This is only the "To Print" page. To go to the regular page of Ray Carney's www.Cassavetes.com on which this text appears, click here, or close this window if you accessed the "To Print" page from the regular page. Once you have brought up the regular page, you may use the menus to reach all of the other pages on the site.

2006

February: Marshall Fine’s Accidental Genius: How John Cassavetes Invented the American Independent Film is published by Miramax Books. The book is advertised as being an “approved” biography, which Fine has received permission from Gena Rowlands to write, and in which certain passages have been cleared with her before publication. Since the majority of the events in Fine’s book are taken from Carney’s earlier Cassavetes on Cassavetes and Shadows books, most of the facts and dates are correct, but Cassavetes’ personality, his soul and spirit are oddly missing. Fine leaves out or radically downplays the artistic and personal demons, the struggles and disappointments, the crazinesses, the doomed and exultant extremity that defined Cassavetes: his charisma and charm; his goofy sense of humor and fondness for zany practical jokes; his pride and competitiveness; his self–centeredness; his willfulness; his big–talk; his insecurity; his tell–them–whatever–they–want–to–hear “rug–merchant” salesmanship; his bullshit–that–won’t–quit readiness to say anything that furthered his ends; his love of pushing people’s buttons and getting their goat; his addiction to risk–taking and long–shot gambles; his drunkenness and alcoholism; his suicidal self–destructiveness; his toughness and skepticism; his womanizing; his scam–artist lies, cons, and deceits; his shouts, fights, fits of anger when things went wrong and his explosions of rage with anyone who crossed him or questioned his judgment; his dirty tricks and acts of vindictiveness; his feelings of frustration and neglect; his loneliness and discouragement; his doubts and despairs in his final years. The personality of the man who made the films, films whose characters have many of the same qualities as their creator, is strangely absent from the account. A proper analysis of Cassavetes, the man remains to be written. It will require a rare combination of courage and inside knowledge to write.

A new print of Love Streams is struck and screened in several Canadian film festivals. Unfortunately, it is based on a “television print” of the film that was been re–edited to minimize the nudity and also has changes in the “make–a–bet” dream sequence. Along with Husbands, Too Late Blues, A Child Is Waiting, and Gloria, the film is still not available in America on DVD or VHS.

2007

June 21: Michael Ventura publishes Cassavetes Directs (Kamera Books), an on–the–set diary of the making of Love Streams. The manuscript was completed more than 20 years earlier (see the entry for February 1984), and unfortunately shows its age. The text is still back in what might might be called the “hero–worship” phase of Cassavetes’ study – unashamedly in awe of him and his work and almost completely blind to the personal failures, confusions, and vulgarities that energized it and allowed him to create it. (To read about another similarly star-struck, hero-worshipping, sentimental biographical portrait of Cassavetes, click here.)