Cassavetes Films Quotes & Sayings

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

These were my people: the abandoned, the unloved, the phenomenally unlucky. — Amy Bloom

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

I see you lying next to me, with words I thought i'd never speak, awake and unafraid, asleep or dead? — Gerard Way

Koran says whoever believes in God in the last day shall be saved. It is a religion whose very name, Islam, comes from the word Shalom, which means peace. It's about establishing peace. We greet each other with peace be upon you, which the Jews do in greeting each other. — Feisal Abdul Rauf

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

Films today show only a dream world and have lost touch with the way people really are ... In this country, people die at 21. They die emotionally at 21, maybe younger ... My responsibility as an artist is to help people get past 21 ... The films are a roadmap through emotional and intellectual terrain that provides a solution on how to save pain. — John Cassavetes

My films are expressive of a culture that has had the possibility of attaining material fulfillment while at the same time finding itself unable to accomplish the simple business of conducting human lives. We have been sold a bill of goods as a substitute for life. What is needed is reassurance in human emotions; a re-evaluation of our emotional capacities. — John Cassavetes

Commercial movies have no feeling, no sensitivity. Most people tell me people won't understand films with feeling. But everyone can feel. — John Cassavetes

Art films aren't necessarily photography. It's feeling. If we can capture a feeling of a people, of a way of life, then we made a good picture. — John 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

I can't point to a moment or incident that made me see that this business, this putting down words on paper, was what I would do for the rest of my lucid life. But apparently, that is my calling. — Robert Reed

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

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

All your thoughts, imagination, feelings, emotions and sensation are part of the mechanical process that can be understood, at the state of self-realization. — Roshan Sharma

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

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

What love is to man, music is to the arts and to mankind. Music is love itself - it is the purest, most ethereal language of passion, showing in a thousand ways all possible changes of color and feeling; and though true in only a single instance, it yet can be understood by thousands of men - who all feel differently. — Carl Maria Von Weber

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

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

Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties forth
With such a full and unwithdrawing hand,
Covering the earth with odours, fruits, flocks,
Thronging the seas with spawn innumerable,
But all to please and sate the curious taste? — John Milton

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

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