Thus it may come as a surprise to learn that the Cassavetes behind the camera, the one who launched America’s independent cinema of the sixties and ultimately made a dozen films (most of them completely under his control), considered himself, and was considered by associates, a missionary of love. But even as a hero, he was too unpredictable to inspire confidence. Of course, he also played good guys, like the pianist-detective on the 1959 TV series Johnny Staccato, a short-lived Peter Gunn imitation that enabled him to pay off the debts from Shadows, which cost all of forty thousand dollars. From the moment he shows up, he suggests a loose screw: think Saddle the Wind (1958), The Dirty Dozen (1967), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), and The Fury (1978), in which a lifetime of pent-up malevolence is released in a quaking detonation-a Roman candle of rage. He seemed born to the role, with his volatile energy and dynamic outbursts, luminous yet curiously deadened eyes, wide-gaping mouth (David Thomson has likened it to a shark’s). As a film star, John Cassavetes embodied the kinetic, wild-eyed, insanely grinning villain.
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