Seymour Cassel, the veteran character actor who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as the hippie swinger Chet in John Cassavetes' Faces (1968), studied acting at the American Theatre Wing and at the Actors Studio. He made his movie debut in Cassavetes' first film, Shadows (1959), on which he also served as associate ...
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Star Sign
Aquarius
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Trademark
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Distinctive rusty voice
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Unexpectedly intelligent working-class characters
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Independent film is film that has thought in it. There's no independent thought in studio films. It's collective thought. These things you get from Hollywood are no more than computer games, where you might as well have a little wired handset that you could blow up this truck if you want instead of that one, that would at least allow audience participation. With independent film, simply because they don't have the money to make a big-budget film, they're forced to make a story that's important to them, that they would like to see on film, a personal story that people can relate to, about people, where you can see the love of the characters. That's true of the best films I've done, certainly [John Cassavetes] films."
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Shadows (1959) wasn't so difficult to get made. It was just, when [John Cassavetes] had the time. He was a working actor, a television star. Edge of the City (1957) had just come out, with him and [Sidney Poitier] and Jack Warden, so John would work to make a living and also to put money into what he wanted to do. We tried doing a couple of films, one with Paramount, and one with Stanley Kramer, and then he just decided, "I'm going to borrow the money on my house". He took a job at Universal and spent the money on the film. People thought John was crazy, spending his own money. And yet they admired him for it. Many people came out and said, "Boy I'd love to make a film that way. Well, borrow some money, get some people together -- you can get people to work for nothing, just treat them right, treat them as human beings, not stars, give them all an equal share, make them feel a part of what they're doing. There's no big secret to it. But people just didn't have the guts. I met a lot of directors, friends of John's, people I admired, say Don Siegel. But Don had grown up in the studio system. He wasn't going to go over and move a chair, grab a camera, just get it into place and shoot it, that wasn't his style.
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[on shooting in continuity] For an actor it's ideal, you build the character as he goes along, the way it was written. Like with a play, the curtain goes up and you do the first act, the second act, you just play the shit out of it. Most films you do piecework" "Why are we breaking this scene up, for Christ's sake, let's just shoot!" "Well, because once we pull this wall . . . " Jesus, forget the wall. It doesn't matter how beautifully a film is photographed. The acting tells your story. It's what people relate to. If you don't believe the characters, it doesn't work.
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Faces (1968) and Shadows (1959) are my favorite John Cassavetes films. And they were John's favorites, too. "Shadows" because it was our first. And "Faces because it was a defining turning point in the way we were going to make films. I knew it was, because I worked on the crew. We had a crew of seven. I did it all. I shot, I loaded magazines, moved lights, put screens in. We took turns competing to shoot with the second camera. That way of making a film was so much fun. No unions to deal with, no time schedule. We shot it in continuity, which John did with every film after that. He did it for himself and he did it for the actors.
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Fact
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Mentioned in two auto-biographies co-written by Anthony Bozza; "Slash" and "Too Fat To Fish" by his Beer League co-star Artie Lange.
$8 Million
