|
|
| Imagination is more
important than knowledge --Albert Einstein |
| 1980 East/West Game author: John Cassavetes director: John Cassavetes player: Nick Cassavetes, Sandy Martin date: November, Los Angeles PLOT: a comedy about a playwright "off-Broadway" - played by Nick Cassavetes - that is asked to compromise to be able to write a movie in Hollywood. The show was structures as a piece into a piece. 1981 Knives author: John Cassavetes director: John Cassavetes player: Peter Falk, Richard Kaye, Jamie Horton, Robert Fielsteel, Shera Danese, John Finnegan date: 3 May 1981, Los Angeles PLOT (minimal in case you decide to read the play): it's a story of a murder in the comic show business, an actor Larry, accused of the homicide, Maureen, his wife, killed with her precious kitchen knives. A party that everybody seem to remember in a different way. Two acts, a series of flashback and forward, a tone really discordant and satirical and the human being with all his miserable masks. Comment: the European Premiere was held in Bolzano, Italy at the Teatro Comunale by Teatro Stabile of Bolzano (27/oct) and Teatro Puccini of Merano (another rapresentation was held in Roma, at Sala Umberto) - The Italian version was born one night in Berna (where John Cassavetes was shoting Brass Target), where John gathered some friends to show a play he had written, Knives. It was his first attempt. Among these friends there was Basilio Franchina, who decided to do the italian adaptation. This version is probably more close to original version than the Peter Falk's one (re-adapted by the author himself) Read some lines from italian adaptation. The Third Day Comes author: Ted Allan director: John Cassavetes player: Nick Cassavetes, Michael McGuire, Gena Rowlands date: May, Los Angeles PLOT: the same characters of Love Streams, set in Canada, during the Depression era Love Streams author: Ted Allan director: John Cassavetes player: Gena Rowlands, Jon Voight, Margaret Abbott, Diahnne Abbott date: May, Los Angeles PLOT: see relative movie (Knives, The Third Day Comes, Love Streams are known as Three Plays of Love and Hate and cycled at the Center Theatre of Los Angeles) 1987 A Woman of Mistery author: John Cassavetes director: John Cassavetes player: Gena Rowlands, Carol Kane, Roy Brocksmith, Carol Arthur, Alan Stock date: 10-25 May, Los Angeles (Court Theatre of West Hollywood) Comment: John Cassavetes wanted to make a movie out of this play, but he was too ill and so he was convinced that a play would have been less exhausting - Young director Richard Arrington was rehearsing his cast for a production of John Guare's Landscape of the Body when he was approached by John Cassavetes, who said he needed a small theater for a play he had written for his wife, Gena Rowlands. The play is called A Mysterious Woman and will also star Carol Kane, Charles Durning and Woody (Cheers) Harrelson. Because Cassavetes is gravely ill, the 57-year-old actor-director asked Arrington if he would mind postponing his own production so that Cassavetes might stage his work first. Arrington turned over the theater until June From the program notes John Cassavetes wrote: "I have noticed that people who were loved or felt they were loved seemed to lead a fuller, happier lives. All of my own work in theter and film has been concerned with varying themes of this love. A Woman of Mystery has to do with an unexplored segment of our society, referred to as the homeless, bag ladies, winos, bums - label that are much easier for the public to deal with than the individual. It has been difficult to explore this particular woman of mystery. She is not only homeless (if homeless means without the comfort of love) but she is nameless, without the practical application of social security, or any other identity. Alone, she clings to her bagagges on the street. Our heroine enters into a series of encounters that challenge her isolation, her inability to communcate. A young woman passerby seems to feel that this woman with the suitcase causes the woman's memory to play tricks on her. A young man seems to touch unexplained dependency in her and a clerk at a travel bureu gets dangerously close to exchanging love. Change continues as the woman comes forward, attempting sociability. But, in the end, normal feelings of affection are too difficult to return to. The woman has been permanently disabled by long discontinuance of feeling of love" |
| MISCELLANEOUS Haircut Written and Directed by Tamar Simon Hoffs Short movie (about 20 mins) Presented at Cannes in 1983: shttp://www.festival-cannes.fr/filmbase/va/films/1/1539.html PLOT: a businessman (Cassavetes) enters a barber shop for a quick trim only to come away amazed at the deluxe full-service treatment given inside. Comment: I saw a few scenes from this short (reported in Anything for John). Try to get it, because even in 20 minutes you have the real feeling of great acting. John was wonderful and so was his hair - Available as a special feature on DVD/VHS "The Allnighters" (available on NTSC standard only) The Lloyd Bridges Show Produced by Four Star Productions - New World International/Four Star International - 1440 S. Sepulveda, Los Angeles, CA. Following his four successful years in "Sea Hunt", which was distributed in First-run Syndication, Lloyd Bridges attempted this network series produced by Four Star Productions. He played a free-lance journalist who involves himself in present or past dramas, some of which he played a part. So it was a kind of hybrid Dramatic Anthology, with Lloyd Bridges introducing the weekly dramas and sometimes acting in them. His sons who were starting their own careers -- Beau and Jeff Bridges -- were cast in some of the roles. But the series only lasted one season despite the abundance of Bridges family talent and venerable Four Star Productions behind it. (CBS Primetime, 1962 - 63) Episode: A Pair of Boots, My Daddy Can Lick Your Daddy A Pair of Boots Directed by John Cassavetes Writing credits Mort R. Lewis CAST Beau Bridges Lloyd Bridges .... Otis Seymour Cassel Royal Dano Gene Darfler .... Jonas John Dierkes Frederick Draper George Dunn John Marley Maurice McEndree Andrew Parks .... Boy in Museum Lawrence Tierney Jason Wingreen Produced by Everett Chambers, Aaron Spelling (running time 30 min) Comment: At the end of a bloody battle during the Civil War, a Confederate officer (Lloyd Bridges) proposes a ceasefire to his Union counterpart. But it is violated by a crazy Southern soldier who kills a Northerner for his boots. The battle resumes, in spite of the exhausted cambatants. - Shot in three days, the film uses actors dear to Cassavetes, such as John Marley and Seymour Cassel, both of whom would appear in Faces (from the catalogue of 47 Festival Internazionale del Film Locarno, Locarno 1994) My Daddy Can Lick Your Daddy Directed by John Cassavetes Writing credits Robert Towne CAST Lloyd Bridges Frederick Draper Lelia Goldoni Gary Lockwood Produced by Everett Chambers, Aaron Spelling (running time 30 min) Comment: My Daddy Can Lick Your Daddy was made by Cassavetes during the summer of 1962 at Dick Powell's Four Star studio for the The Lloyd Bridges Show; this series was conceived as a vehicle for Bridges, then a TV star, who each week played a different role. This episode, probably made after A Pair of Boots, is about a vain boxing champ (Bridges) who is challenged by his own son (from the catalogue of 47 Festival Internazionale del Film Locarno, Locarno 1994) |
