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Accidental Genius: How John Cassavetes Invented the Independent Film |  |
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Accidental Genius: How John Cassavetes Invented the Independent Film | |
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.
作者简介 Marshall Fine is the author of Bloody Sam: The Life and Films of Sam Peckinpah and Harvey Keitel: The Art of Darkness. He is the film and television critic for Star magazine. He lives in Ossining, NY.
媒体推荐 ". . . 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
专业书评 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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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 --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
The New York Times
". . . step forward in detailing the frenzy, the dread, the hope, and the immense, self-destructive independence with which Cassavetes worked."
Martin Scorcese
"A must-read for anyone who cares about moviemaking."
Newsday
". . . telegraphs how the spirit of a man who lived through imagination and determination could manifest itself on screen."
