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
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.
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.
Commercial movies have no feeling, no sensitivity. Most people tell me people won't understand films with feeling. But everyone can feel.
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.
We only have two hours to change people's lives.
Art films aren't necessarily photography. It's feeling. If we can capture a feeling of a people, of a way of life, then we made a good picture.
During the actual filming, I’m not really listening to dialogue. I’m watching to see if the actors are communicating something and expressing something. I’m just watching a conversation. You’re not aware of exactly what people are saying. You are aware of what they are INTENDING and what kind of feeling is going on in that scene.
People who are making films today are too concerned with mechanics - technical things instead of feeling.
Most people don't know what they want or feel. And for everyone, myself included, It's very difficult to say what you mean when what you mean is painful. The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to... As an artist, I feel that we must try many things - but above all, we must dare to fail. You must have the courage to be bad - to 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.