Oscar Night: For Gena Rowlands

Gena Rowlands accepting her Lifetime Achievement Award at the Governors Awards last November

Gena Rowlands’ Lifetime Achievement Oscar, presented to her at the Governors Awards last November, is the only Oscar that matters to me. There were many films and performances I’ve loved this year, many of which were not nominated, some of which were, whatever, and etc. and so forth. But Gena’s Oscar is meaningful: It celebrates a lifetime of work, not just the revolutionary films that she made in the 60s/70s/80s with her maverick husband John Cassavetes, but the whole she-bang. She is what it means to be devoted to being an Artist. She did what she did whether or not she would get any glory. Some of her best performances (Opening Night, Love Streams) were in films that barely got releases, were barely seen until the advent of a VCR in every room (but even then: Love Streams, for example, was almost impossible to find, and it was never released on DVD until Criterion finally released it in a deluxe edition – complete with video-essay written/narrated by yours truly) – in 2014. You can see a short clip from my Criterion video-essay here.

I was proud to be asked to write the narration for the tribute reel for Gena, played at the Governor Awards ceremony in November 2015. It won’t be played on the broadcast tonight because it’s 6 minutes long. It won’t be released on Youtube due to copyright (there are so many clips in it). This is not meant as a complaint. This is a post of tribute. I am just happy I got to do it, and I am happy that Gena (who does not particularly enjoy sitting around being complimented) was basically trapped in that awards hall and HAD to see it. (The video producers did an amazing job: the clips, the music, the interview tidbits with John and Gena … it’s just gorgeously put together.) As everyone probably knows, Angelina Jolie read the words that I wrote, and I’ve seen the reel, and as you can imagine, it was a Trophy Moment.

But the best part about this particular Trophy Moment for me is that it was in tribute to a great woman, my favorite actress, getting her own long-overdue Trophy. Of course I was excited personally. It was a great opportunity. But really, none of it was about me, and that was the best part of it. That has always been what my writing has been about: paying tribute to the things I love and things I obsess over. That’s why I do what I do, and this was the same old thing except on a much grander scale.

John and Gena

To those of us out there who are devoted to Gena Rowlands (and, by association, John Cassavetes), not just their work – but what they represent and MEAN to us – this is such a gratifying moment. Everyone who knows anything about movies knows how fucking cool those two were, how much they changed everything, how their films cracked open the carapace of old Hollywood and let in a cold whoosh of air and reality and spontaneity. Gena Rowlands has impacted our world in immeasurable ways – even if you are not aware of it. That’s kind of the beauty of it. You – the person who might not have seen any of their films – are the beneficiary of the life that she lived, the choices she made. She helped create the independent film movement in America. She and her husband did it almost single-handedly. So if you take it for granted that there are “independent” film-makers out there, you need to know that, actually, there was a time when there were almost none out there. Orson Welles was independent, in many senses of the word when he was brought to Hollywood, given a deal that made other directors sick with envy and look what happened to Citizen Kane, and, by extension, him. The studios were a monopoly, and, more importantly, there wasn’t a distribution system in place outside of the particular studios. Although there were other film festivals, those tended to be gigantic international affairs, like NYFF, Cannes, Venice, etc. Now we have Sundance (primarly – originally created FOR independent films, although that has changed) – as well as a PLETHORA of film festivals (too many) across the land, where your film has a chance to gain some momentum and then get picked up by a distributor. Without distributors, and without theatre owners willing to work outside the studio system, your film did not have a shot at getting shown anywhere. John and Gena saw the problem and set about trying to bust down those doors. So you have Gena to thank for … Sundance, Tribeca, the Independent Spirit Awards. Self-financed films. Grass-roots marketing. Hell, Kick-starter! John Cassavetes would have been creating a New Kickstarter campaign every other day if he lived now.

Gena Rowlands in “Opening Night”

Anyway: all of that (at least in America) is because of John and Gena. They were the examples that made other film-makers – you know, little-known directors such as Martin Scorsese – go, “Wait a minute. Why am I relying on the studios – in their death throes anyway – to give me a job? Can’t I make my own work?” And voila, now we have Mean Streets and the whole world is different. But it was because of John and Gena, they got there first, they were bold enough and crazy enough to give it a go outside the studio system, with Shadows and Faces and Woman Under the Influence, and etc.)

It is great as well that the Hollywood establishment would honor such a flat-out outlaw and outsider like Gena Rowlands, who said “No” to the system so strongly. It’s a pretty big deal.

If you haven’t seen any of Gena Rowlands’ work (or, if all you’ve seen is The Notebook), do yourself a favor … I mean this with no condescending judgment. I’m just urging you to check her out. Seriously: you won’t see acting the same way again. You’ll go, “Oh. THAT’S why she’s a legend. Got it.” It’s unlike anything done by anyone else anywhere. That’s what it means to be a genius.

I wrote an overview of her career for Rogerebert.com: Gena Rowlands: A Life on Film, and there are so many titles there to get started, many of them are easily find-able (two of the TV movies mentioned are on Youtube in their entirety).

And here’s a fun post of quotes by and about Gena Rowlands.

To newbies interested in getting to know Gena’s work, I would suggest starting with 1974’s Woman Under the Influence. You can skip around after that, but you really need to start at the top of the mountain. While Gena Rowlands has given numerous great performances (I would count Opening Night and Love Streams as equally towering achievements in acting) – her performance in Woman is a high water-mark in acting. Not just in Gena’s career, but in acting in GENERAL. Woman is a crash-course in why she makes other gifted actresses – Oscar winners, some of them nominated tonight for perfectly fine performances – look like they’re phoning it in or playing it safe.

Here’s the very entertaining speech Gena gave at the Governors Awards ceremony.