Filmmaking was always personal. Shadows was a reflection on the uncertainties of his own youth; Faces and Husbands were ways of working through questions about middle age. Almost everything Richard and Freddie say and do is anchored in Cassavetes’ real-life relationship with Fred Draper, whom he knew from his AADA days. But the overlap between life and art runs deeper than events. It is as if Cassavetes’ personality (every part of it – from his crazy competitiveness and bravado to his petty jealousies and irrational rages to his feelings of doubt and insecurity) is divided among Faces’ characters and given voice by them. They are versions of him. According to George O’Halloran, there was, in fact, an enchanted evening during the making of the film when, with the whole male cast and crew present in his living room eating and drinking late at night, Cassavetes sat down at the piano and improvised a succession of serenades to each of them one after another, telling each how he was a version of himself – someone he had wanted to be or had been at some other point in his life; someone who had done things he wanted to do; someone who figured a wish, a dream or a secret part of him that no one else knew about.