John Cassavettes: "This is the dumbest business I've ever seen in my life."
"Cassavetes stares at his soft drink for a moment as he calmly considers his answer. “People used to love to call me a maverick because I had a big mouth and I’d say, ‘That bum!’ or something like that when I was young. Mainly because I believed it and I didn’t know there was anybody’s pain connected to the business. I was so young, I didn’t feel any pain. I just thought, ‘Why don’t they do some exciting, venturesome things? Why are they just sitting there, doing these dull pictures that have already been done many, many times and calling them exciting? That’s a lie. They’re not exciting. Exciting is an experiment.’
“You know, in this business, it’s all jealousy. I mean, this is the dumbest business I’ve ever seen in my life. If somebody gets married, they say, ‘It’ll never work.’ If somebody gets divorced, they say, ‘Good. I’ll give you my lawyer.’ If somebody loses a job, everyone will call him—to gloat. They’ll discuss it, they’ll be happy, they’ll have parties. I don’t understand how people who see each other all the time, and are friends, can be so happy about each other’s demise.
“I think people—studio executives and filmmakers—should hate each other openly and save a lot of trouble."
2 comments:
Sorry -- too many mispellings on that last (deleted) comment. Sure wish Blogger's comments had a spell-check feature...
Loved those quotes by Cassavetes -- brutal but true, cutting right through all that surgically-tightened flesh to solid bone.
Glad you're back, and thanks for the referral. I liked your post on fear and our industry -- which seems to run on a high-octane, maximum-anxiety blend of fear and greed.
Sometimes I wonder how anything good ever survives the bruising journey through The System in this town...
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