Cassavetes Quotes & Sayings

When your child is sick, you have tunnel vision. — Nick Cassavetes

There is no reason why a serious film, one about life, can't be enjoyable, maybe even fun. Emotions can be very entertaining, you know. I try to use them generously in my films. — John Cassavetes

Of course I would change anything if John Cassavetes said so - it's his script. But he was very easy about that. — Gena Rowlands

I was a big fan of John Cassavetes, his wife, Gena Rowlands, and that era of filmmaking which was about realism and which represented the antithesis of the dreamy escapism you found in musicals. — Carmen Ejogo

I'm a great believer in spontaneity because I think planning is the most destructive thing in the world. — John Cassavetes

No matter how old you get, if you can keep the desire to be creative, you're keeping the man-child alive. — John Cassavetes

John Cassavetes wrote A Woman Under the Influence as a play. He said, "Hey, I wrote you a play." And I said, "Great, let's read it." I read it and I said, "John, I couldn't do this every night and twice on Wednesday and Saturday". — Gena Rowlands

He[John Cassavetes] was just being an actor. A very successful actor, especially in live TV. He did many wonderful performances. — Gena Rowlands

The idea of love as a mysterious, undiscovered world has come to have no place in our innermost imagination. — John Cassavetes

It's a bloody shame that all the video stores have gone, I'll tell you. Everything's so mechanical now. It's all so if-you-liked-this-then-you'll-like-this. There's no picking something out, or finding some brilliant person to open up new worlds for you. — Alexandra Cassavetes

I've had people ask me to come and work for them. I went to Vienna and did three scenes in a movie for a guy that I met at a retrospective of Cassavetes films. It's a great way to travel, to meet people, to see different countries and cultures. — Seymour Cassel

John [Cassavetes] loved actors. He gave them a lot of freedom. So if something came up that a certain actor just felt at the moment and said - that kind of improvisation he would accept. He gave very little direction. — Gena Rowlands

You look at people like Gena Rowlands, but she had [John] Cassavetes to write these amazing roles for her. — Winona Ryder

I went to this Episcopalian school, and one day I came home and asked my mom, 'What religion are we?' She looked at me and said, 'We're artists.' — Alexandra Cassavetes

I feel too strongly about rearranging reality in a movie. It gives me peace. — Alexandra Cassavetes

I didn't plan to be a director until I was 35. For years I wanted to do anything but! — Alexandra Cassavetes

I just want to make something that is true to itself and that interests me; otherwise, how can I have the audacity to think it's going to interest anybody else? — Alexandra Cassavetes

I tell myself, 'If I can wake up each day and be excited about what I'm doing, then I must be happy.' But then again, maybe I'm in denial. — Alexandra Cassavetes

I think vampires are different from human beings, but they're sentenced to eternity on this planet. They have the same confusion about love and permanence, integrity, and denial. These qualities really are the same in vampire characters as in humans. I think they're universal themes. — Alexandra Cassavetes

There are so many people I know who could be the greatest film-maker but who will never get the chance to make a movie; it's all about what somebody is going to make back. There are not a lot of romantic ideas about making movies anymore. — Alexandra Cassavetes

My taste in films doesn't lead financers to think they are going to make a zillion dollars. — Alexandra Cassavetes

You know as a director what you want, but the film is smarter than you, the film says no, the film says there's something more here. — John Cassavetes

My mother and father were never frightened of anything. They always felt that they should go through life happily and without fear, and they did that. And it was a great boon to my brother and myself. — John Cassavetes

Because John Cassavetes was so terrific in live TV, a lot of his friends had not been able to participate in that yet and so they asked if he would gather with them at night when I was at the play and tell them what live TV was like, what you had to adjust to because it was its own medium - it had many things you had to be aware of. — Gena Rowlands

During the actual filming, I'm not really listening to dialogue. I'm watching to see if the actors are communicating something and expressing something. I'm just watching a conversation. You're not aware of exactly what people are saying. You are aware of what they are INTENDING and what kind of feeling is going on in that scene. — John Cassavetes

It's sweet to hear, but anyone who says that they want to be the next John Cassavetes is crazy. He had it so tough. No one would want to walk a step in his shoes. Believe me - I wouldn't. — Alexandra Cassavetes

It was more freedom than I think most people get when they're starting out - or even when they're not starting out. He [John Cassavetes] did his thing and I did whatever I thought. — Gena Rowlands

Film is, to me, just unimportant. But people are very important. — John Cassavetes

I have the confidence that I can take anybody and have them give a good performance, because I don't think there's anything to acting except expressing, being able to converse. So if I can just convince somebody not to clean themselves up, and not to be someone that they're not, and just be what they are in given circumstances, that's all that acting is to me, and I don't think it's very difficult. — John Cassavetes

I think at its most mature, love is a very bourgeois state. There is something about luxuriating in the nest of love that people fall into naturally. — Alexandra Cassavetes

[John Cassavetes] came backstage afterwards and introduced himself and we talked a bit, and then went for a little coffee at the Russian Tea Room next door. It just ... started. — Gena Rowlands

I think vampires would want to find a way to stay attached to the living, the way human beings do, and that is through love, interrelations and meaning. — Alexandra Cassavetes

I love when I'm writing and I'm cringing because I know I'm doing something right. — Zoe Cassavetes

My actress friends would tell me their horror stories, or say they couldn't get work, and were deemed too old, even though they were established and talented and fit and gorgeous. It was frustrating for them and it was frustrating to hear. Maybe because I was the same age as them and it was already hard enough trying to cross over to the 40s without someone judging your every move. — Zoe Cassavetes

The celebrity culture demands a camera-ready-at-all-times look or else the photo is circulated in a demeaning headline. — Zoe Cassavetes

I don't know about relationships. Maybe I'm supposed to travel and make films and meet people and have adventures instead. — Alexandra Cassavetes

As a writer, I wouldn't know how to not take things out of my life. — Zoe Cassavetes

So many people mistakenly think that the rest of his [John Cassavetes] pictures and the ones we did were improvised, which isn't true. He wrote all the rest of them. — Gena Rowlands

I think people are very stiff. Money makes people stiff, and we want it, and we have to pay the penalty. I never agreed with stiffness. I think people have an understanding of what their life is. I define success by being a realist and not humiliating people. I'm a revolutionary - but not in the political sense. — John Cassavetes

I never understood a word John Cassavetes said. And I think he did that deliberately. — Peter Falk

There is another movie I love that always sticks with me and influenced me called "Frankie" starring Diane Kruger as a model past her prime trying to make it work and going crazy from how she is treated. — Zoe Cassavetes

God, I love John Cassavetes. — Angela Sarafyan

If you are the writer/director especially, no one cares more about the project than you do. You know it in and out. You created it. So always listen to input but don't be afraid to veto and fight decisions that you know instinctively are wrong. — Zoe Cassavetes

It was a very hard play [Woman Under the Influence] to do every night. And John Cassavetes said, "Don't worry. Don't even think about it, you're right. I hadn't thought of that." He said, "Just forget it." — Gena Rowlands

I wanted to make an adult vampire film, not something for children. — Alexandra Cassavetes

I like to act in films, I like to shoot 'em, I like to direct 'em, I like to be around 'em. I like the feel of it and it's something I respect. It doesn't make any difference whether it's a crappy film or a good film. Anyone who can make a film, I already love. But I feel sorry if they don't put any thought in it because then they missed the boat. — John Cassavetes

I got a part opposite Edward G. Robinson in a play called Middle of The Night, which Paddy Cheyafsky had written. It played for a long time because everybody just loved Edward G. Robinson, everybody in New York wanted to see it. John [Cassavetes] and I were married at the time and put into a position where I was working very long evening hours and he was working in the daytime and so there was a lot of spare time. — Gena Rowlands

In a way I'm lucky because when people suggest I won't be able to do something I have no choice but to show them they are wrong. If I say I'm doing it, I'm doing it. No matter how hard it is. — Zoe Cassavetes

The pressure for an actress to look good and be skeletally thin is insane and unrealistic and it's a subject I've been fascinated by. — Zoe Cassavetes

It was fun to create characters who had truth to them but were also made up so as not to completely offend! — Zoe Cassavetes

I think the reason vampire movies have been so popular over time is that they share so many parallels with human beings. — Alexandra Cassavetes

We don't take the time to be vulnerable with each other — John Cassavetes

You can defeat fear through humor, through pain, through honesty, bravery, intuition, and through love in the truest sense. — John Cassavetes

Most people don't know what they want or feel. And for everyone, myself included, It's very difficult to say what you mean when what you mean is painful. The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to ... As an artist, I feel that we must try many things - but above all, we must dare to fail. You must have the courage to be bad - to be willing to risk everything to really express it all. — John Cassavetes

The camera is the slave to the actor. — John Cassavetes

My parents allowed their two sons to be individuals. My family was a wild and wonderful place, with lots of friends and neighbors visiting and talking loud and eating loud and nobody telling the children to be quiet or putting them down. — John Cassavetes

'Faces' became more than a film. It became a way of life, a film against the authorities and the powers that prevent people from expressing themselves the way they want to, something that can't be done in America, that can't be done without money. — John Cassavetes

We only have two hours to change people's lives. — John Cassavetes

I'm very worried about the depiction of women on the screen. It's gotten worse than ever and it's related to their being either high- or low-class concubines, and the only question is when or where they will go to bed, with whom, and how many. There's nothing to do with the dreams of women, or of woman as the dream, nothing to do with the quirky part of her, the wonder of her. — John Cassavetes

I like to give my actors a lot of room. — Nick Cassavetes

Work very very hard. This business is no joke. Make sure you know what you want or you might be taking someone else's view instead of your own. — Zoe Cassavetes

The greatest location in the world is the human face. — John Cassavetes

As an artist, I feel that we must try many things - but above all we must dare to fail. — John Cassavetes

I got to grow up in an incredibly artistic family. — Zoe Cassavetes

I'd rather do 'She's So Lovely' that John Cassavetes wrote versus doing 'Batman.' — Robin Wright

My all-time favorites that I always go back to are films by the director John Cassavetes. The movies he made, the work he left behind, have been a big influence for my work. — Nina Hoss

I won't make shorthand films, because I don't want to manipulate audiences into assuming quick, manufactured truths. — John Cassavetes

You just go in and try to do the best job you can everyday. — Nick Cassavetes

You can fail in films because you don't have the talent, or you have too much humility, or you lack ferociousness. I'm a gangster. If I want something, I'll grab it. — John Cassavetes

We do have a problem in this country. You can either make a movie and ignore that, or you can acknowledge it and say, this is the water that we're living in. You know this - the movie lives in this - it's centered around this particular problem, and I chose to acknowledge it. — Nick Cassavetes

I'm not good at comparing and contrasting. I take what's in front of me for what it is, although I guess there's something about Paul's realistic writing that is like Cassavetes. — John Cassavetes

I'm not complaining about my life; every moment of it has been fantastic, and I'm so lucky. — Zoe Cassavetes

I've never seen an exploding helicopter. I've never seen anybody go and blow somebody's head off. So why should I make films about them? But I have seen people destroy themselves in the smallest way, I've seen people withdraw, I've seen people hide behind political ideas, behind dope, behind the sexual revolution, behind fascism, behind hypocrisy, and I've myself done all these things. So I can understand them. What we are saying is so gentle. It's gentleness. We have problems, terrible problems, but our problems are human problems. — John Cassavetes

People who are making films today are too concerned with mechanics - technical things instead of feeling. — John Cassavetes

By the age of 50, I would like to know that I'm not dead - that there's some continuity to my life. — John Cassavetes

I think I probably have the philosophy of a poor man. You know, like maybe I'd steal the pennies off a dead man's eyes. — John Cassavetes

John Cassavetes was there at night while I was working. After they [with his friends] discussed as much live TV as they felt they needed to, they started improvising scenes just for the fun of it and one of those scenes everybody got very interested in and it turned into Shadows [1959]. That movie was entirely improvised. — Gena Rowlands

People don't know what they are doing most of the time. They don't know what they want. It's only in 'the movies' that they know what their problems are and have game plans to deal with them. — John Cassavetes

I think of making a movie in such a romantic way. — Alexandra Cassavetes

Ricardo Montalban is to improvisational acting what Mount Rushmore is to animation. — John Cassavetes

Like, I'm a big fan of films from the '70s, like Cassavetes and things, where they just keep the dialogue really loose and just kind of roll, you know what I mean? — Jody Hill

I would put my pictures up against anybody's in this world. Certainly in my own day I bow to no one. I don't think there's another director in the world who works harder to make better films than I do. — John Cassavetes

I have a one-track mind. That's all that I'm interested in - love. And the lack of it. When it stops. — John Cassavetes

I go back to many films that I really love. Some Bresson, some Godard of the early times, the Cassavetes of those years I love. And the early Wim Wenders. But my own films I don't watch, unless I need them. — Agnes Varda

I was honestly a cartoon kid. I loved cartoons. That was more my dream than anything else. But now, it's the films of people like John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands. Those are the kinds of characters I want to play, and that's the kind of filmmaking I'm fascinated by. — Tatiana Maslany

John [Cassavetes] had shot a great deal of Shadows and I had to go fulfill my contract in California, so he and all the rest of the Shadows cast came out to California and they finished it off and he cut it. He turned the garage into an editing room and he was by then a director of Shadows. That's the only thing he'd directed. But, he loved it. — Gena Rowlands

(Acting) is an extension of life. How you're capable of performing in your life, that's how you're capable of performing on screen. — John Cassavetes

The vampire movies I embraced as a kid used vampirism as a metaphor that expressed deep sadness and a lot of human qualities. — Alexandra Cassavetes

I like so many different directors: Scorsese, Coppola, Cassavetes, Jarmusch, Gus van Sant, Woody Allen and the greats like Fellini, Bergman, Tarkovsky and among current filmmakers von Trier, Ang Lee, Wong Kar-wai. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

When you create, it comes from this deep part of you, and your job is you, and so when you don't get heard it can feel bad and frustrating and you have to somehow keep the confidence up. — Zoe Cassavetes

Actresses feel immense pressure to keep up. Nobody wants someone who doesn't know how to market themselves. — Zoe Cassavetes

I will watch a ton of movies while I'm writing for inspiration. "Postcards from the Edge" was one. I love the mother-daughter relationship and all the hard humiliating stuff she has to go through. Or thinks she has to go through. — Zoe Cassavetes

Love is a component of many different things - the baggage you bring, the moment, what you need in your life, seeing someone as a portal for understanding everything, and all the intensity that brings. It's not something to count on and act like it's a stable thing. — Alexandra Cassavetes

To me there is a name for each person. I think it's marvelous to have a name. A woman is not a woman. It's either Gena or my mother or some other person. — John Cassavetes

I don't care about being on top, about being No. 1. I just make movies for a few suckers in the audience, anyway. — John Cassavetes

People are fascinated with eternal life and physical power - the idea of having no vulnerability. We all feel small and powerless in the world at times, so the temptation to be a vampire is compelling. — Alexandra Cassavetes

People have said that my films are very difficult to watch, that they're experiences you are put through rather than ones you enjoy, and it's true. — John Cassavetes

In general, I hate films that are overtly either very masculine or very feminine, you know? The same way that I don't like a war movie about soldiers smashing people's heads. But a chick flick I like would be Cassavetes' movies. 'A Woman Under the Influence,' 'Husbands.' — Gael Garcia Bernal

Well, I think that people are smart enough to understand the difference between a movie and real life. — Nick Cassavetes

I hate entertainment. — John Cassavetes