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
Commercial movies have no feeling, no sensitivity. Most people tell me people won't understand films with feeling. But everyone can feel.
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.
People have said that my films are very difficult to watch, that they're experiences you are put through rather than ones you enjoy, and it's true.
Film is, to me, just unimportant. But people are very important.
Filmmaking is exploring. Why would I want to make a film about something I already understand?
I won't make shorthand films, because I don't want to manipulate audiences into assuming quick, manufactured truths.
You must be willing to risk everything to really express it all.
You know as a director what you want, but the film is smarter than you, the film says no, the film says there's something more here.
One question. How did you know I was here?
We have problems, terrible problems, but our problems are human problems.
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.
My parents allowed their two sons to be individuals. My family was a wild and wonderful place, with lots of friends and neighbors visiting and talking loud and eating loud and nobody telling the children to be quiet or putting them down.
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.