The absence of judgments takes us to the very heart of Cassavetes’ genius – and the reason his work confused (and still confuses) many critics and viewers. Faces is not satiric or ironic. It does not mock its characters. Cassavetes does not, in the Altman way, sit in judgment of them, separate from them, superior to them. Like Husbands after it, the film loves its main characters. It sees their problems, but sympathizes with their plights. To a large degree Cassavetes functioned – both in his life and his work – outside the confines of normal judgments of good and evil, better and worse, right and wrong that most of us live our lives within. One might say that, whatever the causes, from a young age Cassavetes freed himself from the ‘censoring’ part of the soul – the part that says not to do something because rules of society or ethics say so. He did not live by customary codes of conduct. That meant that he could be wildly original, iconoclastic and creative at times; but also petty, selfish, cruel and manipulative, apparently without compunction or regret, at other times. There is no reason to mince words about the negative side of Cassavetes’ behavior, since the evidence is abundant in any random selection of Hollywood biographies. He shamelessly tricked, conned and used many of the people around him. He charmed and sweet-talked people when it served his purposes, and bullied or brazenly abused them if they got in his way. He fast-talked his way around problems. He flew into childish rages and threw temper tantrums when things went against him. He was a lot like Freddie, Richard and McCarthy (and like the character he plays in Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky, which I take to be the closest depiction of what his personality was actually like, at least at times).