John Cassavetes

By 1956, Cassavetes had begun teaching an alternative to method acting in his own workshop—co-founded with friend Burt Lane in New York City—in which character creation, rather than backstory or narrative requirements, would serve as the basis for performance.[14] Cassavetes was particularly scornful of Lee Strasberg's Method-based Actors Studio, believing that the Method was "more a form of psychotherapy than of acting" which resulted in sentimental cliches and self-indulgent emotion.[15] In contrast to the Actors Studio's "moody, broody anguish," the Cassavetes-Lane approach held that acting should be an expression of creative joy and exuberance, with emphasis put on the character's creation of "masks" in the process of interacting with other characters.[16]

Shortly after opening the workshop, Cassavetes was invited to audition at the Actors Studio, and in response he and Lane devised a prank: they claimed to be performing a scene from a recent stage production but in fact improvised a performance on the spot, fooling an impressed Strasberg.[17] Cassavetes then fabricated a story about his financial troubles, prompting Strasberg to offer him a full scholarship to the Studio; Cassavetes promptly rejected it on the basis that Strasberg couldn’t know anything about acting to have been so easily fooled by the two ruses.[18]

An improvisation exercise in the workshop inspired the idea for his writing and directorial debut, Shadows (1959; first version 1957). Cassavetes raised the funds for the production from friends and family, as well as listeners to Jean Shepherd's late-night radio talk-show Night People. His stated purpose was to make a film about modest-income “little people”, unlike Hollywood studio productions, which focused on stories about wealthy people. Cassavetes was unable to gain American distribution of Shadows, but 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 box-office returns of Shadows in the United States were slight, it did gain attention from the Hollywood studios.

Cassavetes with his wife, actress Gena Rowlands

Cassavetes played bit-parts in B pictures and in television serials, until gaining notoriety in 1955 as a vicious killer in The Night Holds Terror, and as a juvenile delinquent in the live TV drama Crime in the Streets. Cassavetes would repeat this performance in the 1956 film version. His first starring role in a feature film was Edge of the City (1957), which co-starred Sidney Poitier. He was briefly under contract to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and co-starred with Robert Taylor in the western Saddle the Wind, written by Rod Serling. In the late 1950s, Cassavetes guest-starred in Beverly Garland's groundbreaking crime drama, Decoy, about a New York City woman police undercover detective. Thereafter, he played Johnny Staccato, the title character in a television series about a jazz pianist who also worked as a private detective. In total he directed five episodes of the series, which also features a guest appearance by his wife Gena Rowlands. It was broadcast on NBC between September 1959 and March 1960 when it was acquired by ABC and although critically acclaimed, the series was cancelled in September 1960. Cassavetes would appear on the NBC interview program, Here's Hollywood.

A still from the Edge of the City trailer.

Cassavetes and Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby (1968)

In 1961 Cassavetes signed a seven-year deal with Paramount.[19] Cassavetes directed two movies for Hollywood in the early 1960s – Too Late Blues (1961) and A Child Is Waiting. A Child Is Waiting (1963) starred Burt Lancaster and Judy Garland. He also starred in the CBS western series Rawhide, in the episode "Incident Near Gloomy River" (1961). In the 1963–1964 season he was cast in the ABC medical drama about psychiatry, Breaking Point. In 1964, he again co-starred with his wife, this time in an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour anthology program, and in 1965, he appeared on ABC's western series, The Legend of Jesse James. The same year he also guest-starred in the World War II series, Combat!, in the episode "S.I.W." as well as insane nuclear scientist Everett Lang in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, season 2, episode "The Peacemaker".

With payment for his work on television, as well as a handful of film acting jobs, he was able to relocate to California and to make his subsequent films independent of any studio, as Shadows had been made. The films in which he acted with this intention include Don Siegel's The Killers (1964), the motorcycle gang movie Devil's Angels (1967), The Dirty Dozen (1967), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968), and The Fury (1978). Cassavetes portrayed the murderer in a 1972 episode of the TV crime series Columbo, titled "Étude in Black". Cassavetes and series star Peter Falk had previously starred together in the 1969 mob action thriller Machine Gun McCain.

Faces (1968) was the second film to be both directed and independently financed by Cassavetes. The film starred his wife Gena Rowlands, whom he had married during his struggling actor days, John Marley, Seymour Cassel and Val Avery, as well as several first time actors, such as lead actress Lynn Carlin. It depicts the slow disintegration of a contemporary marriage. The film reportedly took three years to make, and was made largely in the Cassavetes home. Faces was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Original Screenplay,[20] Best Supporting Actor,[21] and Best Supporting Actress.[22] Around this time, Cassavetes formed "Faces International" as a distribution company to handle all of his films.

In 1970, Cassavetes directed and acted in Husbands, with actors Peter Falk and Ben Gazzara. They played a trio of married men on a spree in New York and London after the funeral of one of their best friends.[23] Cassavetes stated this was a personal film for him; his older brother died at the age of 30.[24]

Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), about two unlikely lovers, featured Rowlands and Cassel. A Woman Under the Influence (1974) stars Rowlands as an increasingly troubled housewife. Rowlands received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, while Cassavetes was nominated for Best Director.[25] In The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), Gazzara plays a small-time strip-club owner with an out-of-control gambling habit, pressured by mobsters to commit a murder to pay off his debt.

Opening Night (1977) Rowlands plays the lead alongside Cassavetes and the film also stars Gazzara and Joan Blondell. Rowlands portrays an aging film star named Myrtle Gordon working in the theater and suffering a personal crisis. Alone and unloved by her colleagues, in fear of aging and always removed from others due to her stardom, she succumbs to alcohol and hallucinations after witnessing the accidental death of a young fan. Ultimately, Gordon fights through it all delivering the performance of her life in a play. Rowlands won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 28th Berlin International Film Festival for her performance.[26]

Cassavetes's films aim to depict "small feelings" often repressed by Hollywood filmmaking, with emphasis placed on intimate character examination rather than plot or stylization.[4] He often presented difficult characters whose inner desires were not easily understood, rejecting simplistic psychological or narrative explanations for their behavior. Cassavetes also paid little attention to the "impressionistic cinematography, linear editing, and star-centred scene making" that are fashionable in Hollywood and art films.[45] Instead, he worked to create a comfortable and informal environment where actors felt free to experiment with their performances and go beyond acting clichés or "programmed behaviors."[46]

Cassavetes also rejected the dominance of the director's singular vision, instead believing each character must be an actor's "individual creation" and refusing to explain the characters to his actors in any significant detail.[47] He claimed that "stylistic unity drains the humanity out of a text [...] The stories of many different and potentially inarticulate people are more interesting than a contrived narrative that exists only in one articulate man's imagination."[48] He frequently filmed scenes in long, uninterrupted takes, explaining that:

The drama of the scenes comes naturally from the real passage of time lived by the actors [...] The camera isn't content to just follow the characters' words and actions. I focus in on specific gestures and mannerisms. It's from focusing on these little things — the moods, silences, pauses, or anxious moments —that the form arises.[49]

Cassavetes also said that he strove "to put [actors] in a position where they may make asses of themselves without feeling they're revealing things that will eventually be used against them."[50]

The manner in which Cassavetes employed improvisation is frequently misunderstood: with the exception of the original version of Shadows, his films were tightly scripted.[51] However, he allowed actors to interpret characters in their own way, and often rewrote scripts based on the results of rehearsals and performances.[52] He explained that " I believe in improvising on the basis of the written word and not on undisciplined creativity."[53]

Cassavetes's unorthodox characters reflected his similarly unconventional method in the making of his films. He employed mostly his friends as actors and set personnel, generally for little or no money guarantee and a share in the profits of the film. Both Shadows and Faces were shot over a four-year period on weekends and whenever funds became available.

Cassavetes said: "The hardest thing for a film-maker, or a person like me, is to find people … who really want to do something … They've got to work on a project that's theirs."[54] This method differs greatly from the 'director run' sets of big-budget Hollywood productions.

According to Marshall Fine, "Cassavetes, who provided the impetus of what would become the independent film movement in America … spent the majority of his career making his films 'off the grid' so to speak … unfettered by the commercial concerns of Hollywood.[55] To make the kind of films he wanted to make, it was essential to work in this 'communal', 'off the grid' atmosphere because Hollywood's "basis is economic rather than political or philosophical",[56] and no Hollywood executives were interested in Cassavetes's studies of human behaviour. He mortgaged his house to acquire the funds to shoot A Woman Under the Influence, instead of seeking money from an investor who might try to change the script so as to make the film more marketable.

Cassavetes was passionate about a wide range of music, from jazz to classical to rock, "I like all music. It makes you feel like living. Silence is death."[57]

For the soundtrack of Shadows, Cassavetes worked with jazz composer and musician Charles Mingus and Shafi Hadi to provide the score. Mingus's friend, Diane Dorr-Dorynek, described Cassavetes's approach to film-making in jazz terms:

The script formed the skeleton around which the actors might change or ad lib lines according to their response to the situation at the moment, so that each performance was slightly different. A jazz musician works in this way, using a given musical skeleton and creating out of it, building a musical whole related to a particular moment by listening to and interacting with his fellow musicians. Jazz musicians working with actors could conceivably provide audiences with some of the most moving and alive theater they have ever experienced.[58]

When asked by André S. Labarthe during the making of Faces whether he had the desire to make a musical film, Cassavetes responded he wanted to make only one musical, Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment.[59]

Cassavetes worked with Bo Harwood from 1970 to 1984 on six films in several different capacities, even though Harwood had initially only signed on to do "a little editing" for Husbands, and "a little sound editing" for Minnie and Moskowitz. Harwood composed poignant music for Cassavetes's following three films, and was also credited as "Sound" for two of them. During these projects, Harwood wrote several songs, some with Cassavetes.[60]

During his work with Cassavetes, Harwood claimed the notoriously unpredictable director preferred to use the "scratch track" version of his compositions, rather than to let Harwood refine and re-record them with an orchestra. Some of these scratch tracks were recorded in Cassavetes's office, with piano or guitar, as demos, and then eventually ended up in the final film. While this matched the raw, unpolished feel that marks most of Cassavetes's films, Harwood was sometimes surprised and embarrassed.[61]

The relationship between Harwood and Cassavetes ended amicably. When asked by documentarian Michael Ventura during the making of Cassavetes's last film Love Streams, what he had learned from working with Cassavetes, Harwood replied:

I learned a lot through John. I've done a lot of editing for him. Picture editing, sound editing, music editing, shot sound, composed score, and I've learned a lot about integrity ... I think you know what I mean. You know, thirty years from now, I can say I rode with Billy the Kid.[62]