Accidental genius

by Marshall Fine

Among filmmakers and film buffs, Cassavetes is revered. A major star of live television in the 1950s, he stumbled accidentally into making his first film, Shadows, while leading an acting workshop--and created a template for working outside the system that would produce some of the most piercing and human films of the next thirty years, including Faces, Husbands, and A woman under the influence. Turning his back on Hollywood, he became the prototypical outsider, fighting the system, financing and ultimately distributing his films himself, at a time when there was no apparatus to get a non-studio film into theaters around the country. His life and work are examined in this biography, with cooperation from his wife and muse Gena Rowlands and others of this inner circle, to reveal just how daring and forward-thinking he was.--From publisher description.