{"id":195749,"date":"2025-12-09T09:00:01","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T14:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=195749"},"modified":"2025-12-08T07:38:34","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T12:38:34","slug":"film-is-to-me-just-unimportant-but-people-are-very-important-john-cassavetes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=195749","title":{"rendered":"\u201cFilm is, to me, just unimportant. But people are very important.\u201d — John Cassavetes"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When I think of Cassavetes, anything that comes up is inextricable from my own life journey. He’s just so IN there with me, the choices I made, the goals I had, my values<\/i>. He’s also behind my favorite marriage proposal, which might sound silly but … it’s Cassavetes. It’s not silly at all. That’s the one proposal I said yes to. Now, we did not end up getting married, but it’s still a pretty funny story. I discovered Cassavetes young, which I think is good. I discovered him before I was a film critic, long before, which I also think is good. I came to him as an actor, looking for community, hungry for connection. He was (and still is) inspiring. I took this picture, when I was living right behind the Music Box Theatre, and spent all my free time there. <\/p>\n

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\nIt was years before I could finally see the long-unseeable Love Streams<\/i> (his final film) … and, coincidence? I think not … my first “gig” for Criterion, back in 2014, was to write and narrate a video-essay about Gena Rowlands’ career. It all made sense. <\/p>\n

Of course I’ve written so much about Cassavetes over the years but I’ll highlight just two I’m really proud of: <\/p>\n

For my newsletter, I resurrected an old piece about Minnie and Moskowitz<\/i><\/a>, a film that gets me every time.<\/p>\n

And most recently, I wrote a piece I’d been wanting to write for years. Decades, really. I wrote about my VIVID first year in Chicago – which I’ve covered in other contexts<\/a> (“tsk tsk”) – and how I saw Opening Night<\/i> for the first time, and also discovered Tennessee Williams’ Two-Character Play<\/i>. Within months of each other. To this day, those two works of art seem almost the same to me. I was different after I encountered both, and never really got back to my before self: John Cassavetes, Tennessee Williams, and Intelligent Insanity<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cI guess every picture we\u2019ve ever done has been, in a way, to try to find some kind of philosophy for the characters in the film. And so, that\u2019s why I have a need for the characters to really analyze love, discuss it, kill it, destroy it, hurt each other, do all the stuff in that war, in that word-polemic and film-polemic of what life is. And the rest of the stuff doesn\u2019t really interest me. It may interest other people, but I have a one-track mind. That\u2019s all I\u2019m interested in \u2013 love. And the lack of it. When it stops. And the pain that\u2019s caused by loss of things that are taken away from us that we really need. \u201d
\n\u2014 John Cassavetes<\/big><\/p>\n

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\nThank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account<\/a>. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0<\/a>, if you’d like to subscribe.<\/em> <\/small><\/p>\n