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1990
A Woman Under the Influence is added to the National Film Registry by the Film Preservation Board established by the Library of Congress to preserve film deemed "culturally, historically, or esthetically important."
April: To support a Cassavetes retrospective at Anthology Film Archives, in New York, Ray Carney introduces the films, moderates post - screening question - and - answer sessions, and hosts a celebrity panel discussion featuring members of the films' casts and crews. He conducts a seminar on Cassavetes' writing methods, comparing various drafts of the scripts of Faces, A Woman Under the Influence, Opening Night, and Love Streams. He also delivers a lecture "Cassavetes at Work," screening rare and otherwise unavailable videos showing Cassavetes talking about his work and rehearsing scenes with actors.
June: Ray Carney conducts a celebrity panel discussion about Cassavetes' life and work at UCLA's Film and Television Archive in Melnitz Auditorium. Panelists include Elaine May, Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara, Ted Allan, and Seymour Cassel.
May 12: Lisa Katzman publishes an article in the New York Times that says that Cassavetes was "demoralized" by the failure of Opening Night and pulled itfrom circulation in an effort to "cut his emotional losses." Gena Rowlands sees a pre - publication copy of the interview and has Al Ruban call Ray Carney and ask the source of this information. When Carney says that it is a paraphrase of an interview Katzman conducted with him and accurately reflects a statement Cassavetes made to Carney, Ruban tells him that Rowlands is extremely upset by the comment and insists that Carney call the writer and demand that the objectionable sentences be removed from the article before it is published. Carney tells Ruban he will not do that.
In response to Carney's comments to Katzman (as well as subsequent statements by Carney that Rowlands does not approve of) Rowlands and Ruban take three courses of action. The first is that, without explicitly naming Carney as the target of her remarks, Rowlands makes it a point to rebut Carney's statements in future interviews. To rebut the Katzman observation, interviewers are told, even when they haven't asked about it, that her husband was never depressed, discouraged, or sad. A sample quote from a 2002 Rowlands interview with Matthew Hays for the Montreal Mirror: "I know there are certain people, especially one professor in particular, who think that John was unhappy with reactions to his work. But I don't think John cared. I never saw John depressed."
The second response
is that Rowlands, through Ruban, attempts to blackball Carney from attending festivals
screening Cassavetes' works. Film festivals conducting retrospectives
in
The third response is to vilify Carney to film curators and programmers and to denigrate his work at public events. Click here to read more about the attacks conducted by business manager Ruban with Rowlands's knowledge and permission.
Mid - 1991 to mid - 1992
Ray Carney guest-edits the "John Cassavetes Special Issue" published by Post-Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities as their Winter 1992 issue. When a year - long call for papers attracts only three brief submissions (an interview by Maria Viera, an essay by Carole Zucker, and an essay co - written by Janice Zwierzynski and George Kouvarous) to avoid having the issue cancelled, Carney commissions a fourth article from one of his students, Lucio Benedetto, and writes 77 of the issue's 112 pages himself.
1992
February: Ray Carney publishes a coffee table picture - book devoted to Cassavetes' life and work: John Cassavetes - Autoportraits, published by Editions de l'Etoile/Cahiers du cinema. It is introduced by Andre Labarthe and translated into French by Serge Grunberg. It becomes the best selling book in any language about Cassavetes. As a condition of giving permission for publication, Gena Rowlands insists on structuring the publishing contract so that royalty payments are made not to Carney but to her.
1992 - 1993
Going for the most lucrative financial offer, Gena Rowlands sells Touchstone, a division of the Disney Corporation, exclusive video rights to "the Cassavetes collection." The films to be issued are: the second version of Shadows, Faces, A Woman Under the Influence, the second version of The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and Opening Night, none of which has appeared on video before. Touchstone is ill - suited to appreciate or release Cassavetes' work. After issuing two of the five titles, it abandons the project and sells off its interest in all five titles. For more information, click here.
1993
The second version of Shadows is added to the National Film Registry by the Film Preservation Board established by the Library of Congress to preserve film deemed "culturally, historically, or esthetically important."
1994
April 10: Ray Carney's The Films of John Cassavetes: Pragmatism, Modernism, and the Movies is published by Cambridge University Press. It is illustrated with 50 behind - the - scenes photographs by Sam Shaw. Ruban attempts to stop the book from being published.
April 28: The UCLA Dept. of Preservation screens a so - called "restored" print of Husbands during their "6th Festival of Preservation." During the restoration process Gena Rowlands tells the Archive that she thinks the singing scene with Leola Harlow is offensive and goes on too long and that the vomiting part of the men's room scene is in bad taste. In an effort to please her, material is left out of the print. All subsequent prints and videos also omit this material. (Click here to hear the audio of twelve minutes that were cut at the end of the singing scene and the beginning of the men's room scene in Husbands.)
May: As part of the first "Beat Festival" at New York University, Ray Carney programs Shadows as a key beat work. The film has never before been included in a survey of beat film or treated as being related to the beat movement. Carney hosts a reunion of the cast and crew of Shadows, featuring Lelia Goldoni, Hugh Hurd, Maurice McEndree, George O'Halloran, Jonas Mekas, and others, focusing on Cassavetes' creative methods and the relation of the first and second versions of the film.
1995
Nicole Brenez's French - language Shadows: John Cassavetes is published by Editions Nathan in Paris. It is riddled with dozens of factual and interpretive errors, many due to Brenez's imperfect grasp of English.
Ray Carney informs Al Ruban about the search for the first version of Shadows and is told that "there is no such print," and that even if it were found, Ruban "will make sure it is never seen." Ruban, who had only the most tangential involvement with the second version and no involvement with or knowledge of the filming or screening of the first version, ominously insists: "There is only one version of Shadows" -- presumably because it would cut into rentals of the available version, which he controls.
Ray Carney co - curates the "Beat Culture and the New