I'm Almost Not Crazy: John Cassavetes - The Man and His Work

I’M ALMOST NOT CRAZY:  JOHN CASSAVETES – THE MAN AND HIS WORK     B                     

USA  (60 mi)  1984  d:  Michael Ventura 

If this refrigerator-freezer is turned off for sound or whatever it must be turned back on after shooting. It was off all Thursday, Thursday night and Friday and by the time I found it after work on Friday it was really horrible so please don’t forget.   

—Gena, note left on home refrigerator

An intimate documentary shot during the making of Cassavetes last major film Love Streams (1984), the film title comes not from a Cassavetes character but from a line spoken over the phone by Gena Rowlands character Sarah Lawson, “Jack, I’m almost not crazy now,” to her divorced husband Jack (Seymour Cassel), where after a long absence abroad she’s eager to reunite.  Jack’s classic response is “I just don’t care” as he hangs up on her.  There’s a terrific scene shot with Cassavetes and his script girl as he attempts to write these lines, where’s he’s already got Rowlands lines, but he can’t think of the retort, nevertheless, the camera holds on him for several minutes awaiting his line which never comes.  This is an utterly conventional film about an utterly unconventional man, a guy driven by the best of intentions, who was sick of the way movies manipulate and lie and resort to convention, trying to discover a new way to tell some of the same stories, but from a more personal point of view.  Cassavetes intention, as expressed ably by Cassel, was for people to care.  For or against, love or hate, so long as his films provoked a personal response he thought they’d be remembered 10 to 20 years down the road.  To that end, he made about 9 films that truly “mattered,” in the Cassavetes sense of the word.

Besides Cassavetes, who has a kind of infectious personality, whose energy and enthusiasm for life feels endless, one of the real revelations here is his wife Gena Rowlands, as it shows the two of them working together, where the director couldn’t be more supportive and understanding of his star actress, showing keen personal insight into how to spring an improvised scene on her - - at the last minute with barely any time to rehearse.  Rowlands acknowledges she likes to spend time with her characters, allowing them to infiltrate into her normal life, where she spaces in and out of character, where her daughter Zoe affectionately has to remind her, “Earth to mom, earth to mom, come in please.”  The scene in question is the first dream sequence of the film, perhaps the most memorable in the entire film where Rowlands does a 60 second vaudeville routine in front of her movie husband and daughter who were instructed ahead of time not to laugh, which was based on a game Cassavetes regularly plays with his daughters.  Rowlands, on the other hand, is cracking up throughout, where she realizes the absurdity she’s up against, but she fights for that laugh anyway.   Separately, it’s clear they each have a unique understanding of one another, as Cassavetes’s films live and breathe through Rowlands’ characters, as she’s the force that carries the film, while she trusts her husband’s instincts implicitly.  The rare intimacy that they share together is captured in the time capsules of his movies. 

Ventura had never made a film before, but Cassavetes had already asked him to write a book, knowing he’d already been diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver, so he prodded him into doing the filming on the set as well, probably taking him aside and showing him what to do, as he did for so many of his regulars working on the set.  Some of the editing is truly exceptional, especially the brief clips chosen from the major works of the director.  Each one is set up very well in advance by information revealed in Ventura’s documentary, which is mostly an expression of curiosity.  As a writer, he’s apt to be more prone to hearing clever words, or even eliciting candid comments from others on the set.  At 60 minutes, it moves at a rapid clip and never bogs down, showing a variety of people and their views, getting a feel of what it’s like to work with a guy who is such a force of nature.  LOVE STREAMS was shot in the Cassavetes home, one of about 6 films that uses the home, but here the camera can stop and linger over some of the pictures on the wall, getting a better glimpse of a completely unpretentious but comfortable and lived-in home.  While playing backgammon with what appears to be his fellow Greek production designer Phedon Papamichael, the subject of Socrates rolls around, a jerk in Cassavetes opinion, displaying his typical diplomacy, for conceiving a world through logic alone.  Philosophy is often discussed on the set, where we hear from the director, “We’re making a picture about inner life, and nobody really believes that it can be put on a screen—including me—I don't believe it either - - but screw it.”  Works for me.