Here’s a ten minute excerpt reel of John Cassavetes speaking culled from half a dozen different interviews. When he’s younger he looks like Roy Scheider and when he speaks with an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips he is the quintessence of New York-Actors Lab-Beatnik-Mingus-Jazz Clubs-New Wave-Greenwich Village-Paris sidewalk cafe-Sartre reading-Gitanes smoking-mid-century icon. Now I have to confess something; I’ve never made it through an entire Cassavetes movie. Even the ones that I”ve liked eventually exhaust me and, from the sound of him in these interviews, I don’t think he would have particularly cared or objected. His most repeated refrain is that this was personal art done for the fun and satisfaction of  himself and the group of his actor/friends/collaborators who he cultivated and who obviously adored him (see yesterdays fascinating clip of Cassavetes and company in a restaurant–they hang on his every word and clearly feel they’re in the presence of a deity). And I’ll make one other confession: I think his extreme charisma goes a long way to bolstering his pronouncements. In other words, he comes across as very much an actor playing a profound filmmaker rather than simply a profound filmmaker. His words, if separated from him, would likely not hold up when coming from the mouth of someone less magnetic. I know I risk losing any indie film street cred I have by saying this but, again, I think Cassavetes prized honesty over all and I like to think he would have simply laughed and shrugged off my observation. Or perhaps even appreciated it for it being an awkward truth. After all, awkward truths are very much what his work was about.