I'm Almost Not Crazy: John Cassavetes, the Man and His Work | |
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Directed by | Michael Ventura |
Written by | Michael Ventura |
Produced by | |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Gideon Porath |
Edited by | Daniel Wetherbee |
Distributed by | Cannon Group |
Release date |
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Running time | 60 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
I'm Almost Not Crazy: John Cassavetes, the Man and His Work is a 1989 documentary directed by Michael Ventura and starring John Cassavetes in his final film appearance. [1] [2]
Filmed in 1984, the filmmakers document Cassavetes during the making of Love Streams , the last film he both wrote and directed. Originally released following Cassavetes' death in 1989, the documentary is featured on the 2014 Criterion release of the film. [3]
Peter Bogdanovich was an American director, writer, actor, producer, critic, and film historian. He started his career as a film critic for Film Culture and Esquire before becoming a prominent filmmaker as part of the New Hollywood movement. He received accolades including a BAFTA Award and Grammy Award, as well as nominations for two Academy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards.
A Woman Under the Influence is a 1974 American drama film written and directed by John Cassavetes, starring Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk. Rowlands plays a housewife whose unusual behavior leads to conflict with her blue-collar husband (Falk) and family.
Virginia Cathryn "Gena" Rowlands was an American actress, whose career in film, stage, and television spanned nearly seven decades. A four-time Emmy and two-time Golden Globe winner, she collaborated with her actor-director husband John Cassavetes in ten films, including A Woman Under the Influence (1974) and Gloria (1980), both of which earned her nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She also won the Silver Bear for Best Actress for Opening Night (1977). She appeared in Woody Allen's Another Woman (1988), and her son Nick Cassavetes's film, The Notebook (2004). In 2021, Richard Brody of The New Yorker said, "The most important and original movie actor of the past half century-plus is Gena Rowlands." In November 2015, Rowlands received an Honorary Academy Award in recognition of her unique screen performances.
Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking developed by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch, inspired by Dziga Vertov's theory about Kino-Pravda. It combines improvisation with use of the camera to unveil truth or highlight subjects hidden behind reality. It is sometimes called observational cinema, if understood as pure direct cinema: mainly without a narrator's voice-over. There are subtle, yet important, differences between terms expressing similar concepts. Direct cinema is largely concerned with the recording of events in which the subject and audience become unaware of the camera's presence: operating within what Bill Nichols, an American historian and theoretician of documentary film, calls the "observational mode", a fly on the wall. Many therefore see a paradox in drawing attention away from the presence of the camera and simultaneously interfering in the reality it registers when attempting to discover a cinematic truth.
John Nicholas Cassavetes was a Greek-American filmmaker and actor. He began as an actor in film and television before helping to pioneer modern American independent cinema as a writer and director, often self-financing, producing, and distributing his own films. He received nominations for three Academy Awards, two BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, and an Emmy Award.
Faces is a 1968 American drama film written, produced, and directed by John Cassavetes. It is his fourth directorial work. The film, shot in cinéma vérité-style, depicts the final stages of the disintegrating marriage of a middle-aged couple, played by John Marley and newcomer Lynn Carlin. Cassavetes regulars Gena Rowlands, Seymour Cassel, Fred Draper and Val Avery also star.
An audio commentary is an additional audio track, usually digital, consisting of a lecture or comments by one or more speakers, that plays in real time with a video. Commentaries can be serious or entertaining in nature, and can add information which otherwise would not be disclosed to audience members.
Seymour Joseph Cassel was an American actor who appeared in over 200 films and television shows, with a career spanning over 50 years. He first came to prominence in the 1960s in the pioneering independent films of writer/director John Cassavetes. The first of these was Too Late Blues (1961), followed by Faces (1968), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award and won a National Society of Film Critics Award. Cassel went on to appear in Cassavetes' Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), Opening Night (1977), and Love Streams (1984). He also appeared in other notable films, including: Coogan's Bluff (1968), The Last Tycoon (1976), Valentino (1977), Convoy (1978), Johnny Be Good (1988), Mobsters (1991), In the Soup (1992), Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Indecent Proposal (1993), The Sleepy Time Gal (2001), Beer League (2006), and Fort McCoy (2011). Like Cassavetes, Wes Anderson frequently cast Cassel – first in Rushmore (1998), then in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), and finally in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004).
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is a 1976 American neo-noir crime film written and directed by John Cassavetes and starring Ben Gazzara. A rough and gritty film, this is the second of their three collaborations, following Husbands and preceding Opening Night. Timothy Carey, Seymour Cassel, Morgan Woodward, Meade Roberts, and Azizi Johari appear in supporting roles.
Love Streams is a 1984 American film directed by John Cassavetes, in what would be his final independent feature and penultimate directorial project. The film tells the story of a middle-aged brother (Cassavetes) and sister who find themselves relying on one another after being abandoned by their loved ones.
Mikey and Nicky is a 1976 American crime drama film written and directed by Elaine May. It stars John Cassavetes as a desperate small-time mobster and Peter Falk as his longtime, childhood friend. The supporting cast features Ned Beatty, Carol Grace, Rosee Arrick, and noted acting teacher Sanford Meisner.
Husbands is a 1970 American comedy-drama film written and directed by John Cassavetes. It stars Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk, and Cassavetes as three middle class men in the throes of a midlife crisis following the death of a close friend.
Jaromil Jireš was a director associated with the Czechoslovak New Wave movement.
Michael Ventura is an American novelist, screenwriter, film director, essayist and cultural critic.
Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession is a 2004 documentary film about Los Angeles pay cable channel Z Channel which was directed by Xan Cassavetes, daughter of Hollywood director and actor John Cassavetes. It was screened out of competition at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.
Nicolas Winding Refn is a Danish film director, screenwriter, and producer.
Leonard Cohen was a Canadian singer-songwriter and poet who was active in music from 1967 until his death in 2016. Cohen released 14 studio albums and eight live albums during the course of a recording career lasting almost 50 years, throughout which he remained an active poet. His entire catalogue is available on Columbia Records. His 1967 debut Songs of Leonard Cohen earned an RIAA gold record; he followed up with three more highly acclaimed albums: Songs from a Room (1969), Songs of Love and Hate (1971) and New Skin for the Old Ceremony (1974), before allowing Phil Spector to produce Death of a Ladies' Man for Warner Bros. Records in 1977. Cohen returned to Columbia in 1979 for Recent Songs, but the label declined to release his next album, Various Positions (1984) in the US, leaving it to American shops to import it from CBS Canada. In 1988, Columbia got behind Cohen again and gave full support to I'm Your Man, which brought his career to new heights, and Cohen followed it with 1992's The Future.
Benjamin Harwood Jr., better known as Bo Harwood, was an American sound mixer, sound editor, sound engineer, music supervisor, composer, and songwriter. Harwood's sound work gained attention in the 1970s after his work on films directed by John Cassavetes. In the 1990s and 2000s, Harwood worked primarily as a mixer for several television series, including Felicity and Six Feet Under.
The 34th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from 17–28 February 1984. The festival opened with The Noah's Ark Principle by Roland Emmerich. The retrospective was dedicated to German-American actor, screenwriter, producer and film director Ernst Lubitsch.
Aaron Brookner is an American film director and scriptwriter. His debut feature film was The Silver Goat (2011), the first feature film made for iPad exhibition. He produced the restoration of cult classic Burroughs, directed by Howard Brookner, which was re-released by The Criterion Collection. His film Uncle Howard was selected as part of the US Documentary Competition at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.