John Cassavetes facts for kids

Quick facts for kids John Cassavetes
Cassavetes as Johnny Staccato (1959)
Born	John Nicholas Cassavetes (1929-12-09)December 9, 1929 New York City, U.S.
Died	February 3, 1989(1989-02-03) (aged 59) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Resting place	Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery
Alma mater	American Academy of Dramatic Arts
Occupation	Actor filmmaker
Years active	1951–1989
Spouse(s)	Gena Rowlands ​ (m. 1954)​
Children	Nick Alexandra Zoe
Parent(s)	Katherine Cassavetes
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John Nicholas Cassavetes ( KASS-ə-VET-eez; December 9, 1929 – February 3, 1989) was an American actor and filmmaker.

Early life and education

Cassavetes was born in New York City, the son of Greek American actress Katherine Cassavetes (née Demetre), who was to be featured in some of his films, and Greek immigrant Nicholas John Cassavetes (Νικόλαος Ιωάννης Κασσαβέτης), who was born in Larissa to Aromanian parents from the village of Vrysochori. He had an elder brother. Members of the Cassavetes family later settled in Volos and Zagora. His early years were spent with his family in Greece; when he returned at the age of seven, he spoke no English. He was raised on Long Island, New York. He attended Port Washington High School (now known as Paul D. Schreiber Senior High School) from 1945 to 1947 and participated in Port Weekly (the school paper), Red Domino (interclass play), football, and the Port Light (yearbook).

Cassavetes attended Blair Academy in New Jersey and spent a semester at Plattsburgh, New York's Champlain College before being expelled due to his failing grades. He spent a few weeks hitchhiking to Florida and then transferred to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, encouraged by recently enrolled friends who told him the school was "packed with girls". He graduated in 1950 and met his future wife Gena Rowlands at her audition to enter the Academy in 1953. They were married four months later in 1954. He continued acting in the theater, took small parts in films, and began working on television in anthology series such as Alcoa Theatre.

Career

Cassavetes began as a television and film actor before helping to pioneer modern American independent cinema as a director and writer, often financing and distributing his films with his own income. AllMovie called him "an iconoclastic maverick", while The New Yorker suggested in 2013 that he "may be the most influential American director of the last half century."

Cassavetes starred in notable Hollywood films throughout the 1950s and 1960s, including Edge of the City (1957), The Dirty Dozen (1967), and Rosemary's Baby (1968) . He began his directing career with the 1959 independent feature Shadows and followed with independent and critically acclaimed productions such as Faces (1968), Husbands (1970), Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), Opening Night (1977), Gloria (1980), and Love Streams (1984). During this time he intermittently continued to act in studio projects such as Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky (1976) and his own directorial works Husbands and Minnie and Moskowitz.

Cassavetes's films employed an actor-centered approach which prioritized raw character relationships and "small feelings" while rejecting traditional Hollywood storytelling, method acting, and stylization. His films became associated with an improvisational, cinéma vérité aesthetic. He collaborated frequently with a rotating group of actors and crew members, including his wife Gena Rowlands and friends Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara, and Seymour Cassel. Many of his films were shot and edited in his and Rowlands' own Los Angeles home.

For his role in The Dirty Dozen, Cassavetes received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. As a filmmaker, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Faces (1968) and the Academy Award for Best Director for A Woman Under the Influence (1974). The Independent Spirit Awards named the John Cassavetes Award in his honor.

Filmmaking style

Directing

Cassavetes's films aim to capture "small feelings" often repressed by Hollywood filmmaking, emphasizing intimate character examination and relationships rather than plot, backstory, or stylization. He often presented difficult characters whose behaviors were not easily understood, rejecting simplistic psychological or narrative explanations for their actions. Cassavetes also disregarded the "impressionistic cinematography, linear editing, and star-centred scene making" fashionable in Hollywood and art films. Instead, he worked to create a comfortable and informal environment where actors could freely experiment with their performances and go beyond acting clichés or "programmed behaviors."

Cassavetes also rejected the dominance of the director's singular vision, instead believing each character must be the actor's "individual creation" and refusing to explain the characters to his actors in any significant detail.

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

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."

According to Marshall Fine, "Cassavetes [...] spent the majority of his career making his films 'off the grid' so to speak … unfettered by the commercial concerns of Hollywood. 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", 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.

Music

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

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 contributing lyrics and rudimentary tunes.

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.

Filmography

As director

Awards and nominations

Images for kids

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  Cassavetes with his wife, actress Gena Rowlands, in 1959

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  A still from the Edge of the City trailer

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

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  Faces (1968)

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  Opening Night (1977)

See also

In Spanish: John Cassavetes para niños