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 stairs as he came up to the bedroom. Cassel expressed shock and said, ‘I’m not going past that guy. I’d be too afraid to. I’d rather take my chances running across the roof and jumping.’ Cassavetes then turned to Marley. When he asked him how he would really respond if he had lived through this series of events, culminating with his wife telling him she hates her life and doesn’t love him, Marley said he would leave, since ‘I would not put up with that shit for more than a minute.’ Cassavetes privately disagreed with the conclusion, but instead of rejecting it outright, said, ‘OK. Let’s try it. Let’s see if it works. Let’s do a rehearsal right now.’ After Marley got slapped by Carlin, he headed down the stairs and out of the house but only got as far as the kitchen before he turned around. The rehearsal revealed an ending very close to the one Cassavetes finally used.

As in Shadows, and as would be the case in all of his subsequent films, Faces’ actors were encouraged to draw on the deepest aspects of their personalities and attitudes in their playing. Cassavetes’ secret to making this work was to operate in such a deep way that the actors didn’t realize what was going on. Their performances became explorations of parts of themselves they didn’t know were there, and which would only be discovered later, if ever. The characters Cassavetes created were sufficiently different from the actors in superficial respects that the actors didn’t recognize the similarity to themselves, which meant that they played their roles unselfconsciously and unguardedly. But, at the same time, the roles tapped into deep structures of feeling and personality that enriched their performances and made them profoundly revealing.