Lost Heroes, Why every creative needs to know about John Cassavetes

"As an artist, I feel that we must try many things-but above all we must dare to fail"

John Cassavetes

John Cassavetes filmmaker, director, actor, writer and iconoclast was a true original, a man who stood for what he believed in who fought with passion for his art.

Born in 1929 to Greek parents in New York City, he went on to study dramatic arts at American Academy. He auditioned for the actors studio but was rejected. He then started to teach his own alternative to the method in NY and through this class came the concept for his first feature Shadows(1957/59) a piece of celluloid jazz about love, people and the human condition. As he told radio host Jean Shepard he wanted to make films about little people different from the Hollywood fare. The '59 version is considered a watershed moment in independent American cinema.

He shot the '57 version first put it out there and when it was rejected, not liked or just didn't get the response he wanted he didn't crawl into his shell and hide. He went back and reshot half the film, that's a lesson for all of us, sometimes its better just get your 1.0 product out in the world let it be misunderstood or disliked, just iterate make it better and it could be that watershed moment in your industry.

Cassavetes also gained some crowd-funding by announcing on Manhattan radio show that if every listenser just sent in a dollar he could make a movie, John was surprised a few days later that he had received thousands of dollars from willing listeners.

A little antidote serves to understand him as a person. On the set of the troubled, A child is waiting (1963)  Cassavetes saw a young kid lurking around the set watching he asked him what he was doing, when he found out the young man wanted to be a director. Cassavetes allowed him to direct him for the day, that young man was a very young Steven Spielberg.

There is so much in Cassavetes I recommend grabbing a good book like Cassavetes on Cassavetes,  or checking out A Constant Forge a great documentary made a few years ago.

To finish with a quote from John

"you must be willing to risk everything to really express it all"