John


1929-1989

John and his wife Gena Rowlands made 10 movies together: A Child is Waiting, Faces, Gloria, Love Streams, Minnie and Moskowitz, Opening Night, A Woman Under The Influence, Machine Gun McCain (1969), Two-Minute Warning (1976) and Tempest (1982).

He and his good friend Ben Gazzara made 5 movies together: Husbands, Capone (1975), If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium (1969), Opening Night and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie.

He and his good friend Peter Falk made 6 movies together: Husbands, Machine Gun McCain, Mikey and Nicky (1976), Opening Night, Big Trouble, A Woman Under the Influence and one movie made for TV: Columbo: Étude in Black (1972).

As of 2007, John was one of only 8 filmmakers to be nominated for Best Directing, Writing and Acting Oscars over the course of his lifetime. The other 7 are Orson Welles, Woody Allen, Warren Beatty, George Clooney, Roberto Benigni, John Huston and Kenneth Branagh.

As of 2007, he is one of 6 directors who has directed his wife to a Best Actress Oscar nomination and is the only one to have directed her to two nominations.

While some of John’s Hollywood films (such as Too Late Blues) lost money, his own movies were often hugely successful. Shadows, filmed with non-professional actors on the streets of New York with a hand-held camera on 16mm black & white film, cost a mere $40,000 and recouped its cost many times over, winning the 1960 Critics Award at the Venice Film Festival. Another of his films, Faces, cost $1 million and made ten times as much in profits, as well as taking out another five prizes in Venice in 1970. (IMDB)


John Cassavetes