artistandreader

I simply want to recommend a fantastic book about Mike Leigh's

work that I discovered: Ray Carney's The Films of Mike Leigh:

Embracing the World published by Cambridge University Press.

Carney is the best film critic I've ever read--few footnotes, no

jargon, amazing passion for the subject, and mind-bending

insights. Check out the book. I keep it on my coffee table so that as

I am working my way through Leigh's films on video I can read the

chapter on each film immediately after watching it. Carney's

beautiful descriptions of scenes and subtle insights often make

me pop the video in again to check out a scene or two or three a

second time. Like having an ideal guide through a tangled and

uphill but sublime landscape. This book should be bundled with

the videos! Check out Naked, check out the book, and check out

the other Leigh films too which are in it: Bleak Moments,

Meantime, Abigail's Party, and all the rest. They are all wonderful

movies and I see even more in them now that I have read this

book.

This is just a brief note for anyone who wants background information about how Opening Night was made or what Cassavetes intended when he made it. I just came across--and VERY highly recommend--Ray Carney's Cassavetes on Cassavetes book. Carney has amazing behind-the-scenes information about how Cassavetes created Opening Night and all of his other no-budget wonders. Carney knew Cassavetes and had hundreds of hours of conversations with him before his death about his philosophy of life and art. It's all in the book. It is full of previously unknown material, nutty stories, and nutty filmmaking anecdotes. For example: Did you know that Peter Bogdanovich filmed one scene? Or that the unions tried to stop the production, picketing and shouting down the actors? Or that Joan Blondell almost quit in the middle of the shot because she was so confused by Cassavetes methods? What a crazy, inspiring guy Cassavetes was and what a nut case when it came to getting things done! If you can't find the book, Carney's web site has excerpts. But try to get the real thing. Opening Night is a great movie and you just won't believe everything Cassavetes went through to make it. What a guy. What a film!

One of the most interesting aspects of this film is the self-portrait of the artist that it includes. Mabel is John Cassavetes, not in a superficial biographical sense, but as an embodiment of his vision of life's collaborative expressive possibilities. Mabel gives us a view of how Cassavetes actually performed on the set as he made all of his movies. Like her, he used every trick in the book to elicit a performance from an actor, adapting his methods to the individual actor's needs: begging, pleading, and explaining sometimes--rallying, badgering, provoking, or chiding at others. Playing mind games when it was necessary to help an actor go deeper into himself (just as Mabel nags Mr. Jensen when everything else fails to stimulate him and tells jokes to Mama Longhetti to get her to lighten up). Like Mabel, Cassavetes was his actors' own best audience, laughing, smiling, jumping out of his seat with delight when interesting and unexpected things happened (just as she does with the construction workers). Like hers, his vision of directing was the opposite of dictation. Direction was interaction. Mabel shows us what it really means to say that Cassavetes' view of direction was not a relation of superior and inferior, of boss and worker, but of equals working together in a surprisingly intimate yet public "family."

Mabel is her creator's reflection on his own life of directing. This is one of the insights I got from Ray Carney's amazing new Cassavetes on Cassavetes book, which goes into incredible detail about how all of the films were made. (He has more than 100 pages on this film alone.) I highly recommend it--along with his web site devoted to Cassavetes' life and work, which has more information

When you watch Mabel's ecstatic, doomed, inventive, tragic, comic performance, think of Cassavetes. Think of someone giving his or her soul to a world that doesn't want it. Think of the tragedy of an artist who wants to make the world laugh and love, but only elicits criticism and embarrassment the harder he tries. Mabel is John.