Biography
Cassavetes was born in New York City to Nicholas John Cassavetes and Katherine Demetri, both of whom were Greek immigrants. He grew up on Long Island, New York and attended high school at Blair Academy in New Jersey before moving to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. On graduation in 1950, he continued acting in the theater. By 1953, he was doing small parts in films; he continued to play a James Dean-like "juvenile delinquent" throughout the 1950s. Cassavetes also acted on television, which was still finding its feet as a medium. His experience working within television's budgetary and schedule limits influenced his later film production style.
NOTE: Cassavetes did not, as is often reported, attend Colgate University. (See Raymond Carney's collection of interviews Cassavetes on Cassvetes)
Early films and acting
During this time he met and married actress Gena Rowlands, a fellow television actor, who was a year younger than he was. By 1956 Cassavetes had begun teaching method acting in workshops in New York City. An improvisation exercise in one workshop inspired the idea for his writing and directorial debut, Shadows (1959). Cassavetes raised the funds for production from friends and family, as well as listeners to a late-night radio talk show.
Cassavetes was unable to get American distributors to carry Shadows, so he took it to Europe, where it won the Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival. European distributors later released the movie in the United States as an import.
Although the viewership of Shadows in the United States was slight, it did gain attention from the Hollywood studios. Cassavetes directed two movies for Hollywood in the early 1960s — Too Late Blues and A Child is Waiting — but the experience was exasperating. The intervention of the studios, the lack of creative control, and the over-all dumbing down of his work was unbearable. Cassavetes refused to go through the process again.
His strategy, brought on by necessity, was to work as an actor in mainstream movies, and channel the funds he made there into his work as a director. He didn't just clockwatch as an actor, though; he did masterful work in blockbuster hits of the late 1960s, including a short fuse army prisoner in the World War II epic The Dirty Dozen (1967) — for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor — and in arguably his most famous onscreen role as Guy Woodhouse, Mia Farrow's struggling actor husband, who redefines what it means to sell out in Roman Polanski's classy thriller Rosemary's Baby (1968). He also turned in stellar work as a sinister nemesis to Kirk Douglas in the CIA thriller The Fury (1978), which provided one of the genre's most unforgettable demises of a villain.
His next independent film was Faces, which lay down new themes for later work. Starring Cassavetes's wife Rowlands, Faces depicted a contemporary suburban marriage in the process of slow disintegration, with the accompanying desperate and degrading sexual improprieties. Cassavetes held an unflinching camera on the pettiness and emotional greed of the distancing husband and wife and their lovers, but in the end the pathos of their story gives them an unexpected dignity. Faces was a critical and financial success, nominated for two Academy Awards (Best Supporting Actor and Actress).
After Faces Cassavetes could concentrate more fully on his directorial work. He had enough leverage at this point that he could make movies in the studio system, yet retain full creative control. Husbands (1970) starred Cassavetes himself, with Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara. They play a trio of men escaping their marriages for minor peccadillos. Another in the 1970s include Minnie and Moskowitz, about a misdirected young woman seeking love, and starring Rowlands again with a small part for Cassavetes's mother, Katherine.
Cassavetes was a good friend and mentor of director Martin Scorsese, who was an impressionable young man just getting his start in the film industry. Scorsese worked with Cassavetes on Minnie and Moskowitz. He would also help develop the idea of The Killing of a Chinese Bookie with Cassavetes.
1970s masterpieces
His three masterpieces, made in the late 1970s, were produced independently. A Woman Under the Influence (1974) stars Rowlands as an increasingly eccentric housewife trying to keep her hold on reality. Playing her husband, Peter Falk tries to retain a facade of normality but ultimately decides to commit her to a mental institution. The characters were nuanced and the ethical dilemmas were sensitively calibrated. The wife's behavior, while disturbing and disconcerting for those around her, is not obviously dangerous or unstable. Rowlands was an expert collaborator in the story, playing Mabel with subtlety and energy. She received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, while Cassavetes was nominated for Best Director.
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976) was a movie about the experience of men as much as Influence was about women. Ben Gazzara plays Cosmo Vitelli, a small-time strip-club owner with an out-of-control gambling habit, who is convinced by mobsters to commit a murder to pay off his debt. Driven by fear and uncertainty, Vitelli deceives friend and foe alike. Author Christos Tsiolkas said of Bookie that it showed "being a man means knowing gutlessness better than knowing courage, that failure stays with you long after success."
Finally Opening Night (1977) reflected upon acting itself. Once again Gena Rowlands was the lead actress along with Cassavetes, Ben Gazzara, and, in one of her last films, Joan Blondell. Rowlands portrays an aging former film star named Myrtle Gordon who is limited to work in the theater and who undergoes a personal crisis. Alone and unloved by her colleagues, in fear of her age, and always at a remove from others on account of her stardom, she succumbs to alcohol and hallucinations after she witnesses the accidental death of a young fan. Ultimately she succeeds to break free by fighting her personal demons on stage, delivering the performance of her life in a play. Some time after the movie was completed, critics stated that Cassavetes had made this movie because he might have experienced the range of emotions that Rowlands' character would depict. According to Laurence Gavron, Cassavetes worked on the screenplay for several years, endlessly refining and altering it. Unfortunately the production turned out to be a disaster, costing more than 1 1/2 million dollars of loaned money and taking more than one year to complete. The first cut was more than five hours long and only one copy of the final version was released in the U.S.
Late career and death
Cassavetes continued to work through the 1980s, although personal troubles with alcohol were beginning to take their toll. Gloria (1980) is a more conventional thriller starring Rowlands as a mob moll who runs off with a young boy orphaned by the mob and soon to be next. Love Streams (1984) starred Cassavetes as an aging lothario who suffers the overbearing affection of his recently divorced sister. Sadly, Cassavetes's last movie, Big Trouble (1986), was a last-minute project picked up as a favor when a younger director friend peremptorily quit the project. The movie, wracked by incompatible studio and director edits, was, in Cassavetes' words, "a disaster". Already ill, he was heartbroken that it would be the last film he would do.
Cassavetes's personality was overpowering and driven. He lived to make film, and sacrificed his colleagues and himself to the process. The intense effort took its toll; a long-time alcoholic, Cassavetes died from cirrhosis of the liver in 1989 at the age of only 59. He was survived by Rowlands, who has continued to work as an actor, and three children. His son, Nick Cassavetes, followed in his father's footsteps as an actor (Face/Off, Life) and director, and made 1997's She's So Lovely from the elder Cassavetes's screenplay; he also directed 2004's The Notebook.
A Note On Improvisation
The role of improvisation in Cassavetes films is frequently misunderstood. His films were - with the exception of the original version of Shadows - heavily scripted. Confusion arises in part because Cassavetes allowed actors to bring their own interpretations of characters to their performances. Performances were scripted, but delivery was not. Cassavetes was also willing to revise the script if he saw an actor taking a character in a different direction.
Tributes
Fugazi, a rock music group who shared Cassavetes' independently-minded aesthetic, titled a song after the filmaker on their 1993 In on the Kill Taker album. Lyrics include: "Complete control for Cassavetes/If it's not for sale you can't buy it".
The feminist punk rock band Le Tigre also wrote a tribute (of sorts) to the filmmaker called “What’s yr take on Cassavetes?” which appeared on their debut, self-titled album. The lyrics mostly consist of a rotating list of possible answers to the question posed by the title of the song, and those answers include Misogynist, Genius, Alcoholic, and Messiah.
In September 2004, The Criterion Collection produced a set of his five most well known films: Shadows, Faces, A Woman Under The Influence, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and Opening Night. Also featured in the set is a documentary about the life and works of Cassavetes called A Constant Forge along with a booklet featuring critical assessments of the director's work, along with tributes by old friends.
Cassavetes is also the subject of several books about the actor-filmmaker's life. Perhaps the most comprehensive of the collection is a book called Cassavetes on Cassavetes, which is a collection of interviews collected or conducted by film historian Ray Carney, in which the late filmmaker recalls his experiences, influences and outlook in the film industry. In the Oscar 2005 edition of Vanity Fair magazine, one of the articles features a tribute to Cassavetes with three members of his stock company: wife and actress Gena Rowlands, actors Ben Gazzara and Peter Falk.
Selected filmography
As Director
Shadows (1959)
Too Late Blues (1961)
A Child Is Waiting (1963)
Faces (1968)
Husbands (1970)
Minnie and Moskowitz (1971)
A Woman Under the Influence (1974)
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976)
Opening Night (1977)
Gloria (1980)
Love Streams (1984)
Big Trouble (1986)
As Actor
The Killers (1964)
The Dirty Dozen (1967)
Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Two-Minute Warning (1976)
Mikey and Nicky (1976)
The Fury (1978)
Who's Life Is It Anyway?) (1981)
The Tempest (1983)
