Gena Rowlands on Cassavetes: Precisely engineered spontaneity
John Cassavetes would have hated smartphones. The late actor/writer/director may be regarded as the father of American independent filmmaking, and his work may be celebrated (or reviled) for its raw, cinema vérité feel. But most of his films were thoroughly scripted, and shot with his own money. So, as his lifelong collaborator and wife of 35 years, Gena Rowlands, explained, Cassavetes had an inviolable rule.
“You had to pay attention to what was going on,” Rowlands told me in a phone interview on Wednesday. “You never saw anybody reading the trades or anything. They were there to make the movie.” There would have been no heads-down tap-tap-tapping allowed.
Spontaneity doesn’t happen by accident – not Cassavetes’s kind, anyway. From 1959 until his death in 1989, he directed a dozen films, most of which he also wrote, including Faces (1980). Eleven of them, plus three of Cassavetes’s best-known performances as an actor, will be shown July 14-31 at Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox, with Rowlands on hand for two days to introduce two films and do an onstage chat.
All of Cassavetes’ films employ his unmistakable style: incredibly long scenes. Tight close-ups. A fly-on-the-wall shooting style, which meant that if the actors ended up standing behind a lamp, they’d shoot the whole scene through it. (“We didn’t use marks on the floor,” Rowlands said. “How the cameramen did that I’ll never know. But I didn’t think about it; that was their worry.”)
And unadorned dialogue, full of the non-sequiturs, stutters, interruptions and speaking errors of real conversation. “John wrote language people actually speak,” Rowlands said. “It was very free, and gave his work such a sense of reality.”
His characters were ordinary, flawed people beating back some misery of daily life, and as such were subject to denial, anger, forced laughter and mood swings (often alcohol-fuelled) that made the scenes career wildly from flirting to fist fights to crying. His actors burrowed deep, into darker, sillier or more naked places than most movies dared to go.
“I became very attached to the characters, very fond of them,” Rowlands said. “They stayed with me, all of my life, actually. It was painful, thrilling, all those things when you enter another persona. Yes, you carry some of it with you into your real life. But it was down there on paper. John’s attitude to all actors, if we asked any questions about our characters, was, ‘Hey, I wrote it, but I gave it to you. By this time you should know more about her than I do.’ It belonged to you. It was wonderful.
Gena And Portland Oregon - News
and his work may be celebrated (or reviled) for its raw, cinema vérité feel. But most of his films were thoroughly scripted, and shot with his own money. So, as his lifelong collaborator and wife of 35 years, Gena Rowlands, explained,
They could drive more than 200 miles from one lookout to the other, or they could hike the gorge — about 45 miles round trip. For a moment, they considered their options. Why not run it? “That's like an ultramarathon,” Gina Slaby said, recalling the
I've been training for triathlons for eight or nine years. I just started with the sprint triathlons. Over the years I have just increased the number of or length of them. I decided I would take on the challenge of Ironman, which is in November.
The state trooper who pulled over Gina Tessener a couple of weeks ago did so on the pretext that her Lexus's headlight was out. Whether it was or not hasn't been answered definitively, but after the stop Trooper Edward Wyrick said he smelled alcohol,
Make-it or break-it time is expected to arrive July 26 for South Carolina's new congressional districts, including a new 7th District that area residents want to see anchored by Horry
American Idols Tour 2011 – Portland, OR – Videos Live Blog ...
Lauren’s a walking accident. She’s always sick or injured or something, lol.
As an aside, I wonder if people seem like better performers because of the crowd reaction to them. I went to see Bruno Mars and Janelle Monae this year, primarily to see Janelle, but no one in the audience cared about Janelle and everyone in the audience went apeshit for Bruno so it made me like Bruno’s set so much more than Janelle’s because of the energy in the room. I walked away a huge Bruno Mars fan.
It could be the same on the Idol tour…If everyone’s predisposed to cheer for Scotty and James, it’s going to be a much cooler set regardless of the performance level.
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