SEYMOUR CASSEL: THE ACTOR
By Jim Healy

An Italian-translated version of this interview originally appeared in a book co-edited by Jim Healy and Emanuela Martini, published in conjunction with the John Cassavetes retrospective at the 2007 Torino Film Festival. Seymour Cassel will appear in person in the Dryden on May 16 and 17, following screenings of Faces and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie.

Audiotaping an interview with the garrulous, demonstrative Seymour Cassel for later transcription can be a problematic task. A born performer, Cassel always illustrates his stories and reminiscences with little bits of pantomime and physical shtick, which includes dead-on impersonations of his friends and co-stars like Peter Falk and John Cassavetes.

Almost literally born into show business, Cassel’s mother was a burlesque dancer with the famous Minsky’s showgirls and at age four, he would participate in on-stage antics with baggy-pants comics. A notorious ladies man, Cassel has linked his obsession with the fairer sex to his upbringing: “I saw more naked breasts before the age of four than most men see in their lifetime!”

His mother’s career kept Cassel steadily on the road as a child. When she married a career military man, Cassel spent a brief part of his adolescence in Panama City. When she divorced, she brought the young Seymour home to Detroit, MI where his dalliances with juvenile delinquency ultimately led to his joining the U.S. navy.

Released from the service, he went to New York to pursue a career as an actor in the mid 1950s. He studied briefly with Stella Adler until he discovered the acting workshop co-founded by John Cassavetes and Burton Lane. Looking for a free scholarship, Cassel made a lifelong friend and collaborator in Cassavetes, who immediately put Cassel to work as a crew member on SHADOWS.

Cassavetes proved to be Cassel’s patron saint and main mentor as the young actor entered show business. For most of the next ten years, Cassel’s was primarily employed as a crew member and/or performer in Cassavetes’ film and television work, culminating in an Academy Award-nominated performance in FACES and his first leading role opposite Gena Rowlands in MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ.

Although he continued to work with Cassavetes on such projects as THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE and LOVE STREAMS, Cassel developed enough clout to attract the attention of filmmakers like Ken Russell, Don Siegel, and Sam Peckinpah, with whom he was also very close. After Cassavetes’ death in 1989, Cassel found work on studio projects directed by the likes of Adrian Lyne, Andrew Bergman, Barry Levinson, and Wes Anderson, who has cast Cassel in three of his features.

But it was his work for Cassavetes and his leading turn opposite Steve Buscemi in the 1992 feature IN THE SOUP that has made him much in demand for roles in independent features. An outspoken proponent for the rights of actors, he’s currently campaigning to become president of the Screen Actors Guild from his home in Santa Monica, CA.

JIM HEALY: How did you come to work on Shadows?

SEYMOUR CASSEL: They had already started on the movie when I showed up [at the workshop] looking for the free scholarship, which meant John just let me come for free. He paid for the space for the school in the Variety Arts building and his partner, Burt Lane, ran the school. Through the improvisations in the class with Leilia [Goldoni] and Ben Carruthers, John had already developed the story of the movie. He probably had it in his head all along that he wanted to direct a movie, because he was frustrated as an actor. So he went on Jean Shepherd’s radio show, said he was making the movie and asked for investors. He got over a $1,000! With that, he bought more film. But when I showed up, he took me in his office and talked with me for an hour and I told him my life story.

JH: What did you learn from being a crew member on Shadows and Faces?

SC: I learned I didn’t want to do that! Seriously, first thing I learned was how to load a 16mm magazine in a black bag. Then I learned to thread the camera with it, then pull focus, how to operate a boom. The torturous part was during editing. We shot so much film.

We had to do it that way, but it taught me a lot about film. Everyone got to operate the camera a little bit too. There was always a job for someone and no one was expendable. One day during Faces, a camera operator was playing basketball on one of the breaks and he tore his Achilles tendon, so from then on, he became a loader.

JH: I get the feeling there was a little bit of bluff involved that helped you enter the movie business.

SC: There’s always a lot of bluff involved, especially in this business and John recognized this in me. He was also mischievous and I had that and he sensed that in me.

Once we were in the White Elephant Bar in London and a couple of producers would come in and John would ask them to sit down. They asked, “You got any scripts you’re working on.” John would say, “Yes, I’ve got this one thing.” And he’d look at me [eyes dart suspiciously] because he knew I knew he was lying and he’d make it up.

JH: You were in London when Shadows was first released there?

SC: Yes, ’60 or ’61. John and I had been in Ireland where we had been in a movie [the Ted Allan scripted The Webster Boy], John bought two round-trip first-class tickets. Al [Ruban], [Maurice] Mo McEndree, and myself, we went out drinking to different bars and we wind up at Downey’s. It’s getting along to four in the morning and John asked Mo if he wanted to go to Europe with him and Mo said no. John asked me and I said sure. But I was working on a Playhouse 90 directed by Sidney Lumet. I had about six lines and I was supposed to be at work the next day. We went back to my place and John fell asleep on the couch and I packed a bag. When I woke him up, I said, “Let’s go.” We go to the airport and I called Playhouse 90 to tell them to recast me. I went to London and we were in the hotel for a couple of days and we went on to Ireland where I got a part in the movie.

Then, it was Easter time and we had four days off. John said, “Gena and I are going to Paris.” I said, “Great, I’ve never been to Paris.” “No Gena and I are going.” I said, “Fine, I can get another hotel room.” “I’m not taking you to Paris with me.” I said, “What do you think I want to do, stay here in Ireland? They don’t fuck, I mean, they’re religious as hell!”

I stayed behind in Europe. I cashed in my first class TWA return ticket for a coach and I spent the money and got a place on the Right Bank in Paris. It was lucky I stayed over. I eventually went back to London because I could speak the language and thought I could get a job. I was staying at Ted Allan’s place when I got a call from Penelope Houston at Sight and Sound. She called me on a Friday and she said [affecting British accent], “Do you have the print of Shadows?”

“No, don’t you have it?”

“No, and you know the movie shows on Monday.”

I called John in California and said “Where’s the print of Shadows? It shows here on Monday.”

He said, “Oh fuck, I forgot!” He had to put it on a plane.

But David Robinson in the Financial Times wrote a great review and we got a distribution deal with the Boulting Brothers who had their own theater.

JH: Did you like working with Bobby Darin on Too Late Blues.

SC: Yes. He wanted to do everything because he knew he was going to die early, because of the heart thing he had. John liked Bobby. He didn’t want Bobby for that movie, he wanted Montgomery Clift and Gena [instead of Stella Stevens]. Clift had had an accident and he was also a drinker, so that was a problem for the studio.

Stella was a nice girl. Marty Rankin, the head of the studio, was one of her boyfriends. She got better as she got older, especially in the Peckinpah film [The Ballad of Cable Hogue].

JH: What do you remember about Cassavetes’ studio experience making Too Late Blues.

SC: I forget the name of the cameraman, the guy who shot it, old-time cameraman [Lionel Lindon] and John wanted a different set-up. The cameraman said, “What do you want me to do, drill a hole in the fucking floor?” and John said “No, just put the camera down and I’ll shoot it myself.”

JH: He wanted to follow the actors around more easily…

SC: Well, actors tell your story. Hopefully the writer is there when you do it and Johnny was, so if there was a problem, he could re-write the scene. Then he got to know his actors as people. In Faces, when I’m singing to the girls, John knew he had no money for music rights, and John knew I was doing rap music before they even thought of it, so I just did it: [sings] “Put on the red meat, Mama/Don’ want no taters, no onions…” It was loosey-goosey kind-of stuff. The ‘Mechanical Man’ he told me to do because he saw me do it before. My biggest thrill was to entertain him as well as the actors I worked with because he would stand right next to the camera going [covering his mouth, suppressing a laugh]. He taught me how to incorporate myself in my work. I grew up watching people. I was always an astute observer and John taught me how to use that too.

JH: So, even before you met Cassavetes, what drew you to performing was a need to represent the behavior you had seen?

SC: Yeah, but I wanted to be loved and liked too, and I knew if I could do things people liked, they’d like me.

JH: Did you want to be famous too?

SC: No, I didn’t care about fame. Before I got nominated for the Oscar for Faces, while we were cutting the movie, John said, “See, you’re going to win an Oscar. I’m telling you.” He was so happy when I got nominated and he was happy for Lynn [Carlin] too. We were supposed to go to the awards together, but the day of the show, I called him and he said he couldn’t come. It dawned on me that he didn’t give a shit that he got nominated [for a best screenplay Oscar]. He always gave to his actors. He was really phenomenal that way.

John’s passion was to be able to make movies his way. It’s easy to get people to believe in you when you do the kind of work he did from Shadows to Faces. Benny and Peter never worked for John and they saw Faces and came to him. He then told them he had a story about four guys: one dies and the story is about the other three guys. Peter saw Faces and he said [imitating Falk] “Jesus Christ! That’s a great movie!” But when he was shooting Husbands, he asked Ben Gazzara, “Do you know what the fuck John is talking about? Do you know what he’s saying? Would you tell me because I don’t know what the fuck he wants!”

JH: He seldom talked to actors about their characters during production.

SC: That’s true, but I don’t think [Falk] was used to John’s way of shooting. During Husbands, he was very insecure. By the time he did A Woman Under the Influence, John got Peter to stop worrying about his glass eye, because he needed to shoot him a certain way.

JH: Your character in Faces is almost a symbol for a generation, a hippie prototype, if maybe a bit older than the average hippie.

SC: My hair wasn’t as long then [in 1965 when the movie was shot]. When it came out [in 1968], that [the hippie youth movement] was all happening.

JH: Your character, Chettie, seems to be a bit of you and a bit of Cassavetes rolled into one. He doesn’t live by any rules, especially when it comes to women, yet he’s the moral center of the film.

SC: He has a morality, but there’s nothing immoral about wanting to get laid. He cares about [Lynn Carlin’s character] and the other women in the story. John was one of the most compassionate people who understood the humanity that each person had. His ear was so good too. He could see the way people would not react to each other or the way they would be abrupt with each other or maybe he could sense it.

John and I were together once and we saw Raul Julia and his wife and John told me he could see that she was in a lot of pain. He told me he’d catch up with me and he went and talked with them for about an hour. He said he knew that they weren’t communicating and they were such lovely people. He was amazing at that.

JH: You’ve also said he was superstitious.

SC: He’s a Greek and they’re superstitious gamblers. I remember calling him in Rome from the Venice Film Festival where Faces was showing and I told him to come up because I thought we were going to win awards. He said, “No, I have to work.” He was superstitious because I had been in Venice in ’61 with Shadows by myself when that won. He went to Berlin and wins there for A Woman Under the Influence but I couldn’t go. He took Gena. He goes there a second time with Gena for Love Streams and he calls me and says, “Sey, you should’ve heard the fucking audience when you came on, the applause!”

I said, “Why didn’t you take me.”

He says, “Well, I’ve got my wife.”

I said, “You’re superstitious, you cocksucker!” [laughs]

Greeks are unbelievable. It’s not like John wouldn’t step on a crack or any of that shit, but he loved to roll the dice. John was crazy in a way, a wonderful crazy, and so was I. There are stories I can’t tell about John, you know. Not while Gena is still alive.

JH: I understand there were times when you had to take the blame for things that weren’t always your fault.

SC: I always got blamed. We’d go out to the Lakers Game and he even lied about that. He’d tell me he had tickets for the game, but he wouldn’t show them to me. When we got to the game, he said, “just follow me,” so I knew something was up. We’re sitting right on the court, where the visiting team sits. When I asked where he got the tickets, he says, “I won ‘em in a raffle.”

I say, “I’m not Gena. You may have told her that, but you didn’t get these tickets in a raffle.”

He says, “Oh yeah I did.” They were like $150/$200 tickets.

We’d go out after the game some nights and be out late. I’d pick him up and drop him off. One time, the next day I called and Gena said to me, “Seymour, I don’t want you coming into this house any more.” And she hung up. So for a while, when I’d call John and Gena would answer, I’d hang up.

JH: How long did that go on for?

SC: For a while. When we had softball practice, he’d say, “Don’t worry, I’ll meet you at the bottom of the driveway.” Finally, one night when I picked him up, I said, “What the fuck is wrong with you? Can’t you tell her that you were the one who kept me out late? Just once?”

He said, “What? And have her be mad at me?

JH: Speaking of sports, the subject runs through some of Cassavetes movies. There’s the baseball team in Too Late Blues and the basketball discussions in Husbands.

SC: We played sports all the time. Back in New York in Central Park, we used to play Puerto Ricans up at 102nd and 5th – hardball. That’s how I got Al (Ruban) involved. He was working at a garage near Carnegie Hall and I got him to come play for us. He was the third baseman. We’d play the Puerto Ricans for a couple of cases of beer and if they didn’t win, they’d run. If we lost, they’d stay and we’d have to buy them a couple cases. John loved ball – football, basketball, all of the sports. We’d play in the rain against Columbia students.

When shooting Faces, [John] had a basketball court right outside his living room. We’d have a quick lunch, shoot some hoops, then we’d film again.

JH: Was Cassavetes very competitive?

SC: He was very competitive. He taught me how to play chess when we were cutting Shadows on 63rd, just off Madison. We played waiting for other editors to show up. He beat me over and over again and he said he didn’t want to play me any more. I said “why?”

“Because you’re no good.”

“Yes, but I’m getting better.” So I went down to the village on weekends to the park.

JH: To practice?

SC: Yeah, and I played these guys there and about six weeks later, I said [to Cassavetes], “Let’s play some chess. I think I’m better.” And I beat him.

He said, “Let’s play another,” and I beat him again. He wanted to play again and I said, “No, you gotta practice a little bit.” That’s how competitive he always was.

JH: Why do you think Cassavetes was such a contrarian, so argumentative?

SC: Because people carry their attitudes and beliefs like they were written in gold. If you’re a street-smart kid, you say, ‘are you kidding me?” and John was good at picking up on that stuff, and he could bullshit with the best of them. He would argue a lot. Gena almost didn’t marry him because he was so jealous.

JH: What are your memories of making Minnie and Moskowitz?

SC: We had just finished a scene and John went up to a grip and asked him what he thought of the scene. The grip said, “it was great, John!”

John says, “Yeah, Gena was good, but Seymour was a little weak.” He was doing it to bug my ass because he knew I could hear everything he said!

JH: Al Ruban thinks that the one thing wrong with Minnie and Moskowitz is that you never see the two main characters having actual sex, consummating their relationship.

SC: Well, that’s because John didn’t trust me![laughs] The scene at the Palomino where we’re dancing and I dip her, Gena opened her mouth and I went in. After the scene, John didn’t say shit, he didn’t care, but Gena gave it to me, so I took it. [laughs]

JH: Was Cassavetes squeamish about showing erotic intimacy?

SC: He didn’t like to really show it. You could know it without seeing it. Like in Faces when you see me and Lynn Carlin the morning after.

JH: What was it like to work with Timothy Carey?

SC: John loved Tim Carey. Tim was great. He was wild and there were times you had to watch him. I asked Gadge [Elia Kazan] why he never used him again after East of Eden. He said he almost broke Jimmy [Dean]’s arm. He was playing a bouncer and he was trying to throw Jimmy out – that was his job. Brando used him in One Eyed Jacks. In Killing of a Chinese Bookie he wore editing gloves for his performance.

John shot lots of footage on Tim, just to see what he would do and he came up with weird stuff like his lines about his elbows getting fat in Minnie and Moskowitz.

Tim gave John a German shepherd and John said he didn’t want it, so Tim said, “No, it’s a great dog. He’s a watchdog. Look, he’s not afraid of guns.” And he shot a gun off over the dogs head. John said, “Ok, I’ll take the dog!”

JH: Can you talk about your experience with Sam Peckinpah?

SC: Sam was a conniving son of a bitch. I mean, I loved him. I drank with him. We went to Bogota together. We were going to do a movie from a book called Snowblind. We were going to write the script together, but it got all screwed up. He was a maverick. Sam was a loner more than John was.

JH: How do you feel about New York vs. California living?

SC: I love it here, and I love New York too, but you can’t make a living in the theater and tickets are so expensive - $100 for good seats! It’s too expensive to live there now. The city is so crowded. My apartment on 46th between 9th and 10th was $40 a month. I had a bedroom, a kitchen, and a living room on the ground floor. Richard Hepburn, Kate’s brother, was a playwright and he lived across the hall. I helped him steal a bench from Central Park so we could put in the back of the place. We drove it up 10th avenue in my car.

JH: When did you first come out to California?

SC: I came out here in ’61 for Too Late Blues and then I came back about a year later. I was thinking, “They’re not actors: Rock Hudson, Robert Wagner, Tab Hunter.” I had worked as an extra on that film [Tab Hunter] did with Sophia Loren [His Kind of Woman]. He didn’t know what the fuck he was doing. Acting is as complicated as you make it and the more simple you make it, the better you’re going to be. If you take your time, have fun and enjoy what you’re doing, you’ll make it interesting for yourself, then the other actors pay attention and the words mean something now, because they mean something to you. You can’t make it as laborious as all that.

John taught me a lesson. You can steal anything you want, just make it better when you steal it. I just did that on a movie I just shot on Staten Island and it’s called Staten Island. The director gave me tapes with Charlie Chaplin. I play a deaf mute and I don’t talk in the whole movie and I’m one of the leads. Since I couldn’t speak, I ended up taking the famous globe ballet from The Great Dictator for a scene when I win a trifecta.

John was the closest friend I ever had, plus he was like an older brother.

AL RUBAN: THE TRUCK
By Jim Healy

An Italian-translated version of this interview originally appeared in a book co-edited by Jim Healy and Emanuela Martini, published in conjunction with the John Cassavetes retrospective at the 2007 Torino Film Festival. Al Ruban will appear in person in the Dryden on May 16, 17, and 18 following screenings of Faces, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and Husbands.

“We used to call him The Truck,” Seymour Cassel tells me about Al Ruban. Ruban was a key collaborator on seven of John Cassavetes’ eleven features, beginning with the first, SHADOWS, in 1958, and ending with LOVE STREAMS in 1984. Today, almost two full decades after Cassavetes’ death, Ruban is still a formidable presence. Tall, trim and outspoken, it’s easy to understand how he earned his nickname. When you speak to him about his experiences in bringing these films to completion, it’s clear that his tenacious, ‘no-bullshit’ manner was a major asset to Cassavetes’ rogue band of do-it-yourself film craftsmen.

Ruban began as a production assistant on SHADOWS, then served as either cinemtographer, producer, or both on FACES, HUSBANDS, MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ, THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE, OPENING NIGHT, and LOVE STREAMS. He also turned in brief performances in LOVE STREAMS and, as the gangster who takes Cosmo Vitelli’s money in the opening scene of the long version of CHINESE BOOKIE.

Between SHADOWS and FACES, Ruban ran his own production company in New York, where he churned out softcore features for the grindhouse market. Internationally recognized for his work with Cassavetes, he was hired as inematographer for Peter Lillenthal’s 1979 German drama, DAVID, and Gonzalo Herralde’s JET LAG (VÉRTIGO EN MANHATTAN, 1981). Later, he also helped produce John Avildsen’s HAPPY NEW YEAR (1987), with Peter Falk, and Peter Bogdanovich’s TEXASVILLE (1990).

In 1989, Ruban took over management of Faces Distributing Corp. overseeing the enormously successful re-release, to theaters and home video, of the five independently made films owned by the Cassavetes estate: SHADOWS, FACES, A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE, THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOOKIE, and OPENING NIGHT. He currently resides and works in New Jersey.

Although his particularly innovative and inspired camera work on FACES has been praised by numerous critics and academics, Ruban has no pretensions of being a ‘great artist.’ On the contrary, he sees himself as someone who was without ambition in the early part of his life, and who had the good fortune to meet John Cassavetes in 1958, after a short-lived career in minor league baseball…

AL RUBAN: I managed to get up to double A ball for a little while, and then it was over for me. My original contract was with the farm team of the St. Louis Browns. The problem is I didn’t know what life was about until I got much older, so when I was playing baseball, I was playing and having a good time. It was a game to me.

JIM HEALY: And it was baseball that led you directly to Cassavetes…

AR: Yeah. I had been out of professional sports and was playing in Central Park in New York – a mixture of softball and some hardball. A friend of mine one day said, “I know these actors uptown on 86th Street with a baseball league. They play these Puerto Rican guys and they always lose. Would you like to play with them?” It sounded interesting and I went up there and played with them and they kept inviting me back to play. We just didn’t lose as often. On that team was John, Seymour [Cassel], [Maurice] Mo McEndree and a few people who also worked on SHADOWS. One day, John came to me and said, “would you like to work on the crew?” I professed my ignorance. My only connection to the movies was paying an admission and I told him I didn’t have any knowledge of how to make a movie and he said we’d all foot our way through together…and that sounded appealing to me.

JH: At that point, had the Paris Theatre screening already happened?

AR: No. I was there for the midnight screenings in 1958. I remember not being terribly impressed. John and I had previously talked about a particular scene where I said the actor looked like he was anticipating what was going to happen next. Along the way, somehow, it was recorded that I shouted: ‘He’s anticipating!’ while the scene was being shot, which I would never do under any circumstances. I did shout it out during the scene at the Paris Theatre screening.

Then we went on to shoot another couple of weeks. I just got to carry the equipment and find some locations. That’s it. I got the credit of Assistant Cameraman. I got to see and touch and find some things out, but it was more the experience that was wonderful for me. I thought, “This is just like playing ball. This is fun!” And that’s how I got into the business.

JH: How did SHADOWS lead to your next job?

AR: I got a job at a small production house, McEndree and I, doing…I guess what were called porno films at the time. You could show a breast or two, but that was the extent of what you could do. I worked there for about two years and I got to handle all the equipment and it was an education for me.

JH: Were you editing then too?

AR: I edited some, which was not a difficult task because usually whatever you shot was the picture! [laughs] But yeah, I became very familiar with the process. I then said to two of my friends, ‘What’s the point of struggling and doing this for somebody else when we could struggle and do it for ourselves?’ So we made a few of those films for ourselves.

John had just finished work on something and he came to visit me and I showed him the latest piece that I was working on, which I called THE SEXPLOITERS, about housewives on Long Island who were going out and picking up these daily contacts. I showed it to John and he had a particularly peculiar way of laughing: he’d grab his nose and go [makes sputtering, snickering noise], and he laughed through all the footage I showed him.

He then told me about FACES, which was called several different things along the way, but at that point was called THE MARRIAGE. He said he wanted to do it and he asked me how to go about doing it with limited money. So I finally suggested we could buy used equipment. That way, we’d own whatever we had and we wouldn’t be limited by any kind of payments…if he could afford it. And he said ‘OK. How much?’ and I suggested a price and he went back to California and sent me the money. Then, I went around New York and picked up stuff and put it in a trailer and took my family and the equipment and another guy who was going to work with us named George O’Halloran and we went to Mo McEndree’s home in Iola, KS, and I left my wife and children and took George and went on to California. I introduced everyone to the equipment because I was the only experienced person and that’s how it got started.

JH: What do you make of all the critical interpretations of these films you and Cassavetes worked on?

AR: We’re not as clever as people have made it out to be. Some of the things just happen. The films speak for themselves and quite often you just do something that seems right to you without having thought it out beforehand.

We made them for ourselves and none of us ever thought they’d get to play before an audience. We had to make films that way. That’s the advantage and disadvantage of having grown up with John: he always made films for himself. He had to like it and have an interest in it. He’d write something, be in love with it and talk about it with everybody: the guy who delivered the groceries, the guy that delivered the water, people walking in the streets. He’d say, “hey, you wanna hear this?” But when he directed, the writer was dead. He directed the film from his new, changing point of view. He would re-write the scenes if the actors had difficulties or if they explored some new territories he hadn’t thought of. He would always accommodate the actors if he thought it improved the story. And when he finished production, and began editing, he was not happy with the writer and director, and he would change what they did.

JH: Can you give us an idea of how you and Cassavetes interacted during production?

AR: We started our careers together at a point where neither of us knew very much and I had great respect for him, but when we were working together, I never looked at him as an important figure. We had a healthy debate every day of our lives together and always about the work. I would voice my opinion as strongly as I could and when, in the end, he said, “I can’t do that,” I said “OK.” He was the director and in that sense it was his vision, not anyone else’s. I learned, particularly during FACES, that he would never instruct the actors to do anything. They got a sense of the character working through the rehearsals, which were always long periods before shooting began.

I would go to him early in the shoot and ask him to tell me what he wanted out of a scene: “Give me a hint. At least tell me the emotion you want in the scene and I can light it.” But I realized that the way he worked with actors was the way he worked with the crew. He really didn’t tell you anything. He wanted you to come to work with some thoughts of your own and contribute. He was never bashful and I knew to just light the scene and if he wouldn’t like it, I would change it, but over all those years, he never really changed anything I did, other than one time when he ordered me to get rid of some lights. I think that was on CHINESE BOOKIE, could’ve been LOVE STREAMS. He said, “those lights are destructive to actors’ eyes.” To which I said “bullshit” but I changed the lights.

JH: The actors always came first?

AR: They did and why not? In FACES, we put no marks on the floor and that was a rule of John’s, you had to follow the actors with the camera. [Cassavetes] would say “I don’t care, you’ve got to get them,” so a lot of the time we were just catching up with the actors and the action was different in every take. That’s the way it was and he’d use it in the film if he liked the performance. It didn’t matter to him if the focus went soft in a few places. He would rather it didn’t but the performance was everything.

JH: Working on some of the films was not always a happy experience for you.

AR: I had some lousy experiences, from my point of view, on a couple of them. My first problems with John were on HUSBANDS and we had some flare-ups. I guess I was getting growing pains. He came to me after FACES and said “I never want to go into the editing room again.” I said, “OK”, and we hired Peter Tanner out of London to come in and be the editor. Tanner and I worked on the editing of HUSBANDS. We put it together the way John shot it.

JH: It corresponded to the shooting script, right?

AR: Yes. I did it the way he wrote it and shot it. We screened the picture to over 1,000 people. I thought they all loved it. People were talking about it and were ecstatic. Benny (Gazzara) was out of this world, he was so happy about it. The film starred Ben Gazzara and everyone else played subordinate roles. But out of that 1,000 people, there was only one person who really disliked it. That was John. So I left the editing room and he went in, but we had already sold the picture to Columbia.

Columbia also saw that first cut and they were not unhappy with it, but when John took the picture and re-edited it, they were very unhappy. They wanted changes and I suggested shortening the bar scene. For me, I wouldn’t put up with bullshit from these guys for more than five minutes. I thought you could cut it into a ‘can you top this?’ kind of moment, and then you could cut to the scene in the bathroom and it would still be dynamic, because you would have great contrast. [In Cassavetes’ cut,] these guys seem kind of arrogant and boorish in their behavior, so even when they go in and throw up, the impact is not quite there. You understand why the audience feels the way they do. But he was rather curt with me when I made that suggestion. He wanted it his way and ‘fuck it!’ I left him for a little while after that picture and I made a commitment to make another picture with Benny. We were going to do a film called FUNZY AND THE HOLY NAME SOCIETY. The money for the picture fell out the day before we were going to start shooting.

JH: How did you get involved with MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ after your falling out on HUSBANDS?

AR: [John] asked me to do that picture and I said no, because I was still pissed at him, but he’s a smart guy, so he had [Universal Pictures Executive] Ned Tanen call me and Ned said, “Frankly, it would make me feel more comfortable if you would do the picture.” So it fed my ego, my vanity, and I said, “OK, since you put it that way.” Somebody else wanted me other than John, but it was not quite so pleasant for me. Again, we reached a point, in the editing, where we disagreed. I thought [MINNIE AND MOSKOWITZ] was a fantasy, and a lot of people wouldn’t accept the relationship between Seymour and Gena. I thought they were both wonderful, but I also thought that when Seymour carries Minnie up the stairs, they should have consummated the moment. It would have taken it out of fantasy and made the relationship real.

JH: They should have had sex at that moment?

AR: Yeah. You don’t have to show them, but you gotta let the audience know that it’s consummated, in my opinion, but [John] wouldn’t do it. I thought that was a moment lost for the audience, for them to feel that this was more than just dreamland, because any doubts they might have had over this relationship would have been cured, in my opinion, if that had happened. And it didn’t. He wanted to make his film from that point on and it wasn’t that he rejected everybody’s suggestions, but because I had such a close relationship, some rejections I took more personally. Perhaps I shouldn’t have.

JH: You parted company with him for a while after MINNIE, right?

AR: John called me and said we’re going to do A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE, but I didn’t want to work with him at that point. John called me after they had shot WOMAN and asked me to come out to look at it, which I did. It was the toughest film I had ever seen. I saw it with two of the critics for the Daily News, who were crying in that theater.. Extraordinary. Tougher than the final version.

JH: What did it mean to be a producer for John Cassavetes?

AR: I enjoyed it. Basically I was the guy who kept our promises. That’s the way I liked to look at it. Before we would start shooting, we would settle on the general direction of the script, and we would settle on the actors. Then we would do a budget and I would go through it – in great detail with John – and say ‘here’s what we have.’ If John felt we needed something that was outside of that budget, I would not automatically say, ‘No, you can’t have it.’ I would usually say “Ok, I’ll try and get that, but if I get that, something else has to go,” because I did not want to wind up owing, I considered that bad fiscal management. When you have money you can make all sorts of promises, but you can’t fuck the people. I can’t go to the crew at the end of the week and say, “I can’t pay you because I have no money for work that you’ve just done.” John could be cavalier about those kinds of things, so I insisted that he stay out of it, and he would always know what I was doing. If he came and asked me how much money we had, I would tell him. If he came and suggested something that was really stupid, I would tell him it was stupid. If it was about the story or the actors, I’d give in at some point, but if it was about payment, I would not give in. He’d have to go my way, unless he could bring more money to the production. I had the power of the pen. He didn’t sign any checks and I took it very seriously. That was part of my contribution to make it happen. John busted his ass and did everything he could for that same reason. It’ one thing to start a project, but it’s another thing to actually finish it and to be able to do all the things you set out to do. That to me is a tremendous accomplishment. It hasn’t always been easy. It’s been tough. But that’s exciting in itself.

JH: There were times, though, before some productions began, when you had disagreements about money.

AR: He was a prick in that way, John. We were doing HUSBANDS and I went to the financier, Bino Cicogna, in Italy, to negotiate my contract, and had one of those experiences in life that you’re convinced will never repeat itself. No matter what I said to him, [Cicogna] said, “Yes.” I had learned not to take a lump sum for my work when I work with John, because the work goes on and on and on. I would’ve made a million dollars on that picture, but when I came back and told John what a great experience I had, that no matter what I said, Cicogna said yes, John was aghast. So I had to go back and renegotiate my deal to make it better for John. Only to find out that John had sewn everything up in terms of his contract. I was happy, at first, to do that picture, but I learned, you must negotiate your own deal. That’s why I didn’t do GLORIA.

I was on GLORIA for three days and I got upset because John wanted to incorporate me into his deal. I had objected to a few other things too. I didn’t like Buck Henry as the father. I didn’t like the kid in his Cuban heels. I grew up in a neighborhood that was all old tenements and was completely Italian. You would never get a gangster to sit down at a meeting and have pasta and orange juice. That is absolutely ludicrous. John said, “but it’s funny.” Funny, but not true. You could have him put whipped cream on that pasta, that would be funny too. I would say that mutually we decided that I wouldn’t do that picture. I left.

JH: After you saw the film, you still weren’t impressed with it?

AR: No, because I know how it came about. He didn’t want to direct that picture. He didn’t like gangsters. We had a terrible time on KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE.

JH: Because he didn’t like gangsters or violence…

AR:…But he wrote it and when it came time to kill the bookie, he didn’t want to shoot it. I said, “What are you talking about? You gotta kill him!” And Benny would say, “John, after all, you wrote this, and the title is THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE.” [laughs] We went around and around and John was serious. At that point, he did not want to kill him. So, quietly, he said, “ok, Al, let’s go kill the bookie.” We went back and did it.

JH: Maybe he thought the title would be ironic?

AR: No, I don’t think that at all, because we had already shot scenes that take place after the killing. [laughs]. I thought that film was going to make us a lot of money. We had to pull it after six or seven days. We were playing it at the Columbia in New York City, and when you come out at the end of a screening, the people were so angry and so vocal, telling people in line to not see the movie, “It sucks! It’s terrible!” all kinds of awful, awful things. Because we were handling our own advertising and distribution, we couldn’t sustain it and wait for the mood to change. It was deadly. Deadly.

JH: I read that for the initial release version of CHINESE BOOKIE, he turned over the editing to others because he was going to shoot another film that he was just acting in.

AR: Not true. That was his version. Nobody else did that. That’s what he wanted at the time. I feel he had personal reasons for playing it out at that length because he wanted a vehicle for Meade Roberts, who played Mr. Sophistication. I guess, in some way, John felt an obligation. Innumerable times, Ben and I said he had to cut that stuff, that this guy [Roberts] is boring. Deadly.

JH: I’ve read that you were the one who had to deal most with the union disputes on these non-union productions.

AR: I was the one, but I knew I would be from the beginning. The actors, especially Peter [Falk] and Ben, were all very supportive, in fact, I can’t think of a single actor, except maybe [OPENING NIGHT’s] Paul Stewart, who was difficult, and Paul was wonderful to me. He was just such an old time hand that he wanted things in a certain way and certain things he had to talk about with John, which was ok with me. He’d say, “I can’t talk to you Al, because you’re too nice.”

JH: I get the feeling that on LOVE STREAMS, the studio, Cannon, pretty much left you alone.

AR: Very much so. They were a peculiar company. They rode roughshod over their other low-budget productions, but not ours, because John was very strong. Chris Pearce was supposed to be the production manager, but he never worked on the film, because he was running Cannon. I got along well with him, and then I got into the union and took over as a production manager. Strangely, they wanted me to go out and get vendors who served the film’s cast and crew, and they would abuse them. I wouldn’t let that happen and I paid everyone out of our petty cash account. I ran the account up to $25,000 and they kept replenishing it, but they wouldn’t have paid the bills if they were sent into the official Cannon system. They were hoping to ultimately pay a dime on every dollar.

Other than that, they never interfered. On LOVE STREAMS, I came in as executive producer, with Golan and Globus as producers, though they never showed up. They tried to upgrade the status of their company by doing a Cassavetes film. John told Golan, “If we win any awards, you’re going to get the prize.” In any case, we had an Israeli cameraman, David Gurfinkel, a nice guy, and he had an Israeli camera crew. John loved the first two days of footage and was praising David Gurfinkel, and I had a sense of impending doom and I went to David and said, “That’s terrific, but don’t take it to heart. There are good days and bad days.” Two days later, John hated the footage and David. David came to me and said he was quitting. I said you can’t quit, wait until you get fired. But he complained about his ulcers and quit. John came to me and said, “Al, you gotta shoot this.” I said, “Fuck you, John, I’m not shooting it. I’m already working six days a week. I’m not doing it.” He said, “Ok, but you gotta talk to Golan.” So he gets on the phone – in my office – and gets Menahem on the phone in Tel Aviv and says, “Menahem, I’m with Al. He doesn’t want to shoot the picture!” and hands me the phone. Menahem says, “Please Al, you must, only for two weeks and I’ll find another cameraman.” So, I give in. Now I’m producing it, I’m production manager, and director of photography and I’m now working seven days a week! Madness. Madness. But that’s how John was. He always wanted me to shoot the picture, because that meant there was one less person to talk to. [laughs] He was the same way with [composer and sound designer] Bo Harwood, who never gets enough credit for the work he did.

JH: I get the feeling that on the films you shot after FACES, you became cinematographer by default. Were there some jobs you enjoyed more than others?

AR: The one thing I really enjoyed was being on a film from beginning to end. It’s like giving birth to a child and seeing it develop. It didn’t much matter after it went out, although it was, but the romance is gone. [After working with Cassavetes,] I worked on other films as a cameraman. I had difficulty with the people I was working with and working for because I didn’t respect them. I could have made it a lot easier on myself by just going along and doing my thing, but by nature, I’m not that way, and having grown up with John, I never had to be that way. I always had free rein to do whatever I had to do, and he trusted that, because I never screwed him around, and I would treat everyone the same way. If I had a problem, I would tell you, I wouldn’t sit back in the weeds and wait for the moment to pass. If I have difficulty, I will express it to you. If a director is having problems with someone on the crew, you have to have that person replaced. I don’t find it difficult to do that. Otherwise, you lose so many strides, you create factions within the company where someone has to side with one person over another, because we’re usually talking here about department heads.

JH: What were the circumstances with Jon Voight leaving LOVE STREAMS?

AR: We were negotiating with Jon and he accepted the part in the film and Cannon offered him a sum of money that he agreed to. The night before production began, [Voight] called me and said, “Al, I can’t do it. I’m backing out. I hope you understand. I just cannot do it. Please tell John.” There was no action to be taken. If he didn’t want to do it, he didn’t want to do it. Because it was so close to the start of production, John, who did not want to play the part [of Robert Harmon], said he would because there was not enough time to get someone else.

JH: Is it true that Voight wanted to direct the film?

AR: He never said that to me. Maybe there was some private conversation between him and the person who wrote that. I can’t believe it because [Voight] knew John. John was going to direct the picture and [Voight] accepted the role knowing that. [Voight’s] career really took off again after that and he’s been working non-stop ever since. So, for him, it wasn’t the wrong move. It just was a lousy thing to do.

JH: Did you feel the release of LOVE STREAMS was botched?

AR: I didn’t feel it was botched. They just didn’t have the faith to release it, and let it build up momentum. Cannon just couldn’t do that. Everything had to be now. It was good for what it was. We won the Golden Bear in Berlin and we brought the award back to Menahem.

JH: Can you talk about how you were involved in re-releasing the five Cassavetes-owned films after his death?

AR: In 1989, before John passed away, Sam called me at home to tell me that John only had a couple of days to live. He asked me to come out to see him and I said no. I said I would come out for the funeral, but I wasn’t going to go there to watch him die. I had too much respect for him. So, I went out, handled the funeral arrangements for Gena. When it was over, she was still upset, and I asked if she wanted me to take the films and see what I could do with them. She said yes, please. I later found out that John died with no money. His films were his only assets besides his house. He left her broke. I got a call from Bruce Jenkins at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. He wanted to run the films, but I couldn’t afford to make new prints, so I proposed that if he could find a bunch of venues to take the films on tour, we could make the new prints. He had them booked for a year and two months, in wonderful places where people really wanted to see the films. The bookings paid for themselves. I then talked with my friend Julian Schlossberg at Castle Hill. He wanted to distribute the films. He was enamored of them, but I insisted on the films being booked for one week at a time in New York, in sequence, and then, after a week, no matter what kind of business it was doing, the film should be pulled. It was a huge success, then we moved to the Laemmle Theaters in L.A. and played them the same way. Then, Disney, of all studios, called and wanted to put out video cassettes! This was the decision of Bill Mechanic, who was then running the company. He really wanted to do it and we made another deal that was very profitable. They brought out WOMAN first, but it didn’t go beyond a certain plateau in sales. They put the color films out first, but they didn’t sell enough units. WOMAN sold 44,000 units, but it wasn’t enough. Then they did CHINESE BOOKIE and it sold less, but they were charging $99 a tape! A mistake. How would you expect to sell it to the people who love these films, unless you sell at a more accommodating price? They didn’t want to release the black and white films, so I made a separate deal for those.

JH: When you went to work with other filmmakers, it was quite a different experience, I’d imagine.

AR: And how! Everybody in film I’ve worked with works hard, and for different reasons. I’ve been on productions that cost in excess of twenty million dollars that were all disasters at the box office. I did TEXASVILLE and HAPPY NEW YEAR, and they each played, maybe a week, at best. They really didn’t need me on those pictures. They just needed a body to do the things that you’re supposed to do within the system of making these multi-million dollar movies, which is not me. So I couldn’t help them, not that I couldn’t make it better or make it worse. It didn’t matter. The industry is set up that way and that’s the way it goes, which is why commercial films are invariably not as good as they should be. It’s hard to have a passion for your work when the people with box office clout have the say, because they’re only looking out for their interests. They want to keep their image alive. I really can’t fault them for that…or I can, but I understand why it’s done in this system.

JH: Is there a specific kind of movie you like, as a viewer?

AR: I want to like the characters or some of the characters. I want to be interested in the film. It doesn’t have to have a happy ending. I just want to find something to like so that I’m drawn into the story. I have no problems with whatever happens because when I’m involved, I’m taken for a ride. I show up being a very willing participant. I don’t care if it’s a musical, comedy, heavy drama, whatever. I just want to believe the people. Even if it’s a villain, I want to see something in that character that I believe. Most people are like that. They show up and say, “here I am. I want to believe you until you make me not believe you.” If you fall out of the picture, it’s very hard to get you back into it again. You fall into that emotional line, it’s hard to recover for an audience. Nowadays, it’s just titillation.

JH: A lot of viewers see the Cassavetes films as, if not pessimistic, then ‘downbeat.’ He saw them as essentially hopeful, apparently. I wonder if that’s because there’s always something hopeful in honesty, in that believability that you’re talking about.

AR: I think so. Everyone in life, unless you’re depressed, is hopeful, always looking for things to get better and we so foolishly screw things up for so many different reasons, for petty things. If you make a commitment to your spouse, that doesn’t mean the rest of the world should be turned off to you. That doesn’t mean you should commit adultery, it just means you should have more of an interest in your commitment. It’s just too easy to travel so many different roads at the same time and blame something or someone else for everything that goes wrong, every failure you might reach. You should take responsibility for what you’ve done. Own up to it because that’s the only way you can improve the situation for yourself, not even for others, just for yourself. The only way you get any better is by saying, “goddammit, I made a mistake there,” admitting it and moving on.

He really was a visionary. I never knew it at the time we were doing it. He created characters, he involved people, he had a willingness to let the actors take over the characters. As a testament to his talent, here we are today. He’s actually become more popular since his death in ’89. His attitudes come through the films. You don’t have to know him. I mean, often he would say, later in life, as death was approaching, that he didn’t want to do interviews. He’d do it to promote the films as they were coming out, but he cared nothing about leaving a legacy through interviews. He said, “just let ‘em see my films. Then they’ll know everything there is to know.”

He was an obsessive Greek. Earlier in his career, he was the greatest salesman. He had charm and could get you to do whatever he wanted you to do. As he moved on in life, it changed somewhat and he didn’t need to use his charm. He became an obsessive creator, who wanted to make his own creations.

JH: Was he discouraged by something?

AR: I really don’t have the insight to that. I always felt he became more determined to have the films reflect his current thinking, whatever that was, and it always changed. He was always writing. He had a compulsion to write. And if he could sell his material, he would sell it when he needed money, but he never wanted to go back and sell something he had written before as a current project. He always had to write and work on something new – deal with some part of the world or life that he had not dealt with before.

Some of the more difficult things to put up with were when I would argue with him about a scene and he would convince me to his way of thinking. Then, the next day, he’d change his mind again and I felt betrayed because he deserted his own view. But that was momentary because it happened so often and I got past it: [John] was a guy who was thinking all the time and I was only thinking about the things that I was doing. He was thinking about the big picture, so he has my undying respect for that.