When Cassavetes told him he was an actor, Shaw said he wanted to help him in any way he could. The older, more experienced man immediately ‘adopted’ the younger. Shaw would be one of Cassavetes’ closest friends and collaborators for more than thirty years – initially introducing him to most of the movers and shakers of the New York artistic and cinematic scene, and subsequently advising and doing uncredited photogra- phy on Shadows; producing or co-producing Husbands, A Woman Under the Influence, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Gloria and Love Streams; and (with the assistance of his daughter Meta and son Larry) doing most of the photography, layout, design and writing for the films’ press packs, theater posters and newspaper ad-campaigns.

Shaw was a more worldly and slightly younger version of Cassavetes’ own father, with a similar reverence for art and artists, and brought to the relationship a vision of film’s artistic importance that inspired Cassavetes. Shaw believed in the importance of art and treated Cassavetes as an artist, in the most exalted sense of the word. He had boundless faith in and unfeigned enthusiasm for Cassavetes’ projects, no matter how uncommercial. Cassavetes’ ad hoc ‘repertory company’ would later consist of individuals of varied backgrounds and interests. Some were actors of the highest level of accomplishment (Rowlands, Falk, Gazzara and Cassel), others had technical abilities (Bo Harwood’s musical ability, George Sims’ and Mike Ferris’s abilities with a camera, George Villaseñor’s editing skills), and still others had organization skills (Al Ruban and Moe McEndree’s ability to run the business side of a production). But Shaw was the ‘poet’ in the group – less interested in lenses, focus and f-stops than in the ‘music’, ‘poetry’ and ‘truth-telling’ power of a work (to invoke terms frequently on Shaw’s lips).