And I’m getting the Cassavetes 8 disc SE DVD boxset for Christmas!! You have no idea how excited I am!
Cassavetes is a groundbreaking genius. That 8 disc box set is manna from heaven and “Shadows” is one of the greats of cinema. Enjoy your Christmas, David.
Its actually my favorite Cassavettes.
Most people thought the long scenes of the burlesque acts were tedious but I thought they really added to the dark/cynical tone of the film.
Yes, David, enjoy that most special gift. If only it included “Husbands.” (Big sigh.)
in introducing people to cassavetes i always try to start them with ‘a constant forge’. it is so hard to watch that and not be completely swept up in, and charmed by, his humor, passion, wit, method and madness. i love the anecdote in it about how nearing the end of ‘killing’ he was trying to come up with some way not to kill the chinese bookie.
Ben Gazzara is bad ass as Cosmo. I like to believe this is were they came up for Kramers first name!
Chinese Bookie is great. I really want that boxset! Lucky you.
My favorite Cassavetes is Faces.
i have to be careful with cassavetes. every time i watch one of the films in that box set, my brain is turned on in ways i didn’t know were possible. every time i watch constant forge i want run out, get camera and film and start making movies. Faces is so dark. the first time i watched Faces was like being smacked in the head. it was the laughter, that sad, masking-the-hurt laughter that really did me in. watching Woman Under the Influence is a test of endurance. that film just gets to the heart of it, you know. Chinese Bookie? can’t even begin to describe that one. the only film in the set that I’m not enamored with is Opening Night. I haven’t been able to get into that one.
I watched Chinese Bookie so long ago now that I’d have to scramble around to pull a story together in my memory and yet the feeling of the film…just reading Kyle’s comment above about the long scenes of the burlesque acts brought that feeling home to me again. That’s Cassavetes. He’s one of that pantheon of filmmakers who leaves a residue in you with their work and no matter how many years pass, it remains.
This movie was rough when I saw it, almost painful, but when all was said and done it felt like a hell of a movie.
Bookie and Minnie and Moskowitz (1971) constantly vie in my head and heart for personal number one favorite Cassavetes film.
But then I realize that they are, in their way, two side of the same coin. With M&M starting from the inner darkness of a parking garage and into the blinding sunlight of two lonely people finding each other. Bookie starts and ends in an opposite way from the blinding spotlight of a seedy burlesque stage to standing alone bleeding on a city street in the dead of night.
For me, what Cassavetes does more than any director (other than perhaps Herzog) is INSPIRE. When I see one of his films— I want to MAKE one. John Cassavetes is like the Sex Pistols of Filmmaking!
I agree with Shotzi, the film was pretty rough. this was my first Cassavetes film and it won’t be my last, but i must say that Chinese Bookie was not an overall great movie watching experience, for me. it was a little too slow paced. i really loved the style of the movie and the Cosmo character. those two things alone kept me interested and wanting to see more of Cassavetes’ films.
“For me, what Cassavetes does more than any director (other than perhaps Herzog) is INSPIRE. When I see one of his films— I want to MAKE one. John Cassavetes is like the Sex Pistols of Filmmaking!”
What you said.
TKOACB is just about a perfect experience for me. If I’m forced to choose, I’m going to come down on the side of the longer version.
Criterion, or some outfit, needs to get cracking on “Love Streams”. Whoever is preventing this from happening needs to be visited by Pete Clemenza.
Love this movie! And love Cassavetes, probably my favorite behind Godard. This film has such a great noir feel to it with some great characters. I honestly think Cassavetes has the best written characters in cinema (I wouldn’t say the best characters, but the best written). I’m so glad Criterion released his box set but there are so many more Cassavetes films that aren’t available on DVD that they need to release! I’m mainly talking about “Husbands” and “Love Streams”. But since they just individually released the movies from the box set it will probably be a while before we see a new Cassavetes release from Criterion.
I still need to see this.
My favourite Cassavetes so far.
I’ve seen Killing of A Chinese Bookie a few times and I still don’t understand why lots of Cassavetes’ fans I know never liked this film too much. Good characters, great line from Cosmo Vitelli- “… if you have any complaints, any complaints at all- we will throw you right out on your ass.” But I hated that Mort(Cassel), I wanted that bastard shot.
Greatest Gangster Film of All Time.
I watched this a few weeks ago. Short version. I thought the pacing was terrific, and can’t imagine the longer version being better, but who knows. It sounds as if they are two different films. I think liking the shorter version depended on one’s ability to handle the burlesque scenes. They can be rather tedious and painful to watch, but they really add the ambiance. It sounds as if with the long version, they rise out of the ambiance and become the film, where the thriller aspect becomes backdrop. I don’t know if I can see it working, but it sounds interesting.
Does anybody know anything about the films visual style? There were all sorts of interesting things going on with the camera; weird, discombobulating angles, colored lights flaring up, frame flickers (!) that seemed almost avant garde, etc etc. I wonder how much of this was intentional and how much just “happened”. One thing that always bothered me about Cassavetes is that he never seemed very “cinematic” to me; I always felt I was watching theater transplanted to the screen. This is the one film where he really tried to implement an visual style, and it worked incredibly well, IMO. Makes me wish he gave this aspect of his other films more attention, but I suppose than he wouldn’t be the same Cassavetes we know and love.
Okay Cassavetes film but far from my favorite. Always thought the strip club was unbelievable in 70’s L.A. It looks like it time warped from 1952.
Okay Cassavetes film but far from my favorite. Always thought the strip club was unbelievable in 70’s L.A. It looks like it time warped from 1952.
Cassavetes wrote “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” as a script for Scorsese to direct. (Marty was A.D. on “Minne and Moskowitz”)
Bt Marty told him “This is relly you. You should direct it yourself.”
So he did.
Great film.
Cassavetes wrote “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” as a script for Scorsese to direct. (Marty was A.D. on “Minne and Moskowitz”)
Bt Marty told him “This is relly you. You should direct it yourself.”
So he did.
Great film.
the music in this film is essential. Esp. that of the Morning Audition scene.
A shame the music isn’t available
For me it’s usually the second or third viewing of a Cassavetes film that really hits me, and it was the same with The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. I wasn’t too sure about this one to begin with, mainly because of the subject matter…it just didn’t seem like something Cassavetes would be doing. About twenty minutes into my second time watching it everything started to fall into place for me. This is essentially a gangster flick, but he reworks the genre…he makes it his own. Now I can’t understand what I was thinking the first time I saw it. A great work of art. And on a side note: Opening Night is wonderful too. Watch it…then watch it again.
NEH
Cassavetes is Socrates.
A founding father of autodidacticism,
he broadsides us with questions.
Watch both versions of this
film for a duel-lesson in pacing:
the longcut has sly, ‘realtime’ cinema,
the shortcut is deft to perfection.