Product Description

In the world of independent filmmaking, John Cassavetes became the prototypical outsider fighting the system for much of his career. A major star of live television and a serious actor, he stumbled into making his first film, Shadows, and created a template for working outside the Hollywood system that would produce some of the most piercing and human films of the last thirty years including A Women Under the Influence and Husbands.

Film critic Marshall Fine has been hailed by the New York Times for this "first full life of Cassavetes." The Minneapolis Star Tribune said, "Accidental Genius is as thoroughly researched as an academic study but reads like a pop biography minus the fawning." Fine reveals the passion and singularity that characterized Cassavetes and his lasting influence on filmmaking.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #759362 in Books
• Published on: 2006-12-13
• Released on: 2006-12-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

From Publishers Weekly
To most film junkies, the late actor and director John Cassavetes (Faces, A Woman Under the Influence) is an independent film icon. To everyone else, he's either the evil husband in Rosemary's Baby or the guy who directed wife Gena Rowlands in Gloria. And that is Fine's motivation: "I wanted to write the book that I longed to read...the one that explained to a mainstream audience why they should know and care about the work of John Cassavetes." The good news is, the book is not an impenetrable academic tome. Rather than engage in esoteric film criticism, Fine gives us a blow-by-blow account of how Cassavetes's fierce will led to the birth of independent film. The director's desire to go against the grain is highlighted throughout, such as when he told higher ups at the Actors Studio: "Screw you. I don't want any part of you. I've got my own school and I'll drive yours out of town." For a Cassavetes devotee, this is manna. But if Fine's goal is to convert the uninitiated, he's missed the mark by taking it for granted that the reader will be as enamored of his subject as he is. And Fine's fetishistic description of every Cassavetes project progresses at a merciless grind so tedious that the merely curious would do better to rent a Cassavetes film.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Fine stints on critical analysis yet convincingly argues that mainstream moviegoers ought to care about maverick director Cassavetes (1929-89) as the progenitor of today's American independent film movement. Cassavetes stumbled into making his groundbreaking first film, Shadows, which evolved out of workshops he conducted as a young actor in late-1950s New York. Other challenging, uncompromising works followed over the next decades, including Faces, Husbands, and A Woman under the Influence. Fine details Cassavetes' struggles to finance and distribute his resolutely noncommercial films, which he funded largely from his earnings as a performer in others' movies, such as The Dirty Dozen and Rosemary's Baby. The loose, sometimes messy nature of his own films led many to believe they were improvised. All derived from tight scripts, though Cassavetes espoused spontaneity and called planning "the most destructive thing in the world." Fine talked with members of Cassavetes' inner circle (though not with his wife and frequent collaborator, Gena Rowlands) as well as other directors, such as Martin Scorsese, who were influenced by his approach. Gordon Flagg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
". . . step forward in detailing the frenzy, the dread, the hope, and the immense, self-destructive independence with which Cassavetes worked." -- The New York Times

". . . telegraphs how the spirit of a man who lived through imagination and determination could manifest itself on screen." -- Newsday

"A must-read for anyone who cares about moviemaking." -- Martin Scorcese

Customer Reviews

Reverential Biography of the Film Auteur Who Gave Rise to Independent American Cinema-Verité
I just saw one of John Cassavetes' early films as a director, 1963's "A Child Is Waiting", which he apparently disowned once producer Stanley Kramer edited it to make the story of mentally disabled children in a state-run institution a more sentimental movie. Despite Cassavetes' misgivings about the finished product, what remains has some truly unexpected moments of emotional honesty. Author Marshall Fine, film and TV critic for Star Magazine, has written a thorough, sometimes effusive biography of the film auteur who died in 1989. Cassavetes is most definitely a worthy subject for a comprehensive book, as he was a groundbreaking filmmaker who made gritty, low-budget independent films well before Sundance.

His style was polarizing, but there is no getting around the fact that he dared to go to places other filmmakers feared, primarily the dark spaces where self-pity and hurtful actions were predominant. Even though his favorite director was ironically the supreme optimist Frank Capra, Cassavetes liked exposing the chaotic nature of life among the middle classes and refused to tie up loose ends for the sake of a happy ending. Fine does an illuminating job of showing the filmmaker's psyche at work and how he kept the focus constantly on the actors, especially as he created an intimate environment where spontaneity was encouraged and prized. Lacking the desire for a more formal process, Cassavetes employed a hand-held, semi-documentary style to elicit the naturalism he wanted to capture even when it meant constant script rewrites.

The author also explores the downside of the filmmaker's work techniques: his quick temper, his megalomania, his lack of savvy in dealing with studio bosses. More importantly, Fine takes us behind the scenes on each of Cassavetes' films beginning with 1959's jazz-infused "Shadows" of which he did two versions. From there, we see him at work on such acknowledged classics as "Faces" and "A Woman Under the Influence" all the way through the end of his life when he took over from Andrew Bergman on 1989's "Big Trouble" as he was dying of cirrhosis of the liver. Recollections are meticulously detailed but do not feel extraneous. It's a fascinating career well documented by Fine, though I wish he could have been more critical on the finished films and more interested in letting us know who is carrying on Cassavetes' legacy.

A must for independent film makers
Marshall Fine is on to something here. Anyone who has aspirations to make an independent film owes it to themselves to read this book. Part inspiration, part determination and a huge dose of humanity, Accidental Genius delivers more than a look at Cassavetes the man. This is a "how to" masterpiece in a biographical wrapping. I loved it and am giving copies to all of my film-loving friends.

This Book Is Genius
Movie lovers, indie fans and film history buffs, have to check out Marshall Fine's Accidental Genius for the most compelling, insightful and entertaining book about the independent film industry I've ever read.