Activity

The amateur has no preconceived notions of how it should be done; the professional has: he’s gone to school, learned techniques, knows what will work – his choices, his selections, are usually better. The amateur has no selection: it’s a very pure thing. So the professional gets a little jealous wh…

The truth of actors’ feelings was used to test the truth of the work. John Marley and Seymour Cassel, in effect, helped to ‘write’ Faces’ ending. As was usual, the final scenes were not worked out until the shoot was almost done. Cassavetes told Cassel he wanted him to ‘squeeze by Marley’ on the st…

People talk about improvisation as if I say, ‘Everybody does what they want,’ and I take a camera and a movie comes out. It doesn’t work that way. Anybody who knows anything about film knows that’s crazy. Unless you’re shooting a war maybe, and even there you have to look for action. There are no a…

To tell the truth as you see it, incidentally, is not necessarily the truth. To tell the truth as someone else sees it is, to me, much more important and enlightening. It’s what these people are thinking, what they’re feeling. That’s the drama of the piece. Everybody just refers to their own experi…

Every single person on the picture, in the crew, was an actor. It makes a great difference. Actors really understand actors, and they’re really rooting for them. If something is very difficult for a performer, and the technicians are there, there’s pressure to get on with it; the technicians want t…