John Cassavetes
John Cassavetes
John Nicholas Cassaveteswas an American actor, film director, and screenwriter. Cassavetes was a pioneer of American independent film, writing and directing over a dozen movies, which he partially self-financed, and pioneered the use of improvisation and a realistic cinéma vérité style. He also acted in many Hollywood films, notably Rosemary's Babyand The Dirty Dozen. He studied acting with Don Richardson, using an acting technique based on muscle memory. Cassavetes considered directing to be a full-timehobby and himself an amateur filmmaker...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionActor
Date of Birth9 December 1929
CountryUnited States of America
I think people are very stiff. Money makes people stiff, and we want it, and we have to pay the penalty. I never agreed with stiffness. I think people have an understanding of what their life is. I define success by being a realist and not humiliating people. I'm a revolutionary - but not in the political sense.
'Faces' became more than a film. It became a way of life, a film against the authorities and the powers that prevent people from expressing themselves the way they want to, something that can't be done in America, that can't be done without money.
I don't care about being on top, about being No. 1. I just make movies for a few suckers in the audience, anyway.
People don't know what they are doing most of the time. They don't know what they want. It's only in 'the movies' that they know what their problems are and have game plans to deal with them.
The idea of love as a mysterious, undiscovered world has come to have no place in our innermost imagination.
I think I probably have the philosophy of a poor man. You know, like maybe I'd steal the pennies off a dead man's eyes.
Commercial movies have no feeling, no sensitivity. Most people tell me people won't understand films with feeling. But everyone can feel.
By the age of 50, I would like to know that I'm not dead - that there's some continuity to my life.
I think I'm probably one of the worst directors around, but I do have an interest in my fellow man.
I won't call my work entertainment. It's exploring. It's asking questions of people, constantly. 'How much do you feel? How much do you know? Are you aware of this? Can you cope with this?' A good movie will ask you questions you don't already know the answers to. Why would I want to make a film about something I already understand?
There is no reason why a serious film, one about life, can't be enjoyable, maybe even fun. Emotions can be very entertaining, you know. I try to use them generously in my films.
I would put my pictures up against anybody's in this world. Certainly in my own day I bow to no one. I don't think there's another director in the world who works harder to make better films than I do.
My mother and father were never frightened of anything. They always felt that they should go through life happily and without fear, and they did that. And it was a great boon to my brother and myself.
Everyone who makes a film is at the major distributors' mercy.