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If a man gets paid, say, $300,000 for directing a picture, it is hard for him not to compromise. When you work in a major studio, when the studio owns the story, you have to be very clear in your own mind why you are there. If you are there primarily to make money, then compromise is all right, in …

McSorley gave Cassavetes a crash-course in screenwriting, and the two men worked together intermittently over the next five years on a variety of projects. Cassavetes later said that McSorley taught him the three most important things he knew: 1) that character was more important than plot, and tha…

[...] Back in January, on Amos Vogel’s recommendation, Cassavetes had invited Albert Johnson, a programmer for the San Francisco Film Festival, to attend the Youngstein screening. Johnson not only loved Shadows but, by sheerest chance, had been asked to write a piece on the contemporary film scene …

His friends thought of Cassavetes as the most driven and ambitious actor they had ever known – desperate to succeed and make up for the years of idleness and unemployment. Others regarded him as willful, self-centered, cavalier and willing to do almost anything to further his own personal projects.…

Cassavetes worked on his actors’ emotions. Another technique he employed was to give actors conflicting directions in certain scenes or to put them in slightly different emotional states. Goldoni tells how, for the sidewalk scene with Tony Ray, while Tony was given his lines in advance, she receive…