A Constant Forge Page #6

He said, "Sey, be gentle. "

I took the moment

within the time and...

I gave her a nice kiss.

And it was so right,you know.

Itjust paid off so well.

Chettie...

will you drive me home?

Sure.

Dorothy was probably more

the epitome of that picture...

than any of the ladies there

at that time.

She might have been 55, 56...

and very unhappy.

She'd been a big silent movie star.

And he really got her vulnerability.

Chettie! Chettie!

You said you'd drive me home.

I will. I will.

That's why you'd shoot a 10-minute

magazine on Florence- Dorothy Gulliver-

listening and watching...

and looking at Lynn talk to me

in the way- and to -

and that reassured her character.

So, when she - "Chettie, I'll dance with you.

I want to dance with you. "

That made her character...

to feel that she was that important

in the scene, and John knew that.

All right.

Let me get the keys.

Here's this beat-up broad out

to seduce a young guy she picked up at a discotheque...

and she tries everything and doesn't care

how ridiculous or pathetic she looks.

She wants this guy,

and she wants to get him in the sack.

I think she might have succeeded

if Maria, that younger chick...

hadn't been there too,

all cool and available.

The point is Florence tried.

She fought, she struggled,

she wouldn't give up.

Isn't it better to fight to see

your fantasies realized-

fight and lose-

than to suffer

and dream away in silence?

In Opening Night, he goes into

an even more complex emotional territory...

which is the internal landscape

of a complex woman like Myrtle.

Oh, my God.

What are you doing?

Don't worry, Sarah.

I'm doing this to myself.

She was a tremendous fighter...

and not that concerned

with what people thought of her personally.

As an actress, yes...

what the audience thought of her

was everything.

But she would make a fool ofherself

in any number of ways...

to fight it through.

Myrtle is left in conflict...

but she fights the terrifying battle

to recapture hope.

Stand still!

In and out oflife,

the theme of the play haunts the actress...

until she kills the young girl in herself.

You can defeat fear through humor...

through pain, through honesty...

bravery, intuition...

and through love

in the truest sense.

There's a sense

in all of Cassavetes'films...

that women are victims.

But one of the things I love

about his cinema...

is that men are no less victims.

Is she dead?

If ever one were to use

the term "feminist" about him...

I think you'd then have to turn around

and say, "No, it's humanist. "

John wasn't a feminist.

He wasn't a masculinist either.

He was no "ists. "

There's a view in Cassavetes'work,

very deeply grained in it...

that the world is made up of individuals.

Each character,

each figure in the films...

is respected and cherished

for their own uniqueness.

Cassavetes goes inside to understand...

so that when you watch any of

the characters in a Cassavetes'work...

you feel that

it's an ultimate act of empathy-

that he is entering into

their point of view.

That is the greatest genius

of Cassavetes'work...

is that capacity to identify...

with characters,

no matter how different they are.

I've never had any

difficulty defining the differences between people.

The difference between people

is what they want, what they come from...

how much money they have-

all those problems.

But they're not groups of people.

The groups can go f*** themselves-

all of them.

To me, there's a name for each person.

I think it's marvelous to have a name.

And a woman is not a woman.

It's either Gena or my mother...

or some other person.

What he does in films like Faces -

They're dissections.

Dissections of, say,

middle-class marriage, of suburban life...

and yet with tremendous sympathy...

for the individuals

at the center of the frame...

even ifhe's critiquing, I think,

the structures into which we've become slaves.

Yeah, well, I'm all wet.

You know you have

a beautiful body?

Yeah, well -

I - I've been told that, yes.

He never wrote anything

about somebody...

that he didn't have

some kind of sympathy or affection...

or respect for in some way,

as low as they may be.

Even the moment that this character we've only

heard about in Chinese Bookie gets killed.

At first you see him as this pathetic, old

Chinese guy in a hot tub with a hooker.

And yet, at the moment

of recognizing what's about to happen-

He's looking at this man in the darkness.

The stillness of that guy-

There's an enormous dignity to that character.

John decided that he was

gonna be killed in this swimming pool...

which at the deep end

was rather deep.

Now, not only was

this fellow nearsighted...

he couldn't swim,

and he was frightened of the water.

So, we built parallels out, but unfortunately,

they didn't go all the way across.

And he was scared to death.

And so we came to that pivotal moment

and broke for lunch...

which was about midnight.

We go down -

On the Strip somewhere we had dinner.

And an hour passes,

and we're drinking wine.

An hour and a half passes,

John turns to me and said -

says...

"Ben. " "Yeah,John. "

"You think we should kill him?"

Now, he was serious.

And for another hour...

he thought about this

very carefully, you know.

And Al Ruban had to come down.

"John, the crew is waiting. "

"Wait a minute. "

So, going back and forth,

back and forth.

Now, you see, I knew what was at issue.

John hated guns. He hated violent people.

He hated gangsters.

He hated them.

I mean, on a real level.

These were the interferers in the dream.

- What are we doin' anyway?

- Just take it easy.

This guy is into us for a lot of money.

He could get so emotional.

"I really love that old Chinese guy. "

Al says, 'John, the crew's waiting.

What are you gonna do?

Kill him or let him live? Whatever.

Let's make up our mind. "

"Look, time's up, Benny.

Do you think you wanna kill him?"

"I like him,John.

I think he's a great guy. "

"What do you think, Sey?"

"Sh*t, that guy's great.

Let's let him live if you want to. "

"Ah, I just really hate to kill him. "

And he finally turned to me

and said, "What do you think, Al?"

I said, 'John, the picture is called

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie.

"You wrote it that way.

Everything has led to this moment.

How can you not kill him?"

He was upset that he had brought himself

to a point in the story...

where the taking of a human life...

seemed an affront to him,

even though he had written it that way.

So, he was thinking of a way to save - to call

this picture The Killing of a Chinese Bookie...

and not kill the Chinese bookie, you see.

But finally he said,

'All right. Let's go up and kill him. "

Real bad.

I'm so sorry.

At the beginning, if someone

just told you what these characters were...

you wouldn't have any sympathy

for them at all- or understanding.

And somehow the - It just -

He just worked that magic that -

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes