The Burnzo Diaries: How I Got into the Films of John Cassavetes

I’m not sure I ever would have heard of or even been exposed to the films of John Cassavetes had I not attended Boston University. I believe it could have been my freshman year at the university and I remember walking into the main entrance of BU’s College of Communication building. There was a little display case in the entrance showcasing books that College of Communication professors had recently published. I remember seeing a big fat copy of Cassavetes on Cassavetes in this display case, which had recently been published by BU film professor Ray Carney.[i] I was very drawn to this book. There was a photo of John Cassavetes behind a film camera, so I knew the book was about a filmmaker, but I had never heard of this filmmaker before. I think part of what intrigued me was how fat the book was. I was wondering who this filmmaker was that somebody had written such a big book about (500 pages long).

Cassavetes on Cassavetes

As my time at BU progressed, I began hearing the name Cassavetes pop up here and there, mainly because America’s renown expert on Cassavetes (Carney) was the head of the film studies department at BU and I basically couldn’t help but NOT hear the name pop up. By my second semester sophomore year, I was in an introductory film course called UNDERSTANDING FILM. This course was not taught by Carney but by a professor who had been a former student of Carney’s and was kind of like his protégé. Although we didn’t watch any Cassavetes films in the class (looking back on this, I’m surprised that we never did), I do remember my professor devoting a class to Cassavetes’ filmmaking style, which he called “experiential cinema.” I had no idea what that meant at the time, but I think I do now. I think what he meant was that Cassavetes films were not interested in providing a mass audience “communal experience,” which is basically the goal of all Hollywood films. In fact, the goal of the Hollywood movie is to—generally speaking—serve a canned experience to an audience, one which most members of the audience will experience in a similar manner. You know: thriller, horror, comedy, drama … there may be some variation in which a viewer experiences the film, but the main goal is for everyone to enjoy the experience as a collective body. They laugh together, get scared together, get thrilled together, cry together, and then they can all talk about it at the water cooler on Monday morning.

Cassavetes films, however, are the complete opposite of this.

John’s work did something that no film had ever really done before and that was provide a non-communal experience, meaning each viewer mostly experiences the film in his or her own unique way. What one scene means to one person means something different to another person. Thus, an individualized experience is created, not a collective one. A person can watch a Cassavetes film and literally have an experience with that film that is completely unique, personal and intimate to them. Now, if you’re confused by what I mean when I say “intimate,” what I mean is that you basically engage in an intimate relationship with that film that nobody else is a part of. It’s just you and the film and the experience you have with one another. Then, of course, another viewer has their own relationship with the film that is different from your own and then another viewer has yet another unique, intimate relationship and so on and so forth. No one relationship is quite the same as another; they are all different, personal and, yes, intimate. If you really think about it, what is more American than that? Embracing the individual and NOT the collective. When it’s said that John Cassavetes is the godfather of American Independent Film, it couldn’t be more accurate, because his films were, indeed, so truly American.

So, yes, in short, “experiential” cinema meant that when you watched the film, you had a unique experience, one that didn’t leave you feeling like a member of a mass audience but, rather, left you feeling like an individual. Or, put another way, John’s films were one-on-one media, not mass media. I could not for the life of me understand this concept when I was a sophomore in college, but I was still so intrigued by Cassavetes and I wanted to begin watching his films.

I believe the very first Cassavetes film I ever saw was A Woman Under the Influence and that was probably a good film to start with. I remember that I was watching it in the basement of my house and my mom came downstairs to iron or something and caught one of the more dramatic scenes. She seemed riveted and said something along the lines of, “You know, there’s households out there that are really like that,” meaning dysfunctional and chaotic. At the time, I kind of scoffed and said, “Oh, silly mom,” she doesn’t get that there is something much deeper and smarter going on in the film, that there is something beyond the surface of it all, that Mabel “represents” something larger, that there’s some deep social commentary to be found in the film’s subtext. But that was me thinking I was Mr. Smarty Pants. I was used to seeing films and looking for deep messages and metaphors and I thought Cassavetes films must be much more than what they appeared to be. It wasn’t until years later that I realized I was being way too intellectual in my viewing of A Woman Under the Influence. What my mom got out of the film was what she was supposed to get out of the film. Cassavetes had realistically captured a complicated, at-times chaotic and often dysfunctional (yet loving) family in a completely riveting manner. I thought my mom was just looking at the surface of the film and not “getting it,” but what was there to get? Cassavetes wanted to capture the reality of a troubled marriage and imperfect family in its rawest form and he had successfully done it. Now, I can’t say that there AREN’T any metaphors, social commentaries or allegories in Cassavetes’ films (because I personally think there are some), but the point of watching a Cassavetes film is not to search for metaphor, decode social commentary and identify allegory. Above all else, the point is to experience the expression of human behavior, including how humans engage in complicated relationships with one another. My mom got this. I did not.

Gena Rowlands as Mabel in A Woman Under the Influence.

John Cassavetes filming Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence.

Other than A Woman Under the Influence, I, at a certain point, tried watching The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, but I remember that not going so well; I thought it was boring and I was disappointed that it wasn’t the Goodfellas-esque gangster film I thought it would be (today it’s ironically my personal favorite of the Cassavetes films—maybe not his best but a personal favorite). I’m not even sure I made it through the film. Instead, I went back to my viewing of more “conventional” movies like Hitchcock and Kubrick etc.

However, I still felt an attraction to Cassavetes. The Cassavetes on Cassavetes book was in the display case at the COM building entrance for maybe a couple years or so and it kept calling my name. I knew it wanted me to read it.

It wasn’t until the summer between my junior year and senior year at BU that I finally went to the Barnes & Noble in Kenmore Square and bought myself a copy of Cassavetes on Cassavetes. In fact, I think I had just completed an intensive round of summer school courses that ended in July and I had maybe a couple months of downtime before I resumed classes in the fall. I began reading Cassavetes on Cassavetes and I didn’t stop until I read all 500 pages of it. I don’t even think I watched the Cassavetes’ films along with the reading of the book. Reading the book was enough for me or all I wanted to do at the time. I found Cassavetes’ words so creatively inspiring. I can’t say that I owe it all to Cassavetes, but that summer marked a turning point in my life. What would happen on most of my summer vacations was that I would go into them with all these big plans of what I would do. You know, “I’m going to read this book and that book and … hmmm … maybe I’ll write a screenplay, maybe even write a book,” and then what would happen after a week or so would be that I’d get lazy, play video games, watch movies, TV, hang out with friends doing nothing all that productive (unless hanging out outside the local 7-Eleven is considered productive), and none of my big plans would come to fruition.

The summer between junior and senior year—the summer of 2003, to be exact—was very different. That was really the summer when I somehow found the self-discipline needed to become a writer. I also made a couple short films, nothing like Cassavetes’ work, by the way, but they were creative endeavors and my newfound creative drive was definitely driven by the reading of Cassavetes on Cassavetes and the inspiration it gave me. I was never the same person after the summer of 2003. My newfound self-discipline never went away and I still have it to this very day, more than 20 years later.

My personal copy of Cassavetes on Cassavetes that I still have today.

But, no, I didn’t watch any more Cassavetes films, even after reading Cassavetes on Cassavetes. The words of wisdom were enough. And I never took a class with Ray Carney while I was at BU. Why? Not sure. I guess I had other priorities at the time. Carney was teaching a Cassavetes course and I think, to be honest, I thought I was too dumb for it. Yes, I actually think I was afraid of the course. It felt intimidating to me. Besides, I wanted to take more film production courses and I also wanted to pull off an English minor, so I took a lot of literature courses and the Cassavetes class never became a priority for me.

It actually wasn’t until AFTER I graduated from BU that I got REALLY bit by the Cassavetes bug. It was either the end of 2004 or the beginning of 2005 (i.e. six months after graduating college) that I heard there was a box set of Cassavetes films being released by the Criterion collection. Criterion had the reputation of releasing some really good, high-quality DVDs. It looked like a nice box set with all sorts of extra features and I knew I had to get it. It was either for Christmas that year or for my birthday, which came a couple weeks later (on January 5^th) that I was gifted the box set of five Cassavetes films.

This was, in all seriousness, another life-changing moment.

I popped Cassavetes’ first film Shadows into my DVD player and I never looked back. Faces, A Woman Under the Influence, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Opening Night—I watched each of John’s films over and over again. I don’t know if it was divine timing or what, but I guess, for some reason, it was now the perfect time in my life to begin watching Cassavetes films. Up until that point, I had been exposed here and there to Cassavetes, in little bits and pieces, then I, of course, read the Ray Carney book, but now … NOW … it was apparently time for me to really do a deep dive into his work. Maybe I wasn’t ready for his films until that point in my life. Who knows?

I didn’t stop with the five films that were in the box set, either. On Amazon, I managed to find rare VHS copies of both Minnie and Moskowitz and Cassavetes’ last film Love Streams. I watched those over and over as well. Also, from my local library network, I was able to find a DVD copy of Husbands. Every night, I would confine myself to my bedroom, turn out the light, sometimes sip an adult beverage, sometimes not, and “escape” into the world of a Cassavetes film. And I put the word “escape” in quotes because it was really the opposite of escaping from reality … it was tuning into reality, the complete antithetical experience of what Hollywood movies do (i.e. provide you an escape from reality).

The Love Streams VHS.

The uniquely designed Canon Group VHS box for Love Streams.

The Minnie and Moskowitz VHS.
This film is hard to find in any other format as of 2025.

All of Cassavetes’ films were so different from what I was used to. Most Hollywood movies were “plot-driven,” but Cassavetes’ films were the most character-driven works, I think, in existence. In fact, ‘character-driven’ isn’t quite the correct term. I would say his films were more like ‘human-driven’, which was a radical departure from Hollywood where the “humans” in movies are more like dehumanized pawns strategically used to tell a good story … or, in other words, a means to an end. Cassavetes, however, apparently didn’t give a damn about entertaining an audience with a good story. All he cared about was capturing something truthful about human behavior and the human condition. The story didn’t dictate the human behavior; rather, it was the human behavior that dictated the story.

Now, many people (rightfully so) misconceive Cassavetes’ films as being “improvised” (maybe because a title card in Shadows says everything you are seeing is an improvisation), but the films are apparently all scripted and well-structured in their own unique, non-Hollywood way. They seem improvised because Cassavetes was so talented at capturing real human behavior on the written page. Of course, his scripts were by no means etched in stone. The actors—with the guidance of Cassavetes—were free to explore the complexities of their characters and alter their dialogue or actions as they saw fit.[ii] The script was always subject to changes, even during shooting (as you can see in the documentary I’m Almost Not Crazy) and was never bound by a tight plot.[iii] In fact, ‘plot’ was a dirty word. Reality was more important than plot, the latter of which, if you think about it, is really the opposite of reality; it’s un-reality.

Indeed, Cassavetes’ main interest lay in non-contrived reality while Hollywood was more interested in contrived character arcs, plot beats, Acts, well-established character conflicts, clear-cut character goals (the question ‘what does this character want?’ must be clear!) etc., all of which are elements of a false reality. Cassavetes wanted to deliver audiences from this Hollywood-induced unreality and reintroduce them to reality.

As for me, I apparently craved this reality. For a period of several months, Cassavetes’ films were my addiction. I literally could watch nothing BUT Cassavetes. Hollywood movies were suddenly so stupid to me, with one-dimensional characters or ‘types’ with canned emotions, Hollywood feeling, not real humanfeelings that you would experience in everyday life.

Out of all the Cassavetes films I watched, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie probably became my favorite; again, not because it was necessarily his best film but, for some reason, because it spoke to me the most. The Criterion DVD contained two different versions of this film and I watched both versions multiple times. That’s right: Cassavetes’ filmmaking was very explorational and his artistic vision was in a constant state of flux throughout the process of shooting a film and even throughout the process of editing it. If the editing process took him in a different direction from what he had in the initial script, well, he would simply go with it and pleasantly surprise himself with an end-product different from anything he had initially envisioned. If he wanted to explore two different creative pathways and end up with two versions of his films? Well, why not? Hollywood, of course, wouldn’t approve of this explorative process; they would want one version of the film finished on deadline, then they would promote the film, distribute the film, hope to make a lot of money off the film and on to the next. Cassavetes, however, seemed to like taking his time and the filmmaking process was more interesting to him than making an end-product that would hopefully be a “hit” (i.e. a financially successful movie). In this sense, he was the epitome of the anti-Hollywood filmmaker. His filmmaking style was unprecedented at the time, especially in America. He completely subverted the Hollywood model of what a movie should be.

Anyway, it sounds sappy, but I watched so many Cassavetes films over the course of about a year that it felt as though Cassavetes himself was holding my hand throughout this entire process, functioning as a kind of spirit guide, walking me through the spiritual experience of a lifetime.

Assisting with this “spiritual experience” were Ray Carney’s books on Cassavetes, my reading of which coincided with my viewing of the films. I re-read much of Cassavetes on Cassavetes, but I also read Carney’s book The Films of John Cassavetes: Pragmatism, Modernism and the Movies,[iv] a British Film Institute (BFI) published book called Shadows,[v] and a self-published book called John Cassavetes: The Adventure of Insecurity.[vi] Both the films of John Cassavetes and the writing of Ray Carney went hand-in-hand. Carney’s books were almost like an extension of the films themselves, meaning you got way more out of the viewing experience with his writing complementing it. Or, in other words, I guess what I’m saying is that Cassavetes and Carney were sort of a package deal.

The amazing thing (and what-I-deemed serendipitous at the time) was that Carney literally lived a mere five minutes away from me. One day in March 2005 (a good three months or so into my addiction to Cassavetes films), I was out walking my Bassett Hound Anthony just down the street from my house and I saw this man rolling down the street on his bike. As he came closer, he started looking familiar and then he waved, smiled and said ‘hello’. I suddenly realized, holy sh**, that was just Ray Carney! At the time, I had been drowning myself in all things Cassavetes, reading all things Carney as a kind of study aid to the films, and then, boom, there was the man himself riding right past me on his bike. It was so surreal. Too surreal. Serendipitous for sure.

I felt a strong pull to contact Mr. Carney, so the next day, I wrote Ray a letter and sent him a VHS copy of a short film I had made. A few days later, I received an email from him thanking me for the letter and he said he enjoyed the film and, more specifically, he said, “You leave people thinking.” Needless to say, getting a compliment like that (i.e. that my film was thought-provoking), from the guy who wrote Cassavetes on Cassavetes really made my day.

I emailed Ray back and forth and probably bothered the hell out of him because he was such a busy man, but he eventually invited me to sit in on his American Independent Film class at BU. So back to BU I went as a non-student and sat in on Carney’s class, but I don’t think he ever showed any Cassavetes films for the classes I had attended (I believe he taught a whole separate Cassavetes course during a different semester). For the next two months or so, I occasionally sat in on Carney’s classes, corresponded with him via email and very often crossed paths with the film scholar while he was biking.

Surprisingly, I can’t think of many occasions when Carney would mention Cassavetes or his work. I know he did a couple of times, but the filmmaker wasn’t discussed as much as you would think. We had interesting conversations, though, especially about the current state of film schools and how they had become kind of like trade schools that taught students how to achieve success in Hollywood, not places where students were taught to express themselves freely or even think freely.

In general, Ray was very encouraging, inspiring and supportive of my work. He would tell me things like, “Fight the culture of unreality!” and, “Work for truth!” and, “Don’t think, just do!” and, “Do your soul work!” (i.e. work that may not pay but that your soul needs you to do). Incidentally, Carney also gave me the filmmaker Richard Linklater’s email address. That was nice of him to do. Oh, and how could I forget the time when Ray came to see a play I was in called King of Hearts! He had very nice things to say about my performance (I played a deaf mute named Demosthenes). Again, Carney was very supportive and encouraging when it came to my creative endeavors.

Signed copy of Ray Carney's John Cassavetes: The Adventure of Insecurity.

A nice message from Ray Carney after I sat in on his class.
This is a signed copy of Ray Carney's self-published book of essays and interviews.

Another self-published book of Ray Carney essays/interviews signed by Carney.

A third book of Carney essays/interviews signed by Carney.

Years later, in the year 2020, right at the beginning of COVID, I re-read Cassavetes on Cassavetes and it was like I had never read it before. I found it just as inspiring and just as fascinating, maybe even more than I had when I first read the book.

In 2022, I made a point to rewatch many of Cassavetes’ films, which I hadn’t done in maybe a good 10 or maybe even 15 years. My experience watching them was a lot different this time around. I was older, had different life experiences under my belt and could identify with or simply appreciate things that I hadn’t appreciated before when I was younger.

Let me quickly give you a few examples of this:

The first example is in Faces where at least three scenes in that film reminded me of many late-night “after parties” I had gone to during my twenties and even early-thirties. You know what I mean: the kind of parties where you are out with friends at a bar, you meet up with some new girls and they invite you back over to their apartment to do more drinking and the night kind of turns into a hazy blur. During the course of the night, you try to win over the girl you want, but sometimes your friend is having better luck with this or vice versa and you kind of compete with each other or put on a show for the girls to try and impress them and whoever puts on the best show wins the girl over or so it seems at the time. This is what I saw happening with the scenes that take place at Jeannie’s house when Richard Forst and Freddie Draper are trying to win her over, then in a similar scene when Jim McCarthy is competing with Richard Forst to get Jeannie to like him, and also when the four ladies—Maria Forst, Louise, Billie Mae and “Florence from Torrance”—bring Chet (played by Seymour Cassel) back to their place after being out at Whisky a Go Go. In the latter scene, there are also interesting moments when Chet clearly is into one particular woman (Maria), but it’s Florence from Torrance who is the most into him and he politely ingratiates her with his attention but also tries to ditch her at the same time. There is even one moment when Chet is dancing with Florence but also nonchalantly leading her towards the door to the house, subtly (or perhaps not-so-subtly) trying to get her to leave so he can be alone with Maria. Again, these are all situations that reminded me of late-night “after-parties” that I had been to.

One of the "after-party" scenes in Faces.

The second example is something I identified with in Husbands and Love Streams. In both movies, Cassavetes plays a character that, at one point, tries to win over a girl who is playing hard to get; in Love Streams, it’s Robert Harmon trying to win over the nightclub singer Susan and in Husbands it’s Gus Demetri trying to win over Mary, a girl he picks up while carousing with the guys in London. When Robert and Gus do eventually win these girls over, they get cold, back off and run in the opposite direction. They are interested in the chase, but once they get their prize, they are no longer interested. Or maybe they only want what they can’t have and, after they get it, they don’t want it anymore. Or maybe they’re afraid of real relationships and once it seems like an actual relationship is being established, they get scared and back off. Or maybe, especially in the case of Gus, it’s part of a mid-life crisis and it’s his way of feeling young and free again, but once he feels like the woman likes him, then he no longer has any use for her, his ego has already been satiated. Whatever it is, both characters—Robert and Gus—don’t seem to really know what they want (i.e. do they or do they not want the girl?). This complex male psychology was certainly something I could identify with and I think it’s very common male behavior. It’s also something you would rarely find in a Hollywood movie because characters always have to know what they want. It’s pretty much the first rule of conventional screenwriting: figure out what your character wants, what their goal is.

Robert Harmon (Cassavetes) and Sarah Lawson (Rowlands) in Love Streams.

The movie poster for Husbands.

A third example is a bar scene that felt very familiar to me in The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (the shorter 1978 version, that is). This is the scene early in the film when Cosmo has finally paid off his debts to the loan shark. He has a cab drive him to a local dive bar so he can grab a couple drinks to celebrate by himself. There is nothing overly revealing about this scene as far as plot goes. Cosmo basically walks in, orders a scotch ‘n water, dances around with himself a bit, then goes and plays a song on the jukebox, sits down and says to a random girl that he’s “got the world by the balls.” Again, not much plot going on, but the scene reminded me of moments I’ve had in my own life when I’m in a really good mood and I was also reminded of the few times that I’ve actually been out to a bar on my own. I have a good buzz going. I talk to random people. I’m in a good zone and actually feel like I got “the world by the balls.” Now, I’m not sure if this was the intention of the scene (i.e. to remind me the viewer of moments when I’ve drank by myself in a bar); there may have been some other purpose why Cassavetes wanted this scene in here, but, for me, it reminded me of drinking alone at a bar, having a great buzz going, celebrating something in my mind, and feeling like I have the world by the balls. That was my unique experience in watching that scene.

On a side (but also related) note, I should probably mention that one other thing that I became more consciously aware of while watching Cassavetes’ films this time around was how much drinking there actually is in them. Not to mention smoking, too. If you were to play a drinking game and take a sip of a drink every time a character lights up a cigarette and/or takes a drink or says, “I need a drink,” or asks, “Want a drink?” you would be absolutely plastered by about 20 minutes in and I’m not sure I’m even exaggerating. Cassavetes’ love of alcohol and cigarettes was certainly no secret, as it is proudly expressed in almost every frame of his films. Seriously, it’s hard to watch a Cassavetes movie without feeling hung over and like you need a shower to get the stench of cigarette smoke off yourself.

Anyway, I’m sure that, after another ten years or so, I will watch Cassavetes’ films again and identify with or appreciate or notice something completely different about them. That’s the beauty of his films. They never get old. You never get sick of them. And your viewing experience of them is never the same. It’s almost as though they are living, breathing entities, like perpetual-experience-machines or something, works of art that you never fully consume. I mean, there’s only so many times you can watch a movie like Star Warswithout having the feeling that you’ve had enough already. But Cassavetes films—no matter how many times you’ve watched them—always leave you with a new experience, even when you think you’ve experienced it all.

…

MATT BURNS is the author of several novels, including Weird Monster, Supermarket Zombies!, The Woman and the Dragon and Johnny Cruise. He’s also written numerous memoirs, including GARAGE MOVIE: My Adventures Making Weird Films, My Raging Case of Beastie Fever, Jungle F’ng Fever: My 30-Year Love Affair with Guns N’ Roses and I Turned into a Misfit! Check out these books (and many more) on his Amazon author page HERE.