotic spin on On the Waterfront. On Criterion til the end of the month, and recommended.

Tempest is a time capsule, man.

the constant yelling

That just overwhelmed everything else in Minnie & Moskowitz for me--if there was anything good in there, it was drowned out by the constant yelling.

The constant yelling in M&M vs the constant laughing in Faces

Well, Tempest was a bloated, aimless mess but still a pretty fun watch. I thought I'd seen it before and remembered it all being on the Greek island, but at least half of it is in NYC and Atlantic City. Acting is great, but as a romantic comedy it fails on both fronts, so I'm not sure how to classify it.
A film that cost $13 million and did $5 million at the box office, and you can see why.

there was almost as much yelling as laughing in Faces

and no acting

:)

I prefer Bugs Bunny’s performance of “I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair.”

Go watch Deathdream if you'd like to see the lead husband + wife play husband + wife in a much better movie.

I thought Shadows and Too Late Blues were really interesting snapshots of the late 50s-early 60s. but have not been sure I've liked Cassavetes’ films in general

thought Husbands was a real improvement in cinematography from his earlier films, but there is just so much toxic masculinity in it that it is repulsive to me

“You’re inscrutable!”

I think I'd find those characters just as exhausting if they were having an enlightened discussion on The Female Eunuch.

from the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually still alive:

Saw a Happy Birthday Mom from Zoe Cassavetes on Twitter recently, and lo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gena_Rowlands Didn't know she was active that long, or that she was in 10 of John's movies (or possibly problematic re some of them later)

― dow, Sunday, June 20, 2021 3:33 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

was thinking of her anyway, having seen her four Alfred Hitchcock performances, one on Presents, three on Hour.

― dow, Sunday, June 20, 2021 Wonder if she did any harm w changes in those JC prints? I always enjoy her acting anyway.