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To access Ray Carney's complete website, go to http://www.cassavetes.com/

Dear Mr. Carney,

My name is Gopi Sait and I'm a film producer in NY.

I'm Avid fan of yours and your book "Cassavetes on Cassavetes" sits by my bedstand as a bible and inspiration to make the kinds of films I want to make. Everytime I get depressed I turn to the book for ideas and inspiration, and it totally puts the real perspective back into life and what genuine filmaking is all about.

I thank you for what you do to help young filmmakers like me to reach deep down inside and find those things that we all search to discover about ourselves. I totally enjoy your ideas, thoughts and dialogue about the films and what they represent to us in our day and time.

There's a wonderful little film that I'd like to bring to your attention, it's called ~ "indocumentados". Written and Directed by Leonardo Ricagni

SHORT SYNOPSIS: INDOCUMENTADOS is an intimate and spiritually evocative look at the lives of undocumented immigrants - "those we don't see in front of us" - struggling to survive in post September 11th New York. It is the story of how a bicycle destined to be shared, brings together different people from different cultures and religions and gives them an enlightened promise of hope in the darkness.

I love to mail a copy of this meditational film on DVD to you, would you consider a review?

Thank you,

Gopi Sait

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Can't resist a response to your "necessary experiences" response on the letters postings on your web site. I find myself recently coming to the opinion that I need to find a way to make enough money to be able to have some measure of independence. Without it, I am more or less at the mercy of whoever is in power... Long-term consequence of choices (or rather non-choices) made long ago... Just thoughts for my own life. I am trying to find the truth behind my self-delusions. It's a scary process, coming face to face with what I've been trying to avoid... What messes we deal with created by the past - by ourselves, our parents and others! I am trying to find a way to work through them. Navigating dark, murky waters... Hard work, looking at things that need to be changed about oneself. None of these probably makes any sense to you, but it's ok. I just don't want to be doomed to repeating the same mistakes over and over.

Name withheld

Ray Carney replies:

Yes, the culture is designed to reign people in. To buy their souls. That's that way it works. Faust is not fiction.

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Saw this great quote by D.H. Lawrence. Passing it along to you.

Be well,

Lucas

»The essential quality of poetry is that it makes a new effort of attention, and "discovers" a new world within the known world. Man, and the animals, and the flowers, all live within a strange and for ever surging chaos. ... But man cannot live in chaos. ... Man must wrap himself in a vision, make a house of apparent form and stability, fixity. In his terror of chaos he begins by putting up an umbrella between himself and the everlasting whirl. Then he paints the under-side of his umbrella like a firmament. Then he parades around, lives and dies under his umbrella. Bequeathed to his descendants, the umbrella becomes a dome, a vault, and men at last begin to feel that something is wrong.

Man fixes some wonderful erection of his own between himself and the wild chaos, and gradually goes bleached and stifled under his parasol. Then comes a poet, enemy of convention, and makes a slit in the umbrella; and lo! the glimpse of chaos is a vision, a window to the sun. But after a while, getting used to the vision, and not liking the genuine draught from chaos, commonplace man daubs a simulacrum of the window that opens on to chaos, and patches the umbrella with the painted patch of the simulacrum. That is, he has got used to the vision; it is part of his house-decoration. So that the umbrella at last looks like a glowing open firmament, of many aspects. But alas! it is all simulacrum, in innumerable patches.«

-- D.H. Lawrence

Ray Carney replies:

Yes, yes, yes. See why I tell everyone to read Phoenix I and II? (See a page or two back in my letters replies.) If you don't already own these books, get both and read them cover to cover! I've used this quote dozens of times in my courses. Funny story: I once gave a presentation at a film festival about the meaning of the second paragraph, and had Rose Troche stand up and razz me about "parasols" and "meteors"! Good old Rose. Yes, this is what it's all about. And what being an artist is about. Lawrence understands. Thanks so much!

RC

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Subject: Cassavetes, Faces, and Dreyer

I just finished reading "Cassavetes on Cassavetes", and I am without words. It was a deeply moving experience-- profound on both the emotional and intellectual levels. Many of my own ideas about film, acting, and art, I was surprised to find, were similiar to those of Mr. Cassavetes-- only he followed them to a degree to which I lack either the courage or skill to pursue.

I've also been reading more of your site, and I found your analysis of symbolic and archetypical/non-specific approaches to art to be dead-on: it is a "high school" understanding, a trick I often make fun. Usually, when watching some of my footage, my wife will point out something amiss: for example, each of these three characters has their own shot, and each of the shots have different lighting. With my best psuedo-intellectual voice, I will pronounce that it is Symbolic of the Disconnect Between the Characters and their Levels of Understanding (TM). Symbolism is good for a laugh, and that's all.

I've also recommended one of my comrades to your site. He's in a contemporary culture class and is doing a paper on the similucrum, the copy that has no original. Though I haven't found any reference to this directly in your work, I have found and recommended to him many useful pieces on aesthetics, cultural approaches to aesthetics, and the difference between the sincere and facile in art.

Well, here I was, going to talk about your Cassavetes book and I got started on something else. Thank you for taking the time to read these e-mails, and for responding to them: your responses are full of insight, wit, and inspiration, just like the words of Cassavetes. It was a very moving experience, almost spiritual. The only thing I could compare it to is watching Ozu or "Umberto D." It was the first time in a long time that I read a biography as throughly researched as yours AND got a sense of the subject as a man, as a person.

When I first tried to watch Cassavetes's work, I watched "Faces" and "Shadows" and tried to watch "Minnie and Moskowitz" and "Killing of a Chinese Bookie". I was just out of high school. I thought Shadows was okay and I struggled through Faces-- struggled hard. After about ten or fifteen minutes, I couldn't take it and turned it off. Later in the day, I started it again at the point where I left off, and eventually I finished the film-- five minutes here, ten minutes here. Something I had never done before or since. (Even when watching a long movie like "Life and Death of Col. Blimp", I'd rather start it over than watch it in two sittings. It bugs my wife, but films don't have chapters just like plays and symphonies don't. It's meant to be seen in one sitting.) I was confused by it, confounded. I didn't see the point (little realizing that art doesn't need to have a point, per se, to be profound or moving). I spent the whole time waiting for the movie to start, for the plot to kick in. What was this? Just people babbling about Peter Piper and other nonsense. And why did John Marley flick his tongue at the dinner table, and what was so funny about it? Why did the guy muss up his hair in the bathroom?

A couple weeks ago, just before I started reading "Cass on Cass", I decided to try and tackle Faces again. I watched in one sitting. I was not bored. I was mesmorized. What a difference a few years make!

Like you've said in your writing, it requires knowledge, knowledge and experience of life. I was a very sheltered child (and teenager) and eventually, I got that experience: I learned about love and anger and life, about people. ( I don't think I'll ever understand people or have a healthy bit of common sense about them, but I'll never cease to be fascinated by them and the things that they do.) And I started watching movies that, while not great art, where a little different, less about plot than about people. Movies (and books) that studied behavior and didn't supply a pat, moral lesson. It took me a while to train myself-- to unlearn patterns picked up in high school, reading for symbols and significant prose and How It All Ties Together In the End: the point of it. I had to learn that cohesiveness and tidiness were not the important things. And I did that by living, and by experiencing a wider range of works of art, and also by working against my gifts for plot structure and parrallelism and fancy-schmancy dialogue, to worry less about Having Something to Say or How to Say It and more about people. It's much more difficult to write something now, but I'm far prouder of the end result, of the people I create. I love them more now, too. That's out of the necessity of writing so slowly: it's easy when you're writing quickly to be mean and cynical and satirical about a person. But when you're spending a lot of a time writing something, you want to spend it with people you like, and either you like them or you find ways to like them. The last film I did, I wrote before I fully matured, and I'm a little ashamed of my hatred for some of the characters. But, that's how one learns.

Anyway, I watched Faces again and I was in something of a state of shock: how could I have dismissed this work, this seminal, important, incredible work? I was riveted to the screen. And the mechanical man bit-- THAT was incredible. That was amazing. That touched me on such a level, on such a deep and profound level, that I found myself surprised I hadn't noticed it the first time.
I want to thank you for your writing and your site. If not for it, I wouldn't have given Faces or Cassavetes a second look. And I want to thank you for compiling and editing the words of Cassavetes, and putting them into perspective with your own insightful writing.

Tom Russell

PS: I think I'm going to be getting your Dreyer book as a Christmas present. I've only seen "Passion
of Joan of Arc"-- which bowled me over-- but I know enough from Schrader's (muddled and difficult-to-read) book that it's pretty different from his other work, especially his sound work. Which of Dreyer's films would you recommend for such a Carl Theo. virgin? Not necessarily the most accessible or the easiest to grasp, just the ones that would be ideal starting points? Also, what's the availability of Dreyer on dvd? I know Criterion has a rather pricy box set-- it's a little beyond my means at the moment, but would you recommend that?

Ray Carney replies:

Tom,

Sorry for the unconscionable delay in replying. I am clawing my way through hundreds of unanswered emails. What's the Robert Frost line from Servant to Servants? I shan't catch up in this lifetime anyway......

On to your questions: You don't particularly need the fancy pants Criterion DVDs. Just any old Ebay videotapes will do. All that extra stuff on most DVD sets is junk to lure you into buying it. Not necessary. The films are what matter, not some idiot's program notes or something else.
I'd recommend starting with Day of Wrath, then doing Ordet, then moving on to Gertrud. Then doing Two People. And the Passion of Joan of Arc too of course. The David Bordwells and other art-is-its-own-self-sufficient-world types have over-sold Vampyr. It's really overrated. Not that great. Don't know if you can get Two People come to think of it. I got my copy from the head of the Danish Film House, the Dreyer Archive. It's as under-rated as Vamyr is over.

Thanks also for the kind words about my work. Though I wouldn't compare our achievements, I'm difficult—and perverse—just the way Cassavetes is, so it takes a little getting used to. I always try to sail against the wind. It's the only way to go.

Gotta get to those other emails. Forgive the brevity. Keep looking at new art. Keep changing your
mind. Keep making new discoveries.

RC

P.S. Oh, I just remembered your: "He's in a contemporary culture class and is doing a paper on the similucrum, the copy that has no original....." YES. YES. YES. I HAVE BEEN WRITING ABOUT THAT FOR THE LAST TEN YEARS BUT NO ONE SEEMS TO UNDERSTAND or worse yet, get it. The house of mirrors of contemporary life and art. Most people live in a house that is ALL mirrors. No original images at all. Just reflections of someone else's reflections of someone else's reflections of someone else's reflections.There's no there there..... Their laughter is canned. Their emotions are processed. Their experiences are clichés. They think with someone else's brain. But it's worse than that because that person too is thinking with someone else's brain. And so on, mirror image after mirror image in our culture of unreality, The culture of recycling. The endless attempt to recreate the most imitated imitation, the great Hollywood movie, the successful Broadway play, the ultimate Superbowl halftime show forever and ever, per omnia secula seculorum. O holy of holies. O hole of holes. There's a Zen koan about this house of mirrors, this love of quotation, this need for approval, this quest for instant identity. It's what Mark Rappaport's Scenic Route and Local Color are about. It's what D.H. Lawrence was getting at in the painted sun and sky quote I cite (just above this on this page). It's what Leigh's comic figures are about—they organize their lives around the pursuit of illusions.and their identities around unrealities. Look at Abigail's Party. Look at Rupert and Letitia in High Hopes. Aubrey in Life is Sweet. Sartre's waiter playing at being a waiter. The nightmare of "referred" existence. The quoted experience. The canned feeling. The plastic thought. The cult of Hitchcock and Lynch. The weave of in-jokes and allusions and self-parody in Quentin Tarantino and the Coen brothers. The echo replacing the voice. The reproduction that makes the original seem like a pale imitation. The press release that is more important than the event. Memorex triumphant. Xerox forever. Turtles all the way down.....We must get down to ground zero, back to the garden, the place of truth, even if it is the "foul rag and bone shop of the heart." Poor dear old Yeats in love.....

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Subject: about "knives & other pieces"

Good Morning

I am a french theatr realisator, and i'm trying to find the text of the theatr pieces of John Cassavetes.
I will be really very happy if you can help me. I know that an adaptation has been realised in Italian by Basilio Franchina for knives.

Did east/west game was published?

Could you give me more informations about this subject. I may give you more informations about my work in France,

thank you for answer

Alain Hélou

Ray Carney replies:

Dear Alain,

As I note on my web site letters pages, Gena Rowlands refuses to make Cassavetes' work available. He gave me copies of almost everything before he died, but she would toss me in jail if I started sending them out or giving people permission to mount them. She has thousands of pages of material she won't make available—to me, to you, to anyone. I have offered to have this material published but Rowlands has not pursued the possibility. So I'm afraid I can't help you. Not good news I know.

If anyone in Paris ever invites me to come there and show the first version of Shadows and discuss it, I'll look you up and explain more in person. All sincere best wishes.

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Re: Converted

Dear Ray Carney,

I used to read your articles with much loathing and contempt. Almost everything that you had to say, and more importantly the tone in which you said it, sort of angered and annoyed me. The mere mention of your name made me angry, in fact. I was liable to hit things upon having read your work. Needless to say, I was irresistibly drawn to your articles (such as "The Path of the Artist" Parts 1, 3, which served as my introduction to you) for no other reason than my own desire to get angry at someone or something. After all, who on Earth gave you the right to attack so many films, with such smugness, as though your taste and your taste alone was all that mattered?

Ultimately, however, what really got to me was your deification of John Cassavetes, the films of whom, at the time, I'd never actually seen. Regardless, who the Hell were you to write off every other filmmaker who ever lived in favour of one guy who tried to bring real life into the cinema? Who the Hell, Mr. Carney, were you? And who wants to see real life in the cinema anyway?Oh, Mr. Carney, I was wrong. I was so very, very wrong.I'm writing to you today to tell you that I have finally seen the films of John Cassavetes and that, finally, your work and what you've had to say about cinema, and even, perhaps, the tone in which you've said it, has begun to resonate deeply with me. Maybe it was crazy of me to have written you off without having seen any of Cassavetes' pictures (forget the 'maybe;' it was definitely crazy), but now I've seen the error of my ways, so to speak.I've not seen all of Cassavetes' films yet, mind you, but those that I have seen (the first four with the rest to follow as soon as possible) have been more enough to irrevocably convert me. I've borrowed Cassavetes on Cassavetes from my University library and am even revisiting those articles of yours that I wrote off so long ago. I finally see where you were (and are still) coming from. And not only this, Mr. Carney, but I'm actually beginning to agree with you. It's a scary thing to admit, as you may appreciate, but I thought that you might like to know.Please forgive the quasi-ridiculous fervour of this e-mail, but Cassavetes' films and method has, for the past two or three weeks, served as a kind of a personal revelation for me, and quasi-ridiculous fervour is sort of par for the course with such revelations. The thing is that I was actually scared to approach Cassavetes and his films before now; your articles, not to mention the near-mythical aura that surrounds the man, were just so massively intimidating. I was afraid that I wouldn't see it, wouldn't get it, wouldn't love it. But I did and do and will continue to do so. Thus far, at least, it's been amazing.So, you were right about Cassavetes, Mr. Carney. For my disbelief, and for all that loathing, I offer my apologies!

Yours sincerely (and with much fervour),

Matthew Clayfield

Ray Carney replies:

Matthew,

No apologies necessary! And it doesn't bother me, since I get lots of hate mail. And I am convinced anything that is sufficiently orginal and different is always resisted at first.

Even Jesus had that problem. And I'm no Jesus. And in my own life I was a slow learner too. Fought Cassavetes' work when I first saw it, in fact. My packet of Cass. essays has a couple stories about that. Glad you have discovered Cassavetes. Try to make time in the next few months to look at lots of other exciting filmmakers too. There's more in heaven and earth than JC. Mike Leigh, particularly the early work, is another genius. Check out Bleak Moments and Meantime and Abigail's Party. I have a book on him too if you are interested. Look at Jay Rosenblatt's work. I Used to Be a Filmmaker. Human Remains. Period Piece, A Pregnant Moment. (Think that's the title.) Look at Su Friendrich's. Sink or Swim is a masterpiece. It should have won the Academy Award for Best Picture the year it was made. Then cover the masters of course. Renoir. Ozu. Bresson. But there's too much to say. Fare forward, voyager. You have a great voyage of discovery ahead of you. And don't follow my path. Or take my word for anything. Make your own way to your own truths. Go off in your own direction and find new and different works of art. Not the ones I have championed. New artists. New works. They're out there, waiting to be discovered.

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Subject: SHADOWS, 1st versionHi Ray-

Sean Savage here. Hopefully you'll remember me from the Olympia Film Festival. Presently I'm at NYU, doing their masters program in film archiving and preservation. The tale about the rediscovery of the 1st version of SHADOWS rivals in excitement the one about finding THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC in the closet of a Danish insane asylum. I've been following this unfortunate drama, and am actually doing a project about the issues around certain films going "out of circulation" (KILLER OF SHEEP music rights, etc.). I want to include the first SHADOWS and FACES as case studies and make sure I've got the latest on 'em. As you know, there's precious little news out there about these.

We may wait patiently for Ruban and Rowlands to drop dead, but is their any hope for reason out of the next generation of the family? Couldn't this go on indefinitely? Rosenbaum and Adrian Martin had an interesting idea about getting some video dubs circulated for "scholarly" purposes. It may be time for an alternate means of dissemination. Do you think that would help demystify the whole thing, or just further infuriate the irrational powers-that-be?

Well, I know you get hundreds of emails a day, but if you had anything to add it would be great (It's a PowerPoint to a dozen people and a paper with some other case studies). Maybe I'll show up in your classroom one day just to see the damn thing.

Thanks, be well, and carry on,

-Sean.

p.s. The best part about sneaking the Cineastes de notre temps into the box set is that Rowlands is present in the room when Cassavetes says he doesn't oppose screenings of the first version! But even if the whole thing has slipped her mind, how can she demand possession of something she insists doesn't exist?

Ray Carney replies:

Sean,

Thanks for your kind words.

I assume you've read my recent postings on the issue. Try the new Discoveries section, accessible through the Films of John Cassavetes splash page at the bottom, and read the second "interview"—the one I did with George Hunka—for example. ((Click here to go to the interview with George Hunka.)) Also the Faces postings.... ((Click here to read about my Faces discovery.)) And the "Who owns an improvised work" page ((Click here to go there.))

I appreciate the intended flattery of the comparison but this is really much greater and more important than the Joan of Arc discovery. This is a whole new film by a major filmmaker. Like finding a new Dreyer film. Not just a better print and edit of an old one.

I reply to some of Rosenbaum's ideas in a few of the letters responses. Gena would take legal action if I released anything, anyhow, pirated, surreptitious, bootleg copies or anything at all. The legal situation is interesting (and favorable to me): Remember Sh. I was improvised. John doesn't (didn't) own the script or the final work in the usual way. The actors do. That was in writing when it was made. ((Click here to see the new posting on that.))

But the moral for me is how little "right" counts when you have a millionaire (a la O.J.) willing to hire a team of lawyers to threaten and harrass a lowly paid opponent (me). It's not about who's right or what's right. It's about her lawyers being able to annihilate mine with suits and threats and letters that cost a thousand dollars an hour to be replied to. As one of my lawyers actually told me: "When it comes to the law, you get what you pay for." I thought it was a disgraceful thing to say, but she said she was just cluing me in to the way things work legally.

My main disappointment in the whole thing is that no scholar or archive or programmer has rallied around the cause. Would you believe that other than George Hunka and one or two other low level people (like you!), no one has even asked me to tell my side of this? None of the authors of articles (by Jonathan Rosenbaum or Adrian Martin or Tom Charity or Manohla Dargis or anybody else—in Time Out or The New York Times or Sight and Sound or anywhere else) that alludes to my situation—not one of them—has written me a single email or phoned me to have me tell them my side of either the Shadows or the Criterion stories. How can they claim to be interested in the truth if they don't even ask me what happened? That's how little they are interested in getting at the truth, let alone trying to mount a campaign against the kind of censorship that Rowlands is exercising. There are dozens of articles that mention the Criterion firing or Rowlands's refusal to let the first version of Shadows be screened, but almost all of them get the facts wrong because the writers didn't even care enough to research the story. It says a lot about what passes for journalism in film. A real journalist would be fired if he or she wrote an article about what had happened to someone without even trying to interview the person involved.

And since Gena started squawking, not one American film festival programmer has invited me to show the film (which I am willing to do, as long as it is done right, I mean not a stupid quickie screening but a big event to discuss and present it properly). They're all afraid of Gena I guess. So that's a lesson too. A lesson in how it's not about who's right or what the principles of a thing are, but about how movie stars set the priorities at film festivals. If Gena won't attend the screening what's the point in having it? American festivals are about celebrity appearances and ticket sales, ultimately; not about showing the most important films.

Movie stars are the new royalty in America. Deferred to, bowed down to, worshipped no matter how badly they behave, even if they want to suppress a work. Where are the angry editorials about her conduct? Where are the outraged protests? Where are the letters or emails to me offering support or help? It's a sad lesson in how the world actually works. Money and power talk. Keep that in mind in your future career. I wonder if they teach that in your preservation courses.

Cheers,

RC

P.S. My general point is that I AM able to show this film outside of my classroom, but no one will go near it (let alone help me make a duplicate of it) for fear of "alienating Gena." That is the celebrity whoredom that besets our culture. To heck with a new film. To heck with a major discovery. To heck with a harrassed discoverer. Just don't upset a movie star! I offered Shadows I to Peter Scarlet for free to show at Tribeca last year and he ran the other way when he realized he might "make Gena mad." I offered the print to the Film Foundation, but Scorsese vetoed preserving it for the same reason. Don't want to risk "alienating Gena." I offered it to UCLA and they told me they were afraid of "losing her support" if they helped me with it. This is the part of film preservation that is not written about. The suck up part. The make friends with Hollywood movie stars part. It's not ultimately about preserving the great works. It's about who the AFI and UCLA want to make friends with.

If Robert Kramer is not on the hot button list, forget preserving his work. If Barbara Loden is not, give up her work. It's about celebrity not principles.

So when you go into preservation, watch out that you don't cross Beatrice Welles or the keeper of the Bette Davis estate either! It's simply appalling to me how celebrity sets the agendas of our major film archives and places like the Library of Congress too. (That's explained in my Faces find description, where you can see how the Library of Congress collaborated with Gena to suppress the discovery.) Click here and here for information about how the Library of Congress is more interested in staying on good terms with a celebrity than announcing a discovery.

But basta. Hope your teacher allows these issues to be discussed. Noam Chomsky calls it "the institutional control of discourse." And it's a real issue. Not a figment of my imagination!

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Subject: Thank You

Ray,

Thank you for sending me the What's Wrong with Film Courses packet back in late June. ((Click here to learn how to obtain it.)) You are right about skipping movies for a year or two. I skipped them for about 5 years and now see the cinema in an entirely new way. However, there was hope for me back when I was in film school. I saw Schindler's List my senior year and thought it was a manipulative piece of crap. In class, my teacher and several classmates told me to re-examine my life to even suggest that the movie was bad. If only I knew then that I was headed in the right direction! All I can say is keep fighting and keep pissing people off! As you know the truth hurts.

All the best,

Paul